Inmates take over New Castle prison.

Live footage here as of 3:40 p.m. today.

Inmates at the New Castle Correctional Facility took over part of the prison and set several fires this afternoon.

. . .

New Castle Mayor Tom Nipp said “a full-scale riot” erupted at about 1:45 p.m.

“Prisoners were trying to tear down some fence,” he told WISH-TV (Channel 8). “I do know that the exterior fence is electrically wired, so I doubt they were trying to tear that down.

“The police department has been fully mobilized. A perimeter has been established on the outside of the facility to assure that if anyone did manage to get over a fence there would still be security. And all due measures will be taken to maintain that security.”

The privately operated prison is outside New Castle’s city limits, but Nipp said the city’s entire police department had been mobilized, along with officers from nearby departments, paramedics and a fire crew.

Nipp said he did not know if the riot was related to the arrival last month of convicts from Arizona who are being housed at the prison.

The New Castle Correctional Facility which went private on January 1, 2006, has been touted by the Daniels administration as proof of its privatization model for correctional facilities. The Daniels Administration began contract negotiations to run the prison with GEO Group, Inc. in August 2005.

In March, the facility took in 1,200 inmates from Arizona which required the addition of 230 new employees. Last year, a similar deal to import inmates from California fell through. Of the California deal, Gov. Daniels said the $6 million value of the contract was “”pure profit,” as the state was to reap in cash but bear no expense in the deal.”

GEO, Inc., the private contractor was formerly known as Wackenhut, a company with a colorful history. With respect to private prisons, it has gotten in trouble in more than one state for its employees having sex with inmates. In Louisiana, the state had to take over a juvenile facility after the Department of Justice accused Wackenhut of subjecting its inmates to excessive abuse and neglect. It has been accused of diverting money for drug treatment programs and of having lax procedures for background checks. More recently, GEO, Inc. was accused of overcharging the state of Florida by $5 million. For a lot of additional accusations, the veracity of which I do not pretend to know, check out the GEO Group Rap Sheet.

Update Advance Indiana has some more recent details. The Governor regards this as a “relatively minor incident” and Arizona had already started putting brakes on the deal to ship its inmates over here because of “security concerns.”

The Lafayette Journal & Courier is reporting that Fred Phelps‘ Westboro Baptist Church will not be at the funeral of Cpl. Cody Putnam who died on April 12, 2007 serving our country in Iraq.

There had been previous reports that members of Pastor Phelps’ church would be protesting at the funeral. His church promotes the message that God is punishing soldiers with death for defending a country that protects gays and lesbians.

I’m guessing his presence will be missed in Lafayette about as much as that of a rabid dog.

Cpl. Putman’s mother, Pam Mow speaks for us all, I think:

When told the news that the protesters would not show up, Putman’s mother, Pam Mow, sarcastically said: “That just breaks my heart.”

The Indy Star has another installment on the precarious state of our health care system. Turns out, being uninsured isn’t just for poor people any more. Folks at around the median family income level — about $46,000 per year — are joining the ranks of the uninsured at a pretty fast clip. The Lafayette Journal and Courier has a similar article in today’s edition discussing, among other things, how insurance rates go up for the insured as the numbers of uninsured and Medicaid recipients grow. Medical providers end up treating many of these folks with some level of care provided at a loss and need to make up the costs elsewhere.

Money can stand up to populism in this country for a long, long time; but I get the feeling that a huge number of people are getting really, really angry about the state of health insurance in this country and I think politicians will eventually get the sense that Something Must Be Done. That’s a cause for hope and fear. Something actually does need to be done, but politicians simply reacting to populist fears usually doesn’t end well.

In any event, I’ve been over this before, but I take the position that, as a nation, we’re already paying for national health care coverage, we’re simply not getting it. There is massive amounts of waste in the system, with health insurer’s administrative costs — processing claims — representing something like 30% of the total, if I recall correctly. Meanwhile, similar costs for Medicare, if I recall correctly, represent less than 10% of the total. We are, apparently, subsidizing the advertising and R&D for pharmaceuticals — paying full (or more) freight on drugs while the drug companies sell the same drugs to other countries that are more hard-nosed in their negotiations with these companies.

It’s definitely true that Americans could do a better job on their own of keeping themselves healthy. But, just saying that as an excuse for doing nothing with our health care system doesn’t work. Perhaps, for starters, we could divert some of the corn subsidies that encourage production of high fructose corn syrup and use them to pay for parks, trails, green spaces, gym memberships, credits for healthy living, whatever. Just a random idea.

At the end of the day, we need to rationalize health care financing. We have a ton of money going to pay for opaque insurance policies used, in turn, to pay for services that are not on a transparent pricing schedule; assuming that coverage is not denied properly or improperly by the insurer. We also have a lot of money going to treat illnesses at emergency rooms that could have been better and more cheaply treated earlier or elsewhere had the patient had insurance or at least known what the actual cost was as opposed to the retail sticker price. And I wonder how many people keep themselves unemployed or underemployed so that they can maintain their public health care coverage.

[tags]healthcare[/tags]

The Perry County News has an entry on the continuing time zone saga down there. As readers may recall, the Perry County Commissioners adopted a resolution indicating a desire to be put on Eastern Time if the other southwestern counties are granted their petition to be moved to eastern time. I believe Perry County would be required to file a petition with the USDOT to initiate time zone proceedings for their county.

Also, with respect to the ongoing time zone hearings in the Southwestern counties, the USDOT asked Ice Miller — the firm representing the counties — to again provide additional information. A reader has informed me that the Ice Miller response has been submitted but that the submission has not yet been posted to the USDOT time zone docket. Obviously this makes it more difficult for Central Time proponents to double check the accuracy of the responses.

When I was a kid, I tried a few times to use the ‘I forgot’ defense with my parents. It didn’t work too often. So, I was fairly impressed when President Reagan used it with such great effect with respect to the Iran-Contra matter. Unlike the Great Communicator, however, neither I nor Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appear to have Alzheimers.

Gonzales is facing the Senate Judiciary Committee asking questions about whether eight United States Attorneys were fired for political reasons. For example, it has been suggested that the United States Attorney for New Mexico was fired because he would not pursue politically timed and motivated corruption charges shortly before the election there. The reverse seems to have happened in Wisconsin where a U.S. Attorney was retained after pursuing a political corruption charge against Georgia Thompson so baseless the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decided more or less on the spot to release the accused from incarceration, calling the evidence against her “beyond thin.”

This is part and parcel of the Bush administration’s electoral strategy. As McClatchy News article puts it:

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush’s popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

We heard echoes of this strategy in the state GOP’s successful efforts to pass strict Voter ID requirements for those voters who vote at the polls (not so much for absentee voters, as I recall) championed by Todd “blacks are Democratic Slaves” Rokita.

So back to Gonzales, caught with his hand in the political cookie jar, Gonzales had to explain some of this to the Senate. He went with the “I forgot” defense:

His performance clearly exasperated the committee members, who were angered as he invoked a faulty memory more than 50 times. Republicans did not hold back in going after one of their party’s own. Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, went so far as to call for Mr. Gonzales to resign, a demand made by only one other senator, Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

I’m not so interested in Mr. Gonzales’s resignation. I don’t see that the Bush administration has any real interest in appointing competent people to important posts. There is nothing to be done, really, but ride this out and turn over as many of the rocks as possible so people at least know the depth of incompetence.

Condolences to Sen. Tim Skinner. According to the Terre Haute TribStar, his 29 year old daughter was killed in a motor vehicle accident when her vehicle was rear-ended by a semi. Terrible. I can’t even imagine what that must be like for Sen. Skinner and his family.

So, I am now the Vice-President of our county’s Legal Aid Board of Directors. Glamorous, I know. But it’s a valuable organization — Tippecanoe County’s in particular, but also legal services for poorer people generally. As a debt collector, this kind of goes against my natural grain — it’s usually easier for me and my client when the debtor is unrepresented. But for society as a whole, it’s better when everybody gets fair representation. This isn’t just me being a dirty, commie hippie. The thing about the rule of law is that the masses have to buy into it for the system to work. I think Iraq is giving us a case study on what happens when you pass a bunch of laws that nobody feels compelled to obey. Force only goes so far. The system can only use a certain percentage of its available energy forcing compliance before the whole thing breaks down.

The poor don’t get nearly the quality of legal representation as do the rich. The legal system does not treat everybody equally. But, overall, the American legal system gets the job done. Mostly, it successfully assists the government in maintaining its monopoly on force and keeps us from resolving our differences through violence. And, institutions like legal aid are the nets that keep too many of the very poor from slipping through the cracks. If you truly do not have resources and if your problems are significant enough, usually you can get a lawyer to help you navigate through the legal system and keep the railroading to a minimum. And, my hat is off to the lawyers who handle these cases. They are not richly rewarded. The cases are often some of the most intractable — those cases where there is no way to make the situation “good.” All you can hope for, really, is to make the situation less bad. A lot of times we’re talking about home lives that are well and truly fubar, usually with innocent kids in the middle.

I’ll just close with a little pitch. If you have a few bucks to spare, you could do worse than to throw some of them the way of your local legal aid organization.

Update Not directly related, but it seemed relevant. Marked Hoosier posts on Indiana being #1 in volunteering. “The study, released this week by the corporation for national and community service indicates that in 2006, Indiana’s volunteers contributed more than four billion dollars to charities. That puts Indiana far ahead of other states.”

Nuvo has an article up entitled Kurt Vonnegut: the exit interview. Apparently at the end of the interview, Mr. Vonnegut suggested “I AM THE FATHER OF ANNA NICOLE SMITH’S BABY!” as the title of the article. Some interesting stuff in there. But, one bit I was really happy he mentioned involved his interest in architecture and seeing the city of Indianapolis grow and feeling that it was his city because his dad was an architect.

Well, there was stuff going on, heroic events. One was what used to be, and probably still is, the largest moving project in history. The headquarters of the Bell Telephone Company used to be brick. What they did was take the old brick building — with the operators in there saying, “Number please” and all that — and they put it through a quarter of a turn and moved it half a block!

Then they built the new headquarters, which my father designed. So, yeah, there was stuff going on and my family was doing it. That was a very special situation.

I have no idea if this is correct, but the way I heard it Bell Telephone’s quarter turn relocation project was undertaken so that the front door would no longer be on Meridian Street and their property taxes would go down.

Another good one:

One thing in the Middlewest: If you’re in my business you’re aware of the low opinion both coasts have of the midlands. And that is quite mistaken. New York would be a Kokomo if it weren’t for Middlewesterners coming there.

Ouch. (Sorry Kokomo).

Plenty more in the article; well worth the read.

The issues surrounding the “In God We Trust” plate have been well covered in the blogosphere. But, I had not seen the BMV state so explicitly that the “In God We Trust” plate was one of Indiana’s two “standard” plates. But, that is what the BMV is saying at the site designed for voting for Indiana’s next license plate.

I don’t like specialty plates generally. We have something like 30 of them, and it has gotten out of hand. I think we should have just one plate. It’s only a registration tag for a piece of personal property for goodness sake. However, if we do have so many specialty plates, I did not see any particular harm with having another one that said “In God We Trust.” I think it probably violates the First Amendment to some extent, but only in a very minor way. The violation was increased, however, by giving the “In God We Trust” plate preferential treatment by not requiring an extra fee be paid the way it is with other specialty plates. Now, I think state government has probably crossed a line by making a proclamation of faith in God the declaration on one of Indiana’s two standard license plates — plates that must be displayed on one’s vehicle as a condition of driving.

It’s not going to keep me up nights, but I think it is wrong. Unlike chocolate and peanut butter, Government and Religion simply are not two great tastes that taste great together. They’re more like ketchup and ice cream.