Opening Arguments

I’m taking a week off. Back on Monday, Oct. 5th.

We may not lead the world in education, but at least we can be first in something:

DESPITE an increase in entertainment choices, watching television remains as popular as ever, according to data from the OECD’s Communications Outlook report. American households watch the box for over eight hours a day on average, twice as long as anyone else.

First, they came after our toilets, and we said nothing . . .

There is a battle for America’s behinds.

It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for “soft” (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective).

It’s a menace, environmental groups say — and a dark-comedy example of American excess.

The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.

“Recycled paper goods.” Right. If I want sandpaper toilet paper, I’ll go to a hotel. Even the classiests places seem to buy their tp on the cheap.

Hey, don’t leave all that food on the plate. Don’t you know there are starving people in India?

Well, screw them. We have a better use for the scraps here:

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University students who pile too much food on their trays at Purdue’s dining courts are helping the city of West Lafayette generate extra power.

Each week, about five tons of food scraps are being ground up and trucked to the city’s sewage treatment plant, where it’s turned into methane in a special digesting chamber.

This seems to be modeled on the program pioneered in the Bay Area. There, leftovers are collected from 2,300 restaurants and grocery stores, and they hope to eventually sell five megawatts a year to the grid. This sounds a little more appealing than the chicken-poop method of producing methane; at least it’s what I would rather use in my flux capacitor.

Whoda thunk it?

This year, the deep pockets of New York’s rich were tapped like never before. The state’s wealthiest pay new higher income tax rates, higher taxes for limousines and yachts, more to enter a horse in a race and more to dabble in real estate.

Meanwhile, many are losing millions from the closing of business tax loopholes and those making over $1 million are losing tax deductions others get.

Now, early revenue figures suggest that taxing the wealthy more under this year’s state budget may have driven away richer New Yorkers. That could make the economic comeback for the state even harder.

[. . .]

According to the Manhattan Institute, the wealthiest 1 percent of New Yorkers paid 41 percent of all state income taxes before the new tax rates were approved.

“It’s not just who leaves,” said the institute’s E.J. McMahon. “It’s who doesn’t come here? Who doesn’t start a company here? Who graduates from Columbia and decides to start up a business in Philadelphia so they don’t have to share their money with Albany?”

Instead of going to Asia, maybe Gov. Daniels should just do some outreach in states like New York and California: “Come to Indiana, and bring your company, too. We’re not insane here!”

Huh:

More than 19 percent of Wayne County residents over age 15 are divorced, according to new 2008 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s the highest percentage for any county with a population over 65,000 in the nation, and two other Indiana counties — Floyd and Madison — also made the top 10.

This particular story doesn’t say how much more than the national norm that is, but the figure can be found elsewere. Nationwide, 10.7 percent of people over 15 are divorced. That makes the Wayne County deviance pretty strong. This is interesting:

Indiana is one of a handful of states that doesn’t track divorce statistics. So it’s hard to tell if the ranking is caused by a large number of divorces, a lot of young single people moving out of the county to attend college elsewhere or if it’s just a statistical anomaly, Jackson said.

Shouldn’t the state be tracking that statistic? Why don’t we? The harmful effects of children being raised in one-parent homes have been pretty well documented. How can we get a handle on the problem if we don’t even have the actual numbers to talk about?

A little bit of irony here:

A Cloverdale man convicted in 1995 in Tippecanoe County for killing a 10-year-old boy is expected to be sentenced in November to life in prison without parole.

In exchange, the boy’s parents agreed to stop seeking the death penalty during a scheduled retrial, after a federal appeals court overturned the original death sentence.

During an informal meeting in Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 Tuesday night, Christopher M. Stevens, 37, agreed to a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in the 1993 death of Zachary Snider, 10, of Putnam County.

[. . .]

The landmark case led to the creation of Zachary’s Law in Indiana, requiring sex offenders to register with local police when they move into a new neighborhood.

The man whose atrocity resulted in all sex offenders having to register is himself serving the sentence many on the registry should be serving: life with no possibility of parole. The reason offenders have to register is that they are still considered dangerous. Some are and some aren’t. The dangerous ones should just be locked up (or never let out in the first place). The ones who aren’t (those charged with statutory rape, for example, when they were just a few years older than their too-young girlfriends) should be free to go on with their lives. By treating all offenders the same and continuing to punish them after they’ve served their sentences, the law is heading in a direction we might all come to regret.

The Washington Post, sticking up for our poor, overworked legislators who just don’t have time to read the bills they’re voting on, seems to miss a rather large point:

A group of well-meaning professional activists — and, so far, over nearly 60,000 online petitioners — want members of Congress to sign a pledge never to vote on any bill unless they have read “every word” of it.

I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work there, Lou Garry: A sleazeball who runs a video store in Ashley is accused of taking upskirt photos of three female customers, including a 10-year-old girl, and all they’re charging him with is a misdemeanor battery charge for brushing against the girl.

“We had had three different occasions where allegations were made,” said Ashley Police Department Deputy Chief Garry Osborn.

The department has begun an investigation into all three incidents. Officers confiscated Miller’s cell phone and computer hardrive. Police won’t comment on what they found, because it is still an active investigation. All of the evidence was turned over to the Dekalb County prosecutor.

But according to Osborn, unless there is nudity or it can be proven the pictures were sold, the prosecutor can’t press charges. “There’s no statute that covers that type of behavior.”

[. . .]

Newschannel 15 contacted the Dekalb Co. Prosecutors office. Staff told us, they have looked over Indiana law codes repeatedly, including IN code 35-45-4-5 which defines voyeurism. They say the “Voyeurism” statute doesn’t apply in this case, because it allegedly happened inside a store, not a shower or bathroom. And the “Invasion of Privacy” statute doesn’t fit either, because there was no restraining order at work in Miller’s alleged case.

Even Tom Wyss, who pushed for the state’s most recent voyeruism law, says it might be time to talk about reworking the code. But I think a case can be made that current state law covers what this guy did. Angry White Boy makes that case here, citing the Indiana statute on criminal deviate conduct and listing several examples of cases from other states where such activity is treated a little more severely than the DeKalkb County prosectuor seems to want to.

And whether state law is applicable or not, there is a federal law that almost certainly would apply, the Video Voyeurism Act of 2004, which:

amends the federal criminal code to provide that whoever knowingly videotapes, photographs, films, records by any means, or broadcasts an image of a private area of an individual, without that individual’s consent, under circumstances in which that individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, shall be fined or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

“Photographs an image of a private area of an individual”? Check. “Under circumstances” with “a reasonable expectation of privacy” ? Check. Miller should be thrown in jail to await trial and told to pack his bags just in case.

You probably know that some panhandling can get pretty aggressive, and maybe you’ve even experienced some of it. This seems a little over the top, though, doesn’t it?\

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Police are looking for a suspect in a shooting in the parking lot of Lafayette Square Mall.

According to police, the victim was sitting in his car when he was approached by another man asking for money. When the man refused the other man shot him once in the abdomen.

Begging has been defended on First Amendment grounds for a long time now. Suppose some homeless-rights advocate will now defend this guy’s Second Amendment rights? Not giving money to those who need it and ask for it is a supreme act of selfishness, isn’t it? We could even say it causes so much potential harm to the beggar that it ought to be criminalized. The beggar, therefore, was merely defending himself. If word gets around, bet the next selfish bastard won’t refuse to give him money.

I suspect some of my neighbors are among the 1,100 signers of this petition. I can’t agree with them:

Some Waynedale residents are making sure that their voices are heard before a decision is made to close their post office on Old Trail Road.

The branch is on a list of 413 offices to be closed. Waynedale resident Billie Rykard collected nearly 1100 signatures from people who oppose the closings.

Rykard says many residents who use the facility are seniors and walk to the branch.

[. . .]

It would disrupt many peoples lives if we had to go downtown.”

I don’t know how many people would really have to go downtown. There’s a branch close by on Bluffton Road. It doesn’t have window service now, but closing one of two branches so close together and instituting window service at the remaining one would seem to save the post office money. I’m not sure how many senior citizens there are who actually walk to the Waynedale branch, either.

This is one of those cases, as with the BMV branches,  where we all know they need to cut spending and we also know a lot of money is wasted, but, hey, take away somebody else’s service, NOT MINE. We should also be willing to support the elimination of Saturday service or, hell, even going to four days service. How many people still have stuff coming through the mail that they absolutely have to have right now?

Please, please, please, use these coupons to save money at our store, but just come here and shop real soon, OK? Oh, wait. Everybody’s using the coupons, and we’re losing money. Put that coupon back in your pocket and get the heck out of here!

Sears has joined a growing list of companies forced to pull online coupon offers early due to a surge in popularity.

The $10 off coupon for junior’s apparel was supposed to be valid until Nov. 14, but, in a statement to Call 6’s Rafael Sanchez, the company said it would no longer honor the discount.

Sears did not explain its decision, but did apologize to customers. 

[. . .]

The coupon controversy comes after other area businesses, like Marsh Supermarkets, have had similar incidents where coupons were distributed more widely than intended.

These are tough times for your average, middle-of-the-road retailer. The discount places like Kmart and Wal-mart seem able to tough it out, and there’ll probably always be a niche for specialty places like International House of Candles or Moe’s Guns ‘n’ Stuff. But what function do places like Sears and JC Penney still serve? They don’t carry items that are particularly distinctive. It’s just stuff, same as the stuff you can get anyplace else. The only reason to go to an actual store instead of getting something online is that you want it right now, today, and most of us will go where the cheapest price is. Better keep those coupons coming, guys.

Today’s candidate for crime of the century. Note the last line:

INDIANAPOLIS — The arrest of an 85-year-old on a charge of public indecency has prompted police to take a closer look at the issue of prostitution along an eastside corridor.

Frances Tucher, 85, was arrested last week after a neighbor on East 10th Street called police. Investigators said Tucher was performing a sex act in a car near 10th Street and Chester Avenue, 6News’ Jack Rinehart reported.

Tucher, who has no criminal history, was preliminarily charged with indecent exposure, not prostitution. Tucher’s gender identity is not known at this time.

Something we can all hope for — to have no criminal history and get busted for the first time at 85 for indecent exposure.

Sometimes, you have to really pay attention to figure out what’s going on. First, we see that The Rapture is upon us, and the beginning of the 7-year tribulation period will be any day now. The astronomical signs prove this 100 percent!! Next, we notice that a UFO has been sighted above Fort Wayne:

Fairly round, white slightly variant fireball; the shape changed like the silhouette of a bonfire changes. The object was low in the sky, clearly visible over our 40-ft. tree line, and moved steadily from NE to SW in a very straight line, then the lights went out completely.

Coincidence? Believe that if you choose. But if you look around for me, and I’m not there right when everything is going to hell, don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.

A judge in Indy who heard juvenile cases can now really relate to the youngsters:

Teens are warned every day not to text anything inappropriate, and definitely not while behind the wheel or in the classroom.

But it’s a message that escaped a Marion County Juvenile Magistrate.  She was fired for texting violations while hearing cases.

[. . .]

According to a court disciplinary record obtained by 13 Investigates, Magistrate Danielle Gregory engaged in inappropriate conduct, texting a married male employee in the middle of more than one juvenile hearing.

And this just in. Indiana is listed as one of the states that have full or partial bans on texting while driving (ours just covers young drivers — which means Judge Gregory might have heard a case or two) but also does something else:

But many states are more than happy to tweet you with up-to-the-minute directions on how to steer clear of a traffic jam.

It is a mixed signal that some safety experts and politicians say could be dangerous.

 At least 22 states that ban texting while driving offer some type of service that allows motorists to get information about traffic tie-ups, road conditions or emergencies via Twitter.

AFAIC, SSINF. B4N

Proud to be an American:

These days, American food is far more complicated and infinitely better. The U.S. has revolutionized its culinary culture over the last 40-odd years. No longer is it the developed world’s worst food nation; in fact, it’s perhaps the best. And it’s largely thanks to the (currently disputed) genius of America’s entrepreneurial capitalism.

He notes that good — even great — restaurants aren’t just in the big cities these days. Fort Wayne is proof of that. It’s long been noted that we have an incredible amount of restaurants for a city this size. An increasing number of them are first-rate places.

Well, we can certainly dream:

Vice President Joe Biden said today that if Democrats were to lose 35 House seats they currently hold in traditionally Republican districts, it would mean doomsday for President Obama’s agenda.

It isn’t enough to make Obama a one-term president considering all the damage he could do in four years. If Republicans can take 40 seats next year, they get contol of the House back and can stop some programs and kill others before they become entrenched.

Those crazy Swedes:

Sweden’s centre-right on Saturday announced income tax cuts of 10 billion kronor to stimulate the job market, its primary objective.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and three other ministers in the four-party coalition said the reduction would mean most wage earners would have 200 to 250 kronor (20 to 25 euros, 29 to 36 dollars) more in take-home pay every month.

They must think that it’s the private sector that creates jobs and that people will do something productive and beneficial to the whole country if allowed to keep more of their own money. That’s not just crazy, it’s craaaazzy. Somebody should tell them that only the government can stimulate the economy and “save or create” millions and millions of jobs.

Are we going to be saying a final goodbye to Gary in the near future?

For the second straight year, Indiana state auditors have voiced “substantial doubts” about Gary’s “ability to continue as a going concern” as the hollowed-out industrial city is squeezed by mounting debts and newly imposed property-tax limits.

I don’t really know what the big deal is supposed to be here. Everybody knows that all Gary has to do to climb out of the red is let a couple of casinos in there and then get fat and happy on the zillions in taxes provided.

Oh, wait. . .

Bob Dylan has been murdered, and it was a conspiracy:

Bloomington relived Bob Dylan’s classics with a traveling group of Indiana musicians called Hoosier Dylan on Saturday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.

Folksinger-Americana artist Tim Grimm organized the group after he was inspired by Bob Dylan and his caravan of musicians who traveled the northeast and performed in theaters together in the late 1970s.

The group includes solo performers and musical groups as well as Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf, who read poetry to the sounds of musician Gordon Bonham’s guitar.

While some of us consider such butchery the worst sort of crime, it is, alas, not even a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions. And, to be honest, it happens so often that law enforcement wouldn’t be able to keep up with it anyway. I have to admit that I’ve killed Dylan a time or two myself, but I at least have the sense to do it in the privacy of my own home.

Drat. I got so busy with chores yesterday that I missed all the Sunday news shows. And I understand that our reclusive president made a rare appearance on some of them, explaining his health care reform plans. I do wish he’d speak more often so I could come to understand reform from his point of view. As it is, I have to rely on the few crumbs of information made available by rightwing Obama haters, and I guess you know how they twist things. If you listened only to them, you’d think reform was nothing but a grotesquely expensive expansion of big government.

Oh, hang on a sec. Looks like I might get a chance to hear the president after all:

President Obama sits down with CBS’ David Letterman, in a pitch to a different audience — the one that didn’t get up at 9 a.m. Sunday to watch interviews on five shows broadcast simultaneously in some markets. For a president who streams speeches live on Facebook, text messages and frequently e-mails supporters, it would be remiss to think he reached everyone in Sunday’s media blitz.

I don’t know though. Old folks like me tend to nod off about Letterman time. Maybe the president will do the Leno show, which is right on the borderline of my bedtime. Or perhaps he’ll show up on the Food Network while I’m watching, just drop in to do a 30-minute meal with Rachel or whip up something down homey with the Neelys. Nah. That would be overexposure, and I’m sure the president’s inner circle is working hard to avoid that.

Have a nice weekend, Grouchketeers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbCtgu38ZXU

A Hoosier lawmaker does us proud by getting on a Top 15 list!

U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Merrillville, has been named one of the 15 most corrupt members of Congress by an ethics watchdog group.

It’s the first time Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington lists Visclosky in its annual report.

The report criticizes Visclosky for accepting nearly $1.4 million in donations from the PMA Group, a lobbyist firm, between 1998 and 2008. The PMA Group was Visclosky’s top campaign donor in 2008.

“In exchange, the lawmaker rewarded PMA Group clients with millions in earmarks, at least $23 million in fiscal year 2008 and at least $10 million in fiscal year 2009,” the report says.

I lived in The Region for eight years and found politics here much more boring when I first arrived. Northwest Indiana is not just close to Chicago geographically. It practices the same brand of get-it-while-you-can thug politics.

That sex offender registry isn’t a cure-all, is it?

 Bloomington man is behind bars Tuesday night for the third time for the exact same crime.

“Sick, sick…sick, very.” said neighbor Billie Hundley.

Police arrested 29-year-old Todd Rimstidt early Monday morning on the city’s south side. A tipster told police Rimstidt had allegedly been engaging in sexual activity with two 13-year-old boys.

[. . .]

Rimstidt is a registered sex offender. He has been for years. Court papers indicate he was convicted of child molestation and solicitation in 2000. He was convicted again in 2008. In fact, Rimstidt had just gotten out of jail this past May.

He should be given a permanent address that requires no registration, perhaps?

Is nothing sacred? From The New York Times:

So the discovery calls into question theories about the evolution of T. rex . . .

Oh, well. We shall press on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cANmUmGSlw