(H/t Politivolve) – The AP has a story out of Wisconsin about a man on trial for failing to get medical assistance for his child.

Dale Neumann told the jury he didn’t seek medical help for his child because “I can’t do that because Biblically, I cannot find that is the way people are healed.”

He added: “If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God. I am not believing what he said he would do.”

These stories about parents too religious to seek medical treatment for their children come up from time to time, and I’m always reminded of the following tale:

A devout Christian heard an urgent news report on his radio that a flash flood was within minutes of entering the valley where he lived. Immediately he went to his knees and prayed for safety. The words were still on his lips when he became aware that water was gushing under his door. He retreated to the second floor and finally onto the roof of his house.

While he sat on the roof, a helicopter flew by and the pilot asked over the loudspeaker if they could lift him off. It’s not necessary since I have the Lord’s protection, he replied. Moments later the house began to break up and he found himself clinging to a tree. A police boat, braving the waters, approached him for rescue, but he assured them that the Lord would save him. Finally, the tree gave way and the man went to his death.

Standing before the Lord, he asked, Lord, I’m glad to be here, but why didn’t You answer my prayer for safety? The Lord responded, ‘Son, I told you over the radio to get out of there. Then I sent you a helicopter and a motor boat!’

The girl had diabetes and the father didn’t take her to a doctor or get her insulin. There was a group of people standing around her praying as she died. It’s exactly like watching her drown in the bathtub, praying instead of pulling her out. I don’t get the sense that this guy was acting out of malice, but where is the line separating faith from batshit insanity? Wherever it is, I think this guy is well over the line.

Ryan Liedtky had some friendly words for this blog at the Libertarian Party of Indiana website, and I appreciate it. I’ve become less libertarian in my views as I’ve gotten older, but I’m awfully glad the Libertarian Party is around. Even if I am more and more coming to conclude that I probably wouldn’t like a society governed by purely libertarian principals, I like a society where the Libertarians are around to form a throttle on our statist impulses.

Senator Gary Dillon (R-Columbia City) will not run for re-election to the state Senate in 2010, according to an article by Niki Kelly in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. He says he wants to slow down and spend some time with his grandkids.

Already Thursday, several politicos had either expressed interest or decided not to run.

•Rep. Bill Ruppel, R-North Manchester, said definitively he is not interested in the Senate seat because the thinks the House Republicans have a good shot at taking back control of the House.

•Rep. Dan Leonard, R-Huntington, said he is considering the move but is concerned about giving up his seniority in the House.

. . .

•Whitley County GOP Chairman Jim Banks, who is also a county councilman, said he will run for the Senate seat if Leonard does not. If Leonard does, then he would seek the House seat.

Deanna Martin, writing for the Associated Press, has an article on stimulus money being spent on Indiana’s bridges. Apparently a relatively small percentage of those bridges in need are slated to be repaired with stimulus money. The problem was the “shovel ready” requirement. Apparently a lot of the bridges in need of repair didn’t have plans ready to go. So, only one in four made the cut. Instead, some of the money is going to things like road paving projects which were ready to go, but probably aren’t as necessary as the bridge repair. The Indiana Department of Transportation seems to suggest that this isn’t a big deal because money spent now on one project probably frees up money later for things like crumbling bridges.

Kelli Cheatam, reporting in the South Bend Tribune, writes that Berrien Springs police officer Ryan Venno fell off a bridge suffering a compound fracture in his leg while trying to find a spot that wasn’t conspicuous to motorists.

First, let me say that I don’t wish anyone to get hurt and I’m glad he wasn’t hurt more than he was. Second, my tendencies these days are to be very pro-police officer, working as I often do to defend some of them against lawsuits. Those things said, the fact that he was setting up a speed trap really mixes up my inclination toward compassion.

Maybe there are statistics out there that demonstrate the current level of speed enforcement is necessary to keep motorists reasonably safe. But, from my uninformed perspective, speed traps generally look more like revenue tools than safety tools. While driving, I tend to follow a simple rule that one should never speed through a municipality with no obvious source of income. I don’t know if Berrien Springs, Michigan fits that bill, but I find it difficult to believe that their traffic enforcement needs called for six police units at that location.

But, like I said, I’m glad that Officer Venno wasn’t hurt worse than he was, and hopefully his recovery will not be too difficult.

Several Indiana cities have been awarded grants to hire police officers – apparently, the grants come at a 3-to-1 ratio. The federal government will pay for 3/4 of a police officer’s 4 year contract. According to a story in the Muncie Star Press by Rick Yencer, Muncie Mayor McShurley intends to decline the funds for Muncie, saying she can’t figure out how to pay for the fourth year. I haven’t been following Mayor McShurley closely enough to have a sense for whether this is a legitimate budget concern or some sort of Palinesque posturing against the federal stimulus bill. Or, maybe Muncie’s crime is low enough that additional police officers are not a pressing concern.

A sidebar to the story lists other cities and the money they are receiving for police officers:

Muncie 5 officers $1,160,175
Anderson 6 officers $1,501,434
Marion 4 officers $947,500
Indianapolis 50 officers $11,046,850
Gary 11 officers $2,076,514
East Chicago 5 officers $1,120,105
Michigan City 3 officers $592,641
Clinton 1 officer $134,136
Kokomo 5 officers $1,146,950
South Bend 13 officers $2,453,295
Terre Haute 6 officers $1,204,896
Akron 1 officer $143,176
Clarksville 2 officers $467,844
Lafayette 4 officers $915,564
Merrillville 3 officers $588,090
Lake Station 1 officer $186,183
Montezuma 1 officer $129,288
Spencer 1 officer $138,942
LaPorte 2 officers $382,154
Linton 1 officer $161,370
Nashville 1 officer $118,635

The Delphi School Board had to consider other options after a referendum saw 60% of voters say that they would rather not pay for repairs to aging school buildings that would cost $13 million.

[The alternatives] generally were, as Superintendent Ralph Walker laid out:

• A project up to $2 million.

• Several $2 million or less projects addressing different, unrelated needs or buildings.

• A project of more than $2 million but of a smaller scope than the original.

These alternatives wouldn’t trigger the referendum requirement that defeated the original plan.

I suspect that taxes for civic projects are a little like having kids. Almost nobody can afford them in advance and, if folks waited until they were financially ready to reproduce, it would be too late to have kids. Of course there is a difference between having kids when doing so means you have to forgo some luxuries and having kids when doing so means that you’ll have to depend on welfare. If the metaphor is apt, I’m not sure which situation Delphi is in.

Harold Adams, writing for the Louisville Courier Journal, has an article on the town of Georgetown’s consideration of seeking bankruptcy protection to get out of debts owed to the City of New Albany and a Jeffersonville engineering firm related to sewage treatment.

[T]he town made plans to build its own sewage treatment plant and get out of a long-term contract with the city of New Albany sewer board.

Georgetown agreed, in exchange for being allowed out of the contract early, to begin construction on its own plant within 30 months or pay New Albany a $450,000 termination fee. Georgetown also selected a site for the plant and hired the Jeffersonville firm of Capitol Engineering to design and build the plant.

But then problems arose. Residents near the proposed site challenged Georgetown’s plan to annex it. And Floyd County refused to give the required zoning approval.

The delays — Georgetown is still in the process of selecting an alternate site — triggered the termination fee with New Albany and a provision in the contract with Capitol Engineering that called for payments in the event the project stalled.

The bankruptcy code requires that municipalities have specific state authority before they are allowed to seek bankruptcy protection. A spokesperson for the Department of Local Government Finance say they don’t have any such authority. The municipality says that the Home Rule statute should be considered sufficient authority. It seems to me that, generally, when a municipality goes to the Home Rule well, that means it doesn’t have much of a legal leg to stand on.

The article is a little amusing in that it quotes Georgetown Town Council President Billy Stewart as saying that the money just isn’t there and “there’s no way for Georgetown to pay.” Later in the article, the DLGF points out that “the town could take out bonds to pay any court judgment and repay the bonds with a tax that would not count against its state-imposed taxing limit.” This is followed by town attorney, David Andrews, saying, “If a bankruptcy were possible, then that would be something that might be preferable to paying out on a big judgment.” He says that he thinks Georgetown has a strong legal case. My take (based solely on one news article) is that this has more to do with the town’s negotiating tactics in the dispute with the engineering firm than with any real belief that they’ll be able to receive much in the way of bankruptcy relief.

We’re about out of living WWI veterans. The last British one, Harry Patch, died at the age of 111. There is apparently one remaining U.S. Veteran, Frank Buckles, 108, of West Virginia. I was a history major in undergrad. Miami didn’t really do specialties, but my senior seminar or whatever they called it, was British Society in World War I. That gave me an appreciation for a time period I had largely ignored.

I’m not a student of military history, so I’m sure I’m leaving myself open to major objection; but, for me, it was the first really modern, industrial war where our capacity for wholesale destruction really got swinging. A lot of the crap about the nobility and honor of warfare really got left by the wayside after World War I. After that war, soldiers were less noble heroes fighting gallantly for God & Country and more a form of human sausage to be ground up by the machinery of war. Some of that had, also, to do with the nature of the conflict. Where World War II had a Good versus Evil vibe to it; World War I had all the righteousness of a bar fight.

In any case, time moves on, and 100% of the survivors die anyway.

Information in a story by Daniel Lee in the Indianapolis Star suggests that the Bayh family is too conflicted from ties to the for-profit health industry for Evan Bayh to make an unbiased vote on the health care issue.

[F]or Bayh, health care isn’t just the latest high-stakes political fight in Congress. It’s also a substantial part of his family’s income.

As the debate over health-care reform intensifies, Bayh’s wife is receiving lucrative payouts from some of the companies that could be most affected by that legislation.

Susan Bayh’s rise to corporate boards was timely – starting just before Evan was elected to the Senate (but when his election was clearly going to happen.) Her board memberships and the compensation:

[Susan] Bayh’s compensation during those years:
• WellPoint $976,000: Indianapolis-based health insurer, includes Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
• Dendreon $370,391: Seattle-based biotech company focused on cancer treatments.
• MDRNA* $388,169: Bothell, Wash., biotech company developing therapeutics to treat liver diseases.
• Curis $184,001: Cambridge, Mass., drug-development company focused on cancer treatments.
• Dyax $221,692: Cambridge, Mass., biopharmaceuticals company developing treatments for use in oncology and inflammation.
Total $2,140,253

Adding to the perception of conflict is Evan Bayh’s non-committal approach to health care. Whatever his real reasons, a refusal to bite the hand that feeds him (and I’m not talking about his constituents) will lead to a perception of impropriety. To avoid being characterized as the Senator from Wellpoint, I suggest that Bayh should come out and say that he’ll support a cloture vote so a health care bill can get an up or down vote but otherwise will abstain on the issue.