Tag Archives: Indiana

The Times They Are A-Changin’

I’m beginning to wonder whether GLBT folks are today’s canaries in the coal mine.

For those of you unfamiliar with the canaries’ function, the phrase refers to the fact that well into the 20th century, coal miners would bring canaries into the mines to serve as early-warning signals for toxic gases, primarily carbon monoxide. The birds were more sensitive to the presence of the gas, and would become sick before the miners had been exposed to dangerous levels.

I began to consider this (admittedly odd) analogy yesterday, when members of the Indiana General Assembly—as retrograde a group as one could find outside, perhaps, Mississippi or Alabama—announced that they would not hold a vote during this year’s session on a measure to amend the Indiana Constitution by inserting a ban on same-sex marriage.

Only those of us who have lived in Indiana the past few years can appreciate the magnitude of this announcement. Legislative homophobia has been a given, and the prospects for this particular piece of bigotry had been considered bright.  Those of us who oppose the measure had pretty much settled for strategies meant to “kick the can down the road.” (Indiana is one of those states where amending the constitution is difficult; a proposed amendment must be passed in identical form by two separately elected legislatures, after which it goes to the public in the form of a referendum. Opponents focused on getting changes in some of the more ambiguous and mean-spirited language of the proposed amendment; changing the language would at least delay what seemed inevitable.) The working assumption has been that the ban was a slam-dunk to emerge from the General Assembly, and that an eventual public vote would likely lodge discrimination solidly in the state’s charter.

The legislature can still vote on the ban during next year’s session, of course. But the postponement is significant.

Consider the context: The 2012 election ushered in Republican super-majorities in the Indiana House and Senate. Worse, we’ve elected a dyed-in-the-wool culture warrior as Governor. In the wake of the election, prospects for defeating or even delaying the ban looked even more hopeless than before.

But that’s where it gets interesting. A couple of statewide polls show a solid majority of Hoosiers—whatever their position on same-sex marriage—oppose amending the constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted two significant cases, one involving a challenge to DOMA, and one an appeal of California’s Proposition Eight. The President was re-elected handily, even after his very public endorsement of marriage equality.

What seems to be a sea change on gay rights issues increasingly seems to be only part of the story, a leading indicator of a broader social/political shift that is just becoming visible.

Here’s my current analysis (and it’s worth every penny you are paying for it—in other words, nothing): The upheavals we now refer to as “the sixties” created an enormous backlash. All of a sudden, there were uppity black folks, bra-burning feminists, anti-war activists and other troublemakers undermining the natural order of things. Those various movements—womens’ movement, civil rights movement, antiwar movement—permanently changed American society, but they also engendered huge resentment and push-back. That backlash ushered in the so-called “Reagan revolution,” and energized the culture warriors and “family values” organizations.

Just as the 60s movements became excessive, and spawned reaction, the GOPs rightward march has now gone much too far. Women, minorities, young people and reasonable, moderate Republicans are abandoning the party in droves. Except for a remaining fringe of old white Southern heterosexual men, Americans have become comfortable with diversity and the other results of the disorienting sixties—at the same time they are getting increasingly uncomfortable with the extremism and “us versus them” worldview of today’s conservatives.

Gays are among the first to benefit from what I think is beginning: a swing back from the precipice, and a long-overdue reconsideration of what America should look like.

The canaries are breathing. It’s a good sign.

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An Unhealthy Partisanship

As Hoosiers proved again last November, we’re a Red, Red State. And evidently, that partisan identity–and a deep desire to thwart that Kenyan interloper who inexplicably occupies the White House–is motivating a costly and immoral decision on healthcare.

The Affordable Care Act–aka “Obamacare”–provides incentives for states to expand Medicaid coverage. That expansion is not mandatory, however. (The Supreme Court’s decision upheld the Act, but not provisions making Medicaid expansion obligatory.)

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about Medicaid and who it covers. Currently, Indiana’s Medicaid program provides health care to about one in seven Hoosiers–mostly children, pregnant women, the disabled, seniors in long-term care and very low income families. The word “families” is key here, because non-disabled childless adults under the age of 65 are not eligible for Medicaid, no matter how poor they are. And the “eligibility” of families with children is mostly illusory: a family of three (mother, father, child) with income over $4582 a year makes too much to qualify.

The new health reform law gives Indiana the option of expanding Medicaid to provide care to Hoosiers who are currently uninsured–by increasing eligibility to low-income working adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Last year, that would have been $15,415 for an adult, and would have allowed that  family of three to make the princely sum of $26,344.

If Indiana opts to participate, an estimated 450,000 Hoosiers would benefit. And here’s the kicker: if Indiana does participate, the federal government will pay all the costs for the first three years. The state’s portion would then phase in gradually, topping out  at 10% in 2020.

And if we don’t participate? Well, poor people have this pesky habit of getting sick anyway. And we already pay to treat them–frequently, in the least cost-effective way, when they appear at hospital emergency rooms. When uninsured folks are treated there, the costs of their un-reimbursed care drives up the premiums of those with insurance. If the hospital is public, our taxes go up. If the hospitals still can’t recover their costs, they cut healthcare workers or reduce services. The 10% Indiana would eventually have to pay to cover far more people is unlikely to be more than we are actually paying now in a variety of ways–it would just be more visible and much more cost-effective.

The arguments against participating mainly boil down to two: the feds might change the formula sometime in the future, and we don’t like the government or the President.

Let’s see: on the one hand, the federal government will pay to cover nearly half a million Hoosiers whose lack of insurance is currently costing all of us money and jobs. On the other hand, we can show that socialist Barack Obama how much we hate him.

Even Ohio Governor John Kasich–a man without a “blue” bone in his body–has concluded that cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face is rarely a sane public policy option.

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Send In the Clowns….

Don’t bother. They’re here. In fact, they’re apparently everywhere.

Yesterday, a student sent me a link to a story about a Montana lawmaker who is proposing to give people convicted of a crime a choice between prison time and “infliction of pain.” According to the report, Republican Rep. Jerry O’Neil is drafting a bill that would allow those convicted of misdemeanors or felonies to negotiate corporal punishment rather than a more conventional sentence, because he thinks long prison sentences are inhumane, and thinks many offenders would prefer something like “20 lashes.”

This is the same lawmaker who made headlines earlier in the legislative session when he asked to get paid in gold and silver coins because he is skeptical about the future of the dollar.

Not to be outdone, however, our Hoosier legislators are weighing in with some pretty impressive entries in the OMG sweepstakes. Some pending bills are just terrible policy, of course. We’re used to those here in Indiana. Others are head-scratchers. For example, Senate Bill 0462 designates the fourth Saturday of July as the National Day of the Cowboy and Cowgirl in Indiana, and designates the third weekend of May as the First People’s Celebration Weekend in Indiana in observance of the Corn Planting Moon Ceremony.

The Corn Planting Moon Ceremony? SB 0462 is definitely a contender. But my current favorite is Senate Bill o230, which proposes to “nullify” federal laws our Indiana policymakers don’t like.

SB 0230 provides that “any federal act, order, law, rule, regulation, or statute found by the general assembly to be inconsistent with the power granted to the federal government in the Constitution of the United States is void in Indiana. Provides that a resident of Indiana has a cause of action to enjoin the enforcement or implementation or the attempted enforcement or implementation of a federal act, order, law, rule, regulation, or statute declared void by the general assembly. Provides that a plaintiff who prevails in such an action is entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees and costs. Provides that a person who knowingly or intentionally implements or enforces, or attempts to implement or enforce, a federal law that is declared void by the general assembly commits a Class D felony. Finds that the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the federal Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 are inconsistent with the power granted to the federal government in the Constitution of the United States.”

Presumably, the genius who sponsored this one missed that pesky little provision in the U.S. Constitution known as the Supremacy Clause. (Didn’t some of this guy’s forebears try that “states rights” gambit during the civil rights movement? Didn’t work then, either.)

It’s pretty clear what’s pissed off the sponsor of SB 0230, and pretty obvious what his bill–however embarrassing–is all about.   SB 0163, on the other hand, is mystifying.

The digest begins “Provides that an individual may not be registered as a lobbyist for more than ten years.” The bill also provides that “an individual may not be a candidate for election to the general assembly if, at the expiration of the term to which the individual would be elected, the individual would have served more than 16 years as a member of the general assembly” and “provides that an individual may not be employed by or provide personal services under contract to any Indiana government body for more than ten years during the individual’s lifetime.” It also prohibits anyone from receiving more than $1,000,000 in compensation from government during his lifetime.

I understand trying to term limit legislators (although it really isn’t a very good idea, no matter how tempting it may seem)–but lobbyists and government employees?

Maybe we could just give those guys a choice between term limits and 25 lashes?

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Signs of Improvement

The U.S. left Iraq (mostly) over a year ago. We seem to finally be departing Afghanistan. And yesterday brought welcome signs that yet another war is ending: the Culture War. (This must be Eric Miller’s worst nightmare…)

Nationally, there were reports in several news outlets to the effect that the Boy Scouts would abandon their ban on gay Scout leaders, and allow each troop to decide such policies for itself. Given the fact that the national organization felt strongly enough to take its case to the Supreme Court not all that long ago–where they made the argument that being straight was an essential and defining characteristic of “scout-ness”– this is quite the turn-around. The cynic in me notes that Scouting lost a lot of members in the wake of that case, and that it generated a new, competing organization, “Scouting for All.” Nevertheless, the Boy Scouts have stubbornly persisted in this position, reaffirming it as recently as a few months ago.

So–I’d say this is a big deal, as cultural markers go.

Here in Indiana, there are signs that our legislators–so hell-bent on protecting my heterosexual marriage from the certain doom that would befall it if same-sex couples weren’t conclusively banned from the institution–have seemingly misplaced their sense of urgency over the need to insert a ban into the State’s constitution.

Republican leaders who previously insisted that the prospect of same-sex marriage was an existential threat are reportedly assigning a lower priority to the matter this year. Senators who had previously highlighted their opposition to both same-sex marriage and civil unions–not to mention anything that looked remotely, sorta, kinda like marriage–are expressing doubts about the much-debated “second sentence” of the current language of the ban. And several Senators are actually advocating prudence, suggesting that it would be wiser to delay action and wait for the Supreme Court’s decision in cases it will decide this term.

Even in Indiana, the electoral calculus has changed. Homophobia and mean-spirited attacks on gay folks aren’t the surefire winners they used to be.

We Americans can be slow learners, but just maybe we’ve figured out that–both at home and abroad–some wars are misplaced, and others aren’t worth fighting.

Law and Sausage

There’s an old saying that you should never watch either of two things being made: sausage or laws. A report in the Indianapolis Star’s “Behind Closed Doors” section this morning is a good example of the sort of game-playing and disregard of the public interest that is the counterpart to sweeping up the floor to plump up the sausage.

As I’ve posted previously, Mike Young has authored a bill that would divest the Indianapolis City-County Council of its fiscal authority. His bill–and a couple of other iterations also pending–would create an “imperial” Mayor no longer answerable to Councilors for spending, hiring and other important decisions that are now part of the democratic checks and balances. It’s terrible policy.

In response, Democratic County Chair Ed Treacy has an equally bad idea. He wants the Democrats in the Legislature to hold the mass transit referendum hostage. Since it will take actual bipartisanship–i.e., votes from both Republicans and Democrats–to pass the bill allowing Marion County voters to decide for ourselves whether we want decent mass transit enough to pay for it, Treacy proposes that Democrats withhold those votes until and unless the Mayor-as-King bill is defeated.

The only people who get forgotten in this unsavory game of political chicken are the citizens of central Indiana. But hey–watch those politicians play that inside baseball game! Watch them give as good as they get! Tit for tat….and screw the public interest.

Pass the sausage.