Category Archives: Uncategorized

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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The Things You Can Learn at Juanita Jean’s Beauty Salon….

One of my favorite blogs is written by Juanita Jean, proprietor of “The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.” Juanita Jean’s real name is Susan DuQuesnay Bankston, and she lives in Richmond, Texas, which she describes as “the heart of Tom DeLay’s old district, and nuttier than squirrel poop.”

Since I frequently use examples from Texas in my classes–the state is a reliable source of “what not to do”–Juanita Jean has been a godsend, covering as she does a range of idiocy beyond that which hits the  national news.

Here are a couple of recent examples.

Rep. Steve Stockman is the Tea Party candidate running against Sen. John Cornyn in the 2014 Texas Republican Senate primary. (Cornyn, one of the most conservative members of the Senate–and that’s saying something!–is evidently not sufficiently crazy.) Anyway, Stockman has announced that he is now accepting donations in Bitcoins, a virtual currency.

As Juanita Jean explains,

“Of course, Stockman says it’s about … wait for it … freedom.

“I really think digital currency’s more about freedom,” he explained in a YouTube video. “Because all the time people are trying to get in your pocket, trying to do different things to control you. And if you have your own wealth, and control your own wealth, it’s about freedom, it’s not about anything other than that really. Freedom to choose what you do with your money, and freedom to keep your money without people influencing it by printing money or through regulation.”

Yeah, it’s not about ripping people off with a volatile currency.  It’s not even about untraceable campaign donations.  And it certainly isn’t about being able to track what Stockman spends that money on.   It’s about freedom.”

Juanita Jean is at her best, however, when she explains what passes for social policy in the Great State of Texas.  For example, she describes a recent deal between Rick Perry and a payday loan company that will require poor people to visit payday loan offices to set up  accounts in order to use a new toll road.

I’m not making that up.

People who want to set up an account to pay their toll charges can do so by phone, mail or online, but the only places to do so in person in El Paso are at ACE stores. ACE is a payday lender. Individuals who make the transaction at the payday lender will be charged a $3 fee to set up the account and a $2 convenience service fee to replenish a non-credit card.

Let Juanita Jean take it from there….

What the partnership is essentially doing is sending thousands of potential first-time customers directly into the stores of a payday lender.” said Diane Standaert, senior legislative counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending.

But it does not stop there.

Additionally, the man Perry appointed to be Texas’ consumer watchdog, William White, is also vice president of payday lender Cash America. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently fined the company $19 million.

Do you wanna know what interest Cash America charges for a 14 day loan?  533%.  No, that’s not a typo.  It’s three numbers starting with a 5.  Some poor guy working two jobs living paycheck to paycheck has a sick kid.  Where’s he going to get medicine before his next paycheck?  Welcome to Cash America!  He even charged higher rates to United States service men and women.

William White is going to hell.  But, meanwhile, he’s Texas’s consumer watchdog.

Don’t you just love Texas?

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Denial Isn’t Just a River in Egypt….

A friend has shared the most recent Newsletter from Micah Clark’s Indiana Family Institute, and the hysteria is getting palpable. An (annotated) excerpt follows.

The 2014 Indiana General Assembly begins next week.   The issue of marriage protection will likely dominate much of the session, as the media seems to want to cover some sort of angle on the issue almost daily. (That pesky media…why would it be covering a major public policy issue? And why is the coverage so sympathetic to the gays?)

Yesterday, I received calls from two legislators from opposite ends of the state. They confirmed for me that the opposition to the marriage amendment is very subjective.  (“Subjective” opposition is clearly illogical and unbiblical.  “Objective” support comes from people who agree with me.)

It is true that liberal activists have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to prevent a vote on the amendment. They have hired 11 lobbyists from large Indianapolis law firms and have 91 field directors in place working up opposition to the amendment and creating the perception that Hoosiers now believe moms and dads are irrelevant, that gender is interchangeable, and marriage can be whatever anyone wants to make it. (Marriage has always been between one man and one woman! Not like in the bible or in all the countries that still recognize plural marriage…)

However, it was this legislator’s belief that this wave of opposition to natural marriage is entirely manufactured and distorted. (There’s a factory out there somewhere, with an assembly line turning out opponents to “natural” marriage!)  He said that he announced early on, months ago, that he would vote for the Amendment again in order to preserve marriage and to allow the people to decide this, not the activists, unelected judges or Hollywood.

I’m not quite sure where Hollywood comes into the Hoosier picture, but let’s ignore that. Let’s also ignore interesting locutions like “natural” marriage. (Hate to point this out, Micah, but no civil marriage is “natural”–the decision of government to acknowledge partnerships for the purpose of allocating legal rights and responsibilities is pretty much a man-made phenomenon.)

The inconvenient truth of the matter is that the “manufactured and distorted” opposition to constitutionalizing second-class citizenship for GLBT folks is neither manufactured nor distorted: it is the very genuine position of capitalists who want to keep Indiana open for business and citizens who believe that it isn’t government’s job to enforce religious doctrine.

Here’s the thing: you keep insisting that “the people should decide.” Actually, the entire premise of the Bill of Rights is that We the People don’t get to vote on other people’s fundamental rights–that’s why the Bill of Rights is called a “counter-majoritarian” document. We don’t get to vote on who is entitled to free speech or freedom of religion or the equal protection of the laws. No one voted on my marriage, or yours.

No one got to vote on whether Adam should have married Eve, and no one should get to vote on whether Adam gets to marry Steve.

But let’s be honest, Micah. What really has your panties in a bunch is your (well-founded) suspicion that even if HJR6 passes the legislature and goes on the ballot, you won’t win. Your time has passed. Deny it as vehemently as you like–sputter about “nature” and “children” and “interchangeable genders” (whatever that means) and “biblical truth” all you want.

You and your theocrats have lost this one.

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