Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’m as Ethical as Scalia is NOT a Persuasive Argument

A couple of days ago, the Sierra Club, Citizens Action Coalition, Spencer County Citizens for Quality of Life and Save the Valley [update: the organization was Valley Watch, not Save the Valley] filed a petition asking Indiana Supreme Court Justice Mark Massa to recuse himself from hearing a case that will determine the viability of the controversial Rockport coal gasification facility. (I’ve written before about this boondoggle, birthed by political insiders and totally contrary to the free market principles to which the Daniels Administration paid so much verbal homage.)

Not even 20 hours after the petition was filed, Massa issued a ruling denying it. Clearly, the ruling had been written well beforehand–the lawyers who crafted the brief could have saved their (written) breath.

The argument for recusal rested on the long and intimate relationship between Massa and Mark Lubbers, whose personal fortunes are closely tied to the results of the lawsuit, and upon Massa’s friendship with and service to then-governor Mitch Daniels, who rammed the deal through over the qualms of both Republican and Democratic legislators. As columnist Charles Pierce wrote yesterday in his Esquire blog, “Massa couldn’t be more tied into the people who want to build the plant if he came to work every morning in one of those NASCAR firesuits festooned with logos.”

Massa’s ruling relied heavily on Cheney v. United States District Court, the infamous case in which Justice Scalia refused to recuse himself from a pending case despite the fact that he had gone duck hunting with the Vice-President–a named party— while the case was pending. Massa neglected to note that the Indiana Supreme Court, unlike the US Supreme Court, is governed by one of those pesky codes of ethics. (Can we spell “appearance of impropriety”?)

At least he didn’t defend himself by pointing out that Clarence Thomas sits on cases in which his wife has an interest, while he and Lubbers are just best buds. (Actually, relying on Scalia or Thomas for ethical guidance makes me think of that old adage about fish rotting from the head. But I digress.)

In a particularly disingenuous passage, Judge Massa wrote:

“I have a friend who works for General Motors; must I recuse if GM is a party to a case before our court?” he wrote. “All of us on this Court have many friends who are lawyers, some of whom appear before us, including several to whom I am closer and see more regularly than Mr. Lubbers. If mere friendship with these lawyers were enough to trigger disqualification, my colleagues and I would rarely sit as an intact court of five.”

Well Judge, if you had a friend who worked for General Motors, that would be a lot different than having a friend whose continued, highly lucrative employment depends upon a favorable verdict– a friend who got you your first political job 30 years ago, a friend with whom you have subsequently shared many meals and social occasions, a friend who was one of the very few invitees asked to speak at the robing ceremony when you were sworn in as Judge.

I’m disappointed, but not surprised. This is the man who, as a candidate for Marion County Prosecutor, ran an ad asserting that his opponent was unfit for the office because in his private practice he had represented a criminal defendant. (I know several Republican lawyers who had supported Massa until that ad ran, but based on its intellectual dishonesty, instead voted for Terry Curry.)

Massa evidently couldn’t see an appearance of impropriety if it bit him.

Comments

Maybe “Allah” Would Have Been Okay

File under: Just kill me now.

A couple–evidently unmarried–went to court because they couldn’t agree on which of their last names to give their baby. Granted, this does not seem to bode well for future family amity, and does seem to call into question the parents’ common sense.

But they would seem to be paragons of rational behavior in comparison with Judge Lu Ann Ballew, who ordered the parents of 7-month-old Messiah DeShawn Martin to change the baby’s name to Martin DeShawn McCullough.

Why this order? What conceivable business does a Judge have interfering with a parent’s right to name a baby? Glad you asked.

“The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ,” Ballew said.

Ballew even ruled that the parents had to go back and change the baby’s name on the birth certificate.

Now, I note that this throwback to a time when members of the nobility could name the children of the peasants who worked their land (and sample a bride’s ‘favors’ before turning her back to the bridegroom) does not appear to be a genuine Judge; she is identified in the news reports as a Child Support Magistrate. She has, however, been allowed to exercise judicial authority, despite the fact that she has quite obviously never encountered the Constitution, Rule of Law principles, or the 21st Century.

The baby’s stunned mother is quoted as saying, “I didn’t think a judge could make me change my baby’s name because of her religious beliefs.”

Of course, in the world inhabited by sane people, she can’t.

Now, granted, a kid named “Messiah” is going to have some dicey moments. But he should be able to grow up and blame his parents for his problems like everybody else.

Comments

Big Mac Attack

In the face of walkouts by fast-food employees, and negative publicity over the “budgeting advice” provided by McDonalds to its workers, opponents of a higher minimum wage have  gone into high gear, warning that jobs will be lost and prices will rise precipitously if the minimum wage is increased.

What–they ask in ominous tones–would a Big Mac cost if the workers preparing and serving it made 15.00 an hour?

As it happens, we know the answer to that.

The Economist Magazine created and maintains a “Big Mac Index,” making it possible to compare the price of Big Macs in different countries with different wage scales. In Australia, where the minimum wage is 15.00 and the minimum wage for fast food workers is, for some reason, slightly higher–on July 1st, the fast food rate went up from $17.03 an hour to $17.98 an hour–a Big Mac costs 70 cents more than it does in the U.S.

Salvatore Babones is a senior lecturer in sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia, and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.. As he explained in a recent interview, 

What you get for that in Australia is you get to go to a fast food restaurant where you know that everybody behind the counter has full health insurance, everyone behind the counter gets a really good wage, they’re treated well, and they have, you know, options in life…

What about the argument that raising the minimum wage necessarily means fewer jobs?

There’s a theory that raising the minimum wage will result in fewer jobs. And that theory seems to make intuitive sense, that when wages are higher, you know, people hire fewer people. And in isolation that would be true. There’s an assumption economists like to make called ceteris paribus, which means all other things remaining equal, this would happen.

 But all other things are never equal. For example, if you raise the minimum wage, people make more money. That’s the first thing that’s not equal. As people make more money, they spend more, they pay more in taxes. The entire character of the economy changes.

As Babones points out, study after study confirms that no matter how “intuitively” persuasive the argument that raising the minimum wage will depress employment, it is an argument that has no empirical support. In the real world, it doesn’t work that way.

Interestingly, Australia was also the only rich country to dodge the Great Recession.

Comments

Cyber Promises

Yesterday, I shared an internet frustration on my Facebook page. I was surprised–and gratified, in an unfortunate sort of way–with the responses.

Some background: A couple of years ago, someone persuaded me to join LinkedIn. After a month or two of “membership,” I decided that–whatever its merits–the site was not for me. So  I tried to leave–to “recuse” myself, as we lawyer types would say.

No way.

I tried everything. (Okay, every mechanism an old woman with limited internet skills could think of.) Nothing worked. I was a “forever” captive of the site.

Eventually, I gave up. I left my “membership” with LinkedIn, and simply ignored the occasional invitation to connect. But it gnawed at me. I felt impolite–rude–when I ignored an invitation. I wanted to reach out the the person issuing the invitation and explain that I was not declining to be friends or even “connections,” I was simply not participating in this cyberspace exercise.

The other day, when I received three invitations from Linked In, I realized that something needed to be done. So I posted a “just in case you are one of those I’ve ignored” all-purpose apology. And the floodgates opened.

I heard from a large number of people who shared my frustration. A couple of them also shared my guilt, and the impulse to explain “nothing personal” to those they ignored. I’m gratified to learn that I am not the only person in this predicament, but frustrated with yet another situation in which a tool intended to make life simpler/easier instead makes it more complicated.

The internet is a wonderful advance. I can’t remember life without google, and I wouldn’t want to go back.

But they don’t call glitches “bugs” for nothing. They sure bug me.

Comments

Science and Democracy

The recent concerns voiced here and elsewhere about respect for science and science education are at their foundation about more than science. There is a connection between science and democracy that is only dimly recognized and rarely discussed.

The best articulation of that connection that I’ve encountered was in a 2010 book by Timothy Ferris, titled The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason and the Laws of Nature.

As Ferris notes, the nation’s founders were creatures of the Enlightenment, and well acquainted with the experimental nature of science–part of what they called “The New Learning.”  They applied the scientific method to their new political enterprise.

“What isn’t widely understood is that the way that democracies work is by constant experiment. Each election, each new law is, after all, a procedure designed to test a hypothesis about how to make constant improvements to a government.”

Ferris argues convincingly that the democratic revolution was sparked by the scientific one. The new approach to governing wasn’t merely a function of the embrace of reason, because–as current events keep reminding us–people can reason themselves into all sorts of conclusions that have a tenuous connection to reality. Science was the new ingredient, and while science requires reason, it isn’t just reason. It’s empiricism, experimentation…the same sort of experimentation that is the basis for democratic governance.

It was the advent of science and the scientific method that underscored the importance of decisions based on evidence.  As Ferris notes, dogma ruled the world before science came along, and dogma remains the preference of the majority of people today. (If you doubt the accuracy of that observation, look at Congress. Or Texas. Or, unfortunately, the Indiana Statehouse.) But democracy is not a dogma–it’s a method, a process not unlike the scientific method.

It is well to recognize that when strident anti-intellectual political figures attack scholarship as “elitism,”  when they dismiss scientific consensus on everything from evolution to climate change, when they call for “repealing” the Enlightenment, it isn’t only science they are attacking.

It’s democracy as we understand it.

Comments