A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

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Beyond the Pale Without the Benefit of the Doubt

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So Donald Trump has made news again. Anyone who reads this blog has probably heard it by now. But, just so we’re clear on what he said, here’s the quote:

“Hillary wants to abolish — essentially, abolish — the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

He’s imagining a time after Hillary Clinton has been elected, a time when she’s picking judges. At that point, there’s nothing you can do — except (wink, wink) maybe there is! The official line out of the Trump campaign, desperately trying to spin a comment that’s clearly out of bounds is saying he was just talking about political advocacy by Second Amendment enthusiasts. Beat her in the court of public opinion and then at the ballot box, I guess. But to say this is about writing sternly worded letters or going to the ballot box is dishonest. Folks looking at this statement and telling you it’s about anything legitimate to the political process are like the shopkeeper in Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch.

 This is a guy leading rallies where supporters are advocating locking up his political opponent. This is a guy who undermines the political process by — well in advance of the election — claiming it’s rigged. This is a  guy who questions the integrity of the judiciary because the Hoosier on the bench is of Latino ancestry. That guy certainly doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.

And then you have our governor. Governor Pence has not been our best leader, but his flaws are more or less ordinary political flaws. I might disagree with him, but until he embraced Trump, I don’t believe I ever thought his decisions seriously undermined the fabric of our democracy. When Trump’s missteps are of the less serious variety, like throwing shade at a baby and his mother, Pence’s job ends up looking like the Kevin Bacon character in “Animal House,” saying “Remain calm! All is well!!!”

But, he’s made a Faustian bargain. His ambition for higher political office on a national level has caused him to  make common cause with Donald Trump, a man whose vision of politics — a vision where any loss has to be because he was stabbed in the back; a vision where “joking” (not joking) about violence as a political tool is acceptable — that vision does threaten our democratic system. And Governor Pence is not only tolerating this vision; he’s trying to give this vision a home in the White House. We’ve been numbed, I think, by political rhetoric where every policy decision with which we disagree is a step on the path to tyranny. But, imprisoning and killing political opponents are hallmarks of tyrannical systems of government. Sure, he or his supporters will say he was “just joking.” But, Trump is not notably a man of good humor. His “jokes” are the same as those of a bully who says something insulting or pushes you around and then, when called on it, tries to avoid responsibility and blame you as someone who “can’t take a joke.”

It’s not funny, and citizens need to speak out and vote against Trump to show this kind of rhetoric is not acceptable in a political candidate.

Update: Paul Waldman has a post that goes into a little more depth on some of the same themes I alluded to above. It’s worth a read in its entirety, but here’s a good paragraph:

[T]this comes after Trump has been trying to delegitimize the results of the election before it actually happens, claiming that the vote will be “rigged.” If you’re arguing to your angry, heavily armed supporters, who already think the federal government is tyrannical, that there’s a conspiracy afoot to steal the election and that your opponent will be sending jackbooted government thugs to confiscate their guns, you don’t get to pretend that when you say that the “Second Amendment people” might be able to stop the next president’s judges from subverting their gun rights that it’s all innocent and you would never contemplate something as irresponsible as encouraging violence.

Less than meets the eye

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It seemed like I should take a moment to acknowledge the fact that Gov. Pence is now running for Vice-President. That’s a throwback to Indiana’s glory days of the late 19th century and early 20th century when we had someone on the national ticket during most cycles. Between 1868 and 1916, there were Schuyler Colfax, Thomas Hendricks, William English, Charles Fairbanks, John Kern, and Thomas Marshall (along with the Presidential run of Benjamin Harrison.) Since then, I guess it’s been Wendell Wilkie and Dan Quayle.

That previous list surely includes greater and lesser talents alike. This Politico article suggests that Gov. Pence is on the lesser end of that spectrum.  At first glance, with Pence, it looks like the Trump campaign is getting a communicator, a legislator, and an executive. But, each of those qualities looks better on paper than the reality — perhaps a perfect fit given Trump’s history of failing to deliver what he promises.

Pence’s reputation as a communicator probably originates with his history as a talk show host. But, if you’ve ever seen Rush Limbaugh get into an argument where he didn’t control the microphone, you can tell that’s not necessarily a skill set that translates past the friendly confines of your radio studio. If you can’t turn off the camera or microphone when someone asks a follow up question, those well-framed sound bites wilt when they aren’t soundly connected to the underlying reality. Local reporters seem to agree that Gov. Pence often communicates by robotically repeating phrases he’s settled on. This isn’t necessarily a partisan observation, by the way. I think most of the same folks would freely praise Governor Daniels’ ability to riff on a subject and play to the room when called upon to elaborate on a topic.

With respect to his legislative background, my sense is that, while in D.C., Gov. Pence got in good with the cable news and talk radio set. He seems to have tried to move legislation when he first got to D.C., but after the first couple of years was content to mostly just talk. (A friend referred to him as “a back bench bomb thrower with huge ambitions.”) My review of GovTrack information a few years back indicated that he’d introduced 63 bills (about half of which were in his first two years), managed to get three out of committee, and passed nothing. Here is what I wrote then of the GovTrack information:

2001 – 2002:
#34 bills to suspend tariffs on various chemicals — used in agriculture, if I’m not mistaken
#one bill to criminalize the use of domain names to attract kids to look at dirty pictures (again in 2003-2004); and
#one to posthumously give a promotion to an admiral.

2003 – 2004
#A bill to allow an illegal immigrant to remain in the country. She was apparently a Muncie woman, originally from Sierra Leone, who had become a nurse at Ball Memorial.
#A bill to reduce individual capital gains taxes to 10%
#A bill to eliminate the requirement that health insurance issuers offering health insurance coverage in the small group market in a State to accept every small employer that applies for such coverage. (again in 2005-2006)
#A farm bill that would allow acres used to plant fruits and vegetables to be counted the same as oilseeds.

2005 – 2006
#Campaign finance legislation made it out of committee — would relax contribution limits and restrictions.
#A capital gains tax bill that would allow an inflation adjustment for determining capital gains (again in 2007)
#A child pornography bill.
#A journalist shield bill, the timing and content of which seems to have been designed to protect Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper from giving up Scooter Libby for leaking CIA information in the Plame affair. (I believe he introduced a similar bill in 2011).

2007 – 2008:
#A bill to prevent family grants to be given to an entity that provides abortions (Planned Parenthood defunding, I’m guessing) (a similar bill in 2009-2010, 2011-2012).
#An anti-Fairness Doctrine bill that would prevent the FCC from requiring broadcasters to air opposing viewpoints. (again in 2009-2010 and 2011-2012)
#An election law seeking to repeal disclosure requirements about disbursements for electioneering communications.

2009 – 2010:
#A bill seeking to restrict U.S. loans to the IMF where money would be used to support European countries with debt to GDP rations in excess of 60%.

2011-2012:
#A bill seeking to repeal the sunset of certain tax cuts.
#A bill seeking to remove maximum employment as one of the goals of the Federal Reserve (stable prices and moderate interest rates would be the two remaining goals.)

Finally, as to governing, Governor Pence did not create the impression of someone who was engaged and active with the Indiana General Assembly. I’ve heard (admittedly second hand) that legislators were frustrated at the lack of organization and activity from the governor’s office. The governor’s agenda would be late and sometimes vague. Members of the executive branch were not as active in shepherding legislation through the process as had been the case in the Daniels administration.

The roll-out of Trump’s announcement of Pence as running mate was choppy and erratic. Reports streamed in on Thursday. Then Trump looked like he was getting cold feet. The attacks in Nice caused Trump to waffle on when he was going to announce his decision. Then he said he was going to make an announcement on Saturday. Then he tweeted out an announcement on Friday anyway. Then the campaign issued a logo that was immediately and thoroughly derided as being graphically symbolic of what Trump was doing to Pence. As one person described by the Politico article as a “top Indiana Republican” put it, now that Pence is part of the Trump campaign, “every day [Pence is] going to have to go out on the trail and eat a shit sandwich.”

That prediction seems to be panning out. Already, he has had to agree that Mexico was, indeed going to pay for Trump’s wall. And he has said he now backs Trump’s plan to ban people from the country based on particular religious beliefs which he had earlier — correctly — described as “offensive and unconstitutional.”  Mike Pence has famously described himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order” — now that full throated fealty to Trump is his new job, the order of that list is going to have to change.

Deferred Compensation is Unearned and Acquired Wealth is Earned

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I don’t believe the premise advanced by that title, but its a notion that struck me in part based on a couple of posts I saw today by Jon Easter and Abdul today in the context of the gubernatorial campaign. Abdul’s was painting Gregg’s health benefit from his days as a state legislator in a negative light and Jon’s was suggesting that Pence’s compensation as a federal legislator was too high in light of his accomplishments. Neither really advanced or negated the premise of this post, but I wanted to mention them because that’s the context in which I had the thought.

In political discussions, my sense is that the starting point is that if you have acquired wealth, then the assumption is that you have earned it and that if you have deferred your compensation in exchange for ongoing benefits (health care, pension, etc.) then there is something of a rebuttable presumption that it’s just free stuff you are getting because of corruption or something. So, we see people supporting the idea of cutting pensions because they’re too expensive — largely ignoring the idea that this amounts to theft of services. Meanwhile, when you tax wealth, the presumption is that the wealth was earned. Given these presumptions, I’d guess that your average voter is going to react more negatively to Gregg’s compensation with healthcare benefits years after the fact than to Pence’s compensation in cash at the time he was a legislator.

Neither ought to be a huge factor in  a voter’s decision — the voter should be deciding which person would do a better job governing the state. But, when we’re looking at the two kinds of compensation, the real question ought to be whether the men earned the compensation. The form and the timing (now and in cash versus later in the form of a health care benefit) shouldn’t matter. But the form and the timing, I think, makes the average voter more forgiving of an overpayment if it’s made now & in cash than an overpayment made in the form of deferred health care benefits.

I have some thoughts on why that might be, but none of them terribly well defined. The first is just temporal proximity. Maybe they think on some level that, because the person was willing to defer the compensation, they actually would have been willing to do the work for only the compensation they received at the time. So, the amount that was deferred is just gravy — in excess of what the work was worth. The second is maybe a class thing. The types of jobs with deferred compensation are in the same neighborhood as the jobs done by the average voter (e.g. teacher, police officer), and they have an easier time comparing (and criticizing) what they make and the job they do as compared to the deferred compensation job. Arguably excess immediate compensation jobs are maybe more often on a much different level than the average voter (CEO, maybe) and so don’t invite the same kinds of negative comparisons. (But, like I said, these are more or less half-formed thoughts.)

 

John Gregg picks Christina Hale as Lieutenant Governor running mate

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The news is out today that Democratic gubernatorial candidate, John Gregg, has chosen Representative Christina Hale as his running mate for lieutenant governor. She is a Democrat, representing Indianapolis’s District 87 since 2012. Prior to that, she worked as chief communications officer for Kiwanis International and spent some time as a reporter for the LaPorte Herald during college.

I first became aware of Rep. Hale through her efforts with respect to the under reporting of sex crimes against girls. At the time, Rep. Hale was working with the Criminal Law & Sentencing Study Committee because, as she reported:

[A]ccording to the Center for Disease Control, one in six girls in Indiana has been raped or sexually assaulted. Rep. Hale further indicated that the number is actually higher because crimes are under-reported. According to federal data, Indiana is the second worst state in the nation for rape and sexual assault against high school aged girls.

And, in fact, she has continued her work to combat sex crimes. You can see her legislative initiatives for 2015 and 2016. She has worked with a number of bills involving subjects such as rape, harassment, domestic battery, human trafficking, and underage prostitution.

If a Gregg/Hale ticket is successful, it appears very evident that they will have a more effective relationship with the Indiana General Assembly. While the General Assembly will almost certainly continue to be dominated by Republicans, the fact is that Gregg & Hale have a lot more experience with the legislative process than Pence and Holcomb. I don’t know much about Holcomb. He definitely seems to have his strengths, but it’s pretty easy to argue that Gov. Pence traded down with respect to his ability to navigate the legislature when he ditched former Lt. Governor Sue Ellsperman. Ellsperman was highly regarded and had served in the Indiana House of Representatives. Even so, the Pence administration has often seemed to have trouble communicating effectively with the General Assembly and navigating the legislative process.

John Gregg, of course, was Speaker of the House and, in that capacity, seems to have managed a good working relationship with the Senate Republicans across the hall. Rep. Hale is probably a choice that adds to that strength.

From Belief to Resentment in Indiana

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There was a very good piece in the Washington Post this weekend by Eli Saslow entitled “From Belief to Resentment in Indiana.”   It tells of a working class guy in Huntington who has worked third shift at United Technologies in Huntington, Indiana. He believes in the power of hard work and maintains a middle class lifestyle for his kids as he prepares to marry his third wife but becomes politically disillusioned and resentful when UTC announces layoffs because it’s moving the line to Mexico.

“We’re getting to the point where there aren’t really any good options left,” he said. “The system is broken. Maybe its time to blow it up and start from scratch, like Trump’s been saying.”

Krystal rolled her eyes at him. “Come on. You’re a Democrat.”

“I was. But that was before we started turning into a weak country,” he said. “Pretty soon there won’t be anything left. We’ll all be flipping burgers.”

“Fine, but so what?” she said. “We just turn everything over to the guy who yells the loudest?”

Setser leaned into the table and banged it once for emphasis. “They’re throwing our work back in our face,” he said. “China is doing better. Even Mexico is doing better. Don’t you want someone to go kick ass?”

“That doesn’t really seem like you,” she said, and for a few seconds she stared back at him, as if examining someone for the first time. The spices were alphabetized on the shelves. The family schedule was printed on the wall. Theirs was a happy home, a stable home.

You said it always evens out,” she told him.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he said, but now his voice was quiet.

“You said things just have a way of working.”

“Maybe not,” he said, because with each passing day he was seeing it more clearly. The town was losing its best employer, and all around him stability was giving way to uncertainty, to resentment, to anger, to fear.

The uncertainty, resentment, anger, and fear are all very natural responses to the situation. But, while the problems are real,  Trump is an astonishingly counterproductive attempt at solving that problem. Mostly when you blow something up, it doesn’t give you the opportunity to start fresh — rather, now you have to deal with your original problems plus the destruction of the explosion.

The piece also hints at the fetish the political media seems to have for the nobility of the working class white guy. When the black guy, with very real grievances and plenty of cause for uncertainty, resentment, anger, and fear — when that guy embraces, say, Malcom X because he promises some radical solutions; how sympathetic is the media coverage for that guy? But make it about the resentments and horrible political choices of a white guy and the narrative changes considerably.

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Now, this is an aside, but the musing about flipping burgers and whatnot makes me think. I’m not an economist, but I have a nagging feeling we’re missing something when we insist that only manufacturing jobs can pay well and service jobs necessarily have to pay less. I’ve been immersed in Indiana history, and they spent an inordinate amount of time (as in at least a decade where this was a dominant political issue) fussing about whether to base our currency on gold alone or gold and silver together. Turns out, basing our currency on metal dug out of the ground was arbitrary and better monetary policy can be had without either. The insistence on a metal-based currency probably caused a great deal of unnecessary hardship for Americans willing and able to work but limited by an economy hamstrung by monetary policy.

So, too, I wonder if we have the balances wrong in how we protect property rights versus how we protect other kinds of rights (e.g. rights associated with labor), how we approach trade policy, and how we allocate profits from economic activity that creates value.

In any case, it strikes me as more than a little ironic that a guy like the protagonist of the Washington Post story — who is being harmed by the imbalance as between labor and capital is embracing a guy who owes his wealth, not to hard work, but to the advantages our system gives property owners.

Primary Challenges for Senate Leadership

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Chris Sikich, writing for the Indy Star, has an article about primary challenges faced by Senate President pro tem, David Long and Appropriations Chairman, Luke Kenley. If they lose their challenges, the Senate will be worse for it.

The challenger to Long thinks that what the Senate has accomplished in terms of permitting discrimination against gay people and limiting abortion rights doesn’t go far enough. The challenger to Kenley thinks that the General Assembly’s funding formula doesn’t sufficiently sustain the advantage Hamilton County schools have over, for example, Marion County schools.

I’ve generally been supportive of Sen. Kenley and like what he’s done. I’ve probably been more critical of Sen. Long over the years, but I certainly don’t think replacing him because he hasn’t been socially conservative enough would be a good thing for Indiana. Taxpayers are shelling out enough money to the ACLU and other plaintiffs for unconstitutional legislation as it is.