Reports are still muddled, but there has been a shooting at Martinsville West Middle School that happened early this morning. A student or maybe recently expelled student is in custody. The reports I’ve seen indicated uncertainty as to whether the victim was a student or a member of the staff.

The Lafayette Journal & Courier editorial board is the latest to notice that former Senator Bayh is full of crap. Their observations closely match those of Ezra Klein who probably wrote the definitive take down of Bayh’s statements as he departed the Senate as compared to his subsequent career choices.

Sen. Bayh left office, bemoaning partisanship, special interest influence, and a lack of public spirit. He then took a job with the highly partisan Fox News and, rather than teaching or doing anything public minded in Indiana as he had suggested, took a job working for a high power lobbying firm that makes a lot of money promoting some dubious interests.

Had Sen. Bayh left without comment or simply said he was tired of what he was doing and wanted to try something else, he wouldn’t have invited this kind of push back. But he had to get all sanctimonious and lecture us. Choosing the jobs that he did after treating us to yet another concerned lecture, practically begs for clouds of stones to be hurtled into his glass house. Fortunately, given his career choices, he can afford to buy plenty of glass.

Maureen Groppe reports that Indiana’s tax revenues are at their lowest levels since 2006. Revenues were 7% lower in 2010 than in 2009. The average among all states was only 2%. The decline in income tax payments is the primary reason. Indiana ranks 30th in tax revenue per capita.

One of the main downsides is that we have been moving away from property taxes and toward income and sales taxes to finance state and local government. Income tax, as we can see, is a volatile funding source; and our governments — particularly local government, I think — stands to get a kind of budgetary whiplash from the dramatic shifts in funding availability.

So, I guess the issue of schoolyard bullying is in the news again these days. It seems to be one of those evergreen issues that pops up from time to time. Ed Brayton has a decent post up criticizing the crocodile tears coming from the Family Research Council fretting that measures designed to protect gay kids from bullying will have the effect of forcing Christian kids to closet their anti-gay views. Brayton notes that the Family Research Council makes for a particularly unsympathetic victim in this context, but goes on to recognize that First Amendment issues make implementation of anti-bullying measures problematic. There will be tough calls balancing the desire to protect kids from harassment and intimidation against a kids right to free speech.

I respect the first amendment concerns. I don’t respect the social conservative impulse to protect the ability to marginalize gays through social pressure.

Bullying has also been in the news because of the viral Youtube video showing a smaller kid harassing a bigger kid, until the bigger kid picked up the small kid and body slams him. From the video, I have no idea of the context, but it seems like the smaller kid got what was coming to him. I suppose you’re not supposed to condone answering violence with violence, but it’s hard for me to fault the response.

But, how to teach my own kids to deal with this kind of crap? You teach them that violence is never the answer, but sometimes it seems like it is. For now, I guess I’m going with the strategy of telling them that violence isn’t the answer but somehow knowing when I’m full of crap and that they should stick up for themselves — without doing it in a way that will get them in trouble with the authorities.

If I remember my childhood correctly, “go run to an adult and tell on the bully” isn’t really a viable strategy. It may solve the short term problem, but open you up to taking even more crap from your peers. And, I think I do remember my childhood. I was skinny and smart – not a great combination for a boy growing up in the Midwest. I got picked on by a few guys because I used big words and by a few more just because I was little. One thing that helped was that I was friendly with a few of the bigger kids who were maybe a little socially inept. They liked me and didn’t take too kindly to other kids giving me a lot of crap. Another strategy was to go into a sort of passive resistance mode. I didn’t exactly fight back, but I didn’t really back down either. I just sort of dug in. And, I got into a couple of fights and didn’t especially fight fair when that happened. Doesn’t really matter how small you are when you’re on their back, throttling them in a headlock.

But, I wasn’t a tough guy by any stretch. This stuff made me dislike school some; and it ultimately jaded me quite a bit. Maybe that’s just part of growing up. Compared to some other kids I can think of, I had it easy. I suspect this pecking order, schoolyard stuff happens to most folks to one extent or another. But, to the extent we can limit the amount of crap kids have to endure from other kids without turning ourselves into some kind of a police state, I’m mostly in favor of it. The idea of my kids having to put up with some of the stuff I put up with makes me sad.

Update I should add that I wasn’t entirely blameless in the schoolyard incivility. I seem to recall picking on a couple of other kids from time to time — never one-on-one, I don’t think; but as part of a group. (Individuals are usually fairly nice; true meanness comes from groups.) And, I’m sure everyone would be shocked, but I was something of a smart ass.

The legislative boycott by Indiana’s House Democrats pales in comparison to this one from Rhode Island in January 1923. It lasted all year and featured a fistfight and a gas ‘bomb.”

The Rhode Island Senate Democrats were fighting to change how the Senate districts were drawn at the time. Apparently, the 22 Republicans represented 24% of the population while the 18 Democrats represented 74%. (I assume the remaining two percent is some kind of rounding issue.)

(Title, with apologies, from the Church of the SubGenius). The New York Times is going to try its hand at charging for content. They are welcome to try, and they may even succeed. But, I have my doubts.

Historically, intellectual property was not seen as something subject to protection and much in the way of profit. Ideas, once discovered and unveiled by their creator, spread without compensation. Works of art might have been commissioned but, if copies were made, compensation was not anticipated. Anyone willing to undertake the labor of copying a book was free to do so. In the 17th and 18th centuries, copyright started to take off. Initially, it was seen as a tool of censorship by the crown. In the United States, it was seen as a way to induce more creation. Article I, section 8, clause 8 of the United States Constitution says that Congress has the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

It’s an instrumental clause. Intellectual property rights of authors aren’t seen as essential in their own right; but rather as a means to an end – inducing more creation. That’s a different proposition from how you normally see intellectual property discussed — for example, you’ll hear copyright infringement described as “theft.” That implies a deprivation of property and a “malum in se” kind of offense. But copying, as contemplated by the U.S. Constitution anyway, isn’t an evil in itself – it’s only bad because it’s prohibited and to the extent that copying inhibits further creation.

So, what do we lose if a place like the New York Times can’t get paid? We lose a variety of journalism and printed material to some extent. But, I would argue that, to a large extent, we lost a lot of what was valuable to profit-maximizing business practices before the Internet changed the business through ease of copying and distribution. Some content is cheap and easy. Opinion columnists and a lot of crime reporting, for example. There is other content that is expensive: in-depth reporting requiring a lot of travel, analysis of a number of sources, and defending lawsuits against groups who might prefer their activities go unreported, for example.

Profit-maximizing business practices had a lot of the more expensive content on its way out before the Internet changed the game. Media has been trending toward things like opinion columnists, crime reporting, and wire feeds without notably reducing subscription prices. This has left media companies less able to defend against the Internet. A guy like me can and will produce a lot of opinion for free. I can’t and won’t do a lot of hard reporting work. We don’t need copyright protections to induce creation of the easy stuff – look at YouTube and the blogosphere.

So, why pay for the New York Times? To get some Judy Miller stenography on the nuclear threat of aluminum tubes as told to her by White House sources? The wisdom of David Brooks? The Internet abounds in creative works. Until newspapers reverse course and commit to producing content of a type unavailable for free, even if that means less return on their journalist dollar, I don’t think people are going to pay much for them.

The news out of Wisconsin is that the state Republicans used some procedural skulduggery to pass Gov. Walker’s union busting measure. Apparently, they called a conference committee at the last minute, without the normally required 24 hour notice. They then split the budget off from the union busting measures. In Wisconsin, apparently, a bill that has no fiscal impact is not subject to the same quorum rules as the ones that have stalled the Wisconsin legislation for the last few weeks.

We’ve heard Walker maintaining, earnestly, that the union busting was necessary to fix the budget. This new claim, that the anti-union measures have no fiscal impact, puts the lie to that claim. This is just union hating. Anyone who claims that anti-union measures were fiscally necessary can now safely be called full of shit.

As a former legislative employee, what interests me more is the last minute conference committee.

The move ended a bizarre two-and-a-half hour legislative sprint in which the Senate hastily gaveled in and sent the measure to a Senate-Assembly conference committee, which typically works out differences between similar bills passed by the two houses.

Although the Senate hadn’t yet passed the bill, Senate rules allow the Senate president to move a bill to a conference committee if the Assembly’s intent is clear and it’s past the amendable stage — a step the Senate took last month.
. . .
The 6 p.m. conference committee lasted just minutes, and featured an angry speech by Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, the only Democratic member present, who accused the Republicans of violating the state’s open meeting law and “trampling on democracy.”
“Mr. Chairman, this is a violation of law,” he said, referring to the short notice given for the meeting.

Typically, 24 hours’ notice is required for a public meeting. There are exceptions, but it was not clear Wednesday that the conference committee met those standards.

It was before my time, but rumor has it that Sen. Garton, long time Republican leader of the Indiana Senate, did a lot to clean up procedural shenanigans that used to be pretty common, one of which was to call last minute conference committees – or last minute room changes for conference committees. Sen. Garton apparently regularized how the Senate did its business, and that has done a lot to instill faith in the process. I’m not sure the importance of that can be overstated. Unless people buy into the legislative process, legislation is really just words on a piece of paper backed up by guys with guns.

The Lafayette Journal & Courier has an editorial poking some gentle fun at the National months, days, and weeks of this or that; then proposes that March be devoted to basketball.

The editorial board notes the obvious. March isn’t what it once was in Indiana before the IHSAA committed the greatest crime against humanity since . . . well, did a bad thing – I’m afraid I was about to overstate things somewhat.

Call us old-fashioned, but we miss the old Indiana high school tournament, when high-enrollment Goliath schools tipped off against the small-town Davids — often with the same outcome as the biblical story. The madness of March seemed that much more manic when everyone played everyone else.

For my part, seared in my mind are Richmond’s epic struggles against Connersville in the Regionals, battling for an opportunity to go to the semi-state at Hinkle. The semi-state games at Hinkle were as electric as anything I’ve ever experienced. The sun streaming in through those enormous windows, the bleachers flexing as the student section jumped up and down in unison. And, of course, the state finals where Richmond teams went to lose to Marion two out of three years. (But, there was that one year when Richmond finally pulled it off.)

So, anyway, I could sign on for an effort to designate March as basketball month; but I’d suggest an amendment to compel the IHSAA to go back to one class basketball. Because that’s the right way. That’s the Indiana way.

More than anything else, this tells me that lawmakers aren’t terribly serious about balancing the budget. Bill Straub, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, tells us:

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have voted to slash programs affecting everything from poison control to Big Bird in their crusade to corral the $14 trillion national debt, but one item in the federal budget managed to sail through untouched — the farm subsidy program.
. . .
Many Republicans in the lower chamber, though committed budget cutters, hale from farm states where subsidy cuts would not be appreciated.

Cutting poison control center funding but not agricultural subsidies? I understand you’re going to prefer cutting funding that benefits people who voted for the other guy, but this seems beyond the pale.