Our town

Caught Sandy Thompson's weather report on WANE-TV last night. I know she has a certain amount of minutes to fill, but, really, she could have stopped after her first sentence: "If you didn't like today, you won't like tomorrow."

Thank you, St. Joe, for maintaining your burn center:

U.S. hospitals are increasingly shutting down their burn centers in a trend experts say could leave the nation unable to handle widespread burn casualties from a fiery terrorist attack or other major disaster.

Associated Press interviews and an examination of official figures found that the shrinking number of beds is a growing cause for concern in this post-Sept. 11 world.

The Matt Kelty grand jury is heading to its third day of deliberation, and either way it turns out, it's a big story, isn't it? If there is a recommendation to charge him with a campaign-finance-reporting violation, the talk will be about whether he should drop out of the mayor's race and who might replace him if he does. If the conclusion is that no violation occurred, we have to acknowledge that there is a big loophole in state law.

Quite a one-two punch. First, Kevin Leininger's column:

The state collected $395,686 in food and beverage taxes from Allen County bars and restaurants in June, down a whopping 27.8 percent from the same time last year.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=cjtKrHHJvWg]

While governments look for more and more new things to meddle in, the basics get neglected:

NEW YORK - With a blast that made skyscrapers tremble, an 83-year-old steam pipe sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable.

[. . .]

This sounds like a bargain:

An Angola woman is in jail after she paid an undercover police officer to kill her soon to be ex-husband.  Mollie Krontz, 44, was arrested at the public access area of Marsh Lake around 10:00 Tuesday night. 

The Indiana Court of Appeals has upheld a 110-year sentence for a woman who had pleaded "guilty but mentally ill":

Thirty-two-year-old Magdalena Lopez pleaded guilty but mentally ill to two counts of murder for the July 2005 deaths of her nine-year-old and two-year-old sons.

She was sentenced in August to two consecutive 55-year terms. The judge decided against allowing the sentences to be served at the same time.

The Court of Appeals agreed, citing the brutal nature of the crime.

So, we're feeling sorry for ourselves that Kroger bought out Scott's, and there will be fewer stores, less choice. And, by the way, isn't it terrible that all the Mom-and-Pop grocery stores have been driven out of business and we have to put up with buying our food at the giants like Meijer and Wal-Mart? On the other hand, this could be Detroit:

Let the mayor's race begin:

“I believe that the long-term solution lies not in further tinkering with property tax schemes, but with a fundamental move away from property taxes as the dominant source of revenue for local government,” Kelty said.

Issuing his first campaign promise, Kelty said his first annual budget would reflect zero growth in city spending.