Dan Stockman, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has a nice write up about the Mad Anthony Brewing Company. I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting one of their restaurants, but occasionally I can find a store in Lafayette that sells their beer, and it has always been fine stuff. Mad Anthony, along with Three Floyds and Oaken Barrel are probably my three favorite Indiana brewing companies. (This is probably a betrayal of my own Lafayette Brewing Company, but I’m still recovering from the Tippecanoe Common Ale which I really didn’t like — the Black Angus Oatmeal Stout is really good though.)

In today’s New York Times, Paul Krugman argues that St. Ronald started the financial deregulation ball rolling that left us vulnerable to the current economic crisis.

The immediate effect of Garn-St. Germain, as I said, was to turn the thrifts from a problem into a catastrophe. The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.

The deregulation led to an explosion of debt, public and private. Essentially, I think, we’ve been mining the economy for the past quarter century instead of growing it. Now we’re left with the economic equivalent of a Superfund site.

To be a little bit fair, I’m not sure if continuing to grow the economy was a viable option as the rest of the world began to catch up to us. But, by mining the economy instead of conserving it, we’ve probably multiplied the resulting problems. Guess we’ll see.

Now that the legislature has to go into a special session, Gov. Daniels finally joined the budget conversation in earnest. The AP has an outline of his budget cuts:

Financial aid (+3%)
K-12 (+2%)
State police (flat)
Prisons (flat)
College (-4%)
State parks (-8%)
“Faith based & community initiatives” (-10%) (In quotes b/c I don’t know what these programs are.)
Homeland security (-10%)
Environmental Management (-11%)
BMV (-11%)
Health (-12%)
Libraries (-15%)

I wonder what this means for the state’s Medicaid appropriation. As I recall, it’s usually one of the (if not the) highest single line item in the budget, but I’m not sure how much control the General Assembly has over it.

Incidentally, Everybody’s Favorite Economist, Larry DeBoer had a Capital Comments column in April about Indiana’s revenue shortfall, the stimulus, and what it means for Indiana’s budget. It’s either pain now or pain later, or both. When it’s time to cut, we can really identify our priorities as a community. I’m not sure I’ll enjoy what the true priorities of our leaders are, but it’s probably time to find out.

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you… I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good… Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.“

—Randall Terry, Operation Rescue (Fort Wayne News Sentinel 8/19/93)

Terry most recently surfaced to protest President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame.

In an unrelated matter, lone gunman and unhinged nut, Scott Roeder acting completely alone and independently of anybody and everybody shot Dr. Tiller, the physician who provided late term abortions to women whose pregnancies put them at risk of serious harm or whose children had birth defects that would cause short, pain-filled lives.

Randall “Wave of Hatred” Terry declared that the pro-life movement bears no responsibility for Tiller’s slaying. Glad that’s settled. Militia groups and “sovereign citizen” groups will also presumably be disclaiming any responsibility for Roeder.

Roeder, if he’s guilty of what he’s been accused of, took the step of turning ideas into action and, as such, is entirely to blame. We can’t run a free society if we presume that our citizens are so weak minded that they can’t hear certain things lest they go around murdering people. That said, guys like Terry have to realize that when you preach hatred and intolerance, bad things are going to happen. And movements and ideas associated with hatred and intolerance are going to be tainted with the stain of the actions of guys like Roeder.

I love these plate o’ shrimp moments.

With one sentence under way, I’ll take a moment to explain “plate o’ shrimp” for the uninitiated. From the epic 80s film, “Repo Man.”

Miller: A lot o’ people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch o’ unconnected incidents ‘n things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice o’ coincidence that lays on top o’ everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o’ shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconciousness.

Otto: You eat a lot of acid, Miller, back in the hippie days?

So, yesterday, I took my first bike ride of any distance in quite some time. Along the way, I noticed I was crossing the Union Township line and I passed by the Stidham United Methodist Church on Tippecanoe County Road 175 West. Not 24 hours later, I browse the Lafayette Journal & Courier and am treated to a short biography of Jasper Hart Stidham (1833 – 1912), a resident of Union Township from whom the Stidham place names in the area are derived. He had been a “conservative business man, a man of high principle, broad views, good motives, and an honored and useful citizen.” His parents started farming the area in 1830 — the county was created in 1826. Jasper died unmarried, childless, and with 1,000 acres. So, his estate apparently went to things like churches.

Unfortunately, I did not note the stained glass windows as I rode past the church. Apparently it is of local vintage, the creation of Lafayette artist Edna Browning Ruby. The information, incidentally, comes from Bob Kriebel, a prolific historian of the Lafayette area whose work appears in the Lafayette Journal & Courier on a regular basis.

Dorothy Schneider has an article on North Central Health Services, Inc.’s efforts to acquire land so that it can be used consistently with the plans of the Wabash River Enhancement Corporation. NCHS is one of those organizations that provides vital support to the Lafayette area. It started as a holding corporation for Lafayette Home Hospital but sold that interest to the Sisters of St. Francis. The resulting money has been used by corporation to help the community, generally by assisting community organizations.

The WREC was formed as a non-profit organization by Purdue, Lafayette, West Lafayette, and Tippecanoe County. It was initially funded with a grant from the NCHS.

Since 2005, the Wabash River Enhancement Corporation has been making an effort to improve life along the Wabash River. Our efforts have included designation of a portion of River Road as a scenic by-way, floodplain mapping throught Tippecanoe County, and urban corridor master planning within Lafayette and West Lafayette. Our newest endeavor targets water quality improvement within the Wabash River.

Most recently, NCHS has acquired a five acre parcel near a larger parcel it had previously acquired along the Wabash River. The goal is “to create a more river-focused community, possibly adding pedestrian bridges, a riverfront promenade and expanded trails to the Lafayette and West Lafayette banks in the years to come.”

We’re lucky to have the Wabash River as a resource, funding from NCHS and other community minded people and organizations, politicians and community leaders with the foresight to take care of our resources, and citizens willing to put forth the effort on this project. The pedestrian foot bridge and the Wabash Heritage Trail already form the nucleus of something special for the area. One day, maybe we’ll have something instrumental to the increased prosperity and well-being of the community.

Gov. Daniels intends to go on TV to give an infomercial about his budget plan as he releases it. Well, it’s not being billed as an infomercial:

Gov. Mitch Daniels will reach out directly to Hoosiers on Monday to outline his budget proposal for the next two years during remarks that will be offered for live broadcast at 6 p.m.
. . .
The governor’s remarks will be transmitted by satellite for TV and radio broadcast. He will begin his remarks – estimated to last only five minutes – at 6:01 p.m.

The budget is a complicated document that probably couldn’t be meaningfully explained in an hour; let alone five minutes. The Governor’s five minutes of TV time probably can’t be regarded as anything more than a superficial sales pitch.

All things being equal, I’d prefer Troy McClure and Dr. Nick to Governor Daniels:

Troy: I’m here to tell you about “Spiffy!”, the twenty-first-century stain remover. Let’s meet the inventor, Dr. Nick Riviera.

Nick: Thank you, Troy! Hi, everybody!

All: Hi, Dr. Nick!

Nick: Troy, I brought with me the gravestone of author and troubled soul Edgar Allen Poe! [exhibits a grimy tombstone]

Troy: One of our best writers.

Nick: Yes, but unfortunately, a century of neglect has turn this tombstone into a depressing eyesore.

Troy: So what? I guess we’re going to have to throw it away.

Nick: Not so fast, Troy! With one application of Spiffy, you’ll think the body’s still warm! [applies some Spiffy, removes all the grime]

All: Ooooooh! Ahhhhhhhh! [The name “POE” twinkles]

Troy: Quoth the raven, “What a shine!”

Grand Jury subpoenas were sent to offices of Representative Pete Visclosky (IN-01).

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed records of Rep. Pete Visclosky in a criminal probe involving a Washington-area lobbying firm that specialized in providing congressional earmarks to defense contractors.

The lobbying firm is known as PMA Group, employs Viscklosky’s former chief of staff, and specialized in providing congressional earmarks to defense contractors. If Visclosky is tied to John Murtha in any serious way, I would expect that this could get dirty. I’ll be delicate and just say that Murtha has given at least the appearance of impropriety in the past.

For his part, Rep. Visclosky says, “I am confident that at the end of this process, no one will conclude that I have done anything wrong or harmed my constituents in any way.”

One conspiracy theory that flashed past my consciousness was that Chrysler dealers shut down in the Chrysler bankruptcy were disproportionately Republican – cue ominous music and blame the Obama administration.

Nate Silver crashes the party by doing some research, crunching some numbers, and finding that car dealers tend to contribute to Republicans over Democrats by a huge margin.

Overall, 88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates. By comparison, the list of dealers on Doug Ross’s list (which I haven’t vetted, but I assume is fine) gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans — not really a significant difference.

There’s no conspiracy here, folks — just some bad math.

(H/t Craig) You know that $3,100 per household cap & trade tax guys like Boehner and Pence keep going on about? It’s fabricated. The author of the study upon which it’s purportedly based explained that the numbers don’t say what they say they say. The real number, he estimates, is about $340 per household.

It’s almost as if they were bending the facts to fit the policy. That worked out pretty well with Iraq, so I guess it’s o.k. And, of course, the whole global warming thing is a myth. Like the estimate of the earth being 4 billion years old. And the heliocentric model of the solar system.