Category Archives: Uncategorized

Unwilling to Engage

A Facebook friend who has been following the twists, turns and votes on HJR 3 has reported on the defensive behavior of Representative Dave Ober, one of the “yes” votes for that measure.

Apparently, Rep. Ober is unwilling to engage in discussion about his position or his vote–according to my correspondent, he has “de-friended” people posting  contrary positions, no matter how respectfully, eliminated critical posts from his official Facebook page, and refused to defend or even discuss his vote.

Ober isn’t the only legislator hiding from public debate and scrutiny: when a reporter friend of mine asked for an accounting of the letters and emails generated by the HJR 3 debate, she was told that the Freedom of Information Act doesn’t apply to the legislature, and they didn’t have to respond.

Now, there might be an excuse for refusing to supply the contents of legislative emails; there really is no reason–other than potential embarrassment–for refusing to tell the media how many communications were received pro and con. ( Why do I suspect that if letters supporting HJR 3 had outnumbered those against, they’d have complied?) As it is, the legislative response to legitimate inquiries can be summarized as a collective “go *** yourself.”

Can we spell “arrogant”?

The next time one of these self-important lawmakers pontificates about how he’s “doing the people’s business,” someone should remind him that the people have a right to know how their business is being conducted, and whether the measures being passed are consistent with the people’s expressed policy preferences.

Theoretically, democracy is supposed to work like this: we elect folks, watch how they behave, and subsequently vote to retain or reject them based upon that behavior. When those we elect opt to game the system, refuse to defend their reasoning, and generally take the position that they aren’t answerable to those who elected them, it’s time to clean House.

And Senate.

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Playing “Let’s Pretend”

There are two kinds of “let’s pretend” games.

The first is intended to illustrate a principle. For example, let’s pretend that you have a teenage son. You don’t have much money–you live in low-wage, “Right to Work” Indiana–so you’ve been saving  for several years in order to send him to college. He’s also been depositing money from his part-time job into the joint savings account the two of you have established.

One day, you discover he’s dropped out of high school, and taken all the money to buy a car. He explains that he needs a car now, to get to his job at Burger Heaven, where he makes three dollars an hour more than his friends who work elsewhere. Besides, he argues, the future benefits of a high school diploma (forget college) are speculative.

Would you dismiss the unequivocal data about education and lifetime earning disparities and general well-being? Would you endorse his decision to make more money now and damn the future?

Business groups evidently think the kid is doing the right thing.

According to a story buried a couple of days ago in the Indianapolis Star, a coalition of national and state business groups is fighting new rules on greenhouse gas emissions. Indiana  Gov. Mike Pence says Congress should quash the pending regulations because they would hike energy bills and cost jobs.

The new rules will cost businesses and consumers some money now. Those rules, however, are a necessary part of a still-inadequate effort to slow global climate change. It bears repeating that there is no scientific dispute about the reality of that climate change.  We are already seeing its effects. 

Too bad, say the members of the business coalition.

The business coalition, of course, is playing the other “let’s pretend” game–the one being played by people who prefer keeping an extra buck or so in their pockets now to addressing climate changes that will make life miserable for our children and grandchildren. The game played by pretending that the science is flawed, that the warnings are speculative, or that a heavy winter snow is proof that there is no “global warming.”  

As scientists have been telling us for quite some time, a warming planet changes climate patterns. Hurricanes increase in intensity; Alabama and Texas get massive snowstorms while the Arctic ice melts; California has droughts, sea levels rise, species lose their habitats.

All of these things are already occurring. Dealing with them is already costing us a lot more than compliance with federal regulations will cost, and failing to deal with climate change now–pretending that it’s a “hoax” or that the science isn’t settled–is ignorant at best and dishonorable at worst.

When the son who left high school is fifty and still making minimum wage, how will you justify letting him drop out?

When our grandchildren ask why we allowed the seas to swallow New York and Florida, why we failed to prevent the loss of twenty-five percent of the Earth’s species, and why we didn’t protect large areas of the planet from becoming uninhabitable, how will we justify our shortsightedness? Are we going to admit that greed and immaturity–our unwillingness to be even minimally inconvenienced in the here and now–led us to pretend it wasn’t happening?

Playing “let’s pretend” is for children. The businesses fighting for their right to keep polluting need to grow up.

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Faith-Based Economics

The IBJ recently reported that Indiana is advertising on billboards in New York, during the Super Bowl, in what appears to be an effort to get businesses to move here. The ads tout Indiana’s low, low business taxes.

As the IBJ points out, however, while low taxes may be great for employers,

if industrious workers are looking for a place to thrive, evidence strongly suggests they’re better off in New York City—and, really, just about any major city besides Indianapolis. Which is to say, we rank very poorly in upward mobility. A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research weighed the chances of a person from the bottom 20th economic percentile (poor) being able to reach the upper 20th percentile (rich) in different cities. NYC ranked sixth; Indy ranked 46th. Your odds are quite low. MarketWatch has an in-depth look at the report and its findings.

As I’ve previously noted, New York City is safer than Indianapolis; its crime rate is substantially lower than ours. My husband and I get to the Big Apple pretty often–our middle son lives in Manhattan–and I can attest to the city’s superior public amenities and services: a robust bike sharing program, well-maintained parks, great public transportation, efficient snow removal…the list goes on.

Indianapolis cannot claim any of these things. Some people like big cities, others don’t, and that’s a different issue, but it is indisputable that we rank lower than New York (and lower than many, if not most, other metropolitan areas) on virtually every public administration metric.

Some of this reflects poor management, but a lot of it is because Hoosiers’ faith-based economic policies have starved local government.

As this is written, the General Assembly is preparing to pass yet another business tax break–without identifying offsetting revenue for the state’s strapped cities and towns. The result will be fatter wallets for Hoosier employers (aka political donors), and an even worse quality of life for ordinary citizens.

Local government warnings that further revenue cuts will be devastating have fallen on deaf ears. According to one legislator, the lower taxes will generate new jobs and those jobs will make up the lost taxes. That has been the justification for virtually every previous tax reduction, but the jobs–and added revenues– have consistently failed to materialize. (“13 Investigates” reports that IEDC has “cooked the books” for years in order to mask that inconvenient fact.)

I have a suggested tag line for that ad campaign: Indiana! Making Mississippi look good.

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How a Bill Shouldn’t Become a Law

Remember the old cartoon developed to teach students “how a bill becomes a law”?

A proposal is introduced. It is assigned to a committee that reviews it, hears testimony about it, and deliberates its merits. The committee then votes whether to advance the measure. If the vote is affirmative, the entire chamber votes on it.

In bicameral legislatures (those with both a House and Senate), a positive vote sends the bill to the other house, where the process is repeated.

Speaker of the House Brian Bosma is teaching young people–who are disproportionately interested in the fate of HJR 3–a different lesson.

What if a bill the Speaker really wants passed is assigned to a committee that actually does its job–a committee that deliberates based on the evidence before it and the testimony it has heard? What if that committee then concludes that the bill should be defeated?

Why, you just change the rules.

You don’t abide by the decision of the lawmakers you assigned to make that decision.  You cheat.

Speaker Brian Bosma insists that there is nothing unusual in his decision to take HJR 3 away from the committee to which it was originally assigned. And it’s true that some bills are reassigned, mostly in order to expedite the process, or because on closer examination the bill really belonged elsewhere.

In this case, the change was made for one reason only: to get the result Bosma wants. The decision he couldn’t get playing by the rules.

Even more incredibly, the Speaker has scheduled the new committee’s vote for tomorrow. The vote will be taken without the benefit of evidence or testimony–but then, as we’ve seen, the Speaker considers evidence and testimony irrelevant. The only thing committee members need to to know is what the Speaker wants them to do.

Usually, the power plays and the wheeling/dealing is done behind the scenes. This time, that wasn’t possible. This time, everyone got to see what is seldom on public display: the House leadership’s absolute contempt for democracy and the rules of fair play.

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You’re Fired!

In the wake of the Duck Dynasty dust-up, the Chik-Fil-A controversy and other events triggering “right to free speech” debates, we get this report from Huffington Post:

In the new survey, 45 percent of Americans said the First Amendment does not allow people to be fired from a job for expressing their views, while only 36 percent said such firings are allowed under the Constitution. Twenty percent said they weren’t sure.

Answers to other questions in the poll were equally depressing. The article’s provocative title was “Do You Know More About the First Amendment than Sarah Palin?”–and when the answer to that is “no,” you’ve really hit bottom.

The dismal poll results remind me of the young man who called the ACLU, back when I was Executive Director, and demanded that we sue White Castle for denying him his First Amendment rights. They’d refused to hire him, apparently because he was so heavily tattooed they found it unappetizing. I still remember him insisting “I have a right to free expression!” As I tried to explain, yes, and so does White Castle.

If the City of Indianapolis–or any unit of government–passes a law forbidding you from tattooing your body, then you’ve got yourself a genuine, real-life, rootin’ tootin’ constitutional challenge. When White Castle disapproves, you don’t.

If the government told A & E that it couldn’t suspend Mr. Homophobic Duck Guy, it would be violating A & E’s rights. If a local government refused to zone a Chik-fil-A because its owner is a homophobic jerk, it would violate Chik-fil-A’s rights. (Annoying as it may seem, jerks have constitutional rights too.)

Listen up, Americans! The Bill of Rights restricts what government can do. And one of the things government can’t do is protect you from being fired for shooting off your mouth.

Now was that so hard?

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