Tim F. over at Balloon Juice has a good post entitled “Tinkerbell Died.”  He expounds upon the growing Iraq meme among righties noted by Glenn Greenwald: “Iraq failed because the lefties didn’t clap loudly enough.” (All this talk of Tinkerbell and clapping alludes to a scene in Peter Pan where Tinkerbell is dying but will survive if enough people believe in fairies. In the play the
characters make a plea to the children watching to sustain her by clapping.)

Tim writes in part:

Hear that, moonbats? Criticizing the president has consequences. To
wit, it’s your fault if the negative consequences that you predict turn
out to be true.

. . .

[Those] who opposed Iraq basically said that the neocon objectives were
unrealistic and likely to fail. After neocon objectives proved unrealistic and began to fail the same folks, shockingly enough, said ‘told you so.’ In a fair world one earns intellectual credibility by
correctly forecasting the likely outcome of events that haven’t yet
taken place. If so, and I’m looking forward to the arguments against,
then the few prewar critics who correctly forecast what would happen,
Howard Dean among them, have immense credibility on the issue and the
rosy-scenario crowd has little to none.

It isn’t hard to
imagine why somebody would point out that they have credibility on an
issue. The war’s an ongoing problem and people who regularly got it
right maybe have a more realistic sense of what to do than the people
who got every single thing wrong. The long-term question hasn’t worked
itself out yet, true, but the folks whose short-term projections proved
so inept (WMD, AQ links, we’ll be greeted as liberators, reconstruction
will pay for itself, bureaucracy will go back to work right after the
war, candy and flowers, drawing the troops down to 30k within months,
‘last throes,’ no sectarian problems to worry about) will have a hard
time convincing most people that their long-term vision is on the money.

A public service announcement for any law students with residency in the Northern District of Indiana (roughly the northern third of the state).

The Glenn D. Peters Scholarship Fund provides scholarships to residents of the Northern District of Indiana attending an accredited law school located anywhere in the United States. The scholarships are available to defray tuition costs, and grants currently range from $750 to $1,500 at the discretion of the selection committee. Application deadline is June 1, 2006. A copy of the application is available here.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette calls Sodrel’s court stripping bill “the legal equivalent of a temper tantrum.”  Sounds about right to me. More on Sodrel’s bill here. Rep. Sodrel has been joined in his temper tantrum by Reps. Burton, Buyer, Chocola, and Souder.

Bills that passed Third Reading in the House today:

SB 75 – Military family relief fund. It’s a shame that this bill is even necessary – both because the War in Iraq is such a waste of time, effort, blood, and treasure especially when one considers how little our nation gets in return and because it is a shame that military families are not taken care of without bills like this one. That being said, this bill is probably the least we can do. It establishes the military relief fund to provide grants for essential family support expenses to families of Indiana residents who are members of the Indiana National Guard or armed forces reserves and have been called to active duty in the past 4.5 years. The sources of revenue for the fund would be 1) appropriations by the general assembly which the Director of Veterans’ Affairs is authorized to solicit annually; 2) a check-off on Indiana taxes similar to the non-game wildlife fund check-off currently in effect – that fund collected $363,478 in tax year 2003; and 3) donations — to encourage donations, a person registering a vehicle can designate an additional amount for deposit in the fund.

SB 258 – Taxation and state and local finance. This is a hodgepodge bill. It requires the Governor to sign off on internal controls on accounting and financial information in executive branch agencies and requires the budget director and governor to certify that certain financial informationf airly represents the financial condition of the state and that the state’s internal accounting controls are effective. It changes the date for validation of ouutstanding bonds and lease agreements executed by various governmental entities from 3/15/00 to 3/15/06. Specifies that tobacco products are not food. (I suppose if the General Assembly has control over the value of pi and when a fetus is viable, they can make tobacco products food or not food as it pleases.) Specifies that a person is a retail merchant making a retail transaction when the person sells tangible personal property as part of a bundled transaction. For purposes of the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, exempts certain people from the monthly gross retail and use tax return requirements if the person’s tax liability for the preceding calendar year does not exceed $1,000. For sales tax purposes, an order of flowers that is taken at one location and is transmitted to a florist at another location for delivery is sourced to the florist that originally took the order.

SB 269 – License plates. Requires personalized plates to be issued annually (instead of, I believe, biennially). Requires a personalized plate to be reserved before October 31 of each year and requires the bureau to remind holders of personalized plates of the necessity for reservations. Provides that the money in the Indiana arts commission trust fund only needs to reach $1 million before interest is appropriated to the Indiana arts commission. Current law sets the principal level at $50 million.

SB 277 – Genesis Convention Center board of managers. Allows the Gary City council to adopt an ordinance for payment of a salary or a per diem to members of the board of managers of the convention center who do not hold another lucrative office. Currently the statute prevents them from receiving salaries.

SB 283 – Emergency telephone notification system. Allows a county or municipality to establish an emergency telephone notification system to warn citizens of emergencies. Allows emergency telephone system fees to be used to pay for the system. Grants civil immunity to
a service supplier or telephone company in conjunction with operating
an emergency telephone notification system.

SB 310 – Alternate methods for earning high school credits. Allows a student to earn credits toward graduation or an honors diploma through non-classroom methods, including receiving a score that demonstrates proficiency on a standardized assessment recognized by postsecondary institutions, receiving a high proficiency level score on an end of course assessment for a course without having taken the course, successfully completing a similar course at an eligible
institution under the postsecondary enrollment program, or scoring a 3 or above on an AP test.

SB 332 – Dept. of Correction pension benefits. Gives a $150,000 death benefit to family surviving a hazardous duty employee of the DOC who dies in the line of duty and gives free tuition to state colleges for the employee’s children and surviving spouse.

SB 314 – Soil and water conservation districts and wild animals. Defeated on third reading. I wonder what happened to this one. It passed the Senate 50 – 0.  The House Committee amended it but passed it 10 – 0. There were no second reading amendments, but then it was defeated 41 to 53.

SB 339 – Salvage titles. Currently an insurance company is required to obtain a salvage title when the cost of repair exceeds 70% of the pre-damage value of the vehicle. This bill requires the company to obtain a salvage title when the company determines that it is “economically impractical” to repair the vehicle. Flood damaged vehicles are required to get salvage titles in all cases. A business that insures its own vehicles is required to get a salvage title when the damage exceeds 70% of pre-damage value. An owner is entitled to retain his or her vehicle where an insurance company completes a settlement on a vehicle that meets the salvage criteria. In cases of owner retention, the insurance company is required to apply for salvage title which will be issued to the owner.

SB 354 – forestry issues. Allows land to be classified as wildlands for purposes of property taxation. Requires a classified forest plantation to have at least 400
trees per acre. Requires a classified native forest land to have at
least 1,000 trees per acre. Removes the requirement that certain open
areas must be excluded from the classified land. Prohibits certain
nontimber crops from being cultivated on classified land. Establishes
procedures and requirements for revised applications for classified
lands. Establishes penalties for withdrawal from the classified land program. Provides that environmental impact statements do not apply to
forestry management practices of the division of forestry. Establishes
the forest restoration fund. Amends the definition of “merchantable
timber”. Provides that a county legislative body may allow more than
$1,000 to be distributed to volunteer fire departments from timber
sales. Repeals: (1) provisions concerning assessment of classified
lands; (2) the assessment of certain wildlife habitats; and (3) the prohibition of certain reclamation sites from enrolling in the
classified land program. Transfers land classified as wildlife habitats
to land classified as wildlands.

SB 379 – publication of administrative rules. Transfers duties of the secretary of state with respect to promulgation and preservation of paper copies of administrative rules to the publisher of the Indiana Register (the Office of Code Revision in the Legislative Services Agency acting under the direction of the Legislative Council.) Requires state agencies to submit documents for publication in the Indiana Register in an electronic format specified by the publisher. (Not so interesting side note: In my former capacity as deputy director in the Office of Code Revision, for a short time I was nominally the Revisor of Rules. Theoretically, I suppose, I had some oversight over the IAC and Register Staff. As a practical matter, they were so good at their job and I was so green that my “Revisor of Rules” duties didn’t amount to much.)

The Christian Science Monitor has an article on research showing that younger workers are not doing as well financially as their parents and grandparents were doing at a similar age. And this is without the federal debt obligations and Medicaid burdens being passed on to GenX by the Boomers. When those chickens come home to roost, things will presumably get worse.

Between 1970 and 1997, the real median income declined 19% for men under 35 and declined 10.6% for men between 35 and 44.

Perhaps most significant, though, is a labor market that has become tougher on workers, especially those with lower skills. Global competition has compressed wage gains.

Thus, despite a boom in worker productivity, “what the typical family or typical worker has to show for it has been remarkably little,” says Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

In his view, the biggest issue is the rising inequality of incomes during the past quarter century.

At the Blue Frog Bakery, Ms. Brown sees that trend among her own peers. “People are either doing phenomenally well or living paycheck to paycheck,” she says[.]

A book I’d recommend on the subject of increasing wealth disparities in America, increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the ultra-wealthy, and the negative effect this has on our democratic institutions is Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips.

Matthew Tully has a column on a dust-up between Logansport mayor Michael Fincher and Mishawaka Representative Craig Fry.  Fincher broke ranks with fellow Democrats by sending a letter to every state legislator asking them to support Toll Road privatization.

Politically, this was probably stupid of Fincher. Fry wrote to him, suggesting he was a traitor.  At a purely self-interested policy level, Fincher’s desire for Toll Road privatization makes sense. The money used from the multi-generational lease will be used to pay for the continuation of the Hoosier Heartland Highway which runs from Fort Wayne to Logansport and which is scheduled to continue on through Delphi to Lafayette.  With privatization of the Toll Road, the people of Logansport get the people of Mishawaka to pay for a highway benefitting Logansport. That’s a no-brainer from the Logansport perspective (a no-brainer from the Mishawaka perspective too — why would they want to pay more tolls and get nothing much in return?)

This highlights one of the reasons behind Indiana’s prohibition against special legislation (typically legislation specific to a particular area of the state). While I’m reasonably confident the Toll Road privatization does not run afoul of the prohibition legally, I think it runs afoul of the same policy concerns. It’s unjust for one region of the State to be taxed at a higher rate for the benefit of the remainder of the State, popular as taxing someone else may be in those other regions.

The Indy Star has an editorial which brought to mind one of the issues that frequently comes to my mind. I only read the headlines on the original article, and I won’t have time to expound this morning, so my apologies for my slipshod methods.

Anyway, the editorial is in response to a recent report on “the latest and largest federal study of cancer risk from air pollution show an intolerably high level of vulnerability for all of Indiana, especially Marion and Lake counties and their older, industrial neighborhoods.”

While Indiana’s average level of risk was 33 in a million (more than 1 in a million is cause for concern), Marion County’s was 51 in a million and Lake’s 64 in a million. Marion ranked 87th among 3,000 counties, Lake 38th. Those are “honors” that must be stripped, starting yesterday.

Pollution highlights one of the inadequacies of the free market. I suppose it’s nothing more than the tragedy of the commons. But, where you have pollution, you have a situation where the price of a transaction doesn’t reflect its costs. Some of the transaction’s costs are externalized onto the public at large. Say you’re making a widget and part of the widget making process involves pumping pollutants into the air. The manufacturing process involves costs that take the form of people in the area breathing in the pollutants and suffering adverse health consequences. Those costs are not reflected in the price the buyer pays the seller of the widget. Instead, the people in the area subsidize the widget maker by paying for the resulting health problems themselves.

You have a forced subsidy by the people in the community that allows the widget to be sold at a lower price. Subsidies corrupt the market. If prices do not accurately reflect costs, the market receives the wrong signals. It encourages inefficient market activity. So, to make sure the market works well, you have to make sure that manufacturers are forced to incorporate all of the costs of manufacturing into the price of the product. To me, that means regulation requiring manufacturing processes that do not allow the public to be exposed to pollution. Obviously such methods are more expensive, but that is to be expected — the public is no longer subsidizing the process by ingesting pollutants.

As a philosophical matter, I think this is consistent with my libertarian leanings. It involves government regulation, which obviously makes libertarians squirm. But, libertarians are also fiercely devoted to protection of property rights. That means they should be very much opposed to a manufacturer corrupting the atmosphere in and around someone else’s property and causing harm to someone else’s body. The idea that “your right to swing your arm freely stops at my nose” is something that most libertarians I know are comfortable with. A strong aversion to pollution is consistent with this idea. Maybe there are better ways than preemptive government regulation to incorporate the cost of pollution into the price of the product, but I have not seen them. Any solution that relies primarily on post-injury litigation to enforce the rights of a member of the public against a polluter is going to be extremely inefficient and probably ineffective.

Updated material in bold based on an Indy Star article.

The Senate overhauled HB 1008 on the 75 year Toll Road lease. The Senate Committee on Appropriations adopted a committee report that stripped everything out of the version that passed the House and inserted its own language. When I drafted legislation, I had mixed feelings about the “strip and insert” method of drafting amendments. Mainly, I tried to avoid it, but occasionally it was the best way to get the job done.

The biggest problem with writing an amendment that way, instead of the more traditional method of directing the printer to strike or insert language at particular page and line numbers, is that when you totally strip the original bill, it’s difficult to tell exactly how the new version differs from the prior version. Where you’re putting something entirely different in, that’s not a problem. But, where you’re replacing the original with something similar, it’s useful to be able to quickly pinpoint the changes.

The advantage of writing a strip and insert amendment is that it’s a lot easier to tell what the actual law would look like if it’s adopted in its amended form. The page and line editing instructions of the typical amendment make for slow reading.

In any case, on this bill, I do not have time for an exhaustive reading, but some provisions of note:

1. Some protection for Public Employee Retirement Fund rights of state employees displaced because of privatization.
2.  A tax credit (for any taxpayer, I believe) of up to $300 for tolls paid.
3.  A different distribution scheme  with Toll Road Counties getting the biggest share.
4.  A “Next Generation Trust Fund” that is to be held in trust until it reaches $1 billion. After that, the interest on the billion is to be distributed to the “Major Moves Construction Fund.” The initial “seed” money from the Toll Road proceeds is $400 million. The transportation building lobby seems a little piggish about this amendment, complaining that they’re afraid the Next Generation Trust Fund will be raided for non-transportation purposes, even though the legislation specifies that the interest is to go to the Major Moves Trust Fund and the principal isn’t allowed to be touched. The only more certain alternative would be to just blow the money all at once, beneficial to the construction industry certainly; the next generation, not so much.
5.  A provision of which I do not know the import which prohibits termination of a tollway route “along any part of a highway that has at least 4 lanes and is located in a township having a population of at least 80,000.” This would effectively prohibit the construction of a stretch of I-69 through Perry Township on Indianapolis’ Far Southside. The provision is meant to shore up support from some area lawmakers who support the governor’s plan but oppose the proposed I-69 route.
6.  Prohibits solicitation of a future public-private agreement allowing an operator to impose tolls unless the General Assembly first adopts a statute authorizing the imposition of tolls.
7. Allows a 75 year lease — Sen. Meeks (I think) had mentioned a shorter time span, but that would have scotched the offer on the table.
8. The terms of losing bids aren’t to be made public until termination of the RFP process or after closing takes place on the winning proposal.
9. Allows installation of “automated traffic law enforcement systems” to enforce collection of the private operator’s tolls.
10. Removes provisions in the original bill that provided for the Governor to enter into future transportation privatization agreements.

Blog activity was slow today because I went down to Indy for a CLE on estates. I will say this — apparently estate practice is not a young man’s game. I’d put the average age of the attendees of that seminar at about 65.

Indiana Barrister’s Abdul Hakim-Shabazz got himself a lecture from Rep. Dan Burton  when Mr. Shabazz had the audacity to ask tough questions about Rep. Sodrel’s court-stripping scheme.  He has a good post up on the day’s events. I noticed other blog entries at Advance Indiana and The Howey Report.

In addition to some relevant analysis of Judge Hamilton’s decision, Abdul wishes we could have an Eleventh Amendment: “Thou shall not grandstand and use my name in the process!” Moses didn’t offer any such commandment, so we have to rely on the New Testament instead:

And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love
to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets,
that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received
their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and
having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy
Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee.

And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

Mark 6:5-8.