A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Scott Tibbs has a post over at Hoosier Access about public records that got me thinking. The question is whether all e-mail by government officials about government business should be subject to the open records laws even when conducted on private e-mail accounts. (And I also read Tibbs to argue that we should avoid the distinction altogether by simply having public officials conduct all public business on their public accounts).

What got me thinking is that this has parallels to the copyright question I wrote about (pdf) a long, long time ago. In that case, I was (following the lead of John Perry Barlow) asking what we are really protecting, the wine or the bottles? Copyright law uses limitations on duplicating the physical object as a proxy for protecting the work itself — the content contained in the physical object. That worked well enough for analog technology where physical limitations made copying difficult. In the digital age, things are different. Digital content flows more like liquid instead of the solid of the analog world.

So too, I think, with this question about public records and e-mail accounts. Public records laws try to grapple with electronic media, but the whole structure is set up around the concept of physical documents located on-site at a government facility. And it brings into focus whether our interest is primarily to let the public look at the government’s stuff or primarily to look at the communications between government officials and the rest of the world. If it’s the latter, how far does it go? Make officials speak on open phone lines — maybe a live government phone channel feed on the Internet? Sounds a little ridiculous; but, what lines are we drawing and why?

And, by the way, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with Mr. Tibbs in any real way at this point. Just noodling with the concept here.

One of the recurring themes in this federal government shutdown are complaints about what is shut down. The executive branch has shut down some of the more visible, relatively popular and, I presume, relatively inexpensive government services. Monuments are one example. Another one I’ve come across was the census.gov website being shut down. The explanation, in effect, is, “Hey, a shut down is a shut down. Non-essential services are suspended.”

There is probably is a political component to shutting these things down, and the President probably could keep those things open if he had a strong desire. But, it puts many of his opponents in an awkward situation. Those given to un-nuanced “small government” rhetoric suddenly find themselves protesting that particular government services are necessary and inexpensive. It’s difficult to shift from “government is wasteful, sucks, and can’t do anything right” to “How dare you shut down this piece of government; people need it, and, besides, it doesn’t cost very much.”

After this is over, it would be nice if it resulted in more nuanced rhetoric about government from politicians. A unicorn would also be nice.

My schedule has been pounded by work and family obligations so, I recognize, my blog has fallen into a state of neglect. I honestly don’t know if anything interesting is going on in state level politics. Given the time, I’d wander around the General Assembly’s interim study committee sites and read the minutes to see what they’re up to.

The federal government shut down is the main bit of news that has penetrated my consciousness. I know that Reps. Stutzman and Rokita had very bad days but, due to how their districts are drawn, are at no political risk for their actions and statements with respect to the shutdown. And that probably hints at why our federal government in particular is so dysfunctional – where a lot of politicians have more to fear from primaries than general elections, you won’t get a lot of attempts to govern from the middle; but, rather efforts to appease the more zealous of your constituents.

Yesterday, I had two minor reminders of the shut down – 1) The Southern District of Indiana issued orders staying proceedings in (most) civil cases that involved the United States as parties because the reduced levels of the federal attorneys did not permit effective representation in those cases. Also, I went to look up something from census.gov but that site is down.

Despite my protests about a busy schedule, I did, nonetheless find time to watch some football on Sunday. The Colts appear to have put together a legitimate team. Great game against the Seahawks. The Enver v. Allas (no “D”) game was entertaining as well: 99 combined points!

Also too, Daylight Saving Time should end by this time of year. Extending it into November is silly. I suggest, if we’re going to do it, that DST end at the equinox (September 21 or thereabouts).

I always remember a quote from David Eddings when it comes to nuance versus simplicity:

Belgarath: “She complicates this whole business, and I don’t like complications. I like nice, simple situations and nice, easy solutions.”

“Good and Evil?” Durnik suggested.

“That’s a difficult one, Durnik. I prefer ‘them and us.’

That came to mind when I read an editorial by the New York Times about Rep. Stutzman (IN-03) and his government shut down quote:

“We’re not going to be disrespected,” Mr. Stutzman said on Wednesday. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

The New York Times opines that Stutzman’s statement reveals that this “crusade, which is ostensibly about dismantling health care reform but is really about humiliating President Obama and the Democrats, about winning something — anything — just to show a group of angry constituents that they are waging a fight against a hated political nemesis.” (The Wabash must be carrying some kind of foot-in-mouth virus; Rep. Rokita also stepped in it over the past couple of days, earning him a mention on The Daily Show).

Mixing politics with policy is nothing new. It’s the bread and butter of the system. Democrats definitely do that too. But it looks like Republicans have over played their hand on this one; and Rep. Stutzman’s statement suggests that the mix is awfully light on the policy.

Vaccination isn’t a personal choice; it’s a choice you impose on others. NPR has an article entitled Vaccine Refusals Fueled California’s Whooping Cough Epidemic.

Apparently they tracked of whooping cough to times and places with high numbers of personal belief vaccination exemption applications:

They found that people who lived in areas with high rates of personal belief exemptions were 2 1/2 times more likely to live in a place with lots of pertussis cases.

Also, according to the story, when a community drops below a 95% vaccination rate, the community loses herd immunity and this exposes vulnerable elements of the population — infants for example — to the disease.

This sort of thing illustrates another limitation on the individual model of citizenship. For a great many issues, viewing the citizenry as nothing more or less than a bunch of discrete individuals and shaping policy accordingly is appropriate. But there are also plenty of cases where the consequences of individual choices are imposed on others in a way that the law is not equipped to address very well.

If my infant incurs thousands of dollars in medical bills to treat whooping cough because a critical mass of Oprah watching, Jenny McCarthyite antivaxxer moms decided to deprive the community of herd immunity; who do I sue?

I was enjoying the evening by walking my dog and listening to the Nerdist podcast featuring Ken Marino, formerly of The State.

They were riffing on how much the media landscape has changed since the early/mid-90s when The State was on and Chris Hardwick was at TV. This hit home particularly because, for whatever reason, I’d been noodling around last night reading the Gilligan’s Island entry on Wikipedia and had earlier had a conversation about how I wasn’t too worried about my kids’ screen time in light of the fact that I had spent so much of my childhood watching dreck like Gilligan’s Island, Three’s Company, and whatever awfulness the three networks saw fit to cough up.

I don’t have a lot to offer besides “gee whiz,” but Gee Whiz! I’m sure media fracturing has caused all kinds of hardship and folks long for the good old days; but Lowest Common Denominator programming is no longer the beginning and end of media offerings.

My childhood was filled with the few syndication offerings from the big networks. Some of the basic cable offerings were emerging through my teen years. Cable really seemed to start exploding around my college years. Toward the end of law school was when the Internet was becoming a thing — my future wife and I bonded over a mutual love of the Internet. We would sometimes go to the computer lab and surf the web together. (What a date!) I remember being floored by Real Audio coming out during my first few years of work. Seems like I’ve been Christmas shopping over the Internet since probably 1998. And since then, there has been a deluge – Youtube, Pandora, Netflix, smartphones, Facebook, Twitter, etc. And I’m certainly behind the curve if you compare me to kids with a lot more free time.

Is it a good thing? Bad thing? I’m sure there is good and bad with the media explosion. But, at this point, it hardly matters – it’s just something that has to be dealt with. Ride the wave and hope it doesn’t crash on you, I guess.

Edited to add: Looks like I goofed on my premise about the debt ceiling. It’s a spending bill Congress didn’t pass. I’m so conditioned to see that as the negotiating point. This doesn’t obviously reflect well on my reliability as an observer of federal politics. Maybe I’ll just repost this the next time the debt ceiling fight comes around.

So, Congress couldn’t come up with an agreement on how to raise the money it already spent, so the government has shut down. Or, rather, parts of it are shutting down. When a constituent starts grumbling about this or that government function not being performed, a lawmaker will inevitably say, “oh, it’s not that part of government I want defunded; it’s all of those [vague gesture] other parts of government that are wasteful.”

The most recent incident precipitating the shut down was the House Republicans passing a bill that tied continued payment of our creditors to Congress undoing health care reform. The Senate decided it couldn’t go along with that.

The news is full of opinions about “who will the public blame” for the shut down? The general public will blame the House Republicans. If the Senate Democrats demanded adoption of a single payer health care system in return for raising the debt ceiling and the House Republicans wouldn’t go along; the public would (rightly) blame the Senate Democrats. Congress has, for the better part of 4 decades, authorized spending in excess of the revenues it takes in. The status quo among Republicans and Democrats alike has been to raise the debt ceiling without much fuss. House Republicans are now routinely using the debt ceiling as a negotiating tactic to obtain concessions from political opponents who (rightly) view defaulting on our debts as an unmitigated disaster.

Again, this debt ceiling business isn’t like a family tightening its belt and deciding, for example, not to eat at restaurants. Rather, it’s more like going to the restaurant and deciding to skip out on the check. The way to go about resolving the debt problem is to identify those specific government functions whose costs outweigh the cots and eliminate them and to raise taxes sufficient to pay for the remainder. Skipping out on the check isn’t a solution. And threatening to skip out on the check unless your spouse does everything you want is just plain dysfunctional.

Jon Easter has a good blog post on Ernie Pyle. The impetus for the post is that IU is apparently contemplating a reorganization involving the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism wherein Ernie Pyle’s legacy will not be featured prominently.

Growing up, I’m not sure I ever heard much about Pyle. For me, World War II journalism pretty much began and ended with William Shirer. My first exposure to Pyle was walking by the Journalism school at IU en route to the law school. Seems like he’s the kind of guy that Indiana ought to feature as prominently as we can. Small town kid made good; hard working, compassionate, grounded, perceptive, successful in his field.

Easter observes that, even if the School of Journalism is reorganized to reflect changes in the media environment; there is still room to recognize Pyle.

Howard Greninger has an article for the Terre Haute Trib Star about timbers from the Wabash Erie Canal that were discovered submerged in a local lake and are being studied. Vigo County is hoping to use them in an educational park display but have to figure out how to do it without the timbers deteriorating – the water apparently helped preserve them.

The canal was open to Terre Haute by 1847. The culvert, which the timbers supported, was built around 1850. Some timbers for the platform are 20 inches wide.

Don Burden, architectural historian for Gray & Pipe, a member of the White Water Canal Trail Inc., in 2007 estimated that the trees used for the culvert were already 300 or more years old when they were cut for the canal.

Historical engineering documents showed the site was for culvert No. 151 of the Wabash and Erie Canal.

The Wabash and Erie Canal linked the Great Lakes to the Ohio river via artificial waterway. It was part of the Indiana Mammoth Internal Improvement Act that, in conjunction with the Panic of 1837, pretty well ruined Indiana’s finances. According to Wikipedia, however, the Wabash and Erie was the most successful of the canal projects in the state, though never to the extent anticipated.

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has a very good article on a proposal being considered by the General Assembly’s pension oversight committee. I’m out of time to write much about it this morning, but wanted to throw up a link. It has to do with changing a pension option for new State retirees from more of a guaranteed return annuity to a privately managed fund where the employee bears the risk. I’m always a little stunned when the terms of compensation for employment can be changed after the fact. A lot of these employees have traded huge chunks of the only life they’ll get in anticipation of a secure pension.