Yesterday’s newspapers had several stories with the theme being that Hoosiers are mad at Republicans because they simply did not listen on issues Hoosiers felt strongly about such as Daylight Saving Time and Toll Road privatization.
Gov. Daniels response: “I listen . . . *a lot*.” (O.k., so I added the punctuation, but that’s still a stupid statement — on par with George Bush’s debate standard, “this job is *hard*” and his more recent “I’m the Decider.”)
The South Bend Tribune covered the issue in a political notebook type article. The Tribune noted that Rep. Tim Neese drew just 2,862 votes in his primary victory, a far lower number of votes than “scores of other legislative candidates, opposed or unopposed, incumbent or nonincumbent.
Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indy Star, had an article entitled Republicans could feel voters’ ire.
Democrats say the GOP did not listen to the majority of voters who were saying no to daylight-saving time, no to the leasing of the Indiana Toll Road and no to a budget that cut education spending and forced local property tax increases.
This appears to comport with what Sen. David Ford (R-Hartford City) has been hearing from his constituents.
[Ford] said even he is hearing from a cranky electorate about issues lawmakers voted on in the past two years — and some they have no control over at all. “I still hear about daylight-saving time, the Toll Road thing, the war, the gas prices,” he said. “There’s a general feeling out there that people aren’t happy. They’re not exactly sure what they want. But they’re upset.”
I think voters know what they want: Don’t screw with the clocks, don’t sell off the Toll Road, don’t get into unnecessary wars. In short, Hoosiers are pretty comfortable with the principle of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Gas prices are a different story — there is too little oil and too much demand, we have to figure out how to use less, either through conservation or alternate energy sources. That, in my opinion, is a legitimate area of activity by the General Assembly.
An abbreviated version of the Mary Beth Schneider story was included as an AP story in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.
In the blogosphere, Taking Down Words covers the issue in a post entitled “Party On, Dudes: Republicans Grokking that their enemy this year is in the mirror”.
Gov. Daniels is trying to put a positive spin on the situation by noting that the legislators who were challenged on issues like Daylight Saving Time won by comfortable percentages of the primary vote. He utterly ignores the fact that the vote totals were small compared to primaries past. And that’s the problem Republicans face in the fall — not so much that Republicans will vote for Democrats in protest, but rather that their erstwhile supporters will simply stay home on election day. The timing is pretty bad for lawmakers on the Daylight Saving Time issue. Voters will have to change their clocks on October 29, 2006 and then head to the polls on November 7, a mere 9 days later.
The SBT went to quote the governor as saying:
“So, listening’s a good thing, but I think I hear a little different message.” Leaves me wondering just what the color of the sky is in the Governor’s world.
I’d say the color is green — the color of money flowing to the well connected and away from working stiffs. I’d say that the Rhoad/FSSA scandal is indicative of what we can expect from projects financed by the Toll Road privatization. Seems to me that the rest of Gov. Daniels’ agenda (like that of Pres. Bush’s) is so much sound and fury, the real objective is to mine the public sector via “privatization” for the cronies of those in power.
there is too little oil and too much demand, we have to figure out how to use less, either through conservation or alternate energy sources. That, in my opinion, is a legitimate area of activity by the General Assembly.
There is not a lot that any single state can do. But here is a try. Discourage the public from buying new gas guzzlers in the first place and excellerate the replacement of those already out there with more fuel efficient cars.
I am not sure what current law is today, but it use to be that vehicles over 6000 pound, the weight of most full size SUV and Double Cab Trucks were illegal on residential streets unless making a delivery or at a construction site. That is they were defined as commercial vehicle. It has been well documented that the US Auto industry fought to repel or simply no longer inforce these laws in state after state. We can not go back to enforcing the old laws, but why not significantly raise the license plate costs for owning these vehicles? There is absolutely no reason for non-tradesman suburbanites to own such vehicles. Need to put your boat in at the lake once or twice a year, haul some fireword or mulch, then rent one for a few hours or the day. It will still save you over a week or two’s fill-up. And lets not even get into the insane tax breaks for owning a monster SUV or Truck. See http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_08/004448.php
Another idea is for states to demand that the car insurers stop forcing small car owners to subsidize SUV car insurance rates. That would alone would shifts hundreds of dollars back on to SUV owners each year.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0212.mencimer.html
http://archives.cjr.org/year/98/5/bradsher2.asp
Likewise state could make sure that car dealerships inform the public that statistically SUV and Pickup truck are not safer than smaller cars. Something similiar to truth in lending laws. Studies so that the majority of Americans are misinformed on the relation of vehicle size and weight and safty.
What do you expect of a nation that learned about physics from watching RoadRunner cartoons.
http://www.bridger.us/2002/12/16/CrashTestingMINICooperVsFordF150
How about offering license plate rebates and mandate lower insurance premiums for those who drive their cars under 5000 and 10,000 miles a year. Again this a job for the BMVs but could really incourage gas safings.
A more radical yet sensible idea is banning free employee parking for employers with more than 100 workers. The US is one of the very few countries where local governments massively subsidize free parking. Over night this would encourage car pooling.
Now Indiana is said to be a very conservative state. However, everything I mentioned above makes sense from a free market perspective. They all involve removing ill advised or even corrupt Government sanctioned market distortions.
Something the state could do would be to raise the gas tax. This would have the double bonus of starting to wean the state off of oil (at least a little bit), and hurting Daniels’ polls even more.