Monthly Archives: December 2014

Despicable

Brian Howey reports:

For the second consecutive year, the spring National Guard Supplemental Grant awards have been deactivated for Indiana Army National Guard service members in the various ROTC programs around the state. The reason? The state, despite its $2 billion surplus, has run out of money. At least that’s what one university ROTC student I was with learned just before Thanksgiving. The news sent this student into a mode where he needs to replace in the next week or so the promised $2,500 in grant money with . . . a student loan. This comes at a time when student loan debt has surpassed credit card debt in our nation. Now think about this for a minute: The state is reneging on a promise to future National Guardsmen and women to help fund their college educations. These are the Hoosier men and women who will be on the front lines of floods, tornadoes, civil disturbances, and who could end up making the ultimate sacrifice on a foreign battleground, as many Hoosier Guardsmen did in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the message we’re sending these public servant is … go get a loan? That’s not right.

So–we don’t have enough money to honor our commitment to kids who may well have to put their lives on the line for us. But we do have enough money to hire a couple of expensive private-sector lawyers to handle an ill-conceived bit of political theater: a lawsuit against the President for taking executive action on immigration. That action was well within President Obama’s legal authority, and immigration issues are specifically matters of federal–not state–jurisdiction. But even if that weren’t the case, courts of law are not  where we resolve policy disputes, which is what this is, as even our culture-warrior Attorney General recognized when he refused to handle the case.

Yes, even our “sue culture change” Attorney General says this one is a bridge too far.

The Governor is running for President. He wants his (rabid, no-brown-people here) base to know that he’s one of them, and he’s willing to spend a lot of taxpayer dollars on a frivolous lawsuit he knows he can’t/won’t win, in order to get that message out.

Every one of these ridiculous cases costs real money. Even when the AGs staff is doing the work, that’s time they are taking away from the state’s business, and filing fees, etc., add up. According to the IBJ, the AGs office spent over $7,000 just for copying costs in the (entirely voluntary) same-sex marriage litigation that preceded Indiana’s own legal action.

Pence just can’t find the money to fulfill his promise to college students enrolled in ROTC, but dollars are endlessly available for empty, self-serving, political gestures.

Despicable.

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But He Had Friends in High Places

A recent AP investigation appears to conflict with the “nothing here, move along” attitude taken by Tony Bennett, his patron Mitch Daniels, and Tim Swarens of the Indianapolis Star, who recently penned a puff piece about the former Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The AP analyzed a report compiled by Indiana’s inspector general, showing many more instances of campaigning with  public resources than previously reported:

From Jan. 1, 2012, to Dec. 31, 2012, the investigation found more than 100 violations of wire fraud laws. They included 56 violations by 14 Bennett employees and 21 days in which Bennett misused his state-issued SUV. Former chief of staff Heather Neal had the most violations, 17.

In a section labeled “Scheme to Defraud,” the inspector general laid out its case, saying Bennett “while serving as the elected Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Indiana, devised a scheme or artifice to defraud the State of Indiana of money and property by using State of Indiana paid employees and property, for his own personal gain, as well as for his own political benefit to be re-elected to the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.”

The violations fell into five categories: political campaign fundraising, responding to political opponent’s assertions, calendar political activity meetings, political campaign call appointments and general political campaign activity.

Through reviews of emails and calendar entries and more than 50 interviews with top Republicans and former staffers, investigator Charles Coffin determined Bennett falsified mileage logs to cover fundraising trips and use of two separate state workers as campaign drivers. The report also details 20 days on which Bennett used the SUV to go to local Republican fundraisers coded as “business” in his handwritten vehicle logs, as well as instances where trips to events billed as education-related also had calendar notes about political donors being present.

Bennett also used tax dollars to send a staffer to attend the 2012 Republican Party convention on his behalf.

Whatever your opinion of Bennett’s education policy preferences–which, as he proudly noted in the Swarens article, were identical to those of Mitch Daniels–they are no excuse for wire fraud, or the falsification of financial documents. (Need I point out that you don’t falsify records if you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong?)

Interestingly, despite ample evidence of criminal behavior, Bennett has never been charged.

In addition to confirming what many of us already suspected about Bennett, this report adds a bit more substance to the emerging outlines of Mitch Daniels’ fiscal and administrative legacy: Underfunded and struggling municipal governments thanks to the ill-advised constitutionalizing of tax caps. A State Board of Accounts that lacks the resources to do adequate audits of local government units, Department of Child Services caseworkers with unmanageable caseloads, and elimination of subsidies to families adopting special-needs children, thanks to indiscriminate understaffing and cost-cutting. (It took a lawsuit to restore the subsidies.)  A Toll Road once owned by Hoosier taxpayers is currently an asset in a private-sector operator’s bankruptcy, thanks to too-clever-by-half financing schemes. A string of revelations about illegal and unethical behavior by cronies of our ex-Governor, including but certainly not limited to Tony Bennett.

And of course, there’s the little matter of his appointment of Purdue Trustees who–entirely coincidentally!–turned around and hired him at a handsome salary.

Welcome to Indiana, where you can get away with pretty much anything–with a little help from the right friends.

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But I’m Not a Racist…

Chris Harris, a member of the board of the Hooks Independent School District in Texas, is in hot water for a “seasonal” message he posted on social media: the text reads “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas” across a photo of–wait for it– a KKK member in full regalia.

When criticism erupted, he responded by saying that he realizes what he posted “was inappropriate and offended people.” He went on to say he’s deeply sorry and to insist that he’s “not a racist.”

What do people like Harris think it takes to be a racist? A burning cross? Maybe a lynching or two?

Let me offer a couple of clues to the clueless.

If you refer to the members of any group–blacks, Jews, Muslims, gays–as “them” or “those people”–thus inferring that members of that group share certain (generally negative) behavioral characteristics–you’re racist.

If you think demeaning jokes–comparisons of black folks with monkeys, for example– are funny, and “no big deal,” yeah, you’re a racist. Big time. (If you listen to race-based jokes and don’t protest to the “comedian”, you are at least a fellow-traveler; if you forward tasteless emails you’ve received, you are definitely a racist.)

If you thought Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan for Massachusetts was an innovative, business-friendly approach to health care, but the Affordable Care Act–aka “Obamacare”– is UnAmerican socialism, you’re a racist. (And a twit.)

If you are surprised and offended by people protesting the Grand Jury decisions not to indict the police officers who killed Garner and Brown–if you just can’t understand why people might react with anger over those decisions–you are either racist or intentionally clueless (same difference).

If you are a public official who thinks posting a picture of a Klansman is just another way of saying “Happy Holidays” you aren’t only racist, you’re too f**king dumb to hold public office. Or, probably, to get out of bed most mornings.

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Depending on the Kindness of Oligarchs

A recent op-ed in the New York Times considered the implications of some impending philanthropy–a gift of a new park.

[The] park will be just offshore in the Hudson River, largely financed by the media mogul Barry Diller and situated, conveniently, a short walk from his office in Chelsea.

The new park will also be near the High Line, allowing for an easy tour of how private wealth is remaking the city’s public spaces. This trend isn’t unique to New York: Philanthropists are also busy reshaping the riverfront of Philadelphia and building a green corridor through Houston. In Tulsa, Okla., a vast new park system is being financed in part by the billionaire George B. Kaiser.

David Callahan, the author of the op-ed and the editor of Inside Philanthropy, readily acknowledges the admirable generosity of donors like Mr. Diller. But he also worries that the increasing reliance on private philanthropy to replace–rather than supplement–funding previously supplied through taxes and subject to democratic decision making is, in his words,  “more evidence of how a hollowed-out public sector is losing its critical role, and how private wealth is taking the wheel and having a growing say over basic parts of American life.”

In New York, while philanthropists have lavished money on parks adjacent to their neighborhoods, declining public revenues have left parks in poorer precincts in considerable disrepair.

The design, placement and maintenance of parks were once a function of democratic processes. Now, as a citizen, you feel like a spectator to largely privatized decision making. A declining public sector, burdened by budget cuts, creates a vacuum for imaginative civic leadership that is being filled by a new class of Medicis.

Medicis–an apt descriptor.

I have often explained to students the different functions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The question answered by the Bill of Rights is procedural: it answers the fundamental question who decides? Who gets to decide issues of basic individual liberty–what religion you practice, what book you read, what street you can stroll down, who you marry? In our system, I explain, those personal decisions–good or bad– are supposed to be made by individual citizens, not by the state. The Constitution, on the other hand, sets out rules applicable to collective decision-making; it assumes wide participation in a democratically-shaped civic life.

Oligarchy, on the other hand, does not rely on wide participation. Its definition:  “A form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.”

Receipt of largesse–no matter how well-intended–is not a characteristic of a free and equal society. When you are the beneficiary of someone else’s charity, rather than a citizen entitled to enjoyment of public goods, you live in a feudal society.

Like Blanche in “Streetcar Named Desire” who always depended on the kindness of strangers, we peons increasingly depend upon the beneficence of oligarchs.

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Excuse Me? What’s a “For Profit” Church?

A couple of weeks ago, the local news reported on a gathering of anti-gay activists protesting Indiana’s recognition of same-sex marriage. It was a small crowd (probably since people who understand how court rulings operate realized that a protest couldn’t/wouldn’t change anything), and I just skimmed the description of attendees.

Then I stopped. Read it again.

Among the participants listed were “Pastors of several For Profit Churches.” My husband’s snark when I read that description to him was “Aren’t they all?” (Yes, I know that blanket condemnation is unfair.)

I’d never heard of churches established to be for-profit enterprises. When I consulted Doctor Google, there were links to a number of articles advising churches on methods for establishing for-profit subsidiaries, and many more detailing the financial shenanigans of churches from “Mega” to storefront–but nothing about churches actually established as “for profit” entities.

The classification of a church as “nonprofit” or “for profit” has obvious tax and constitutional consequences. Traditional churches can claim certain exemptions from civil rights laws, for example, under the Free Exercise Clause. Whether a “for profit” church could do so is–so far as I know–an unanswered question.

A couple of months ago, there was a case involving a wedding chapel in Las Vegas that wanted to refuse service to LGBT customers. The owners claimed a religious liberty exemption from applicable civil rights laws. As I recall, the fact that the wedding chapel was a for-profit business meant that the exemption didn’t apply.

When you think about it, admittedly for-profit churches sort of give “coming out” a whole new meaning….

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