A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Ferguson charged with misdemeanor battery

by 1 Comment

According to the Palladium-Item, former Notre Dame standout Vagas Ferguson has been arrested on battery charges after a scuffle with a 34 year old woman at Crestdale Elementary school in Richmond, Indiana. Not exactly O.J., but for some reason I remembered that Sports Illustrated cover from 1979.

Ferguson is Richmond Community Schools “attendance liason.” The article said he was confronted by the woman who was upset by the use of “foul language” during a basketball game at the school. The article goes on to say that he confronted her (lots of confrontation apparently) and was trying to get her out of the building. He ended up pushing her down and dragging her by the feet. The injuries were reportedly minor but she went to the hospital for minor injuries.  Betcha those head injuries aren’t so minor once the complaint gets filed. Cha-CHING! Former NFL star acting within the scope of employment of the local school corporation. Much better, from a personal injury perspective, to get shoved by a person like that than to get in a wreck with an uninsured drunk .

Indy Star – DST coming

by 23 Comments

In anticipation of the beginning of Daylight Saving Time this weekend, the Indianapolis Star has numerous articles this morning on the subject. (Thanks to Jim for compiling the links.):

  • DST may challenge drivers – Suggests that DST will cause more morning accidents but fewer night time accidents because, go figure, traffic accidents are more likely in the dark. I’m not inclined to do the math at the moment, but it seems to me that from April through October, there wasn’t a real shortage of evening, drive-time light, so the extra hour won’t assist a lot of commuters in the evening. During those same months, under EDT there is a shortage of morning, drive-time light but not under EST. Not that I think it’s a momentous issue in any case, but I disagree with the Star’s assertion that the gain on one end is equivalent to the loss on the other end.
  • DST: Take a look back in time to examine its origins – a column in the opinion section by David Prerau. He recounts the stories of Benjamin Franklin and William Willett, both of whom found it wasteful for people to not begin their days until several hours of daylight had passed. They thought it best for people to start their day in conjunction with the rising of the sun, thereby reducing the need for artificial light. First of all, I’m not sure how relevant that is in our 24 hour world. But, that aside, even assuming Franklin and Willett’s goals are good policy, we’re probably starting DST to early and ending it too late. To keep sunrise at roughly a 6:00 a.m. wake up time, we should probably start DST at about May 15 when sunrise takes place at about 6:30 a.m. EDT and end it at about July 15 when sunrise takes place, again, at about 6:30 a.m. As it is, sunrise won’t take place until about 7:30 a.m. on April 2. For me (I know I get up earlier than most), it will be about 2.5 hours of darkness after I wake up. )
  • Pulaski County, under pressure, switches to Central –

    Pulaski County commissioners on Monday abandoned plans to stay on Eastern time, saying concerns over a possible federal lawsuit outweighed their unhappiness over the U.S. Department of Transportation’s decision to move the county to the Central time zone.

    “We caved,” said Mike Tiede, president of the Pulaski County Board of Commissioners. “We don’t want to spend a bunch of taxpayers’ money trying to defend this. The Department of Transportation threatened to hand us over to the Justice Department, and our county can’t afford that kind of stuff.”

    There is also an interesting quote from a USDOT official who said “We don’t have the authority to look the other way. In the ’60s the department did so, was sued and lost.” Unfortunately, there was no follow up about what the heck was going on in southeastern Indiana where those counties were illegally observing DST. In any case, Pulaski county officials should never have been placed in this situation. The Governor and the General Assembly passed the buck and the US Dept. of Transportation’s ad hoc approach to this situation left Pulaski in a different position than its similarly situated neighbors.

  • Sleep deprived teens – While not mentioning DST directly, this article reports that teens are not getting enough sleep. School age teenagers should get about 9 hours of sleep per day. Most 12th graders are getting about 6.9 hours. Education suffers with less sleep as does driving. The article cites televisions, computers, and phones in the rooms of teens as some of the culprits.

    I feel compelled to mention that I see this article as just another “kids these days” article, hyperventilating about the sorry state of the youth of today. I’m not an old codger, but I am 34 years old. And ever since I can remember, I’ve been hearing or reading stories bemoaning the sorry state of kids these days. I suspect people have been complaining about “kids these days” for centuries, if not millenia.

    But, putting that aside and taking the premise of the story as correct and worrisome, DST can only exacerbate the problem, such as it is. By May 31 when school lets out (more or less), it won’t get dark until 9:45 p.m. EDT. That won’t encourage kids, or anyone else, to get to sleep any earlier. Wake up times, on the other hand, will tend to remain fixed due to scheduling, regardless of when people get to sleep.

    • Never Mind

    by 4 Comments

    Apparently the folks in Pulaski County won’t be defying the federal government by observing Eastern Time. WSBT is reporting that county officials are backing down from their decision to invoke “home rule” to stay on Eastern Time despite the recent decision of the U.S. Dept. of Transportation to move them to Central Time. So, for now, starting April 2, Central Time it is for Pulaski County. The Board of Commissioners backed down after the Department of Transportation threatened a lawsuit.

    Pulaski County Board of Commissioners president Mike Tiede says they didn’t want to spend taxpayer money defending their decision. Tiede said the only reason Pulaski County sought to be in Central time in the first place was because all of the counties surrounding it were asking to be on Central time.

    IN-03: R&F on AFA & Hayhurst

    by 5 Comments

    Reverent & Free has an entertaining post teeing off on the “American Family Association of Indiana’s” Micah Clark’s letter to the editor critical of Indiana Third Congressional District candidate Dr. Tom Hayhurst for being insufficiently anti-sex. Apparently Dr. Hayhurst didn’t support some sort of ordinance regulating businesses associated with sexuality and that made Mr. Clark mad.

    So, there you have it, Dr. Tom Hayhurst: champion of small businesses and small government! (I’ve noticed that organizations like the AFA are usually in favor of “government small enough to fit into your bedroom.”)

    I don’t know anything about the ordinance in question, so I can’t comment authoritatively, but I get pretty tired of political busybodies trying to use government to legislate their particular sense of propriety. I prefer that government respect its citizens enough to let them make their own moral decisions, so long as those decisions don’t “break the legs or pick the pockets” of other citizens.

    Ready to spring forward?

    by 25 Comments

    Niki Kelly has an article on the upcoming change to Daylight Saving Time on April 2.  Bar owners will lose an hour of business. Microsoft’s Outlook has some problems in addition to the normal, and all Hoosier business systems will have to be reset. I’m still a little puzzled as to why it was supposedly such a big deal for foreign companies to adjust their systems to Indiana time that DST was essential for jobs, but it is trivial — barely worth discussing, really — for Hoosiers to adjust their systems to Eastern Daylight Time.

    Gov. Daniels has been making fun of the counties struggling with the mess he made, comparing Martin and Pulaski counties to “Emiliy Litella” — the Gilda Radner character famous for misunderstanding situations, then saying “never mind.” Bill Blomquist, a political science professor from IUPUI believes the issue will affect few House races.

    “Perhaps I am Pollyannaish, … but I honestly think once people have that additional hour in the evening for a summer they’re going to like it and then they are going to turn their clocks back right before Election Day and they are going to say, ‘That wasn’t such a big deal,’ ” he said.

    We’ll see. What we do know is that it was a big enough deal when Indiana dabbled with DST in the past to get Hoosiers to opt out. Maybe enough has changed in the ensuing decades to make Hoosiers complacent about the change. Anectdotally, I’ve spoken with people for whom time change is utterly foreign. It will be interesting to see how they react to the Governor and his supporters arbitrarily changing a system that worked well enough for the last 30 years.

    Advance Indiana on Katzenberger on Snow

    by 3 Comments

    When I post titles like this, I realize how recursive the Web and the blogosphere are. Anyway, Advance Indiana has a good post on John Ketzeberger’s column criticizing Treasury Secretary John Snow’s assertion that the current economy is beneficial to everybody.

    The market, Snow explained, is rewarding the nation’s most productive people with the highest compensation. And the rising tide, he argued, is lifting all boats.

    I’m a collection attorney. I can tell you that the tide is not lifting all boats. I’ve boarded and captured a few myself after they’d run aground. I’d say it’s more like a hurricane that’s moving the biggest ships along at a nice clip while sinking or waterlogging the rest.

    DST article

    by 6 Comments

    The Indy Star has a DST article in today’s paper that mostly looks at Martin County and the town of Shoals Indiana. Of more interest to me was poll information in the sidebar. Of Daniels claim that DST was necessary to improve the economy, only 16% of Hoosiers believe that the shift will have a major economic impact, and only 21% think DST is a change for the better.

    IN-09: Bush’s Sodrel fundraiser makes Washington Post

    by 12 Comments

    Bush’s visit to Indy to help Rep. Sodrel stuff his coffers with campaign money made the Washington Post. Bush’s new strategy for the Republicans looks pretty much like the same old thing: Scare people, lie about the Democrats, and line your pockets with money from his corporate cronies.

    War on Terror this, Democrats are going to take your money that, blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard it all before. He can say what he wants. At this point, it’s just a bunch of hot air. There is simply no getting around the fact that Bush and his Congressional supporters just aren’t good at governing. Despite spending like drunken sailors, we’re no safer. In fact, the Iraqi debacle has made the world more dangerous and our military weaker. We’re in debt up to our eye balls and communist China is our creditor.

    One party rule has been really bad for the United States. We need some checks and balances and, frankly, gridlock in Washington. Bush isn’t going anywhere in 2006, so that means that Sodrel and his Republican compatriots need to go.

    Journal & Courier on Pulaski time issue

    by 1 Comment

    The Journal & Courier has an article on the Pulaski time zone issue that does a good job of explaining the bind in which Pulaski County was put:

    Frain explained the confusion arose when the Department of Transportation asked county leaders last year what time zone they wanted to observe.

    Pulaski leaders asked for Central after seeing that many nearby counties would do so.

    “We didn’t want to be the doughnut hole,” Frain said.

    But the federal government in January ruled that Pulaski and its northern neighbor, Starke County, would go to Central time, while denying the change to Carroll, Cass, Fulton, Marshall and White counties.

    Hopefully the Governor will read that explanation and realize that Pulaski County’s back and forth on the time zone is not because they’re indecisive dimwits, as he implied, but was directly caused by his half-baked approach to time zones and poor decision making when he refused to recognize that the time zone question is inextricably linked to the Daylight Saving Time question.

    Advance Indiana on Bush’s visit to Indy

    by 3 Comments

    Advance Indiana has a great recap on Bush’s visit to Indy.

    I’ll just throw in some snark in response to 3 lessons we should have learned from 9/11:

    • We must defeat the enemy overseas so we don’t have to fight the war on terror at home.

      • Ah, the “flypaper” argument. This is stupid in that it assumes a finite number of “enemies.” Fact is, we increase our risk of being attacked at home if, by jumping at shadows we suppose to be threats, we create more actual terrorists.

    • We must hold those who harbor terrorists accountable—they are equally as guilty as the terrorists.


      • Saudi Arabia. Pakistan. ‘Nuff said.

    • When we see a threat, we must take it seriously before it comes and hurts us.


      • North Korea. China.