Hoosier lore

There's a lot of libertarian outrage out there today over the arrest of a Virginia man who was charged with indecent exposure for walking around naked in his own home. He says he was just making coffee at the time (early in the morning), but the complaining mother who was walking with her 7-year-old son says he stood naked in the doorway and then moved in front of an open window so they could still see him as they continued by the place.

Guess it must be my turn to comment on Tax Foundation reports lately. Here's the third one in five days touching on Indiana. This one is pretty good news, ranking states by buisness tax climate by considering business property tax rates, the sales tax, individual taxes, corporate taxes and unemployment insurance taxes:

I wonder which century Evansville Mayor Johnathan Weinzapfel has been living in. Talks between the city and the state and federal governments over sewage discharge broke down, and on Monday Evansville got sued. There is the possibility of heavy fines, and the mayor is outraged:

Anybody still think the state is going to hold the line on expansion of gambling? A legislative panel was told this week that if Kentucky and Ohio go ahead with casino proposals and if Michigan OKs an expansion of its gambling, Indiana could lose as much aqs $250 million a year:

Who says today's college students can't write a simple sentence?

Indiana University is one of the nation's top collegiate users of the social networking site Twitter.
[. . .]

IU ranks sixth for its number of university-affiliated Twitter accounts, fourth for number of Twitter followers and eighth for total ``tweets'' per day.

If Indiana is going to try to steal retail business from a surrounding state, it had better be Illinois. According to the Tax Foundation, Indiana's combined state and local sales tax rates of 7 percent ranks it 19th highest in the nation (Tennessee is No. 1 with 9.41 percent and five states tie for last with zero). That makes us higher than all adjacent states (Kentucky, 6 percent; Ohio, 6.83 percent; and Michigan, 6 percent) except Illinois at 8.4 percent (sixth highest in the nation).

I swear, isn't having a casino the greatest gig in the world? It's supposed to be gambling, which means some people win and some lose, but the hosue almost always wins, and if the house does start losing too much to someone, he's just kicked out:

Mike Pence seems to be creating a bit of a buzz these days:

In the unofficial race for president, just one Republican has been to both Iowa and South Carolina.

It's not former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

It's Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, whose travel schedule is raising eyebrows.

I may be in the minority on this one. Sometimes I wonder about the real value of a gesture such as the one urged by the lieutenant governor:

Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman is urging Indiana residents to write letters and send cards to troops during the upcoming holiday season.

Skillman's office received about 20,000 cards for troops last year, and officials hope to top that this year.