A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Prosecutor’s election in Carroll County

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There has been a somewhat interesting development in the Carroll County Prosecutor’s race. Perennial candidate and occasional Prosecutor Jim Huffer has decided to run against the Republican candidate, Tricia Thompson.

Huffer and current Prosecutor Rob Ives had see-sawed back and forth as Caroll County prosecutor. Huffer had run against Ives four times, winning twice in non-consecutive elections. In 2004, Huffer was convicted of a misdemeanor drunken driving charge and had apparently decided not to run for office this time around. That changed, apparently because Tricia Thompson, a deputy prosecutor, defeated Ives in the Republican primary.

So, it looks like the wild and woolly world of Carroll County prosecutorial elections will continue.

He said/She said

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The Fort Wayne News Sentinel ran an AP story on Moveon.org’s latest salvo against Chris Chocola.

The ads say the lawmakers accepted thousands of dollars in donations from defense contractors and then “opposed penalties for contractors like Halliburton who overcharged the military in Iraq.”

The article goes on to quote a Chocola spokesperson as complaining that the ads are misleading.

But, here is my real problem with the article. It left me no wiser as to the basis of Moveon.org’s claim about Chocola’s vote against penalizing profiteering defense contractors and the reality of the situation. Did Chris Chocola have the opportunity to save taxpayers money and better serve the troops by voting in favor of penalties for contractors who do not honor their contracts or who inflate their profits by overcharging? Did he take advantage of the opportunity?

Perhaps I could dig up the documents myself, but I’m a lowly blogger doing this in my spare time. The Associated Press has actual reporters and stuff. I’d prefer some facts where they’re available instead of this “he said/she said” brand of political reporting.

Tully on GOP telemarketing

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Matthew Tully has a very amusing column on a telemarketing call he received soliciting funds for the Indiana Republican Party. Unfortunately, the telemarketer was from Wisconsin, he didn’t know much about Indiana politics, and Mr. Tully was in the mood to have a little fun.

Returning to politics, I informed a surprised Lawrence that many Hoosiers aren’t too fond of Gov. Daniels.

Lawrence told me not to worry. Then, in a desperate bid to woo me out of $600, he veered off script.

“We have to look past Mr. Daniels and to the state as a whole,” he said. “That’s my opinion. Because if we’re not happy with him, we can get him out of there.”

Huh? In a quest to raise cash for GOP House candidates, did a GOP moneyman just tell me we could get Daniels “out of there”?

Toll Road litigation: notice of appeal filed

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The plaintiffs in the toll road litigation have filed their appeal. The Plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the toll road privatization legislation. The trial court judge told them they’d have to pay to play — telling them to post a $1.8 billion bond before they were allowed to litigate the issue of whether the legislation was within the constitutional authority of the General Assembly.

I have questions about the judge’s decisions interpreting the public lawsuit statute under which such a bond is authorized. But, that aside, I wonder about the validity of legislation that makes a Constitutional challenge too expensive for anybody to reasonably sustain. Because the sale involves so much money, nobody can get a court to determine whether the transaction was actually within the authority of the General Assembly.

Smith v. Hoy

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Republican Andrew Smith, candidate for House District 77, is trying to gain a foothold in his race against incumbent Phil Hoy. But, he’s trying to do it on the backs of homosexuals and altering Hoy’s statements to do it.

Smith said the letter, [concerning Hoy’s position on homosexual rights] mailed to about 200 GOP voters who describe themselves as opposed to same-sex marriage, deals with legitimate public-policy issues for voters in House District 77.

“Phil gets upset whenever his extremist views are talked about,” he said.

The letter prominently features in enlarged letters a United Church of Christ statement and includes this quote: “Homosexuality is a good gift of our Creator, as is its responsible, loving expression.”

Smith acknowledges that he changed the word “sexuality” to “homosexuality.”

Hoy’s response:

Rep. Phil Hoy, D-Evansville, contends that the letter — paid for by Andrew Smith’s campaign — is a “smoke screen” to energize social conservatives while avoiding more important issues.

“Why don’t we talk about education, health care, Medicaid?” Hoy asked.

This is nothing new, really. Howard Dean identified the strategy succinctly back in 2004 when he referred to the GOP’s “God, Gays, and Guns” wedge strategy. Get folks all worked up over emotional issues, and they won’t notice so much that their paychecks are stagnant, their environment is deteriorating, the government’s safety net is getting frayed, and the super rich are getting a lot richer.

I can certainly understand gays voting primarily on gay rights issues. And I know that there is a certain segment of the population for whom gays being treated equally under the law is anathema. But I would think that for a substantial majority of citizens, gay rights is something of a side issue. Not to minimize its importance to the people it effects directly — for whom the issues are of immense importance, but for the average Hoosier, the ability of gays to marry or otherwise receive the rights and privileges afforded to other citizens simply does not affect their daily lives.

This issue should be discussed, but it should not be emphasized disproportionately to its actual importance. And altering the text of what Hoy actually said is wrong.

For my part, I’ll go with the “if it doesn’t break my leg or pick my pocket, it’s probably o.k.” reasoning. Also, I suspect that the anti-gay position will eventually be seen as being on the wrong side of history, along side Bull Connor and the segregationists. I’m sure there were many, many good people from that era who held segregationist views for reasons they saw as perfectly legitimate. But they were wrong.

Slowing the privatization train

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The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial about the attempts to outsource the FSSA eligibility operation entitled “Slowing the Privatization Train.”

The main issues are that Mitch Roob had connections to one of the two companies, ACS, in the hunt for the billion dollar contract and that one of the companies, Accenture, has had problems in Texas severe enough that Texas legislators threatened to fire them from Texas’s working on its benefit-eligibility system.

The Journal Gazette also takes the administration to task for its apparent indifference to public input, demonstrated by its initial scheduling of the public hearing one day after the contract was to be finalized and five days before it was to be signed — all over the 4th of July Holiday.

Briefs filed in Toll Road lawsuit

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Tom Coyne has an AP article entitled “Arguments filed in Toll Road fight.” It more or less summarizes issues that had already been raised.

The plaintiffs argue that Articles 10 & 11 of Indiana’s Constitution were designed to prevent this sort of public/private partnership involved in this case.

The defendants want Judge Scopelitis to impose a $3.8 billion bond. To receive that sort of order, the defendants would have had to convince the Judge that the Indiana Finance Authority, which isn’t, strictly speaking, a government entity, is covered by the public lawsuit statute, that the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail on the merits, and that the defendants would suffer more from bond not being required than the plaintiffs would suffer from the bond having been required.

On the last point, the State is claiming it would lose $3.8 billion if the lawsuit is allowed to proceed and it’s deal with the foreign consortium falls through. The plaintiffs, however, contend that if the state keeps the Toll Road and applies the same toll increases it would allow the private operators, it could collect more than $11 billion over the next 75 years.

The lawsuit argues that the Indiana Constitution says any proceeds from the Toll Road privatization must be used to pay down state debt.

I’d love to dissect this a little more, but my baby daughter is busily trying to kill herself, and I’d better make sure she survives long enough to enjoy a future of paying high tolls to travel the roads of Indiana — perhaps even the roads of the United States. According to this article, the U.S. House Transportation Committee is looking to hold a lovefest with Governor Daniels in the guise of a committee hearing inviting him to speak about how he “addressed the infrastructure funding shortfall in [Indiana] through a creative new mechanism” and to look into whether such deals are the future of infrastructure financing.

FWJG criticizes cuts in diabetes funding

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Hot on the heels of the study finding that Hoosiers are getting fatter (and smoking more), the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial criticizing cuts in funding for diabetes research.

The American Diabetes Association estimates that nearly 21 million Americans have diabetes, 6.2 million of whom don’t know it. More and more people are diagnosed with diabetes at younger ages – including many children. Diabetes is the only major disease with a death rate that has risen 22 percent since 1990.

Yet the federal government has decided this is a good time to cut the diabetes research budgets at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Given the massive strain that diabetes already places on American’s rickety health care system, it’s hard to imagine how anybody could think that cutting research budgets is going to save the federal government money.

The proposed cuts aren’t large, but because the federal government currently allocates only about a quarter of what it spends on cancer research to study diabetes, health care advocates say the cuts will be more keenly felt in research programs around the country.

. . .

Often described as a “lifestyle disease,” Type 2 diabetes is nearly always a consequence of obesity, lousy diets and physical inactivity that causes the body to stop producing the insulin that regulates blood sugar levels.

I believe this is what they call being penny-wise and pound-foolish. It will save us a bit of money right now, but given what the government ends up spending on treating citizens with diabetes, it will probably cost us more money in the long run.