A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

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Camp Bayh

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I received an interesting mailer from Evan Bayh’s All America PAC. I’ll just cut and paste it as a public service announcement:

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Evan Bayh will visit Indianapolis on Saturday, May 13th, to host Camp Bayh, a training session for people interested in working on political campaigns, building interest in local politics or running for office themselves. The two-and-a-half day training session will consist of a number of workshops led by Indiana and national campaign experts who will teach the nuts and bolts of organizing winning campaigns. On Saturday, Senator Bayh will meet with participants and speak with them about the importance of public service, his experiences in grassroots politics, and how he hopes Camp Bayh will help put Democrats in a position to win this fall.

The Indianapolis Camp Bayh runs from Friday, May 12th, through Sunday, May 14th, and will be held on the IUPUI campus. The Camp will include three separate training tracks, for those who want to work on a paid position in a campaign, for local party leaders and activists, and for candidates running for office this year. A second Camp Bayh will take place in South Bend from July 7th – 9th.

Portions of Camp Bayh will be open to the media, including Senator Bayh’s remarks to the Camp participants.

Saturday May 13 at 5:00 p.m. ET
IUPUI-Cavanaugh Hall, corner of Michigan St. & University Blvd.

Media interested in covering additional portions of Camp Bayh should contact the All America PAC at 202-326-0450.

This is not your father’s Republican Party

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I think Andrea Neal is engaged in some wishful thinking in this column. She suggests that the primary defeats of Senator Garton, Rep. Budak, Sen. Borst, and Sen. Johnson were cases of “voter imposed term limits.” In other words, she thinks that these legislators were removed primarily because they had served too long and lost touch with their constituency. If you look at their defeats, I think there is a different story to be told. I don’t know much about Budak, but Garton, Borst, and Johnson were all economic conservatives, but were reasonably moderate (by Indiana standards, anyway) with respect to social issues. They were taken down by social conservatives in primary fights where highly motivated and well-organized right-to-lifers can control the show.

The Republican Party in Indiana is becoming less and less friendly for social moderates and libertarians. If you are in favor of a government that stays out of your pocketbook *and* out of your bedroom, today’s Republican Party is not for you. This is not the Republican Party in which I was raised. This is not the Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Rockefeller. It’s not even the Republican Party of Goldwater or Reagan. It’s something else. The theocratic wing of the party is taking over. They want an end to abortion. They want their version of Jesus Christ in the classroom, the courthouse, and the State House. If science conflicts with their preconceived notions, they want it out of the public discourse. Evolution must be diluted and placed along side Bible-friendly pseudoscience. Medical opinion on the beginnings of human life must be put aside in favor of religious dogma. Sex education must be abstinence only, even if it’s ineffective. Gays must be condemned, not tolerated, and certainly not treated as equals.

Ms. Neal’s theory that Garton, Borst, and Johnson were ousted because constituents regarded them as legislative deadwood that needed to be cut out in favor of fresher ideas ignores the politics of Walker, Waltz, and Drozda who defeated them. All of them are part of the so-called “Christian” right. (Though most of the social policies coming out of the “Christian” right seem more in line with select bits of the Old Testament than with the Sermon on the Mount.) Whereas the mantra of Goldwater  Republicans was “smaller government,” with the current batch it has morphed into “government small enough to fit into your bedroom.”

In today’s Indianapolis Star we see one of Senator Drozda’s efforts at social engineering cropping up again:  prohibit orphans from being adopted if they’re being adopted by the wrong sort of caring, competent parents, i.e. unmarried and/or gay ones.  Advance Indiana’s Gary Welsh was featured prominently in the Star article:

Gary Welsh, a family law attorney and Republican who worked in the 1980s for the Illinois House speaker, said the adoption issue could become politically charged if the case ends up before the Indiana Supreme Court and justices issue an opinion before the election.

Impact: While preventing gays from adopting is important to many in the “Christian right” and would spur them to vote, he said, other, more moderate Republicans might be turned off.

Comment: “A lot of people just see it as mean-spirited,” he said, “particularly if they know of a (gay) couple raising a child. Gay couples often are adopting very hard-to-adopt children. Often they are children no one else wants.”

So many of these social policies seem counterproductive to me. They steadfastly oppose abortion, and they discourage informing young women about birth control. Inevitably this is going to lead to more unwanted pregnancies and, presumably, children in need of adoption. Then they turn around and actively try to reduce the number of potential qualified adopting parents.

This is part and parcel with a “right to life” agenda that seems to envision only a right to life without rights except before birth and after brain death but not in between. That may explain why the United States has an infant mortality rate almost three times as high as Japan’s and on par with Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Judging from the comparative efforts of the Christian right to improve access to healthcare for citizens or improve the lot of impoverished citizens generally versus efforts to make sure they don’t get accurate reproduction information from their doctors or have the ability to obtain an abortion, the theory seems to be that it’s important to get them out of the womb alive (even if only just barely) and the heck with them after that.

There are more angles and links to this issue that I’d like to add, so I may end up updating it, but for now, suffice it to say that Andrea Neal’s suggestion that the victory of Walker, Waltz, and Drozda over Garton, Borst, and Johnson is merely a sign of “voter imposed term limits” is to miss the big story, in my opinion. This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party. More and more, the Republican Party is the party of the social conservative with economic conservatism being an afterthought instead of vice-versa as it used to be.

Everything that’s not nailed down (Nevermind edition)

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The Daniels administration is backing away from Richard Rhoad’s sweetheart crony deal after they got caught giving him an $80,000 pay raise for doing the same job.

Said FSSA chief Mitch Roob, “And we would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling reporters and their dog.” Or maybe I’m confusing this with a Scooby Doo episode.

TDW’s Jennifer Wagner gets a quote:

“It’s too bad it had to take a public call for investigation to get the Daniels administration to understand the situation,” Indiana Democratic Party spokeswoman Jennifer Wagner said.

AFSCME union spokesman had similar sentiments:

Employee union AFSCME responded swiftly to the news Tuesday, saying it was unfortunate the Daniels’ administration only made changes after being caught.

“Governor Daniels should remember that he’s not running a corporation anymore, where you can make up the rules to serve executives at the expense of stockholders or employees,” union spokesman David Patterson said. “He’s serving Hoosiers who work hard to pay their taxes to fund important programs, not to pay for higher salaries for executives.”

The Daniels administration primarily hid behind statements saying, essentially, we didn’t do anything wrong, but we’ll back off because it looks bad because the evil press mischaracterized the deal.

Governor Daniels issues 5 pardons

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Governor Daniels recently ordered the pardons of 5 convicts.

  • Maurice Fahim Wasily was convicted in Marion County in 1983 of arson and consipiracy to commit arson.
  • Charles Frederick McElheny was convicted in Montgomery County in 1969 for possession of marijuana.
  • Joseph Bartley Shelton was convicted in Monroe County of fraud at some point around 1991.
  • Brian Vukadinovich was convicted in LaPorte County in 1985 of a DWI and public intoxication.
  • Aaron McDermott was convicted in 1997 in Monroe County of Maintaining a Common Nuisance (Possession of Marijuana).

    In addition, the Governor has recently commuted two sentences:

  • James H. Watts was convicted in 2003 in the Hendricks Circuit Court of theft and receiving stolen property as well as OWI in Putnam County and, in 2004, of OWI in Marion County. His term of 4 years was commuted because his doctors estimated he had only 60 to 90 days left to live because of hepatitis C and liver cancer.
  • Kim Lucas was convicted in Tippecanoe County in 1992 for dealing cocaine for which she received a 38 year sentence. She was not eligible for parole until 2010, but because she has been a model citizen the Governor commuted her sentence, suspending the remainder of her sentence provided she completes a pre-release program and agree to a work release program.

    • Atrios – Liberal Agenda

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    Atrios comes up with a pretty good laundry list of liberal objectives if Democrats take power. I can get on board with most of this:

    1. Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration
    2. Repeal the estate tax repeal
    3. Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI
    4. Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)
    5. Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation
    6. Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there’s probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise.
    7. Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code
    8. Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.
    9. Reduce corporate giveaways
    10. Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan
    11. Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.
    12. Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards “more decriminalization” of drugs, though the details complicated there too.
    13. Paper ballots
    14. Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obiously details matter.
    15. Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.
    16. Marriage rights for all, which includes “gay marriage” and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens.

    And things that ought to be obvious, but aren’t anymore:

    1. Torture is bad
    2. Imprisoning citizens without charges is bad
    3. Playing Calvinball with the Geneva Conventions and treaties generally is bad
    4. Imprisoning anyone indefinitely without charges is bad
    5. Stating that the president can break any law he wants any time “just because” is bad

    Courier Press misses the point on Spy Games editorial

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    The Evansville Courier Press offered an editorial that was mildly critical of the President’s choices with respect to Porter Goss and the CIA. Mainly they went after Goss’s attempts to reward political loyalty over intelligence compentence, which is all well and good. They glossed over the objection that the proposed CIA replacement was a member of the military rather than a civilian. I think that’s a serious concern that merits more attention, but that’s not my beef with the editorial.

    What surprises me is that the Courier Press managed an editorial on the abrupt Goss resignation with nary a mention of the criminal investigation into his 3rd in command, Dusty Foggo, a man promoted unexpectedly by Goss to the lofty post. Foggo is the childhood friend of Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor who is at the center of a Congressional bribery scandal that has already lead to the conviction of one Congressman, Duke Cunningham who pleaded guilty last fall to taking $2.4 million in bribes from Wilkes and others in return for federal contracts. The Congressional bribery scandal seems likely to lead to Congresswoman Katherine Harris, and Porter Goss is suspected of being connected to “poker” parties where Wilkes plied government officials with hookers.

    I don’t think this is about Goss sacrificing intelligence competence for party loyalty. That appears to be the very reason he was sent to the CIA by the Bush administration. This looks to be like Goss getting his hands caught in one cookie jar or another.

    23% of Republicans want to lead the Senate

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    According to the Indy Star, Senator Brent Steele wants to throw his name into the ring to lead the Senate. So far, I’ve heard Steele, Long, Kenley, Delph, Young, Merritt, and Miller as possibilities to take the President pro tem position. The Republicans hold 33 seats, but we know that Garton and Harrison won’t be coming back (any other retirements coming?), bringing the count down to 31. That’s 7/31, or 22.5% of the caucus.

    The Senate Dems are a pretty passive bunch, but I wonder if there is any way they can take advantage of the chaos of this leadership free-for-all.

    IN-08: Hostettler – Immigration #1 issue; Ellsworth – Gas prices, health care, Iraq more important

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    Mara Lee, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has an article entitled “Ellsworth, Hostettler differ on top issue.” Incumbent John Hostettler says that immigration is the most important or second most important issue to voters. (I didn’t see what he viewed as the other possible #1). His challenger, Brad Ellsworth, views immigration as an important issue, but down on the list. Ahead of immigration, he would put the issues of energy costs, the war in Iraq, and health care costs.

    I view immigration as something of a Republican manufactured issue that is being hyped with the hopes that voters will forget about everything else. What’s more, it seems like they’re eager to try to take all the problems in America and blame them on illegal immigration. Low wages? It’s the fault of illegal immigrants, not poorly conceived trade policies that reward capital but crucify labor. Government fiscal problems? It’s all those illegal immigrants on welfare not paying taxes, not lower taxes for the rich, unchecked deficit spending, and a disastrously expensive war of convenience.

    And nevermind the facts by the way. Illegal immigrants do pay taxes and, by and large, don’t get welfare. But, as Stephen Colbert noted recently, facts have a liberal bias.

    INDEBT still down

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    As I mentioned on November 2, 2005 and November 21, 2005, the Indiana Department of Revenue’s INDebt site is not available. Back then, I thought it was a minor oversight, skirting the law in the interest of implementing the tax amnesty legislation.

    But now that the site has apparently been down for at least 6 months, it strikes me as a little more serious. The Indiana Dept. of Revenue is supposed to list tax warrants that are between two and ten years old since their first issuance, and the liability is more than $1,000. I believe the Department of Revenue is in violation of IC 6-8.1-3-16(j) which states:

    The department shall publish the list compiled under this subsection on accessIndiana (as operated under IC 4-13.1-2) and make the list available for public inspection and copying under IC 5-14-3.

    The last time I looked, I was interested in verifying whether a particular debtor was being truthful when he claimed he had huge tax liabilities to contend with. This time, I am investigating collectability of a particular debt. As part of its free information, Doxpop lists a bunch of tax warrant cases pending against the debtor but nothing about the amounts or the status of the case without paying for their service. Anyone know the deal about why INDebt is down or whether the list of tax cheats has been online any time during the past 6 months?

    Maybe Richard Rhoad has a huge tax debt and keeping it under wraps is another “undisclosed detail” of the compensation package promised to him by Mitch Roob. Well, o.k., probably not. But with these guys, you just never know sometimes.

    Can you hear me now?

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    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.