I was just clued in to a lefty blog run out of Notre Dame called Lefty’s Last Cry. Might be worth checking out.

Andy Gammill has an article in the Indy Star reporting on the dismal relations between (almost featured Creationist Evidence Speaker) State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, and the state teacher’s union. They seem to be communicating primarily via inflammatory press releases.

This reminds me a bit of a lesson I learned about communication early on in my legal career (probably earlier – it’s no big secret). I was exchanging letters with another attorney that were becoming increasingly contentious. I was about to escalate with another letter when it occurred to me how stupid we were being. I picked up the phone and had a very cordial conversation, and we resolved the issue which wasn’t all that intractable. The immediacy of speaking to one another tends to put a limit on bellicosity. Speaking in person even moreso. It’s easy to be a Big Man via e-mail.

That said, Bennett does come off looking ridiculous in one particular noted by the article. The State is in the process of applying for a federal “Race to the Top” education grant where there is a pool of about $4.4 billion available to the states. He wants teacher’s union leaders to endorse a plan that he won’t let them see.

Bennett held several meetings with union leaders but declined to allow them to see the proposal for the federal grant, saying that other states might steal the more innovative ideas. Both unions were then asked to write letters of support — for a proposal they had not seen.

Reminds me of Nixon’s secret plan to win the Vietnam War. But, then, I’m a cynic.

Justin Mack, writing for the Journal & Courier, has an article about the tea party rally in Lafayette yesterday. Mostly they got together on the government-built footbridge and talked about freedom and stuff. But this caught my attention:

As hundreds of people placed both tea bags and loose-leaf tea into the box, a trumpet player played Taps while a copy of the U.S. Constitution was lowered into the Wabash River — an act that was to serve as a eulogy for the document.

That old Constitution has been killed more times than Rasputin. Long may she live.

Maureen Hayden, writing for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., has a story about State Treasurer Richard Mourdock’s never ending battle with Indiana’s money in the Chrysler bankruptcy. (h/t to reader RG).

In a court filing that has received little public attention, attorneys for the Indiana state worker pension funds are asking a federal appeals court to vacate a bankruptcy court’s order that cleared the way for Chrysler to sell its assets to a purchasing group lead by Italian car maker Fiat, the U.S. government and the automakers union.

I’ll be getting a little out of my depth here, but they seem to be hanging their hat on the thin reed of a Munsingwearorder from the United States Supreme Court. Generally speaking, a Munsingwear order is issued when a case becomes moot before it can be subjected to appellate review. The idea is that the case is over, so the appellate courts aren’t allowed to review it, but you don’t want to have potentially bad law remain on the books simply because an appellate court doesn’t have a chance to offer correction to the lower court.

On December 14, 2009, the United States Supreme Court issued a brief order, stating:

On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Motion of Washington Legal Foundation, et al. for leave to file a brief as amici curiae granted. Petition for writ of certiorari granted. Judgment vacated, and case remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with instructions to dismiss the appeal as moot. See United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36, 71 S.Ct. 104, 95 L.Ed. 36 (1950).

I haven’t gone over the Supreme Court briefs with any thoroughness, but the mootness argument seems to have been one made by the respondents and fought against by the petitioners (i.e. Indiana Pension Fund). In declaring the case moot, the Supreme Court seems to have found against Mourdock, but there was the additional factor of the Munsingwear rule.

With the Second Circuit appellate order cleared, the Indiana Pension Funds seem to have taken this as an opening to try to wade into the original bankruptcy order again. On March 8, 2010, the Indiana pensioners filed a petition for rehearing. An answer to that Petition was filed on April 9. I have not been able to locate a copy of the petition for rehearing. If the prior Second Circuit opinion was vacated by the Supreme Court, not because it was wrong, necessarily, but because the case was moot – no live issues were left to be resolved – then it strikes me as extraordinary to think that the Second Circuit would even have jurisdiction to rehear the case. Article III, sec. 2 of the United States Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal courts to “cases or controversies.” The Supreme Court’s declaration that the case was moot seems to be a declaration that the case is dead – at least as to the issues covered by the Second Circuit’s ruling.

And, of course, there is the fundamental issue I’ve asked all along: there is no scenario under which the Indiana Pension funds would have recovered more money than they actually did. So why is the state treasurer pursuing this with such vigor and at such expense?

Prior blog entries on the issue:

Indiana Funds Request to Delay Chrysler Bankruptcy Denied

Indiana and the Chrysler Bankruptcy

Arguments in the Chrysler BK Appeal Today

More Chrysler Bankruptcy

Supreme Court Lifts Stay in Chrysler Bankruptcy; Mourdock’s Challenge Denied

Mourdock’s Challenge

Mourdock Loses Another Round in Quixotic Chrysler Challenge

In the case of Smith v. Wrigley, the Indiana Court of Appeals has upheld the constitutionality of IC 34-10-1-3 which provides:

If an offender has filed at least three (3) civil actions in which a state court has dismissed the action or a claim under IC 34-58-1-2, the offender may not file a new complaint or petition as an indigent person under this chapter, unless a court determines the offender is in immediate danger of serious bodily injury.

Basically, this means that an inmate has to pay a filing fee before pursuing a suit after having had three prior suits dismissed as frivolous. This statute was passed after the Supreme Court struck down, at Mr. Smith’s request, a prior statute designed to limit frivolous litigation. That prior statute prohibited pursuing the claim at all. This statute just says the inmate has to pay the filing fee.

Mr. Smith, the most active appellate litigant in the state, so far as I can tell, will undoubtedly ask the Supreme Court to review this decision. I get the sense that the Court of Appeals is more annoyed by shotgun litigation by inmates than the Supreme Court, so it will be interesting to see if the Court of Appeals decision gets reviewed and, if so, whether it will stand.

Mike Kole has a good piece up over at Kole Hard Facts of Life on jobs, taxes, and declining population. Be sure to check out the comments.

One thing that I realized while reading that piece was that I have an assumption about what would happen in communities where we drop taxes to skeletal levels. And that assumption is a lot different than what I think I see from Mike and certainly from other libertarians. I don’t have a lot of proof that my assumptions are right. I suspect that the libertarians do not, either. And there are always other factors at work, so I’m not certain we’ll ever get a properly controlled experiment.

My ideal economic world is a place where those who work hard and/or cleverly will prosper, where those who don’t work hard and/or work stupidly will suffer, and where the vast middle who work reasonably hard do reasonably well. In this desire, I believe I’m aligned with most of my libertarian friends and many others.

The difference is in opinions to the most feasible path to that place. I think libertarians, by and large, believe that if you lower taxes and limit regulation enough, that economic world will pretty much materialize. With the resulting solid base of industrious middle class citizens, communities will thrive.

Meanwhile, I guess I have more of a dystopian view that if you lower taxes and/or regulation much from current levels, you’ll end up in an economic world more like the Gilded Age or Mexico where a tiny few will amass wealth and have sufficient leverage to ensure that the vast majority work extremely hard just to survive and add to the vast wealth of those few who have the leverage and resources. These subsistence level citizens will not have the time or the money to tend to their communities which will fall into squalor and disrepair.

I would love to find out that my fears are misplaced and their view is correct.

I’m not going to have time to do justice to this article by Pam Tharp about a candidate forum in West College Corner, Indiana, but I had to at least take the time to highlight an interesting statement by state Senator Johnny Nugent in response to a question about things he’s done to create jobs in his district.

Nugent said he authored the largest job creation program ever — riverboat casinos — with gambling revenue the third-largest contributor to the state treasury.

Makes me think of the good old days of American prosperity, Dad heading off to work early, hard hat and lunch pail in hand, ready for a long day of dealing blackjack and making this country strong.

(The rest of the article is worth a read and brings up some substantive points I really ought to address.)

I think that there is honestly a blind spot in these Southern political leaders where they just don’t get why folks are upset about them celebrating their treasonous past. The simple fact is that their predecessors took up arms against the United States to preserve their right to own people. Sure, they had their reasons. Everyone has their reasons when they take up arms against others. With a time machine, maybe we could have a great time listening to the folks who fired on Sumter and the folks who destroyed the World Trade Center argue about who had the greater justification. But, as it’s my country fired upon in both cases, I’m nationalistic enough not to care too much about the particulars of their respective grievances.

Now we have the governor of Mississippi rushing to the defense of the governor of Virginia’s decision to revive a celebration of the Confederacy in that state. The linked article suggests that people are upset that it’s “insensitive.” My objections to the Confederacy isn’t that remembering it hurts my feelings. Rather, I have these old fashioned notions that both treason and owning people is wrong. Combining the two is really wrong. And getting sentimental about the combination is appalling. I’m happy enough to let bygones be bygones, but if elected officials from Confederate states insist on bringing up the past unpleasantness, it should be to apologize and to thank the northern states for bringing a forcible end to their peculiar institution.

Haley Barbour doesn’t think celebrating the taking up arms against the United States means “diddly.” He goes on:

I don’t really see what to say about slavery, but anybody that thinks that you have to explain to some people that slavery is a bad thing, I think that goes without saying,” Barbour said.

Goes without saying? Then why, pray tell, did we have to fight the bloodiest war in our history to get your predecessors – who you want to celebrate – to remain part of the United States rather than defect, primarily for the purpose of continuing the practice and expanding it into the territories?

Please excuse me. This “Lost Cause” crap just drives me nuts.

Bear with me for a second here. Earlier this year, I read a book I very much enjoyed, Born to Run by Chris McDougall. In it, among many, many other things he mentions the beneficial aspects of chia seeds which the Tarahumara Indians of the Copper Canyon region of Mexico eat and which, apparently, assist with their ability to run insane distances without a great deal of injury. A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law came for a visit, and she brought some chia seeds. (Yes, this is the same stuff they use for Chia Pets.) So, I figured what the hell, and I started eating them before runs.

And, sure enough, I felt like I had more endurance for the runs after eating the chia seeds. When I mentioned this to my sister but minimized the significance by suggesting that it may well be a placebo effect operating, my sister responded, “so what? If it works, it works.” Placebo effect doesn’t mean the effects are illusory, it means that our brains are capable of operating on our bodies in ways we don’t quite understand.

So, that was floating in the back of my mind this morning (I ran a few miles before work after fueling up on some yogurt & chia) when I was thinking about the significant number of people against whom I am trying to collect debts who are in one stage or another of applying for and/or receiving social security disability benefits. There are some who are very clearly disabled. But there are also plenty where I look at them and, not to put too fine a point on it, call bullshit.

I’m sure there are a non-trivial number who are flat out frauds. But the placebo effect discussion got me to wondering whether there are some who suffer disabling symptoms because something in their brain perceives a need to be disabled in order to get benefits. Maybe on some level, they can’t find or don’t want to work and aren’t, initially, in that bad of condition physically. But, they become aware of the possibility of disability benefits and, while they aren’t consciously seeking to cheat the system, on some level they come to see disability benefits as a lifeline – a steady source of income in a world where income can be uncertain. With those conditions, I wonder if disabling symptoms can begin to really set in with the actual cause being something akin to a placebo.

Like I said, random thought. Whatever the cause, in my collections business, the volume of people telling me they can’t work and have “applied for disability” is a source of annoyance. I’m happy it’s there for people who really need it. But, I’m convinced there is a significant freeloading component of the population trying to take advantage of it.

The Associated Press has an article on federal income taxes and the fact that about half of Americans don’t pay them.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That’s according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.
. . .
In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.

As usual, I have mixed views here. On one hand, I think taxes have civic virtue. Paying them makes everyone invested in the community to some extent – sort of a pride in ownership effect. On the other hand, in political discourse these days, some folks have almost made a fetish out of the federal income tax, as if it’s the only sort of tax that matters. You’ll routinely hear a wailing and gnashing of teeth about how so, so many poor people (subtext: freeloaders) “don’t pay any taxes.” If you push, you’ll get a concession that it’s federal income taxes they don’t pay.

The people not paying federal income taxes are often paying other sorts of taxes: sales taxes, payroll taxes, property tax, user fees, excise taxes, etc. But, for whatever reason, those don’t count.

And, it’s no accident that the federal income tax soaks the rich. That was pretty much its entire purpose. The 16th Amendment allowing the income tax came from the socialists and the progressives agitating for a graduated income tax. And there is some justification to the disproportionate share of taxes paid by the wealthy. The wealthiest 25% of Americans control something like 87% of the country’s wealth. And, contrary to what we’d like to believe about ourselves, wealth (not that I have any great deal of it personally) isn’t solely (or even, arguably, primarily) a function of hard work and ingenuity.

A lot of it has to do with the system into which we were born – Gates simply wouldn’t have made his billions if he were born and raised in Somalia. And, apart from the system, there are obviously advantages to the particulars of one’s family and the like. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about this sort of “unfairness.” But, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to require the prime beneficiaries of a system to do the lion’s share of funding it.