Frank Gray, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has a column on the consequences of failing to update the county on your address. A group of doctors, doing business as a corporation, bought some property. They used one of the doctors’ home address as the address for their corporation. The doctor moved 3 or 4 times, but the corporation never informed the county of the change of address. Taxes weren’t paid. The county sent out notices. A tax sale was conducted. Redemption notices were sent out. The corporation didn’t redeem its property. Eventually the tax sale surplus (funds from the sale in excess of taxes due) made their way to the corporation: $18,000 on a $550,000 property.

The corporation presumably blames the county for not working hard enough to find it. But, really, if you own property, make sure the county auditor has your proper address.

According to an article by Richard Walton in the Indianapolis Star, Indiana children die from abuse and neglect at a rate more than twice the national average.

A study shows 77 Indiana children died in federal fiscal year 2004, which ran from Oct. 1, 2003 through Sept. 30, 2004. The state’s rate was 4.81 deaths per 100,000 children, more than double the national rate of 2.03 deaths.

. . .
Based on data, 81 percent of children who died during the survey period were younger than 4 years old. Three-quarters of the deaths were caused by one or more parents.

So maybe gay marriage isn’t the biggest challenge to “family values” in Indiana.

The story also contains some data about abuse:

[I]t was once thought that people with mental illness were “parentally challenged” — that is, that children of such parents were at higher risk of abuse. That’s now known not to be true, Holton said. According to the new study, the overall rate of child mistreatment has declined nationally. Since 2001, the number of children mistreated fell from 908,000 to 872,000.

Nearly 18 percent of the children mistreated in 2004 were physically abused, 9.7 percent were sexually abused and 7 percent were emotionally or psychologically mistreated. Children 3 years old or younger had the highest rate of victimization; girls were slightly more likely than boys to be mistreated.

Entertaining post by Doghouse Riley. He hurts for our amusement.
My favorite bit:

He’s a suburbanite’s dog, which is to say he’s a purebred, a large breed (Yellow lab), chosen apparently out of some combination of the daughter’s pre-teen I’d rather have a pony aesthetics and weird Republican lawn-care dad Romanticism (We’re going to breed him! He’s going to retriever classes so we can hunt!).

I’ve got to give him credit, John Hostettler — or at least his aide, Matthew Faraci — is high tech. I ran a search on “Indiana Politics” over at YouTube.com and a couple of John Hostettler videos were the only things that popped up. They were uploaded by Mr. Faraci. I don’t have the time or inclination to watch them, but credit where credit is due — they’re attempting to keep up on the latest Internet developments.

Murray Waas, writing for the National Journal, (via Daily Kos) reports that President Bush knew that claims regarding Iraq’s use of aluminum tubes in a nuclear program were disputed by U.S. intelligence agencies and yet, he went on to tell the American people in the State of the Union, without qualification, that the aluminum tubes were for use in a nuclear program.

[A] classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. . . said that although “most agencies judge” that the aluminum tubes were “related to a uranium enrichment effort,” the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department’s intelligence branch “believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons.”

Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.”

Mr. Waas reports that “Karl Rove cautioned White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush’s 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration.”

This report suggests why the Bush administration was so keen to discredit Joseph Wilson who blew the whistle on Bush’s State of the Union claims. Apparently in retaliation, the Bush administration went so far as to reveal the identity of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA agent. The Vice-President’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, is now on trial for obstructing the investigation into the blown CIA cover.

This is pretty cool. Reuters is reporting that the journal of 17th century scientist Robert Hooke has been discovered after having been lost for 200 years.

Hailed as “science’s missing link”, the journal of Robert Hooke contains details of experiments he conducted as curator at the Royal Society from 1662 and his correspondence as its secretary from 1677.

It was found by chance in a cupboard at a private house in Hampshire by experts from auctioneer Bonhams conducting a routine valuation.

The notes include a celebrated row between Hooke and Isaac Newton over planetary motion and gravity, and the lost record confirming the first observation of microbes by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek.

He was one of the leaders of the scientific revolution that took place in the 17th century. He contributed greatly to the development of accurate watches and more powerful microscopes and telescopes. He made advances in astronomy and biology. In addition, he was one of the men most responsible for rebuilding London, along with Christopher Wren, after the Great Fire in 1666.

I’m a little embarassed to admit that my knowledge of Hooke comes chiefly from his appearance as a fictional character in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. So, the accuracy of my knowledge depends on how many historial liberties were taken by Mr. Stephenson. In any event, we are all indebted to Hooke for his discoveries, and I think it’s pretty cool that his journal has been rediscovered.

There is a good column on infrastructure privatization by Washington Post columnist Jerry Knight in today’s Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. He talks about how corporations like Goldman Sachs and the Carlyle Group are getting into infrastructure purchases.

Transportation was once one of the things Americans counted on their government to provide. New York Gov. De Witt Clinton built the Erie Canal and opened up the Midwest in the early 1800s. President Dwight D. Eisenhower started the interstate highway system in the 1950s and put America on the road to being the world’s most motorized society.

But anybody who’s ever been caught in Washington traffic knows our elected officials lack the vision and the political will to deal with transportation issues that require difficult, politically unpopular decisions. Like raising taxes.

Ducking tax increases is what motivated the state of Indiana and the city of Chicago to sell their toll roads. Indiana was facing a $10 billion bill for updating its highway system when Gov. Mitch Daniels, a former federal budget director, came up with an alternative to paying the price – tapping the Toll Road. Chicago didn’t need roads; it needed money. Monetizing the Skyway brought in $1.8 billion. That was enough to pay off $855 million in debt – only part of it due on the road itself – as well as set aside $500 million for a “rainy day fund” and give a few million in home heating assistance to the city’s poor.

If that sounds like tossing the family furniture in the fireplace to keep the house warm, you’re getting the message.

A couple of days ago, I mentioned a “conversation” featuring yours truly over at the Well’s Inkwell.Vue. For those who are interested, it has now gone live.

You can jump in and participate or just lurk, as you like.