Looks like Sen. Alting’s SB 32 passed the House which allows the continuation of vote centers in Tippecanoe, Wayne, and Cass Counties and provides for the option of adopting them in the other counties. All I can say is that I like them personally. I don’t know how they affect voters of various socioeconomic conditions or whether they skew to one party or another (though, it looks like a good chunk of the Democrats voted against them in the House.) I’m happy Tippecanoe County will be able to continue using them.

Tim Brouk, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, is reporting that Richard Mourdock announced that he will run against Sen. Lugar in the Republican primary.

I posted on this recently, so I’ll just offer my opinion that I don’t think Sen. Lugar is any less conservative than he ever was; the Republican Party has been the one moving. (Also, I don’t think “conservative” is a great descriptor any more than “liberal” is. So, when I say more and less “conservative,” I’m not sure I mean anything other than “more and less aligned with active Republican primary voters.”)

So, there are rumors that the Tea Party types are going to try to a primary challenge against Sen. Lugar. My main knock against Sen. Lugar is that he has been in office for like a million years. Beyond that, he has a tendency to talk a moderate game before going ahead and voting the party line. But, votes aren’t enough for the right wing of his party, apparently. They’re mad about stuff like Lugar’s support for a treaty that reduces nuclear arsenals, mainly because it was something that President Obama supported. Opposition to Sen. Lugar is the sort of thing that gave rise to the Onion headline “Republicans Vote to Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed for Earth.”

Most discussions have Treasurer Richard Mourdock as the most likely candidate to challenge Sen. Lugar. Mourdock, of course, is most notable for his wrong-headed decision to waste millions on legal bills to challenge the restructuring of Chrysler in bankruptcy.

So, the weather is the central fact of life in Indiana today; probably tomorrow as well. Seems as if the closing of everything probably could’ve waited until noon or a bit later in Lafayette, but we have some nasty sounding icy stuff coming down right now. For my part, I’m good so long as the electricity is reliable. There’s no overstating how much of my life seems to hinge on those outlets supplying the juice. And, in the winter, the furnace is probably the most important part. Aside from that, I’m able to do work on my computer, have a good supply of wine and other spirits, and have a pretty tasty pot of chili in the works.

In the short term, the forced slow down is mostly nice. God forbid I or someone I love should have to make it to the hospital or the like in this kind of weather. Otherwise, hunkering down for a bit isn’t all bad. We’ll see if the weather folks are in the ball park with this one. They have had a recent track record of overstating the potential of weather events. This one looks to be worth paying attention to.

Keep warm out there. Share your stories of The White Death from Above.

The Urbanophile has a good post on crisis being a time when there is opportunity for government reform. I recommend reading the entire thing – has some kind words for Gov. Daniels. But, what caught my eye was when he touched on the issue of pensions. He’s right that pensions are a huge unfunded liability, and he suggests that now might be the time for reforming how we deal with them. But, I wasn’t entirely clear from reading if and how he might be proposing we deal with the pensions that are already owed. But, he mentioned some facts that – in my mind- argue against messing with the pensions that are already owed:

Today, once you’ve got X number of years in, you are almost handcuffed to your government job for the duration even if you hate it because the value of that [defined benefit] pension is so high. That’s why you always face a battalion of surly employees when you go to renew your driver’s license. Also, it creates a recruitment issue. Lots of people might want to spend some time in public service without making it a career, but it can be hard to do. In many places (though by no means everywhere), government pay is below market on a cash basis, with the balance made up (often more than made up) by generous pensions. So for someone who might want to spend say 3-7 years in government, that’s a huge disincentive. They would be paid below market and not get the pension. If they were paid market and had a 401(k) they could take with them, that’s a lot more attractive option.

So, the people already in the system have made that trade. They have, literally, traded their lives based on this promise. Instead of doing other things with their lives, they spent hour after hour, day after day, doing a job in public service when they, perhaps, could have been doing something with their life that they loved better and/or that paid better. Perhaps the rationale was that, with a defined benefit pension, they could securely retire sooner – possibly to spend their time on things they enjoy or working in some other capacity and making up the income they lost. To pull the rug out from under them after they held up their end of the bargain strikes me as immoral.

That said, it is a big funding problem. But, it probably goes without saying that I don’t view stiffing creditors as a great way to deal with your funding shortfalls, particularly when those creditors are employees (or former employees) who are owed for time spent in your service.

Hoosier Access posted a statement by Rep. Todd Young on voting to repeal the recent Health Care reform law. Rep. Young apparently recognizes that repealing the reform necessarily means continuing on with the status quo of the current health care and insurance system, which is generally about as popular as a rabid dog. He attempts to soften the reality what repealing the reform bill means by saying:

That’s why I also plan to vote today for a resolution instructing Congress to begin exploring new options; options to ensure high-quality and lost-cost health care for all Americans.

Such a resolution sounds about as useful as writing blog post. If they have concrete alternatives, they should put those in the repeal legislation to take effect at the same time as the repeal. Otherwise, it’s just so much sound and fury and, ultimately, a vote for the status quo ante.

David Leonhart has a good column in the New York Times discussing how the economic recovery in the United States compares to that taking place in other countries. Other countries’ recovery tends to feature corporate profits that are still lagging but with much less unemployment. By contrast, here corporate profits have improved 12% over 2007 level but we remain mired in high unemployment.

There is a good argument to be made that critics of government policy are right – Obama and the Democrats have not been sufficiently focused on jobs; but it’s not because they’re unfriendly to business, but because they’re too friendly to corporate interests.

The gross domestic product here — the total value of all goods and services — has recovered from the recession better than in Britain, Germany, Japan or Russia. Yet a greatly shrunken group of American workers, working harder and more efficiently, is producing these goods and services.

The unemployment rate is higher in this country than in Britain or Russia and much higher than in Germany or Japan, according to a study of worldwide job markets that Gallup will release on Wednesday. The American jobless rate is also higher than China’s, Gallup found. The European countries with worse unemployment than the United States tend to be those still mired in crisis, like Greece, Ireland and Spain.

The column makes passing mention of the nation’s disability system. It’s one of those things in which I’ve taken an interest without doing much research. My knowledge of the Social Security Disability program comes from questioning debtors about their income and assets. A non-trivial number of them tell me they’re in the process of applying for disability. Obviously, I’m not privy to their medical records, but a fair number of these look able bodied and sound enough of mind to me. And the process takes an extremely long time. The backlog is measured in terms of years, I’m told. Leonhart has this to say:

Reforming the disability insurance system so it does not encourage long-term joblessness would help. “Once people enter the system,” as Mr. Katz of Harvard says, “they basically never come back.”

A disability check doesn’t mean riches, but it’s a steady check and, for a lot of folks, it beats working. The system needs to be quicker to discard the deadbeats, quicker to care for those clearly in need, and better at following up to determine if continued support is necessary. Whether that’s at all feasible, I don’t know.

When I think of progress in race relations in the United States, I think of Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Both were murdered for their trouble. I’ve heard Slavery called America’s Original Sin and Abraham Lincoln its Christ-figure. But, Lincoln was no son of God, so I guess it took Dr. King’s death and might well take a few others before we’re rid of the taint. There always seems to be a Bull Connor or George Wallace available for the part of the Enemy and the odd John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray available as trigger-men.

The Slacktivist has, I believe, a compelling post about the disconnect between words and action in political rhetoric. He ties together the shootings in Arizona with something very similar to what I’ve said in the past about abortion. (I don’t think I picked up that theme from him originally, but who knows? I read a lot and don’t always know how ideas creep into my brain.)

He’s not saying that the violent rhetoric caused the shooting of Rep. Giffords or that the comparisons of abortions to the Holocaust caused abortion clinic shootings. Rather, he’s saying that you have to be crazy to take such rhetoric at face value. Because, if you compare such speech to the speaker’s actions, the two don’t match up.

They do not believe their own nonsense. We know that they do not believe it because they “don’t behave” in accordance with what such beliefs would entail — what such beliefs must entail.
. . .
The substance of what they say demands “a radicalized citizenry.” If we are in the midst of a “Holocaust,” then we are obliged to respond more vigorously than simply waiting four years for the next opportunity to cast a vote for a candidate who tells us he sympathizes with our opposition to this “Holocaust.”
. . .
They do not behave as if they believe what they say. We are thus forced to choose between believing their words or believing their actions. We cannot believe that both are true. We cannot believe that both are honest. If their actions, their very lives, are sincere, then their words are dishonest. If their words are sincere, then their lives are monstrous.

Neither alternative is pleasant, but these are the only options allowed to us.

The same goes with Palin and “death panels.” “If you really believed that some kind of government Gestapo was being sent to euthanize your elderly neighbors, then opposing these forces would not be a matter of choice. It would be a moral obligation.”

I have no time to develop this thought, but I was chewing on it a bit as I was shoveling the driveway this morning. It seems to me a lot of heated rhetoric takes the form of apocalyptic or revolutionary narratives. The listeners are asked to view themselves as special people in special times. I wonder if some of the effectiveness has to do with the trouble folks have in coming to grips with the vast scope of time and space. In the grand scheme of things, we are trivial. And this is daunting. (Alluded to by Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex). As Jon Stewart put it in his Rally for Sanity Speech, “We live in hard times, not end times.”