Sheila Kennedy – Page 796 – A jaundiced look at the world we live in.

Fun with Numbers

In a column right before the end of the year, Brian Howey shared statistics about Indiana. They’re revealing.

Hoosiers rank 39th in per capita income, with residents making 87.2 percent of U.S. income at $38,119, and 33rd in household income at $46,974, down from $47,399 in 2011 (32nd). In 2002, we ranked 24th at $53,482. That is a 13.6 percent decline in the last decade, ranking us 48th.

The Indiana General Assembly passed and then-Gov. Mitch Daniels signed right-to-work legislation in February 2011. Union membership declined from 11.3 percent of the workforce in 2011 (302,000 workers, or 15th in the nation) to 9.1 percent in 2012 (246,000 workers). Only 10 percent of the workforce is represented by a union, ranking us 15th, down 2.4 percent from 2011.

Indiana ranks 10th in bankruptcies over time in 2012, and sixth in the rate per 1,000 people.

Apparently, the folks who opposed Right to Work were right when they characterized the measure as “Right to Work for Less.”

Howey’s long list also included these interesting numbers: Indiana ranks 17th in college enrollments–we are educating lots of students in our colleges and Universities. But we rank 42d in the percentage of Hoosiers holding Bachelor’s degrees, and 44th in the percentage of Hoosiers with any sort of degree.

We educate them and they leave.

Maybe our intrepid legislators should ask why it is that educated folks don’t stay in our state. Could it be that those low taxes translate into poor public services and a low quality of life?

Today is the start of a shiny new year. Wouldn’t it be nice if those we elect to office would decide to work together this year to improve Indiana’s dismal numbers, and the quality of life in the Hoosier State?

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Needs No Elaboration

Sometimes, the bare facts speak for themselves.

From a recent Pew polling release: “In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.”

There’s evolving, and then there’s regressing.

Tomorrow it will be 2014–and 57% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats reject long-settled science upon which all biology is based.

Happy New Year.

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RIP

Andy Jacobs died this weekend. The brand of politics he practiced predeceased him.

I was the Republican candidate who ran against Andy in 1980. It was a hard-fought campaign, but hard-fought didn’t imply the sort of mud-throwing and character assassination we have become accustomed to. Andy suggested that some of my positions were uninformed; I argued that he was ineffective. When Andy retired from Congress, Bill Hudnut and I were among those invited to “roast” him, and I admitted that during the heat of the campaign I had called him a name…I had called him a Democrat.

Andy didn’t hold grudges against political opponents. His friendship with Bill Hudnut–who actually defeated him before he won back his Congressional office– is legendary. Not too many years after I ran against him, my youngest son served as his Congressional Page. Andy and I would go on to have an occasional lunch together, and from time to time, he would comment favorably, via email, on columns I’d written.

We probably agreed more than we disagreed. When the Iraq War started, he and I shared the stage at a protest rally on Monument Circle. I seldom saw him after that, and I knew his health was deteriorating.

Indianapolis will miss Andy Jacobs.

The whole country is poorer for the loss of generosity of spirit and the politics of principle he characterized.

RIP.

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Pointing Fingers

There is substantial agreement across constituencies that America’s political system is broken. That’s where the agreement ends; who you blame for the dysfunction will depend upon your political orientation and the source and degree of your disgust.

Wherever your finger is pointing, it is becoming increasingly clear that the toxic nature of our politics is threatening to turn off the young people who will be needed if we are ever to improve the system.

A couple of professors recently shared some troubling data in the Washington Post: high school students they had surveyed would rather do anything other than become involved in politics. They don’t want to run for office. They don’t want to be Mayors or Councilors or Governors. Serving as a Member of Congress was their dead-last occupational choice.

As the professors wrote, the fact that they do not want to run for office

“cannot be divorced from their perceptions of the political system. Eighty-five percent of our survey respondents did not think that elected officials want to help people; 79 percent did not consider politicians smart or hard-working; nearly 60 percent believed politicians are dishonest; and fewer than 30 percent said they thought candidates and elected leaders stand up for their convictions.”

There are more than 500,000 elected positions in the U.S. Given the attitudes of these young people, we can only imagine who will run to fill those positions.

As the writers concluded, it’s easy to blame young people for a lack of civic engagement, but this time, “the fault lies with a political system and political figures whose behavior has turned off an entire generation.”

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Speaking of Illiteracy….

The recent Duck Dynasty brouhaha has demonstrated once again that many Americans are totally clueless about what freedom of speech and religion are and aren’t. But apparently, a whole lot of Americans are equally ignorant of what’s really in that bible people keep thumping. According to a recent article by one C.J. Werleman,

More than 95 percent of U.S. households own at least one copy of the Bible. So how much do Americans know of the book that one-third of the country believes to be literally true? Apparently, very little, according to data from the Barna Research group. Surveys show that 60 percent can’t name more than five of the Ten Commandments; 12 percent of adults think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and nearly 50 percent of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple. A Gallup poll shows 50 percent of Americans can’t name the first book of the Bible, while roughly 82 percent believe “God helps those who help themselves” is a biblical verse.

The article notes that when Congressional Republicans quoted 2 Thessalonians (“Anyone unwilling to work should not eat”) to justify cutting food stamps, 90% of Christian respondents to a poll attributed the quote to Jesus. It was actually from a letter purportedly written by Paul to members of his church in Thessalonica, reminding them that if they didn’t help build the church, they wouldn’t be paid. (As it turns out, the letter wasn’t even from Paul; biblical scholars have dismissed it as a forgery.)

The actual texts of both the bible and the Constitution can be inconvenient, even for determined cherry-pickers. Add in historical and cultural context and….well, I guess it’s just too much work to actually read the damn things.

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