Justin Mack, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, has an article about a public meeting in Lafayette discussing a planned mail processing consolidation which would result in a Kokomo facility handling outgoing mail now processed in Lafayette.

I don’t know anything about the issue, so don’t have anything to say about the particulars. But the contentiousness of the meeting underscores how tough it is for government to take action when it changes the status quo. Postal officials say the move would save the postal service $500,000. Members of the public and postal employees expressed concerns that this move will slow down distribution of Lafayette mail, and raised concerns about local jobs.

I wasn’t at the meeting, but the story suggests to me that there were not any clear rules set forth about how the meeting would be conducted. When the meeting is serving the function of allowing concerns to be expressed and addressed, it’s working. But, when it devolves into people bickering with each other, it’s worse than useless.

Eric Weddle, writing for the Journal & Courier, has an article about caffeinated alcoholic beverages. Apparently they’re sweetened malt liquors, caffeinated, and have a higher alcohol content than, say, beer. Folks pound them, and then keep going because, with the caffeine, they don’t go down when they’re too drunk.

Because of the recent hospitalizations in connection with some Central Washington students’ use of the drink, we can probably expect some “ripped from the headlines” approach to lawmaking in the near future. But, from personal experience, I can say that this mix of booze & caffeine is nothing new. During my stupidest level of college drinking, it wasn’t unusual for me to rotate between beers and coffee toward the end of the night. Keeping myself awake long enough to get myself drunker was clearly a Bad Idea. If your body is trying to shut down to deal with all the alcohol you’ve been pumping in, don’t be a hero. Just go down.

Mahon said the drink’s caffeine content prevents the body from combating alcohol, a depressant, with sleep. That leads to people consuming more alcohol and becoming even more intoxicated.

Mahon said research shows that mixing caffeine and alcohol makes people more likely to ride with an intoxicated driver or to be taken advantage of sexually.

In my case, it’s possible the former may have happened, but I’m reasonably confident the latter never did.

In any case, after I’d passed that point in my drinking habits, I had some friends who were into drinking Red Bull and vodka. That was never appealing to me; but I guess these new drinks are just a continuation.

Fred Clark at the Slacktivist has a good post up about how being right doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to convince anyone. The specific issue is climate change, but I think it applies in a lot of areas. Facts will persuade the merely uninformed or honestly misinformed. They will not, alone anyway, persuade the liars or the deluded.

The case of the liars is not very interesting. It’s the old Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” The deluded are a more interesting case. A person’s mental framework can simply get in a state where it resists persuasion by facts. Say a person really, really hates Al Gore for whatever reason. They’ll reject facts that tend to suggest he’s right.

One such “ideology” or framework that I’m convinced plays a large role in American climate-change denialism is the quasi-religious desire to believe that harmful consequences can only result from deliberately malicious actions. If climate change were shown to be the work of a clearly identifiable villain — something more along the lines of the pollution narratives of A Civil Action or Erin Brockovich — then they might be more receptive to the idea. But they cannot accommodate facts that suggest the possibility of calamity due to the aggregate effects of billions of mostly innocent decisions.

Another related one that has stuck with me since I read a blog post is the notion that it’s “arrogant” to think that humans could cause such global devastation. As if it would, in the author’s mind, diminish the worth of God’s creation if puny humans could muster up the strength to screw it up.

Anyway, if you care, here is NASA’s page with a bunch of evidence for global warming. I don’t have any trouble believing it since the geological record shows that humans are extremely incidental to the history of the earth. The planet being particularly habitable for the likes of us might be the exception rather than the rule.

Ken Kusmer, writing for the Associated Press, has a reasonably appalling story about state workers suggesting to parents that their disabled children might receive help at homeless shelters if they can’t be cared for at home.

They said workers at Indiana’s Bureau of Developmental Disabilities Services have told parents that’s one option they have when families can no longer care for children at home and haven’t received Medicaid waivers that pay for services that support disabled children living independently.

This appears to come from a combination of tough economic times and government budget cuts. Medicaid waiting lists have grown as Gov. Daniels has cut the budget. Front line state workers are on the receiving end of families’ frustration at being told to wait; and these sorts of suggestions are probably the state workers’ frazzled responses. Private care providers are getting stuck too; continuing to provide care in some cases even when the money dries up.

I don’t know that there are any great solutions. Not using tax money to fund stadiums for rich sports team owners will only get you so far. It’s entirely possible that the needs actually exceed the resources. But, even if we can’t or won’t provide for necessary care, we shouldn’t be allowed to pretend that this economic reality doesn’t come with awful consequences. We should be made fully aware of the consequences of our choices.

I assume the vote to carve the current property tax structure into the Constitution for future generations is a done deal, so I haven’t said much about it lately. I’m against it. We’re starting to see some problems with structured tax caps of 1% for residential property, 2% for non-residential rental property and agricultural property, and 3% for anything else – mostly business. But, good policy or bad policy, we’re looking to lock them in, removing flexibility for future generations when conditions change.

John Seidel of the Post-Tribune has a good article summarizing the current state of the tax cap situation. Abdul argues that because the General Assembly didn’t eliminate townships, future generations deserve to be hamstrung with respect to funding local government services. Or something.

Morton Marcus, meanwhile, argues against Constitutionalizing the tax caps. Rather than more government efficiency, the caps will likely result in deteriorating local services. The county option income tax the General Assembly provided as a replacement option isn’t all that great. Among other things, it allows only a tax on households and not business. This is just further degradation of local control; more and more local decisions have to run through Indianapolis. Marcus traces this back at least to 1973.

As far back as the property tax reforms of 1973, Indiana degraded local government and shifted power to state government. The legislature has increased its control of our schools. Cities and towns have become prisoners of the state in the tax wars. Libraries have been forced to defend their very existence.

Finally, the benefits of the caps are primarily enjoyed by owners of small rental housing units, commercial apartments and second homes (60%) with about 36% going to commercial and industrial properties. Only about 4% of existing cap benefits go to homeowners.

Marcus has the better argument, but Abdul’s side is going to win the day. Voters aren’t well informed about local government financing. They just hear “tax caps” and think, “yippee!”

The composition of my family dictates that I watch too many kids’ movies. But, when I read this column by Michael Gerson (h/t Tipsy), I started thinking of the seagulls in the Disney movie, “Nemo;” the ones who form a mob, mindlessly chattering “mine, mine, mine.”

Gerson’s column uses Christine O’Donnell, darling of the Tea Party and Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, and her statements about the First Amendment as a jumping off point. O’Donnell has boldly declared that the First Amendment does not speak to the separation of church and state. This was even bolder inasmuch as it was done in a crowd of lawyers and law students; akin to going to a medical school and declaring that the heart has nothing to do with circulation.

Gerson’s column discusses the widespread belief among Tea Partyists that the United States is, and always has been, a Christian Nation. Knowing the history of the 16th – 18th centuries, and the ideas motivating the Founders, makes this a losing proposition. But O’Donnell seems to be one of those folks with such a beautiful mind she is unwilling to waste it on tedious details like Thomas Jefferson’s Deism and the racking religious wars that were recent history when the Constitution was written.

But, Gerson says that this isn’t really about true history or racism or bigotry. Rather, this religious angle to the Tea Party movement is “nostalgia for an idealized past in which government was smaller, social ties were stronger, and America was a Christian country.”

I realize that the Tea Party is something of a Rorschach test where you project your own views onto it. Proponents see the movement as championing their own views about government and minimize the less attractive aspects. Detractors see only the whack jobs playing dress up and carrying misspelled, racist signs. But, it’s fairly clear that these folks are against. Against “what” is somewhat open. (I’m reminded of the Overkill album entitled simply, “I Hate.”) Whatever they’re against, they want to “take this country back.” From whom is left conveniently undefined. And that’s where I find the resemblance to the seagulls. The opposition I see with my version of the Rorschach test has an “It’s Ours and They can’t have it” flavor to it. “Mine, mine, mine.”

In Indiana’s Third Congressional District, Marlin Stuzman is campaigning against big government. So, it’s a little inconvenient for him that he and his family has been taking a lot of government money for their farming operations over the years. His explanation is something along the lines of, “they made me take their wretched money.” He just had to take that $100,000 (near $1 million if you look to the whole family operation), damn the luck.

When Sylvia Smith asked the Farm Service Agency, their response was (and I paraphrase), “Uh, not so much.”

Although Stutzman says the direct payments should be eliminated, until they are, “we can’t say no.” He has described the payments as “federal mandates.”

The Agriculture Department says Stutzman could decline the checks.

“It’s a voluntary program,” said Carl Schweikhardt, program specialist for the Farm Service Agency, the USDA operation in Indiana. “You can refuse payment on the farm.”

But, those farm subsidies are something that frequently seem to get overlooked when the usual suspects are railing against Big Government. The most recent version of the Farm Bill is a five-year $288 billion bill. Once again, I think it “doesn’t count” because those subsidies aren’t going to “Them.” It’s like Medicare and Social Security – going to “Us.”

Boon: [Niedermyer is abusing Flounder in ROTC] Vicious mother, isn’t he?

Otter: He can’t do that to our pledges!

Boon: Only we can do that to our pledges.

Indiana can suspend its motorist’s licenses because the BMV has a dysfunctional system, but it’s really beyond the pale for Indiana motorists to suffer abuse at the hands of the State of Illinois.

Justin Mack, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, reports on the Illinois Tollway Authority wrongfully sending out bills for back tolls and fines for travel on Illinois toll roads. To complicate matters, the Illinois Tollway Authority is not set up to efficiently correct its mistakes, just to take payments or set court dates. The problem seems to be a system that was taken off line for a period of time coupled with a system that is not equipped to deal with Indiana’s plating system which can issue the same number for different kinds of plates. So, Indiana truck plate “123” might get a bill really meant for Indiana “In God We Trust” plate “123.”

Could be time for a little border war.

Our nanny-state government is at it again. Rather than let the free market work its magic, it insists on coddling the looters by using tax dollars to impose a one-size-fits-all solution to the “problem” of “bridge safety” where U.S. 52 crosses the Wabash. The structural soundness of the bridge is in question according to “scientists” and “engineers.” Build a man a bridge and he’ll cross the river for half a century. Teach a man to swim, and he’ll enjoy the unregulated run-off of the Wabash. The Constitution doesn’t mention bridges even once!

Sorry about that – I’ve been reading too many right wing liberty & patriot sites. (But not so many that I feel compelled to break out the all-caps & exclamation points just yet.)

Amanda Harmon has an article in the Lafayette Journal & Courier about the deteriorating condition of the east-bound bridge of U.S. 52 over the Wabash between Lafayette and West Lafayette. It’s old, wearing down, and apparently the same design as the one that fell in Minnesota a few years back. INDOT is studying its options.

In fairness to the right-wingers and liberty types; in my experience, when you present them with specific projects, as often as not, they’ll tell you that they aren’t talking about *that* project as problem with government spending. It’s usually unspecified waste, but in any case, not the stuff they enjoy from day-to-day. It’s money spent on Them.

Maintenance is one of those things that’s politically easier to kick down the road, particularly in the face of reflexive opposition to taxes of any kind. But, the consequences are often disastrous for somebody. Hopefully, to Them instead of to Us.

I feel like I’ve hit hard on the “Is there a God” type questions recently, so that’s not where I’m going with this. However, I got to thinking about different denominations and churches after reading a post by Tipsy on the swanky digs of the Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis. Tipsy is Eastern Orthodox, previously – if memory serves – evangelical of some sort and before that – if memory still serves – something other than evangelical. So there has obviously been some deliberation in that particular journey.

My sense is that, for most people, they end up as whatever their parents were, maybe shifting a bit (or sometimes a lot) to match a spouse. For myself, on my way to not believing in anything much, I was able to see a few denominations/religions up close and personal. Over at Tipsy’s blog, I had some less than kind things to say about Presbyterianism. Because I’m lazy, I’ll just cut & paste at this point:

You know my position on religion generally; but I have personal experience with Presbyterianism. That’s how I was raised. Maybe Richmond Presbyterianism isn’t a representative sample of the denomination as a whole, but my sense of it was as a bland, dry, flavorless thing. Soft Calvinism really captures it, I think.

My memory was of a bunch of old, white people in nice clothes, gathering in the sanctuary, mostly sitting, either listening politely or reciting things in rote, mechanical voices before gathering for coffee after the service.

I was much more taken by the Jewish services I went to – some, but less formality, very much a warm feeling that the group was a family; the Pentecostal services – lots of energy and deep feeling; or the Catholic services – you could feel the deep tradition.

So, for those of you who have made a conscious decision about a denomination or religion, I’m wondering what it was that made the sale.