Farm Land Prices

Farm Notes | pal-item.com | Palladium-Item

On Monday, a panel of Purdue University experts will discuss during a free webinar what factors are behind the steady rise in farmland values.

Could it be that owning farm land is a quick ticket to a government subsidized income? As I said in an earlier post, you get what you pay for. Government farm subsidies increase the demand for farm land which drives up the price. End the subsidies and the price will fall.

Here's what the government pays farmers in this area.

Union County, Indiana Top recipient got almost $58,000 in 2009

Wayne County, Indiana Top recipient got over $70,000 in 2009

You can see info for your area here: EWG Farm Subsidy Database

tnb

Mitch Daniels

Mitch Daniels, the Stealth Christian Jihadist, wants to fix education in Indiana

Daniels shifts aim to education reform | 2011-01-08 | Indianapolis Business Journal | IBJ.com

On Indiana's declining incomes.

"But per-person incomes—despite everything Daniels has tried on job creation, road building, property tax reform and daylight-saving time—have only fallen further behind the national average.

In 2004, when Daniels berated his opponent, Gov. Joe Kernan, for Indiana’s sluggish economy, Hoosiers earned 91 cents for every dollar earned by the average American. By last year, it was just 86 cents.

Adjusted for Indiana’s lower cost of living, Hoosier incomes have fallen from 98 cents for every dollar Americans earn, to 95 cents.

Daniels is quick to point out that declining incomes have been a problem in Indiana for decades. State economists have been writing about it since the 1980s."

I do a lot of troubleshooting in my job on computer hardware and software, and in my life repairing my own cars, motorcycles, appliances etc. One thing I've learned is that when you're diagnosing a problem you should look at the last thing that was changed/adjusted/fixed on the item prior to the problem, pretty early in the troubleshooting process. Quite often, the last thing that's changed is related to the current problem. Mitch needs to step back and take a "what's changed" look at the Indiana declining income problem.

The article says Indiana (and i think US) incomes have been declining every year since the 1980's. So what changed it that era? The biggest changes I can remember were Reagan tax reductions and our governments shift to a belief in trickle-down economics? Since then, wealth has piled up in the hands of the rich while normal worker incomes have stagnated. Do you think maybe there could be a connection Mitch?

On Education.

"Daniels and Bennett want to require schools to consider students’ year-to-year growth on test scores as a “significant factor” in evaluating and paying schoolteachers and principals."

I don't see testing helping much. Basically, you get what you pay for. If you're going to base educators pay on test results, you'll end up with schools spending their dollars teaching kids how to take the test and shorting the rest of the education process.

The kids will be given practice test after practice test with a lot of coaching and memorization. The kids and educators will be bored and the ability of our kids to think for themselves will diminished.

"They also want to expand options for parents to send their kids to publicly funded charter schools or even to receive publicly funded vouchers to pay tuition at private schools."

I'm not sure about private school vouchers? They seem like a path to two separate, not-equal education systems with the rich kids and anyone that can afford to pay in the good private system and everyone else in an even more crappy public system.

It may hurt public school funding as it will be harder to convince private-school people to fund the public system with taxes.

As I think about it, it seems like a downward-spiral that would eventually lead to our current college-type system where the rich can afford it, the poor are subsidized and the middle class are squeezed even tighter.

"Daniels also wants to let high schoolers graduate in three years and then receive a college scholarship equivalent to the amount the state would have spent to put them through a fourth year of high school. Right now, the state spends more than $11,000 per student per year"

This doesn't seem like a bad idea.

tnb

Wikileaks - Richmond Indiana

This Wikileak cable mentions the killing of Dan Mitrione.

I guess the government of Uruguay was pressing the US for information about an unsolved poisoning-via-wine case from 1978 and the US responded by bringing up the also unsolved killing of Dan Mitrione in 1970. It sure sounds like we knew something about the poisoning via wine.

Case of Killing via Wine

In August 1978, Senator Carlos Julio Pereyra
(Chairman of the House of Representatives), Senator Mario
Heber and Representative Luis Alberto Lacalle (later
President of the Republic), each received a bottle of white
wine wrapped in blue paper from an unknown source. The three
democratically-elected congressmen belonged to the National
(Blanco) party. As was discovered later, the three wine
bottles contained a powerful poison. While none of the
congressmen touched the wine, Mrs. Fontana de Heber (the wife
of Senator Heber) drank some of it and subsequently died. The
perpetrators of the crime were never identified. When the
Frente Amplio party assumed power in 2005, it promised to
account for all human rights abuses committed during the
dictatorship period. Since then, the Blancos have complained
that the FA has only pursued cases connected to its members
and its sympathizers.

¶4. (C) A similar letter to POTUS and FOIA requests were made
by a group of Uruguayan deputies last year regarding the
poison wine case. The State Department declassified some
documents related to the case. The CIA did not, citing
concerns about the compromise of sources and methods. Many
Uruguayans remain unsatisfied with the USG response and are
convinced that the USG possesses useful information about the
death of Mrs. Heber.

The Mitrione cable is here: Cable Viewer

We are keeping our fingers crossed that the
poisoned wine case has definitively been laid to rest. The
excellent work at the NSC and the Department of State
persuaded our interlocutors that we take President Vazquez'
requests and his relationship with President Bush seriously,
even though we know that Vazquez was prompted to do so for
domestic political reasons. Finally, the Ambassador raised
the Mitrione case as a pushback on the poisoned wine case.

More about Mitrione here: Dan Mitrione. He doesn't sound like a very nice guy.

The OPS had been helping the local police since 1965, providing them with weapons and training. It is claimed that torture had already been practiced since the 1960s, but Dan Mitrione was reportedly the man who made it routine.[6] He is quoted as having said once: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect."[7] Former Uruguayan police officials and CIA operatives claimed Mitrione had taught torture techniques to Uruguayan police in the cellar of his Montevideo home, including the use of electrical shocks delivered to his victims' mouths and genitals.[8] He also helped train foreign police agents in the United States in the context of the Cold War. It has been alleged that he used homeless people for training purposes, who were allegedly executed once they had served their purpose.[9]

Cool to see a leak with a local connection though.

tnb

We Stand With Israel ?

In my small midwestern town, I'm starting to see these yard signs that say "We stand with Israel". I don't know where these signs are coming from but I'm guessing they're from one of the many local churches. This is a damned religious area and I doubt there's any other organization that could pull it off.

Anyway, I have a question for the people with these signs.

Why the hell do you stand by Israel? Because some preacher or old book told you to? What the hell kind of reason is that? Do you know....

Israel of today, is not the Israel of biblical times.

Today's Israel was founded after WWII following European immigration to the area in the early 1900's. Many of its founders were basically the "terrorists" of their time, killing innocent people to advance a political agenda. Link

Today's Israel has killed around 8,000 Palestinians since 2000. Palestinians have killed 1,500 Israelis (estimates based on figures found here and here).

Today's Israel has attacked it's neighbors more than it has been attacked.
1982 Lebanon, 2006 Lebanon, Gaza, Egypt, Syria and Jordan

The Palestinians do fire rockets into Israel but I'll bet they don't cause as much damage as you think. Here is a list of fatalities from those rockets. link

Total Israeli Fatalities from Palestinian Rockets

2001 - 1 death
2004 - 5 deaths
2005 - 6 deaths
2006 - 4 deaths
2007 - 2 deaths
2008 - 8 deaths
2009 - 0 deaths

Israel also oppresses the non-Israeli people of West Bank and Gaza with apartheid actions like walls, check points and special laws.Israeli_apartheid

Israel has been stealing land from the Palestinians in the West Bank for some time. Link

Most of the the rest of the world has called on Israel to stop the oppression and land grabs but they have continued largly because of US support.

Today's Israel receives almost 3 billion in aid from the US. More than any other country. Then to keep peace in the area we give additional aid to many of Israel's neighbors.

Today's Israel is the primary reason the Muslim world hates the US. The Muslims don't hate our freedoms. They hate the fact that we allow Israel to kill their people and take their land with US support, aid and weapons.

Today's Israel is not the US's friend.

They have killed or injured several Americans over the years: Rachel Corrie, USS LIberty, Israel refuses to pay medical bills for American-Jewish protester who lost eye, US citizen killed in Israeli Flotilla Attack

They have been caught spying on the US several times. Israeli Spying

Here's what the current Israeli Prime minister has to say about the US. Binyamin Netanyahu

So for those in my area that "We stand with Israel".

Today's Israel doesn't give a damn about you or your America except to cash the checks we send to them. It has become a corrupt, evil, war-like state that feeds on the US taxpayer.

I'd like to spend that money here at home on US citizens.

Pit Bull Rapist?

From the Richmond Indiana Pal-Item.

Dog owner: Pet violated

... the dog's owner,........, called police ..... Wednesday after going into his backyard because his female pit bull, Dixie, made a whine of distress.

"He sees a man .... It looks like the guy is having sex with one of his dogs," Berner said. "He confronted him and (the man) takes off running down the alley with his pants down."

That's one damned tough pet rapist there, going after a pit bull. Wouldn't a Lab or Beagle have been safer? damn!

Dog owner: Pet violated pal-item.com Palladium-Item

Drill Baby Drill ..... lets not!!

http://www.pal-item.com/article/20100523/NEWS01/5230306/1008/Pence-maintains-support-for-continued-oil-drilling

I'm against drill-baby-drill for different reasons than most people.

The pro-drill crowd thinks it will ease America's dependence on foreign oil but I doubt that. The gain from increasing our own drilling is a drop-in-the-bucket compared to the global oil market. Most of the drill-baby-drill oil would probably end up going to the highest bidder on the global market so may not help the US's energy problem at all. So there's not a lot to be gained for the US as a whole, more drilling will just pad the pockets of the oil elites.

I'd like to see our oil reserves used as a savings account, basically money in the bank. I think we should buy on the global market as long as we can. Let ours sit in the ground while we use up "their" reserves. At some point in the future, the world will run low or out of oil. When that day comes, I'd like the US to be setting on giant reserves of oil that the rest of the globe forgot about. It may cost us a little more now but could be damned valuable in the future.

I think the anti-drill crowd should use this "our oil is a savings account" message. With a fiscal message and a national security message, how could it miss?

oh,... and Mike Pence is an idiot.

SFI #1

Stupid fucking idiot.... Passes me on a blind curve at about 65-70 mph, with a car coming at us. I had to slow down hard to let the stupid fucker back in our lane. He (she?) missed a 65-70mph head-on by less than 30 feet! Then, the SFI rides the center line for the next ten miles trying to get around a truck, often over the line, with traffic coming at us. Had a couple of less than one or two foot near-miss head-on's. Stupid fucking idiot....

i hope you hit a tree before you kill someone.

December 11, 2009 on US 27 between Liberty and Richmond, Indiana.

Indiana handicapped plate #47583.

Stupid fucking idiot....