As Indiana’s legislative session gets underway, there is (as usual) plenty to criticize. (Senate Bill 100 –which ThinkProgress has dubbed “The most anti-LGBT LGBT Rights Bill Ever”–probably tops the list. See their analysis of the bill or Doug Masson’s if you want to understand why), but it’s certainly not the only item on that list.
In the interests of balance, however, it’s worth noting that the news is not all negative.
Speaker Brian Bosma has introduced a really good bill, one that will actually support public education in Indiana. (Given the beating that public education has taken at the hands of Indiana’s Administration and legislature the past few years, this is a really positive change.)
The idea is to incentivize young people to go into education; the Next Generation Hoosier Educator Scholarship program promises to give Indiana’s top high school students an opportunity to earn a full scholarship to any accredited in-state school of education, so long as they spend five years teaching in an Indiana classroom after graduation.
The five-year commitment is based upon research suggesting that, after five years, a new teacher is “hooked”–likely to remain in the profession for the long haul.
Although it is very early in the process, the indications are that the bill–or at least the general approach–enjoys widespread, bipartisan support.
Wouldn’t it be great if the upcoming session of the General Assembly turned out to be one in which Republican and Democratic lawmakers worked together on this and other measures to address the actual problems Indiana faces, rather than yet another iteration of the culture wars that have dominated past sessions? (Just the thought makes me tingly all over…)
In the wake of Governor Pence’s announcement that he didn’t want any of those shifty Syrians relocating here in Indiana, a friend sent me this article about former Governor Mitch Daniels talking fondly about his Syrian heritage…Worth a read.
Of course, it isn’t just Syrian refugees who aren’t getting a “welcome” sign from our unctuous Governor.
Yesterday was Organization Day at the Indiana Statehouse, and both proponents and opponents of adding LGBT Hoosiers to the list of those protected under the state’s civil rights law showed up to make their voices heard.
There are a couple of things we can be sure of. 1) It will be a contentious session. And 2) Mike Pence will continue to oppose legal equality while insisting that he doesn’t condone discrimination, that he’s not anti-gay, he’s just all about religious liberty.
In anticipation of the Governor’s protestations, the Indiana Democratic Party has compiled and distributed this history of his efforts to marginalize the gay community just since 2000.
2000: During his congressional campaign, Mike Pence said, “Congress should oppose any effort to put gay and lesbian relationships on an equal legal status with heterosexual marriage.”
2000: Pence also supported the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only if federal dollars were excluded from organizations who “celebrate” and “encourage” behavior that facilitates spreading of the HIV virus. Further, Pence supported this reauthorization only if “those institutions provided assistance to those looking to change their sexual behavior”, an off-the-cuff endorsement for ex-gay conversion therapy.
2004: Mike Pence co-sponsored a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as solely between one man and one woman.
2007: Pence voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
2010: Mike Pence voted against the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal which allowed LGBT Americans to openly serve their country in military service.
2012: Pence refused to say on the record if he supported a same-sex couple raising a child together.
2014: Gov. Pence supported HJR-3, a bill to add an amendment banning same-sex marriage to Indiana’s Constitution.
2015: Governor Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in a closed-door ceremony.
2015: Governor Pence said on ABC’s “This Week” that it was “absolutely not” a mistake to sign RFRA, throwing Indiana into a $250 million economic panic and putting Indiana’s “Hoosier Hospitality” reputation in jeopardy.
2015: Even after his approval rating plummets from RFRA, Mike Pence on July 22 told the media he is “studying” the issue of LGBT rights and whether or not he’d support across the board protections for the LGBT community.
Gee, if that’s the way Pence acts when he doesn’t support legalized bias, what measures would the Governor support if he did support discrimination? Exile? Chemical castration?
These refugees are fleeing from the same psychopaths who perpetrated the atrocities in Paris –and before Paris, in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and several other places, although (in a topic for another day) those massacres didn’t get the U.S. media coverage that the Paris attacks generated.
Given all that, you might think that a man who wears his piety like a badge of honor, who talks about “Christian Charity” and the “generosity of Hoosiers” would embrace desperate people who’ve left their possessions behind, who have fled once-comfortable homes and once-thriving businesses and professions in a frantic effort to get away from the naked evil that is ISIS. You might think that heartbreaking photographs like the one of the dead three-year-old whose body washed ashore–photos that went viral and were hard to miss–would convey the urgency and human need of this incredible migratory flood.
You’d be wrong.
Instead of human compassion, we get grandstanding and political calculation.
Why do I think the Governor’s response would be different if the refugees were conservative Christians who looked more like us?
And over at the National Review, Kevin Williamson is right. His article, titled: Take a Bow, Species, rejected the constant drumbeat of what is wrong with America and the world in favor of a focus on what’s right. Here are some reasons for optimism that he lists:
* Polio has basically been eradicated from the globe
* Measles and rubella will be next
* The global rate of “extreme poverty,” currently defined as subsistence on less than the equivalent of $1.90 a day, is now the condition of less than 10 percent of the human race. Take a look at how the World Bank recently plotted that change:
* The overall rate of violent crime in the U.S. has fallen by about half in recent decades.
* U.S. manufacturing output per worker trebled from 1975 to 2005, and our total manufacturing output continues to climb.
* General-price inflation, the bane of the U.S. economy for some decades, is hardly to be seen.
Of course, you aren’t likely to hear about any of that from Republican candidates running for office in 2016. Unlike Ronald Reagan, none of them is remotely a “happy warrior.” Instead, they all seem obsessed with the belief that a country headed by Barack Obama must be in extremis.
This striking mismatch between the GOP’s gloom and doom worldview and our considerably more nuanced reality was addressed in a recent post at Political Animal that quoted a warning from another conservative Republican, W’s former speechwriter David Frum.
I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination…If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.
As the issue of inequality has become more politically and socially salient, researchers are increasingly “connecting the dots”–finding and measuring relationships between social phenomena that may not appear on the surface to be related.
It’s one thing to measure economic distances; to draw conclusions about the ability of low-income workers to afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment, for example. Such statistics represent only a fraction of the social damage done by rising levels of poverty and inequality, but they do offer a window into individual struggles that lead to other, less tangible and/or immediately obvious harms.
The United Ways of Indiana recently issued a comprehensive analysis of the financial distress experienced by “Alice”– Alice being an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. These were households with income above the federal poverty level, but below the actual, basic cost of living. The research concluded that more than one in three Hoosier households cannot afford the basics of housing, food, health care and transportation, that 37% of Indiana households live below the Alice threshold, that these families and individuals have jobs, and many do not qualify for social services or support, and that despite the importance of their jobs to their communities, they are unsure if they’ll be able to put dinner on the table each night.
Other researchers are beginning to investigate the ancillary effects of living like Alice–including the consequences for physical and mental health of individuals, the diminished prospects of their children, and the effects of inequality on America’s social fabric.
The Brookings Institution, for example, recently issued a disheartening study about inequality and stress.
Income and opportunity are increasingly unequally shared in the United States. It turns out that there are also significant inequalities in happiness, stress, and optimism about the future… The poor have lower levels of life satisfaction than the rich, they are far more likely to experience high levels of stress and worry, and they are far less optimistic about the future. They are also less likely than the rich to believe in the American Dream: that hard work can get them ahead.
An important question is how far these inequalities relate to each other. One of most well-known connections is the one between income inequality and intergenerational mobility, labeled the “Great Gatsby Curve” by Alan Kreuger. The idea behind the curve is that inequality in parental incomes (and other means) will result in even greater inequality for their children, as children’s opportunities are increasingly linked to their parents’ means.
The report makes the case that stress related to issues of survival–can I pay my rent this month? Will I lose my job if I stay home with my sick child?–is significantly different in kind and impact from the sorts of stress experienced by middle and upper income individuals. Those issues–Will I get that promotion? Will I get into my first choice law school? Will Heather go with me to the prom?– just aren’t in the same league, stress-wise.
The whole study is worth a read, but I was especially struck by the finding that there was “a higher concentration of both stress and worry among the poor in more unequal MSAs. Stress levels among the rich, by contrast, were essentially the same across cities.”
Eventually, perhaps we’ll recognize that remedying the costs of social dysfunction is more expensive than a social safety net, and far more expensive than paying people a living wage.
