Politics and other nightmares

I wish Fort Wayne had solved all its problems the way Jeffersonville has solved its, so that we, too, could worry about important things like aesthetics. About a month ago, I did a post about Peggy Duffy of that city, who heads some citizens group called City Pride. She was haranguing the City Council about newspaper and advertising boxes.

The New York City Council is expected to override the mayor's veto of a bill giving drivers in certain parking zones an extra five minutes past the expired time on parking meters, escaping a fine of $65. I'm no fan of parking meters or excessive fines, but I think the mayor has a point:

Bloomberg says the law would lead to chaos. He asks how drivers and ticketers will know what time to go by.

Me, either:

The National Association of Manufacturers sent President Obama a plea on the eve of his trip to Copenhagen (pdf file):

Quicher whining, Gary, and learn how to cope with the property tax caps:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels wants struggling cities like Gary to consider merging with other local governments to become more efficient and reduce costs.

Another right you didn't even know you had, probably because you've been wasting your time reading that musty old Constitution -- the right to broadband access:

The Obama administration named 18 projects Thursday that would receive a portion of the $7.4 billion in stimulus funds set aside to bring high-speed Internet to poor and rural areas that have been overlooked by Internet service providers.

There they go again, being reckless with both our money and our national sovereignty:

COPENHAGEN — As hopes faded for a strong climate deal, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to put new life into flagging U.N. talks today by announcing the U.S. would join others in raising $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with global warming.

We've wasted a lot of time here talking about consolidated government that's probably never going to happen. The way things have been shaping up over the "shared space needs" fiasco, we'll be lucky if city and county officials don't start killing each other. In the meantime, Evansville and Vanderburgh County residents seem to have realized that current fiscal restraints might be a good reason to consider changing business as ususal:

On January 5, the public will get its chance to sound off on the issue.

It's nice that Indiana House and Senate leaders finally seem to be serious about ethics reform, but House Speaker Pat Bauer has to go and spoil the moment with a statement so absurd that at first it seems like an attempt at surrealist humor:

These are not good days for libertarians with delicate sensibilities:

The Founders viewed the criminal sanction as a last resort, reserved for serious offenses, clearly defined, so ordinary citizens would know whether they were violating the law.