As part of its week-long series covering new legislation in the Indiana legislature from the perspective of a local lawmaker, the Pal-Item gives coverage today on efforts to bring confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) under tighter regulation by IDEM:

From his kitchen window Al Hutchison can see the first building of a 1,650-cow megadairy going up.The dairy and its 7-acre manure lagoon will be only about 2,200 feet from Hutchison’s home. The lagoon will hold about 21 million gallons of manure.That’s why Hutchison testified last week in favor of Senate Bill 123 authored by Sen. Allen Paul, R-Richmond.

The bill would force the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to penalize confined feeding operations that violate environmental laws. Dutch-owned megadairies like the Union-Go Dairy planned for Randolph County have become controversial in Indiana because many of them have been cited for violating clean water rules through manure spills. Neighbors say the state imposes few or no penalties on those operations for their violations. Paul said he was approached about a bill by Randolph County residents in his district who want more state control over confined animal feeding operations.

“It’s unusual to have people come to you with bills. Usually we’re approached by lobbyists. It’s time to talk about this issue. You can’t let these things blow in the wind,” Paul said.

Link.

Video gambling is big business in much of Indiana.  The only problem is that in most instances, it is illegal:

In June 2004, Larry McKee, deputy commissioner of the Indiana Department of Revenue, told The Star Press that Muncie and Delaware County were in a “bingo Bermuda triangle,” in which bingo operators took a loss at bingo so they could offer more profitable games, including legal pull-tabs and illegal video gambling.

A local prosecutor, who has tried and failed to prosecute illegal video gaming, seems to have developed an understanding of the issue:

The prosecutor has said his priorities are drug crimes and crimes of violence. Reed also noted that some would say his pursuit of gambling charges would seem hypocritical considering that his employer - the state of Indiana - has made legal numerous forms of gambling, from bingo to the lottery.

Link.

The New York Times ran an interesting piece yesterday about some hold-outs, legally we would call then “tenants at sufferance,” who had their property taken by the government:

Legally, their properties have belonged to the City of New London for four years. The city used its power of eminent domain to take their homes and some 90 other nearby properties in the hope of attracting new development, including improved housing and wealthier people. “I think they don’t want to have to look at us,”

The issue here is whether the government can use its power of eminent domain to take property from citizens so it can be redeveloped.  Under the Fifth Amendment, “[n]o person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The issue here is what is “public use.”  There is no problem with the government taking private land to put in a highway, or run power lines, or build a prison, but can the government take land to hand it over to other citizens who are committed to redevelop it?

So far, then answer has been pretty uniformly “Yes.”  Courts have found that the government’s interest in seeing economic improvement, and increasing property values (for tax revenue) is an appropriate justification for such takings. This strikes many in this country as wrong: you work all your life, you buy a piece of property, you pay you taxes and follow the law, and your reward is the government taking your property because it wants to see something else done with it.

This issue is expected to come to a head this year when the US Supreme Court decides Kelo vs. New London. Oral argument in that case is set for February 22. For the government, the decision could take away an important tool they use to close slums and turn around urban blight.  But for private property owners, the issue is one of abuse: Things have simply gone too far:

In Port Chester, N.Y., a small furniture plant is fighting a state development agency that wants its site for a Home Depot parking lot. And in town after town, people of modest means, often members of minority groups, complain that they are being moved to make way for people who either have more money or, in some cases, lighter skin.

The Times note that their headquarters was created by just such an exercise of eminent domain.

Link.

The Pal-Item reveals today in an editorial that AG Steve Carter went behind Earlham’s back while pretending to negotiate with the college in his recent press release of his plan for Conner Prairie:

Attorney General Steve Carter has been fundamentally dishonest with Earlham College.

The college and Carter’s office were in negotiations trying resolve the dispute over Conner Prairie and its massive endowment when Carter contacted three newspapers and asked them to attend a meeting on Saturday, Jan. 22.

A representative of Carter’s office asked at least the Palladium-Item, if not the other two publications, not to notify Earlham of the meeting. Normally, when journalists are asked to embargo information, they comply unless the information is of a compelling public interest. But we only comply when the source is believed to be trustworthy. So, this newspaper complied with that request. It’s the attorney general after all.

Carter then released his proposal to end the situation, where he called for splitting the $174 million endowment, divvying up the land and appointing a fully independent board to oversee the living history museum.

When our reporter called Earlham to get its reaction to the proposal, public relations officials were dumbfounded — not by the proposal itself, but by the very release of information.

Earlham officials thought they were negotiating in good faith with someone trustworthy.

They were wrong.

A spokeswoman for Carter said the attorney general announced the proposal to let the public know where he stands. But that’s disingenuous at best. He announced his proposal because he wants to one-up the college. He’s not interested in negotiating; he’s waging a public relations battle.

Link.

Earlham was founded by the Quakers in 1847, and has been consistently well operated and managed by these quiet and peace loving people. Eli Lilly was impressed enough with the folks at Earlham to trust them with the Lilly homestead (present location of Conner Prairie) and millions of dollars in Lilly stock.  The fact that the state’s highest law enforcer has chosen to take such an aggressive stance with the college has got to start making more of us (at least in Eastern Indiana) upset.  Here is a link to my coverage of this issue to-date.

For years now I have organised my business finances using Quickbooks, and my personal finances using Quicken.  Setting it up was a bit of a task at first, but then it hummed along without complaint for years.  My banking  and credit card transactions loaded in each month with a click of a button. All my bills were paid either automatically, or with a click of a button.  I have not actually written out a check in years.

All this bliss came to a screeching halt recently. Intuit, the maker of quicken told me I had to upgrade to the latest version to continue using their online bill pay system. I was angry, but frankly too invested in the system to balk.  So I paid them more money and took the update.  Then the second and more dire issue hit: Quicken’s new improved version no longer accepted inputs in the formats provided by my bank and credit card companies. This leaves me either the option of keying in every transaction (not going to happen) or hoping that Intuit’s market share will force my financial institutions to adopt Intuit’s new format. I’m glad I am not the only one upset with this:

Boing Boing: Quicken disables the software you paid for to force paid upgrades:

Intuit has lost a customer on this one. Make that two customers — for life. This is the dirtiest of pool imaginable. Bait-and-switch. I wonder if it’s even legal. You’d think that if Intuit had actually made a compelling new product that it could entice its customers to buy an upgrade; seems like they’ve decided that instead of improving their products, they’ll just extort money from customers who were stupid enough to buy from them in the first place. That’s a mistake I imagine very few of us will make again once word of this gets out.

The Indy Star runs today a story about the death from natural causes of Tony Kiritsis, at the age of 77. The article reviews the events of February 8, 1977, when Mr. Kiritsis held a stockbrocker hostage for 63 hours:

Kiritsis confronted Hall in his office at 129 E. Market St., angry about a possible foreclosure on land Kiritsis had hoped to develop. Kiritsis, who described himself as having been angry all his life, attached Hall to a wire noose bolted to the end of his shotgun and put his finger into a metal ring that was wired to the trigger.

Image credit: Jim Young/The News

Link.

Tamara Thompson, over at the PI News Link, has coverage of a case out of the Michigan Supreme Court upholding a private investigator’s ability to watch people and follow them around in the face of a challenge alleging that such snooping amounted to a violation of Michigan’s anti-stalking law.

The court concluded the surveillance by licensed private investigators serves a legitimate purpose and was not stalking under the law.  Tamara says : “We perform information gathering in legal cases for the purpose of establishing the legitimacy of a claim, not to intrude or make contact that creates emotional distress. But that hasn’t stopped the litigious!”

I am not sure the issue is quite so clear.  If I do it, its stalking, but if I hire a professional to do it for me and report, it’s legal?

Link to the case.

News Sentinel | 01/28/2005 | More doctors opt out of Medicaid:

A piece here on doctors finding that continuing on in the Medicaid program is no longer financially rewarding in Indiana, especially in light of this:

In efforts to reduce the projected $121 million Medicaid deficit spending for the current fiscal year, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, which oversees Medicaid, has said medical providers should prepare for a 2 percent withholding of their Medicaid earnings starting Feb. 15.

Ray Kusisto, CEO of Orthopaedics Northeast, said the 27-physician speciality practice does take non-HMO Medicaid patients. “ONE’s reimbursement rate is less than 20 percent of billed cost,” he said, but admits the practice is big enough to spread the burden of Medicaid loss because of revenue from private insurance and reimbursement for higher-cost surgical procedures.

“Medicaid pays so little now, we basically see the Medicaid patients as our appropriate good-deed in society,” Kusisto said. “It can be a challenge if you don’t have a strong commitment to serve that population. There’s certainly no business sense in doing it.”

Teacher sued for allegedly using rubber stamp on student

This sounds like it is getting out of hand: A Fort Wayne high school teacher is accused of battering a 16-year-old student by stamping him with a rubber stamp. 

From the Indystar article, it is a little confusing, but it appears that teacher is facing criminal battery charges, and now the student and his father have filed a lawsuit against the teacher and the school in federal court:

Newport put his head down on the desk and covered his face with his arms while Vickery stamped him several more times, the charges allege. Newport washed off the ink that was on his face, head and hands at the end of class, a police report said.

Every time my kids go to gymnastics, they to are hit with one of these rubber stamp weapons.  I guess I did not see the evil in this until now.

Marcia Oddi has some coverage up today at the Indiana Law Blog about Earlham’s dispute with the Indiana Attorney General over Conner Prairie, the living history museum near Indianapolis that Earlham runs under a gifts made by Eli Lilly.  In her coverage, she posts the online docket entry for the appeal Earlham has filed with the Indiana Court of Appeals.  The docket sheet reflect that although the Court accepted the interlocutory appeal on discovery issues, they had deferred ruling on whether several organisations of small colleges can intervene in the appeal as amicus curiae.

Marcia also mentioned that there is no easy link to my prior posts on this dispute, so I will provide them now: Here is a link to all my coverage of the Conner Prairie story.

The Consumer Bankers Association, which represents most of the nation’s major banks, has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to overturn portions of Indiana’s Do-not-call law, which it contends conflict with FCC rules.

Indiana’s law does not permit the banks to call people on Indiana’s list unless the bank has their specific permission, or unless they owe the bank money.  The federal law permits them to contact people who have been bank customers within the last 18 months and those who recently have called the bank with an inquiry.

Indiana’s AG, Steve Carter is fighting back, he has filed a motion with the FCC to dismiss the petition. Carter is asking citizens to comment in favor of Indiana’s law to the FCC, and has put up an FCC comment form on his web site.  You can access the form and read Carter’s press release here.

Link to the story in the Northwest Times.

Local News - Palladium-Item - www.pal-item.com

An Indiana Court of Appeals panel on Tuesday granted Earlham College’s request to review a Hamilton County court ruling on whether three major stock gifts to Earlham are restricted endowments or trusts under state law.

The three gifts were made by Eli Lilly and created the living history museum of Conner Prairie. An endowment created by the gifts and shared today by the museum and college is valued at about $174 million.

As an update to the story I covered yesterday here, about 2 Florida boys arrested because of their art work, Crime & Federalism has posted a scan of some of the artwork:

Coverage today on a lawsuit brought in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis by the Indiana Civil Liberties Union claiming the State of Indiana’s treatment of inmates at the Pendleton Correctional Facility amounted to cruel and unusual punishment prohibited under the Eighth Amendment. The suit is a fall out of a prison lockdown that left some inmates of the prison jailed 2 to a 12-by-8-foot cell for nearly 5 months:

Under normal conditions, the I-Complex prisoners have jobs or attend classes and have access to day rooms about 15 hours a day and recreation about 90 minutes each day, Falk said. During lockdowns, they remain in their cells except for showers lasting no more than 10 minutes three times per week.

Link to the story in the Decatur Daily Democrat.

I would think that attorneys attending a conference on sexual assault and domestic violence would have a different frame of mind, but I guess boys will be boys:  The partying at just such a conference in New Hampshire has resulted in the resignation of an attorney general, and now a trial judge, both accused of groping/fondeling female attendees at the conference.  Link.

This is not the first round of indictments in a mortgage scam, but it is big news in Indiana, the state that leads the nation in mortgage forclosures.

Here’s how it works (I think I saw it on the Soprano’s a few years back): an “investor” buys a dilapidated property at market value, let’s say $15,000, then immediately turns around and sells it to a buyer for 3 or 4 times as much.  The buyer applies for a loan, and an appraiser values the property at the newly enhanced value.  The buyer quickly defaults and the lender is left with home that will sell nowhere near its appraised value.  The lender’s money is split between the “investor,” the “buyer,” and the appraiser.

Susan W. Brooks, US Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana has announced indictments against 10 people in just such an alleged scheme.  Here’s the kicker: 3 of the 10 are police officers.  Brooks said this activity is akin to bank robbery.

I don’t agree with this characterisation, unless the banks are leaving money in big piles on the curb for the robbers to collect.  My point here is that the lenders bring this on themselves: over the last several years, lenders, anxious to make mortgages, have dropped lending standards, making loans to people coming out of bankruptcy and those with FICA’s below 500. Furthermore, the lenders have demoralised the real estate appraisal industry by forcing appraisers to inflate their values, if they want to do business with the lenders.  It is not at all rare to have homes sell for $50,000 below their last appraisal, conducted through a refinancing.  It is hard to feel sorry for the banks.

Indiana seems posed to jump on the bandwagon, banning handheld cell phone use while driving. A bill (HB 1508) has just been entered into committee.

Link.

I think Doug Mason has the right take on this type of measure:

I guess I’m like most folks because I think driving while phoning makes you a less effective driver. Then again, I think the same could be said about driving-while-tired, driving-while-really-really-old, driving-while-hung-over, driving-while-futzing-with-the-radio, driving-while-the-kids-are-yelling-in-the-back, and countless other distractions or impairments.

Link.

9 and 10 year old boys were arrested in Ocala, Florida - taken from school in handcuffs - on felony charges for their artwork:

One drawing showed the two boys standing on either side of the other boy and “holding knives pointed through” his body, according to a police report. The figures were identified by written names or initials.

Link.

Apparently, the pencil and crayon artwork was construed as a threat to other students. So, I guess it is still legal to have bad thoughts, you just cannot put them on paper.

Benjamin Steinberg is a young inventor who has had some real problems in the past few years. In late 2002, he began the process of obtaining a patent on a very useful item, a reusable glow stick. He began negotiations with Omni Glow, a leader in the glow stick industry to bring his invention to market. Things seemed to be picking up for the young inventor, so he dropped out of college to pursue his business venture.

Everything was going fine until his mother presented him to a hospital in Indianapolis, because she was worried about his drinking, and delusional behavior. Steinberg told the treating doctor that he was expecting an upfront payment of a million dollars in the near future from his invention, and the doctor determined this to be evidence of delusional thinking, and certified that Steinberg was potentially schizophrantic, and gravely disabled. Despite that his patent attorney substantiated that his business venture was for real, Steinberg was involuntarily committed on November 4, 2003.

90 days later the temporary commitment expired, and today (almost 1 year later) , the Indiana Court of Appeals determined that it never should have happened because the State failed to prove that Steinberg was either a danger to himself or others, or that he was unable to function independently. Sorry about that.

Link to the decision.

Indiana does not have an involuntary treatment option, so the only way to force treatment on someone is through an involuntary commitment. NPR’s Matt Hackworth did a piece this morning on “Kendra’s Law” a New York state law that permits a court to order outpatient treatment. The law is up for renewal this year, and opponents arguing it violates the civil liberties of its subjects.

I cannot find the text of the release, but the Star says Earlham has called AG Carter’s plan to rollout 94 Million out of the college’s endowment to fund a separate museum “seriously flawed.”

Link.

Earlham contends that it is continuing t try to negotiate with the AG:

Earlham said creating an independent museum had been discussed with Carter, but “his consultants’ suggested endowment level for Conner Prairie is based on seriously flawed accounting assumptions and projections that substantially inflate their estimates of Conner Prairie’s short term and future needs.”