I have not been Gov. Daniels’ most ardent fan, but I really do appreciate his use of the bully pulpit to promote fitness in Indiana. Along those lines, Cheri Daniels was in Richmond promoting fitness at my old stomping grounds, Forest Hills Country Club. (I worked there for 5 years cleaning golf clubs and whatnot for the princely sum of $3.35 per hour.)

“If the governor can find time to exercise, you can,” Daniels said of her husband, Gov. Mitch Daniels, on Tuesday night before speaking at a fundraiser for women’s health in Wayne County. “Yeah, he works out probably five days a week, running and lifting weights.”

While I appreciate the sentiment that one has to make exercise a priority, I think Gov. Daniels, busy as he is, has some advantages that many working class family people don’t have. I don’t pretend to know Gov. Daniels personal set up, but I can bet he has more schedule flexibility than the average wage earner. Probably he has more ready access to weight facilities and good places to run than many Hoosiers. (And, once again, to be fair, his work on Indiana’s trail system is helping to provide better access to trails.)

The bottom line, however, is that neglect of our health is statistically more dangerous to us than most of the stuff we spend our time worrying about. Heart disease is a heck of a lot more likely to get you than a terrorist, for example. But, such dangers are gradual, far off, and unexciting. And, besides, it’s dark and cold outside – do I get up and go run or maybe roll over under these nice warm covers and grab another 30 minutes of sleep? With the deck stacked like that, we need some cheerleading to give us a fighting chance.

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article about the debate in Indiana’s 9th District between Baron Hill, Eric Schansberg, and Mike Sodrel. I found, however, that I could not concentrate on the substance of the debate because I was distracted by the language used as part of the tax debate.

In particular, the repeated use of the term “fair” tax. Schansberg and Sodrel talked about replacing the progressive income tax with a flat tax or a “fair” tax. The “fair” tax, as described in the article is:

The fair tax is a proposal that would eliminate current income and payroll taxes and replace them with a 23 percent sales tax. Low-income families would receive what’s called a pre-bate, an advance payment meant to compensate them for at least a portion of the sales tax they would pay on goods.

“Fair” just doesn’t strike me as an appropriate adjective to use. It doesn’t really describe what the tax does and it’s a loaded term. “Hey! It’s fair! Who could be against that?” Seems to me that it should be referred to as a sales tax or some variant thereof.

Brave New Films has produced a nice piece deconstructing the GOP’s ACORN gambit:

Kelly Soderlund, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reports on the debate between the candidates for Superintendent of Public Instruction. Richard Wood and Tony Bennett are vying to replace the retiring Sue Ellen Reed. Wood, the Democrat, is local to Lafayette, so I am partial to him. Tippecanoe County schools are, in general, very good. He was superintendent there for 19 years. So, by that measure, he has been a success. I don’t know much about Bennett, the Republican. He is in his second year as superintendent of Greater Clark County Schools in southeast Indiana.

The most divisive one was whether public money should be funneled to private schools through vouchers. Bennett is for the concept; Wood isn’t.

Wood believes that if private schools are willing to accept public money, they should be willing to kick down the barriers many children face when wanting to attend those schools – namely, tuition. He also cited his interpretation of the Constitution, which he said doesn’t allow public money to be placed in educational institutions where religion is taught, thus separating church and state.

Wood is a local guy, he has a history of success, and his views on education seem more in line with my own. So, I’m wishing him luck.

I am trying to update my spreadsheet with the Indiana House Races by putting in some campaign finance numbers. The finance statements have been submitted to the Indiana Secretary of State but have not yet been made available online.

I don’t know whether or when the statements will be available online, but I would humbly suggest that in a perfect world, such information would be readily available long enough before the election to help inform the electorate.

But, such information will likely have to wait. I know that the Secretary of State is working tirelessly to make certain that not one eligible voter is impeded in the slightest by the election bureaucracy.

Ted Evanoff, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article about the economic condition of the state. Indianapolis, and to a lesser extent Lafayette and Bloomington, have been weathering the economic storm while the rest of the state has been suffering.

Although the Indy area added 6,000 jobs in August to rise to 908,200 positions, much of the rest of the state is in shaky transition as old auto and RV factories close or shed workers and communities struggle to find a new economic engine.
. . .
Indianapolis and two college cities in its economic orbit — Lafayette and Bloomington — have been cushioned by the slow rise of a new economy. Built on technology and innovation, sheltered from foreign competition, it has been seeded by shots of venture capital.

Doubtless Indianapolis’s success has to do with the perfidy of big city elites at the expense of honest Hoosiers in the rest of the state; whereas the relative success of the Lafayette area is attributable to the thrift, ingenuity, hard work, and quality blogging of its local citizenry. I am at a loss to explain the success of Bloomington, but presume it has to do with the past greatness of its men’s basketball athletic squads.

Speaking of athletic squads, the North Central Conference cities are not doing well generally:

Outside the metro area, the economic divide appears. Hit hardest have been old industrial centers, including Anderson, Connersville, Elkhart, Marion, Muncie, New Castle and Richmond. Of the state’s 133,400 laid-off factory workers, 116,000 labored outside the 10-county Indianapolis area at now-closed or shrinking factories for Borg-Warner, Guide, Dana, Visteon and others.

Assembly jobs have shifted to places such as China, where factory wages average about $200 a month. Although high-tech plants have opened in the U.S., many locate near cities to access technical workers.

I can’t speak personally to the other cities, but Richmond has been staring this economic displacement in the teeth for a long time now. About the time I went off to college, my Dad accepted a transfer to a related business in Ohio rather than face the prospect of laying off a bunch of guys at Alcoa that he’d worked with for 10 or 20 years.

Solely relying on manufacturing won’t cut it anymore. At the same time, I can’t get past the notion that we have to keep making stuff to remain strong as a country. Over reliance on the financial industry isn’t healthy either. Historically, the Netherlands and Britain shifted from manufacturing dominance to financial dominance before fading away to becoming secondary powers. So, we need to work for a balance.

With permission and because I definitely identify with those who feel that the Republican Party moved away from them instead of vice-versa; here is commentary sent to me from a thoughtful reader and re-posted with permission:

Building a Bridge to Somewhere Else

Being a republican in Indiana is like falling over after 6 drinks, it’s easy and expected, as only a few get away with doing otherwise. I’ve had a lot of fun being a republican. And I cherish the friends, the networking and conversation, a sense of belonging among wonderful men and women who genuinely want what is good for our country. Because I respect the level of political and ethical acuity of most of my peers, I have to believe I am not the only one who feels it’s time to sober up. I like Senator McCain personally and deeply appreciate his sacrifice of service to our country. But I do not think he is able to distinguish his proposed leadership from that of President Bush, whom I also deeply respect, but disagree with on some critical issues. I disagree with Senator Obama on abortion, but I know that we are not going to resolve that issue in the next 4 years. I am pro-life. Life is precious, but also fragile- requiring food, housing, healthcare and a stable family and nation. Senator Obama is not perfect, but I do not question that he is sincerely committed to our country’s wellbeing AND capable of discerning how to bring that about. I am, if not a good republican, a good American, and I am saying I can no longer vote along party lines, ignoring the positions I don’t really agree with, trusting it will have a net positive affect.

You know, being a republican used to mean taking care of our needs at home before spending money buying allegiances overseas. It used to mean fighting a war, if necessary, on the correct front. It subscribed to a true definition of free trade, i.e. good for both countries. And it recognized that our country was built with strong backs and citizenship, not by finding legal means to unethical ends. Perhaps Senator McCain really belongs to the party of Republicans-gone-awry. Or maybe it is just insane to keep voting the same way and expecting different results.

I imagine this election will go on the books as one of the most engaging and ideologically challenging, and for that we can say we will have experienced the best of the democratic political process. We have had to search our souls and confront what were perhaps underdeveloped or even inherited ‘personal beliefs’ about a host of issues such as race, gender, and equity. For all that work, I believe that our next president will be bore out with the help of a new type of republican voter – one that is keenly aware of and is fine with the fact that we cannot go back, even if we wanted to, and we cannot stay here.

I have been impressed by the depth of political analysis and insight that so many people have, in the line at the grocery store, at the high school football games- even the young people are chiming in. As for myself, I keep thinking back to the readings and lectures I had in my political science courses. My $72,000 epiphany is this: We are a great nation, a uniquely blessed society with rights to pursue the inherent goodness of freedom, human dignity, security and prosperity. And we are also uniquely positioned to inspire that pursuit throughout the world. But that our nation, so conceived and constitutionally established, being uniquely blessed and positioned as a nation, is true, not because of the leadership of the past decade, but in spite of it. Something to chew on while we get busy building a bridge to somewhere else. And once we get to somewhere else, we can fight about the rest.