Sylvia Smith has a column in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette entitled Bring back Souder the watchdog. Everyone will be surprised to learn that back in 1997, Mark Souder waxed poetic about the solemn duty of the Congress to conduct oversight over the executive branch. In 2007, he’s not so keen on the idea. Maybe breaking his term-limit pledge has addled his brains, but, more likely Souder has adopted the maxim “It’s OK If You’re A Republican.” Ms. Smith does a nice “then and now” demonstrating the extent of his hypocrisy.
Running
I know this isn’t at all why folks come here, so I’ll keep it short. I just wanted to brag on myself for hitting a new long running distance. Yesterday I ran 6.3 miles, about half of which felt like it was into a head wind (meaning, probably that the other half was with the benefit of a tail wind.) In particular, I was happy with myself for really attacking the 18th street bridge in Lafayette. For whatever reason, the engineers didn’t include much of an approach, so it’s a big rainbow shaped kind of bridge where I was going uphill into the aforementioned head wind. I am also particularly happy to be able to run distances of several miles since it has only been about 3 years since I had a broken knee and couldn’t walk at all.
As my wife has mentioned, I have an irate metabolism. So I need to burn a bunch of calories like I need a hole in my head. But, running is kind of fun, and now that I’m into it a little bit, there is always that desire to go “just a little bit further.” And, let’s face it, exercising is a defensible reason to get away from the kids and listen to some tunes. Yesterday was particularly nice. After I got home, I drank about 3 cups of water and a gatorade, then cracked open a “Robert the Bruce Scottish Ale” from those outstanding Munster brewers, 3 Floyds. I did this while sitting in the sun on the deck in my back yard. Shirt off, I suppose I was giving the ladies in the neighborhood a bit of eye candy — if that’s the proper term for a gleaming white fish belly.
Anyway, it’s amazing how much more fun exercising is at 1 in the afternoon than it is at 5:30 in the morning which is the time I’m consigned to during the week.
Sine Die or Special Session?
Theodore Kim and Mary Beth Schneider have a decent run down of where things stand with the legislature as of this morning. My only criticism is that they end the article with the gratuitous and incorrect statement: “The legislature cannot adjourn without passing a budget.” The General Assembly shouldn’t and it probably won’t. But itcan. As the Indiana Law Blog has been instrumental in pointing out, there is no constitutional or other legal requirement that the legislature pass a budget. There will be hell to pay if they don’t, but adjourning without a budget is within the bounds of things that can be done. Why reporters continue to suggest that there is some sort of prohibition against adjourning without passing a budget is mind boggling to me.
But, that’s just one sentence. The rest of the article is good. It looks like the cigarette tax will be increased to pay for health care. “The plan — first announced by Gov. Mitch Daniels in the fall — has gone through many changes, including last-minute additions to give tax credits to help businesses offer health insurance to workers and to let employees use pre-tax dollars to pay for their premiums.”
Property tax relief appears to be tied to expansion of gambling. Casino expansion has been removed from the discussion, but horse tracks will be able to offer slots if they pay for a license. The license payments will be used to fund some sort of property tax relief.
The budget is getting closer to a deal:
House and Senate leaders, at the request of Democrats, agreed to axe $21 million in funding for two online virtual charter schools slated to open this fall. In exchange, Democrats withdrew their demands for a moratorium on new charter schools in 2008-09.
Gov. Mitch Daniels and House Democratic leaders also agreed on a roughly $1 billion appropriation for road construction over the next two years. The appropriation had been a sticking point.
The General Assembly should adjourn sine die by midnight tonight. If they conclude business without doing something the Governor considers critical — like, for example, pass a budget — he can call them into a special session. At the special session, the General Assembly is not particularly required to follow the Governor’s agenda. They can do more or less than he requests during such a session. At this point, a special session appears unlikely. To my friends at the Legislative Services Agency, I sincerely hope I have not jinxed the process.
Monticello Mayor Bob Fox arrested
Monticello Mayor, Bob Fox, was arrested in his house on Friday. He allegedly submitted mileage claims on 39 occasions for events he either did not attend or for which he did not provide his own transportation resulting in reimbursements of $2,482.83.
I’ll be watching this one since I lived in Monticello for about 7 years. Bob always seemed like a nice guy, but I can’t provide any better character references than that. Seems like a 71 year old mayor isn’t going to intentionally commit crimes for a couple thousand bucks, but who knows.
Actually, the Monticello Herald Journal has more in depth coverage
Legislative negotiations continue
Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an excellent update on various pieces of major legislation still pending in the General Assembly. Much of the budget bill has apparently been agreed upon with a major piece of it being to fund the property tax relief fund such that property taxes increase 10% instead of the projected 24%. House Republicans want to fund it at a level that limits the increase to 5 or 6%. Rep. Bauer complained that it was the House Republicans’ 2005 budget that helped get us into the property tax mess and we can only do so much. Sen. Kenley says that the current tentative agreement is so tenuous and interwoven, it’s not clear that much more can be done. He’s also not sure more should be done on this front.
On the gambling front, House Democrats apparently want to sell licenses for slots at horse tracks for $250 million. House Republicans want to auction the licenses to maximize revenues. The House Democrats counter that the slots are supposed to benefit the horse tracks and should be limited to horse track operators. For my part — and let me be clear that I have no solid reasons, just gut instincts — I always smell a slight whiff of corruption whenever the horse tracks are discussed. Maybe it’s nothing more than the manure.
A fair amount of money has also been alloted for full day kindergarten, but apparently not enough for all the kindergarten age school children, and the program will be permissive but not mandatory for school districts.
USDOT request for more information to Southwestern Counties
I forget if I’ve seen this before or not. But, posted to the docket is a letter from the USDOT to the attorneys for the Southwestern Counties petitioning to be moved to the Eastern Time Zone. If I had seen it, I hadn’t read it in great detail. It looks like the USDOT is doing far more homework on this request than on the original round of requests. And, it appears to be fact checking. For example, where the USDOT was provided with apparently erroneous information about a Jasper, IN Wal-Mart hours and they want the Petitioning Counties to verify the hours and give them the name of the person they’re using for a source. Throughout, the USDOT seems very interested in getting names and contact information for the sources of information. There is another passage where the USDOT points out that the data cited for employees commuting to and from the petitioning area do not support the petition’s assertion that these figures support a shift from Central to Eastern.
Obesity and Farm Subsidies
An interesting article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times Magazine entitled You are What You Grow.
The article responds to the hypothesis that the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight:
Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.
. . .
This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?
The answer is farm subsidies. Corn (sugars), soy (fats), meat, and milk are heavily subsidized while fresh produce receive almost nothing in the way of subsidies. “The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.” The logic of these subsidies finds its way into our school lunch programs where chicken nuggets and tater tots are reimbursable but healthier fare is not.
Interesting article. The author definitely has an agenda, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong.
Biblical Billboard Debate
The Muncie Star Press has an article entitled Billboards spark Biblical debate about homosexuality. The story has to do with a recent billboard campaign citing a Bible verse and saying, “Jesus affirmed a gay couple.” I’d love to do a long blog post on this, but I don’t have the time at the moment. However, I did want to mention that I love the potential for debate that this brings. My incomplete research suggests that Jesus didn’t have much to say one way or the other about homosexuality. Most of the anti-gay passages of the Bible seem to come from older texts that are routinely ignored on other subjects — for example, Leviticus and its dietary commandments, endorsement of slavery, and the like.
If this kind of thing gets traction, I think what it can do is put forward the case that the Bible really isn’t a solid foundation on which to base an anti-gay viewpoint. If those who are against gays want to persist, they’ll have to come up with something more convincing. At least that’s my hope. My suspicion is that reason and Bible quotations won’t make a difference. Some people just have an emotional need to dislike The Other, and rationality has nothing to do with it.
Some time zone documents
The USDOT time zone docket has a couple of interesting recent entries. First is a response from the USDOT to an inquiry from Sen. Bayh with respect to a constituent complaint that the USDOT had not yet acted on the Southwestern Counties’ petition. The response is pretty vague, but essentially it tells the Senator that the process is moving along. They say they are reviewing the Southwestern Counties’ petition. If they find that not enough justification has been provided, the petition will be denied. If enough justification has been provided, the USDOT will issue a notice of proposed rulemaking, a 30 – 60 day comment period will follow before a final decision either issuing a rule changing the time zone or denying the petition.
The other is a letter from state Representative Dave Crooks reporting his unscientific legislative survey showing that 66% of respondents would prefer Eastern Time for all of Indiana versus 32% for Central. He further indicates his support for granting the Southwestern Counties’ request to be moved to the Eastern time zone.
For my own safety’s sake
I just happened across this passage from Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. It’s one of my favorites, so I thought I’d post it. The background is that Sir Thomas More, then Lord Chancellor of England, is arguing with his daughter’s suiter, Roper, as to whether to apprehend a government agent who is about to falsely inform on him.
More There is no law against that. (being false and evil)
Roper There is! God’s law!
More Then God can arrest him.
Roper Sophistication upon sophistication.
More No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what’s
legal not what’s right. And I’ll stick to what’s legal.Roper Then you set man’s law above God’s!
More No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact – I’m not
God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such
plain sailing, I can’t navigate. I’m no voyager. But in the thickets of
the law, oh, there I’m a forrester. I doubt if there’s a man alive who
could follow me there, thank God….Alice While you talk, he’s gone!
More And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the
law!Roper So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get
after the Devil?Roper I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round
on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This
country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not
God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it –
d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow
then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.“A Man for All Seasons” — Robert Bolt
This really gets at the issue of why it’s necessary to abide by and preserve the rule of law even where, in particular cases, it is unpopular or inexpedient or ineffective.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 475
- 476
- 477
- 478
- 479
- …
- 689
- Next Page »