Politico has an article entitled “The nuking of Dan Coats.” First, a disclosure. I don’t care for Dan Coats’ policies. In a race between him and Evan Bayh, I’d vote for Bayh.

With that out of the way, I find the vigorous pushback against the prospects of his candidacy revealing, and what it reveals annoys me. Politico describes the push:

In the week since Dan Coats announced he was preparing to challenge Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, Democrats have launched a withering, no-holds-barred assault on the former Republican senator, throwing him off balance and raising questions about whether his prospective candidacy has suffered lasting damage.
. . .
The ferocious barrage — a coordinated effort unleashed by a small core of senior Democratic strategists in Washington, top Bayh political hands, and Indiana Democratic Party officials — has partisans on both sides of the aisle wondering not whether Coats has been bruised by the punches, but whether he will be able to pick himself off the canvas.

Now, when was the last time you heard Senate Democrats described as ferocious about anything? What this tells me is that they are capable of being vigorous and proactive, but choose not to when it comes to actually getting anything done in terms of policies. Challenge a centrist Democrat’s incumbency, and you’re going to get kneecapped. Derail a Democratic policy initiative and they are as helpless and passive as newborn kittens. Sure, there are procedural hurdles in the Senate that don’t apply to the campaign trail, but I guarantee the last year would have played out a lot differently if the Senate Democrats had taken the political crowbars to filibuster supporters the way the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is going after Coats.

Again, it’s not that they can’t. So, it must be that they don’t care to. The Democrats need to get someone like Howard Dean back in position to put some political energy behind policy initiatives instead of just becoming animated when an incumbent is threatened. From my view, it seems the the Democratic base isn’t so much frustrated by policy positions that are too liberal or too conservative, but rather by a passiveness that seems indifferent to actually accomplishing anything. It’s back to the days when Daschle and the Democratic Leadership Council were running the Democratic Party and the party was routinely getting its clocked cleaned by aggressive, energetic Republicans. It wasn’t until Dean stepped up and showed some intestinal fortitude (not liberal, necessarily, just not waffling and passive) that the Democrats got some of their mojo back.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter (which, I might add has taken a fair amount of energy away from this blog – it’s a lot easier to post a random thought on Twitter than a full blown blog entry.) So, I found this blog post on PeteSearch fascinating. It identifies some regional characteristics about Facebook from peoples’ connections, fan pages, etc.

The old Union states and the Confederacy seem to be identifiable as distinct regions. Dixie has a lot of nearby connections, and not so many far flung connections, and prominent displays of their love of God. The Union (which he labels Stayathomia) is also characterized by nearby connections and not so many far flung connections, but God doesn’t figure so prominently as sports and beer.

Greater Texas seems to revolve around “a central city” which I’m guessing is Dallas, and God is loved but comes in second to the Cowboys. There’s a “Mormonia” intermixed with the “Nomadic West” with Mormon communities likely to be strongly connected with other Mormon communities over long distances. They like Glenn Beck and, for some reason, Twilight. The Nomadic West is characterized by a tendency for small communities to be strongly connected to distant cities. “For example, Boise, ID, Bend, OR and Phoenix, AZ all have much wider connections than you’d expect for towns their size.” These folks like Starbucks.

Finally the Pacific West is divided up into Socalstan, with a center of gravity in L.A. and a tight knot around Seattle.

It would be interesting to see how this sort of thing changes over time. Will the connections get more diffuse? Will regional alignments shift around?

Rep. GiaQuinta’s HB 1324 would give counties options for disposing of vacant lots acquired at tax sale.

Permits a county to sell a vacant parcel acquired by the county in a tax sale to the owner of a contiguous residential parcel for $1 if the contiguous parcel is entitled to the standard property tax deduction. Allows the county to establish criteria to identify vacant parcels eligible for sale. Establishes procedures for conduct of the sale, transfer of the vacant parcel, and consolidation of the vacant parcel with the contiguous parcel. Provides that the consolidated parcel is entitled to an exemption from property taxation in the amount of the assessed value of the vacant parcel at the time of consolidation until the earlier of the following: (1) the next transfer of title after the consolidation; or (2) five years after the transfer of the title to the successful applicant.

This passed the House on a 88-7 vote and is waiting to be heard in the Senate.

I intend on supporting the local franchise in the upcoming sporting event.

Stampede Blue, as always, is doing fantastic work covering the Colts.

Just a little shameless self-promotion here – former Representative Dave Crooks does a radio show in Southern Indiana about Indiana politics on Saturday mornings. He was nice enough to invite me on to talk about blogging about Indiana politics. The show will air tomorrow (2/6/10) at 9 a.m., and you can listen live with streaming audio or archived audio. It’s out of my range, but for those in the area, the radio station is WAMW 107.9 FM/1580 AM out of Washington, IN.

Also on this edition will be Spencer Valentine of A Loyal Opposition.

Update The show archive is available here.

Jennifer Niven’s book, The Aqua Net Diaries, has just been released. My interest is that it was written by a woman, Jennifer Niven (nom de plume of Jennifer McJunkin) a couple of years ahead of me at Richmond High School in the 1980s. It’s a memoir of her days at Richmond.

The Palladium-Item has a write up by Rachel Sheeley. Apparently Jennifer’s buddy Joe Kraemer figures prominently in the story. Joe’s brother was one of my sister’s best friends.

Now, as luck would have it, I have warm memories of Jennifer and Joe who were, I believe, seniors, when I was a freshman on the school’s speech team. As I recall, I wasn’t any good on the speech team at the time, but they were awfully nice to me anyway. I don’t suppose they have any particular memory of that – mighty seniors make a greater impact on lowly freshmen than the reverse.

So, it’s great to see some hometown kids making good – particularly when they were (so far as I knew anyway) good kids who treated people well.

That’s my long way of encouraging anyone with interest in such things to pick up a copy of the book.

The Indianapolis Public Schools announced that they were going to delay their start time by two hours on the Monday after the Super Bowl, hoping to avoid a repeat of 2007 when bus drivers called in sick en masse after the Super Bowl. This resulted in them having to cancel classes entirely that day. Abdul is reporting that the proposed two hour delay solution is running into static from the State.

[T]he Indiana Department of Education tells Indiana Barrister News that state rules mandate students must be in school the entire time and delays can only be used for emergency situations like the weather.

The State says IPS would have to make up the day later in the school year, or let school out two hours later on Monday. A Department spokesman says IPS could ask for a waiver to allow the 2-hour delay, but it’s unlikely it would get it for the Super Bowl.

To which I say: buncha kill joys. This strikes me as inflexible bureaucracy at its finest. The two hour delay is a reasonable solution to a real, albeit somewhat frivolous, problem. Is education more important than football? Well, yeah. But that two hours of school time isn’t going to make or break the kids, and the Super Bowl isn’t an every day issue.

Once upon a time, local leaders would be able to make these common sense gestures as a matter of civic pride. Now there is a mechanized bureaucracy that abhors flexibility and ad hoc solutions.

The Senate has come up with a way to keep up voting on election day in the face of increasing voter disillusionment – election day alcohol sales. The Senate passed SB 118 on a 30-20 vote which repeals a prohibition on alcohol sales during primary, general, and special elections.

Additionally, the Senate passed SB 119 on a 32 – 18 vote which extends Sunday retail liquor sales (restaurants and the like) a bit. Currently, they can sell alcohol from 10 – 12:30 a.m. Under this bill that would be changed to 7 – 3:00 a.m.

Probably I can’t cite the awesome power of Masson’s Blog for this turn around, but following up on a post I did yesterday about budget cuts to the Meat and Poultry Inspection Program (MPIP), Ken Kusmer, writing for the Associated Press reports that the Daniels Administration is backing away from some planned cuts.

The administration of Gov. Mitch Daniels is backing away from a plan to cut in half the budget for state inspections of meat processors after complaints that it would drive some plants out of business and hurt small farmers.
. . .
Animal Health Board Chief of Staff Doug Metcalf says the budget cut still will result in laying off some state inspectors but not as many once feared.

The board inspects about 130 smaller meat processors that employ more than 1,500 workers. They processed about 80,000 head of beef, hogs, lambs and goats last year valued at more than $35 million.

First, a heads up: my information is based on a website of unknown (to me) provenance. But, it seems plausible, so I’ll pass it along. The Pasture to Plate blog has flagged one impact of Gov. Daniels budget cuts. Basically, one of the cuts is apparently to the Meat and Poultry Inspection Program (MPIP) which is an inspection required for locally grown meats to be sold to individuals or farmers markets or the like.

Dear Friends,

I want you to know the ability of family farmers to provide locally-raised meat to our fellow Hoosiers is being threatened by crippling state budget cuts to the Meat and Poultry Inspection Program (MPIP).

To sell meat at farmers’ markets, or direct to families, or to restaurants or donate to food banks our meat has to be processed at an inspected facility.
. . .