A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Fervent Trump Supporters Behind Violent Invasion of Capitol Building to Overthrow Democratic Election Results

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I feel a little awkward writing such an alarmist headline. But the facts on the ground justify the alarm. I’m reminded of William Lloyd Garrison:

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.

There is a temptation to dismiss Trump as a buffoon and his followers’ rhetoric as just so much shit-posting on the Internet. But, there they were on January 6th, killing a police officer, carrying zip ties, bent on mayhem, en route to block certification of electoral votes duly cast after a free and fair election. Despite no evidence of irregularities that would have come anywhere close to altering the election results, and despite losing dozens of legal challenges on the subject, Trump urged them on and they followed – seeking to keep Trump as President despite Joe Biden’s having been elected to the office.

The Associated Press documents what was apparent at the time: “The insurrectionist mob that showed up at the president’s behest and stormed the U.S. Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals.” Unsurprisingly, Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) was lying when he tried to say that this attack came from somewhere other than Trump supporters. These people called for the execution of Mike Pence. These Trump supporting conspiracy theorists made death threats against Nancy Pelosi. They brought assault rifles, homemade napalm, and pipe bombs. Per the AP:

“Fight like hell,” Trump exhorted his partisans at the staging rally. “Let’s have trial by combat,” implored his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose attempt to throw out election results in trial by courtroom failed. It’s time to “start taking down names and kicking ass,” said Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama.

Unsurprisingly, participants in this mob have created an internal narrative where they are the heroes of the story: important people in unique times, acting violently against cartoon-level evil. These are not emotionally  mature people, willing to live humbly for a cause in a vast universe of which they are very small pieces. Rather than abide by the often unsatisfactory outcomes of the democratic process, Trump urged them to embrace the more emotionally pleasing notion that only a shadowy kind of supervillainy could have short-circuited their righteous cause and that it was a moral imperative that they violently impose their preferences on the country. Not only was their tantrum permitted — it was imperative!

These are people who get their guidance from the likes of Trump, Alex Jones, QAnon boards, Roger Stone, and others who feed the masses garbage for fun, profit, power, prestige, and to own the libs. It’s all fun and games until people die and our democratic institutions are threatened. I think we’re there.

Indiana Members of Congress Who Support Efforts to Subvert the Election

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Just for posterity, I thought I’d note the Indiana members of Congress who supported the efforts to subvert the election by baselessly objecting to certification of the electoral votes:

  • Jim Baird
  • Jim Banks
  • Greg Pence
  • Jackie Walorski
  • Mike Braun (Senate)*

*Braun withdrew his objection after the Trumpist mob stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop formal recognition of the Presidential election results.

This vote was always symbolic. There was no chance that the election results were going to be reversed, there is no evidence justifying any doubt that the People of the United States elected Joe Biden as President.  The symbolism was ugly even before the right-wing mob forced its way into the Capitol.  But it got an order of magnitude uglier after that happened. Braun, to give him the minimal credit that’s due, tapped out after the mob did its work. Baird, Banks, Pence, and Walorski had the chance to bail at that point, but they have decided to tie their names to this ugly piece of history. As Senator Romney put it:

We gather today due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of his supporters whom he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning. What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. They will be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history. That will be their legacy.

The objectors have claimed they are doing so on behalf of the voters. Have an audit, they say, to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen. Please! No Congressional led audit will ever convince those voters, particularly when the President will continue to claim that the election was stolen. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership. The truth is that President-elect Biden won this election. President Trump lost. Scores of courts, the President’s own Attorney General, and state election officials both Republican and Democrat have reached this unequivocal decision.

We must not be intimidated or prevented from fulfilling our constitutional duty. We must continue with the count of electoral college votes. In light of today’s sad circumstances, I ask my colleagues: Do we weigh our own political fortunes more heavily than we weigh the strength of our Republic, the strength of our democracy, and the cause of freedom?

A disturbing percentage of Indiana’s delegation to Washington are dedicated to their own political fortunes and are absolutely not inclined to respect voters with the truth.

 

Trumpist Mob Attempts to Subvert Democracy

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Just saw a CNN report (I’m sure it’s everywhere) that a Trumpist mob in D.C. has stormed the Capitol Building to try to prevent Congressional acceptance of the electoral vote. This is appalling and should be dealt with in the harshest possible manner. I’m not a fan of violence in the ordinary course of things or in the course of protests. (I’m not one to embrace the idea that “violence is the language of the oppressed” or similar apologies.) But regardless of how you feel about violence in those contexts, this is about as bad as it gets. If you want to enjoy the benefits of law, you have to acquiesce to the political machinery that legitimizes it. For all the happy talk about “natural rights,” without law, there are no rights. There are just a series of opinions about who gets to do what to whom, the persuasive effect of which rests on the ability of the opinion-holder to deploy violence in support of that opinion.

We’ve had an election where, fevered and fantastic claims to the contrary, there is no doubt about the outcome. These people who have brought weapons to Capitol Hill are doing so in the hopes that they can prevent Congress from doing its duty and formalizing the transfer of power from one elected President to the next. These people stand for the principle that their personal preferences should take priority regardless of the election outcome. Not to put too fine a point on it, that’s fucking dangerous.

People who know better are endlessly shitting on the value of government. This is a logical consequence.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

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Rep. Judy wants to repeal environmental protections

Pollution does not respect state borders

Rep. Judy has introduced HB 1127 (317-232-9619). It purports to nullify all regulations of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The bill preemptively starts with some 10th Amendment gobbledy-gook, then declares all regulations passed by the EPA are void in Indiana. So, according to this statute, Congress has no authority to adopt, say, the Clean Water Act under the commerce clause or otherwise.

First of all, it’s ridiculous posturing to say that every clean water regulation adopted by the EPA under the Clean Water Act exceeds the authority granted under the U.S. Constitution. Second, even if the regulations were unconstitutional, the method for rectifying that is going to a federal court and requesting that a judge strike down the law. The Tenth Amendment zealots might claim that they shouldn’t have to go to a federal court — states are co-equal sovereigns, after all. But that ignores the Supremacy Clause. States can’t unilaterally invalidate a federal statute.

The fiscal note reports that Indiana would lose $24.7 million annually. In this case, it should also probably estimate the cost of fighting and losing the inevitable lawsuits.

And all of this is ignoring the more substantive point that there is a good reason for environmental protection to be the subject of federal regulations. Pollution does not respect state lines. Bad environmental policy in the Midwest can cause acid rain in the Northeast. Federal regulation can help ensure that Indiana does not, for example, externalize the costs of producing energy — reducing its costs and dumping them (literally in some cases) on other states.

Sneak Attack!

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Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has a political notebook piece about Eric Miller’s “Sneak Attack” Youtube video. According to the breathless narration, shadowy forces will push through unspecified legislation having to do with sex and kids. From the Advance America blog:

A sneak attack could take place on Tuesday, November 17th at the State House to pass a bill that will harm the families and children of Indiana – your children and grandchildren!

This sneak attack is being orchestrated by the political establishment at the State House and powerful special interest groups and corporations that have millions of dollars to spend to control the legislative process! This sneak attack must be stopped!

(There is more information about the sneak attack that you need to know)

Be watching for more information in the coming days about this sneak attack and the bill that could be introduced at the State House on Organization Day – November 17th.

Legislative leaders deny that they are up to anything sneaky having to do with sex & kids or otherwise — that this rumor could have been cleared up with a phone call. Just the sort of thing you’d expect them to say if they were organizing a Sneak Attack! ™.

Unrelated: I once read where the grifters of the Nigerian prince genre purposefully made the text of their pitches ridiculous. Sure, most people aren’t going to take such awful writing seriously. But – and here is the key – the people who do respond to the poorly written, unbelievable e-mail are necessarily going to be pre-screened for you as among the most gullible members of the population; much more easily parted from their money.

Sneak Attack!

Immigrant Kids Have a Touch of the Ebola. Probably.

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Apparently playing some kind of headline madlibs, Rep. Todd Rokita said that we should be careful about having the Central American immigrant kids in the U.S. because they might have the ebola.

He’s not wrong that we should be conscious of the health status of people entering the U.S., but with this, he’s just looking for excuses to hate on President Obama’s immigration policies in a way that will maybe rile up his supporters. I guess with ebola also in the news, it seemed ripe for a mash up with the immigration issue.

Inconveniently, however:

No human Ebola illness ever has been contracted in the Western Hemisphere and none of the 30,340 unaccompanied minors released this year to relatives or sponsors, including the 245 children placed in Indiana homes, have Ebola, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Rep. Rokita also opined that, if the kids are settled with relatives in Indiana, they’ll go to school and our property taxes will go up.

Inconveniently, however:

Classroom instruction in Indiana schools mainly is funded by state sales and income taxes, not local property taxes.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition: Senators, Intelligent Design, & Ball State

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Senators Kruse, Walker, and Holdman, and Rep. Thompson are trying to inject themselves into a Ball State personnel and curriculum matter. Ball State apparently has a policy against teaching intelligent design as science. Which is fine because whatever intelligent design is, it’s not science. But, there is an astronomy professor who apparently wants to teach it as science.

The trial court in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District had some thoughtful things to say about Intelligent Design and why it isn’t science. The Dover court issued a 139 page decision (pdf). The court noted that ID was, at heart, a religious argument and observed that the writings of leading intelligent design proponents reveal that the designer postulated by intellgient design is the Christian God. This passage by the court gets to the heart of whether Creationism (or intelligent design) ought to be taught as science:

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. …It is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.

However, not teaching it as science apparently strikes these social conservative legislators as anti-religion. So they are making ominous sounding rumblings at Ball State. The letter had ominous undertones of “nice university you got there, be a shame if the General Assembly had to investigate it.”

They suggest that they won’t be happy if the Ball State committee reviewing the matter is made up of scientists who think that intelligent design isn’t science. Which it isn’t. Populating the committee with mainstream views about what is and isn’t science would be stacking the deck, you see.

Once again, feel free to suggest intelligent design is a notion some people have about how the universe was created. But don’t suggest that it’s science. There is no testable, falsifiable hypothesis involved.

SB 367: Go Ahead and Discriminate on the Basis of Religion. It’s Fine.

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An amendment slipped into SB 367 by Rep. Eric Turner on a 9-8 vote would sanction discrimination by contractors with state and local government against employees based on religion.

The amendment alters IC 22-9-1-10 which requires every contract by state or local government to contain a provision that prohibits the contractor, as an employer, from discriminating against an employee based on race, religion, color, sex, disability, national origin, or ancestry.

The amendment adds a subsection that says the contract doesn’t have to prohibit religious discrimination if the contractor is a school, educational, or charitable religious institution owned or conducted by or affiliated with a church or religious institution.

Honest to Goodness, Indiana!

Update: Speaker Bosma apparently doesn’t think this is a good idea and, according to Tony Cook, writing for the Indy Star, will have the bill recommitted to have the amendment stripped out. Still, this doesn’t seem like the sort of language that ought to require a lot of legislative procedural contortions to defeat.

SB 141 – Hamilton Won. And That Makes Some Indiana Senators Unhappy

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In the past, I believe I have recounted a passage from an American history book where, in the first chapter following the American Civil War, the first line was “Hamilton won.” The reference was to the competing visions of the United States between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. The former envisioned a strong federal government. The latter envisioned a weak one. Testing the strength of the federal government, Southern states committed treason in defense of slavery. The rebels in the southern states were too weak to defeat the United States, and Hamilton won.

Senators Delph and Boots have introduced SB 141 which would purport to limit the effect of federal law in Indiana. Also, just by the way, the bill appears to repeal the common law (at least the piece of it in place prior to 1607) as governing law in Indiana. It offers some declarations of the General Assembly about the purpose of the U.S. constitution and then says a federal law found to be unconstitutional pursuant to that declaration is void and unenforceable and, in fact, anyone attempting to enforce such a federal law is guilty of a felony. The statute is conspicuously silent about who has the authority to declare federal law in violation of the federal constitution under this new state statute.

Here is the thing: federal judges get to interpret the federal constitution. And, if they say a law is constitutional, then the Supremacy clause of the United States Constitution says that a state law to the contrary is void. The U.S. Civil War answered the question of who wins when the states and the federal government get into a pissing match over the scope of federal authority.

And the bit about striking the old English common law in place prior to the founding of Jamestown as a source of binding legal authority in Indiana is just bizarre. The common law is the soil in which our democracy grows. Throwing out the stuff at the bottom because it happened to come from Britain is foolish. (If that’s what they’re doing. It looks like knee jerk xenophobia, but maybe they have something else in mind.)

Indiana Youth Group Wins Round in License Plate Litigation

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The Indiana Youth Group, a pro-gay organization that raised the ire of anti-gay legislators by getting a license plate sanctioned by the BMV has won a round in a legal battle over the plates. As a condition of having the plates issued, the group entered into a service contract with the BMV. Apparently digging for an excuse to terminate the plate, the BMV took issue with IYG’s practice of offering low numbered license plates as an incentive for increased donations. (The real problem some Indiana lawmakers had with the group was their advocacy for gay rights.)

In any case, an Administrative Law Judge found that the low plate incentive was a violation of the contract. However, the proper remedy under the contract was not termination but, rather, notice of the violation with a thirty day opportunity to cure the problem and comply with the contract. (Selling or auctioning the plate apparently did carry a consequence of immediate termination but the ALJ decided that the incentive was not a sale or auction.) I doubt that will be popular with the lawmakers who objected to the plate and the decision makers at the BMV. They almost certainly didn’t care a great deal about the low plate incentive so much as they wanted an excuse to kill the plate.

The BMV has until, I believe, June 15, 2013 to appeal the ruling.