I don’t think I’ve mentioned the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” approach to allowing gays in the military on this blog before, but probably because my take is pretty simple: get rid of it; let gays serve on an equal footing.

It occurred to me to mention this because Maureen Groppe, writing for the Indy Star, has an article about Indiana’s Congressional delegation’s position on the policy.

Andre Carson and Pete Visclosky are on the side of history with this one, explicitly favoring repeal. Mike Pence and Steve Buyer will find a spot in the history books next to the folks who were reluctant to let blacks serve in the military. Pence thinks all of this talk about equality is a bunch of liberal hoo-ha (I paraphrase), and Buyer is very concerned about morale and discipline – I’m not sure if he’s afraid that the military will turn into a sort of Gomorrah with guns, “carrying each other’s baggage” like so many camouflaged rentboys or what. I can’t see where Dan Burton was asked, but I’ll assume he’s against repeal.

The rest of the Indiana delegation: Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth, Baron Hill, Evan Bayh, and Dick Lugar seem to be waffling in one way or another. I don’t believe Ellsworth responded, and the rest of them were going to hide behind the study commissioned to provide cover for the politicians who have to make the decision.

We don’t hire these guys for their sexual activity or their choice in significant others any more than we hire them for the color of their skin. We hire them to fight or provide support to those who do. We hire them for their love of country and willingness to die for same. And yet, once upon a time, we excluded or segregated blacks who wanted to serve in the military. That didn’t make any sense. And it doesn’t make any sense to exclude gays based on their sexual orientation. There will be excuses for excluding gays, but there were excuses for excluding blacks. But, at the end of the day, we stopped discriminating against blacks in the military, and it was the right thing to do. Same with gays.

Maureen Groppe has a news story about a Kaiser Family Foundation study on the impact of the health care reform bill. The value of these reports is going to be marginal, I think, if they don’t (and I’m not sure how they could at this point) get to the bottom line of “what is this going to cost me and how much health care am I getting for my dollar.” Gov. Daniels will, no doubt, seize on on a projected increase of $500 – $900 million for the state of Indiana. But, if I’m paying more tax dollars to Indiana, but my health insurance premiums flatline instead of continuing to skyrocket, I’m not going to care that the money is getting funneled through the State instead of Anthem – (the state is likely to rake less off the top if it comes down to it). What I care about is that my health care costs become more manageable or, at the least, become unmanageable less quickly.

And I’m not sure how good a job these reports are going to do in helping folks decide how good or bad a deal it is for them, personally.

Not to be a stickler about the law or anything, but IC 3-10-8-1(3) was brought to my attention as it applies to Rep. Souder’s vacating Indiana’s Third Congressional seat:

A special election shall be held. . . whenever a vacancy occurs in the office of United States Representative unless the vacancy occurs less than thirty (30) days before a general election.

Other than that language about the vacancy occurring less than 30 days before a general election, I don’t think there is an exception for those situations where the Governor believes selecting representation for a Congressional District would be a waste of money. The use of the word “shall” is generally understood to be mandatory. Where the legislature is leaving the matter up to the discretion of a public official, generally it uses the word “may.”

Rand Paul, following his nomination as the GOP candidate to be the Senator from Kentucky, made a bit of a splash on the issue of Civil Rights. Rachel Maddow asked him about his position (also see) about whether he would have supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically the portion that makes it illegal for businesses open to the public to discriminate on the basis of race.

Paul danced a little bit, but I think he was reasonably forthright as these things go. He is personally opposed to racist behavior. He thinks that legislation to prohibit racism in public institutions is and was appropriate. But, he does not favor legislation that limits a property owner’s right to discriminate on the basis of race.

I don’t think Rand Paul is a racist, but I can see why an ideology that elevates private property rights above other sorts of rights might appeal to those who are. Where minorities don’t have as much private property, a preference for private property rights over other rights can effectively exclude minorities from a good deal of the public sphere or relegate them to second class status. The test, of course, is how dedicated the person is to private property rights in other contexts: Can it prohibit sale of pornography or nude dancing on private property? Prostitution? Marijuana use?

My guess is Rand Paul is dedicated enough to private property rights that he’d allow private property rights to trump the government’s interest in battling social evils – racism, pornography, drugs – pretty much across the spectrum. My guess is that a non-trivial segment of people voting for him wouldn’t necessarily be so even handed.

For my part, watching the oil gushing out in the Gulf, it’s hard not to conclude that private property rights are just one important interest among many to be valued. Clearly the invisible hand isn’t going to clean up that mess. The government is going to have to be involved in a serious way, and, in hindsight, it should have been more involved – even at the expense of some private property rights – prior to the disaster.

The Palladium-Item has a story about federal charges against a mortgage broker with a screwy factual background. The broker’s world started unraveling when she, apparently, paid a couple of guys to rough up a real estate investor who was, if I followed the story right, the boss of the broker’s daughter.

Anyway, the broker is facing charges that she falsified loan application documents and took undisclosed commissions for selling higher interest rate loans. This highlights one of the factors that got us into our present real estate bubble induced financial mess. The incentive structures were all wrong. This woman’s incentives were all geared toward selling a mortgage, preferably at as high an interest rate as possible. The qualifications of the borrower were of no real concern to her since she had no long-term stake in the loan.

Once the loan closed, the mortgage broker coud take the money and run. Then the loan would be sold up the chain, packaged, and securitized. AIG sprinkles magic fairy dust on the product, “insuring” it with money AIG didn’t have, and some credit agency blesses it, turning it into a AAA security, and then pension funds pay top dollar for it. Presto! A figment of a corrupt mortgage broker’s imagination is now a bullet-proof investment opportunity, suitable for widows and orphans.

Looks like active Indiana blogger and attorney, Paul Ogden, suffered a set back from the 7th Circuit in the case of Odgen v. Atterholt (pdf).

In the course of his employment as manager of the title insurance division at the Indiana Department of Insurance, Mr. Ogden wrote a memo laying out criticisms of Chief Deputy Commissioner Carol Mihalik who had oversight of the the title insurance division by virtue of her responsibilities with the Consumer Protection Unit of which the division was part. The memo was submitted to James Atterholt, the director of the Department of Insurance and requested that the title insurance division be removed from the Consumer Protection Unit. Shortly thereafter Atterholt gave Mr. Ogden a choice between resigning or being terminated. A lawsuit followed.

The complaint apparently had a lot of state law claims as well as a federal claim that being forced out based on a whistle-blowing memo was a free speech violation. The district court and the 7th Circuit disagreed, holding that because this speech was in the course of government employment, the government as employer could terminate the employment without committing a First Amendment violation.

The federal claims having been resolved, the state law claims have been remanded to a state court.

I was busy with paying work when news of the Souder resignation broke. It’s been maybe 9 or 10 hours, and it already feels like old news. But, it seems momentous enough that I figure I should comment.

Souder has been committing adultery with one of his staff members (female), and he got caught. Because he got caught, he is resigning. The rumor I heard was that a newspaper was sniffing around about Souder and his mistress getting caught having sex in a public park. But, I hasten to add, if this has been confirmed, I haven’t seen it yet. (TPM Muckraker has a story on this – they say that DNR searched its records and didn’t find an official record.)

Sanctimonious public officials grate on me, so it’s somewhat satisfying when a little petard hoisting sends them packing. But my amusement at this sort of thing is tempered by the realization that Souder isn’t some abstract character in a story. He’s a real person with, and this is the important part, a real family. His family members are no doubt hurting from this, and I have no particular cause to wish them ill.

So, in the course of 5 years, we are seeing a dramatic sea change in Indiana’s Congressional delegation. Of the 11 Representatives and Senators representing Indiana in 2006, only Senator Lugar, Mike Pence, Dan Burton (barely), and Pete Visclosky (if a corruption investigation doesn’t bring him down) seem likely to be serving in 2011. Sen. Bayh is stepping down. Chris Chocola was defeated by Joe Donnelly. Steve Buyer is resigning ostensibly to take care of his wife, but also under the cloud of his sketchy Frontier Foundation funding. Julia Carson passed away in 2007 and was replaced by her grandson, Andre. John Hostetler was beaten by Brad Ellsworth. And Mike Sodrel was beaten by Baron Hill.

I’ve already seen one of the standard defenses to the sanctimonious hypocrite scandal. It goes something like, “it’s not wrong for someone like Mark Souder to proclaim the sanctity of marriage and good, wholesome values even if he falls short in his personal life.” I’m always puzzled by the lack of concern for integrity this defense implies. It’s enough, apparently, that a public figure says the right things about morality and pretends to believe those things because hearing those things and seeing the pretense is “good for us” somehow.

The problem, as I see it, is with condemnation of those who don’t necessarily speak the approved words about proper morality or engage in the pretense that everyone adheres (or should adhere) to that particular code.

If the family values crowd characterized their version of morality as worthy aspirations instead of imperatives, the departure from which is sinful, I would probably agree. And if guys like Souder said that these aspirations were good ideas that he, personally, was lousy at attaining, I wouldn’t have much to hold over his head right now. But there seems to be a judgment of unworthiness applied to others who are not members of the tribe that is rarely applied as vigorously to folks like Souder.

Now, at least, Souder appears prepared to honor his term limit pledge about four years late. Maybe that will allow him to focus on whatever marital pledges he may have made.

The Urbanophile, always worth reading, has a post about The Brookings’ Institution’s report on the State of Metropolitan America. Cities within regions are diverse and don’t necessarily share the same problems simply because they’re geographically near one another. “Columbus is not Toledo.” Brookings recommends an approach where federal government deals with some national issues on its own but lets a lot of the detail work fall to cities themselves. One problem with this approach, that the Urbanophile notes, is that this effectively means putting policy in the hands of the states which have a tendency toward hostility toward municipalities:

Generally I’m a fan of devolution. However, in this case what we are really talking about is devolving de facto to the states. And as we’ve seen repeatedly, state governments are to varying degrees implicitly or explicitly hostile to cities. There are almost no effective or empowered regional entities in America and municipalities are often hamstrung by state laws that limit their ability to deal with their own problems. In a choice between federal vs. state government, I’m usually a state and local kind of guy, but when it comes to metro policy, I’d probably have to say the feds are more likely to get it right, alas.

In Indiana, local government is micromanaged to a large degree from Indianapolis. One popular tactic recently (and quite possibly for a long time) is to impose a list of requirements and severely limit the available methods for paying – all but mandating that local government officials vote for a particular funding option (e.g. raising local option income taxes to deal with property tax freezes coupled with the state mandated requirement of paying for various local services.)

Also of note, the Urbanophile points out that “healthy” cities in the area – Indianapolis and Pittsburgh – have experienced a good deal of increase in their immigrant population and have seen their population with educational degrees increase. One difference between Indy and Pittsburgh is the under-18 population. Indianapolis seems to have a healthy number of youngsters whereas Pittsburgh is aging.

(That ‘under-18’ statistic makes me think of a post for another day. I wonder how the ‘families make adults’ v. ‘adults make families’ culture war debates play out in terms of immigrant populations. A lot of the youthful vitality in American cities these days comes from immigrant populations with larger families; but these populations are more likely to vote “blue.”)

Sometimes we, by which I mean Americans generally, remind me of the children of successful entrepreneurs. We have been given an awful lot without having to work that hard for it. This warps one’s perspective and creates an awful sense of entitlement.

This article out of USA Today reinforces that notion.

Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.

The cries of “taxed enough already” are echoes of the child who has so damn many toys it’s just such a burden being asked to pick them up. Our prosperity is the result of abundant resources clawed at great effort from the wilderness and native peoples. It is the result of sweatshops, ingenuity, hard work, and thrift. It is the result of the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors.

It’s true enough that many of us work fairly hard and have contributed in some measure to the overall bounty. But, I get the sense that our individual efforts are the tip of the iceberg. If we’d been born in, say, Somalia, is there any doubt that a similar level of individual effort would have left any of us far more impoverished than we are in the U.S.?

We need to get our financial house in order. We need to stop sending good money after bad. But, we also need to tone down the incessant whining about the level of taxes in light of the fact that, historically (not to mention comparatively with respect to the rest of the world), they’re pretty low.