A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

I’m grateful for a whole lot of stuff, much of which I’ve blogged about before. Today, I’ll just stick to the basics. I’m grateful for a loving, remarkable wife; healthy, smart, kind-hearted children; and parents & siblings who gave me a stable, positive environment to grow up. I am grateful for my job – particularly co-workers who took me into an established practice and taught me how to be a good lawyer (I make no comment on whether I’ve taken full advantage of that teaching.) And, I’m grateful for a community where I and my family are safe and have the opportunity to prosper.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

My thoughts from Thanksgivings past:

Thanksgiving 2005
Thanksgiving 2006
Thanksgiving 2007
Thanksgiving 2008
Thanksgiving 2009

I don’t have time right now except to throw this out there. The Palladium-Item had a story on Richmond Community Schools’ push to get students caught up on their vaccinations. There were 1,500 who weren’t in compliance. There wasn’t anything nefarious in this – a lot of parents apparently thought they were up to date when they weren’t.

What caught my attention, however, was a comment to the story (my own fault – nothing good ever comes from reading a newspaper’s comment section). The commenter was on about the dangers of vaccinations.

I will grant you that vaccinations are not without risk. However, the risks of vaccination are far outweighed by the risks of non-vaccination of the entire population. Now, what is pernicious about the movement is that they are attempting to be free-riders on the fact that the bulk of the population gets vaccinated. They can perceive the risks of vaccination as comparable to non-vaccination because the diseases against which we are guarding are not tearing through the population because of the prevalence of vaccination. The more this movement catches on, the more I and my family are at risk. Because vaccinations aren’t guaranteed effective for all individuals – but the less a disease can spread, the less risk for everyone.

The Evansville Courier Press has a pretty good editorial on the federal deficit reduction issue.

I have one quibble, that is minor in one respect but important to the framing in another. The CP says:

President Barack Obama has urged Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts for all but high-income individuals and families. It’s the right thing to do if we’re going to attack the deficit problem.

Letting the tax cuts expire for individuals earning over $200,000 and families over $250,000 would generate $700 billion in revenues for the government over the next 10 years.

My quibble is that the tax cuts wouldn’t expire for those individuals. Rather, the tax cuts would expire for that portion of an individual’s income that exceeds $200,000. It’s sort of the flip side of that Anatole France quote I like to use:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

In this case, the law would be majestically equal in not taxing everyone’s first couple hundred thousand dollars as much, and majestically equal in taxing everyone’s three hundred thousandth dollar a little bit more.

And, just another observation, that it’s tough for even fire-breathing conservatives to come up with actual cuts. They like to talk about “earmarks,” but that’s a relatively tiny part of the budget – and they can’t even agree on that. Jim DeMint apparently went to the last refuge of the fiscally conservative scoundrel: “administrative waste.” I’ve heard Republicans and Democrats alike promise over the years to balance the budget by eliminating waste. If there ever was that much “waste” in the budget, with years of lawmakers looking for it – with a bit more diligence, one presumes, than O.J. has spent looking for the real killer – there cannot be much left.

If you have to grandstand about something, please pick something other than our nuclear weapon policy. At the moment, Sen. Lugar appears to be the only Republican Senator willing to move forward with the new START treaty.

Whether Sen. Lugar’s colleagues are willing to move ahead with this or not should go a long way toward showing whether they are political nihlists, willing to run any risk as long as it means an Obama defeat; or public servants, willing to occasionally put aside their political games for a moment if it will be helpful in not destroying the planet.

I sometimes have my differences with Sen. Lugar, but appreciate him taking a stand on this one.

Following up on this story from last year about the attack of Rep. Ed Delaney by Augustus Mendenhall, Mendenhall has been sentenced to forty years in prison.

Not sure I ever blogged about the motives, but I seem to recall that Mendenhall had revenge issues stemming from Delaney’s role in a legal dispute that embroiled Mendenhall’s dad in the early 80s. Stephen Goldsmith and a crusade against pornography was involved somehow, as well.

Just a random plug for Sumy Designs, the web design business run by my wife and her sister. They’ve been at it for four or five years now and have really grown the business nicely. So, if you have needs in that direction, I’d encourage you to contact them.

I’m really falling behind on this whole gratitude thing. I think I’ve skipped a couple. But, in any case, today, I’m grateful for sleep. The difference in a day following a bad night of sleep versus a good night of sleep is dramatic. And how cool are dreams? Just about the best passive entertainment there is, I think. It’s a double edged sword though. Insomnia can really mess with you. (As can infant children.)

And, as a make up for one of my missed days, I’m thankful for Wikipedia – its article on sleep is very informative. Having that much information at your fingertips is really remarkable. Last night at bed time, I was talking with Cole, and a question about the invention of airplanes came up. I have a Wikipanion app on my phone, so I was able to look it up on the spot.