A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Lesley Weidenbener, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has an article entitled Study: Same-sex marriage amendment would impact 600 Indiana laws. This is according to a report released Monday by Indiana Equality and students from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. (I briefly looked for the report on line without success.) The amendment would change Indiana’s constitution to prohibit laws recognizing rights for unmarried individuals, including same sex partners, that are similar to rights granted through marriage.

Among the laws documented by the report:

• For purposes of Medicaid, “immediate family” includes spouse and dependent children under 21 years of age.

• The spouse of a mentally ill individual may initiate a proceeding to commit that individual to an appropriate institution.

• A spouse may request the health records of a deceased spouse.

• A spouse is not legally responsible for the contracts his or her spouse signs or the civil harms she causes.

This is probably a good strategy by proponents of marriage equality. I have found that people who have ideologies very different from mine, nevertheless, tend to have common ground with me when we focus on particulars. For example, I think you’ll find that folks who generally feel that “gay marriage is bad” will nevertheless not have a problem with unmarried gay partners (or unmarried heterosexual partners for that matter) having access to one another’s health records. If it’s just the health records, you can amend just that law, I suppose. But, if the bundle of rights available to married people reach a critical mass of provisions that most folks agree should be available to married and unmarried partners alike, I think you’ll see support for the Constitutional amendment slide away due to a lack of appetite for that ambiguous second sentence: “A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized.”

The Evansville Courier Press has an editorial on Gov-elect Pence’s decision to defer implementation of health care exchanges to the federal government instead of exercising local control as the health care act permits.

The editorial drags out the old chestnut about Pelosi saying that we can’t know what’s in the health care act until we vote on it. Republicans seeking to score points on Obamacare have delighted in using that quote as ostensible proof that Pelosi was acting in a dictatorial or rash fashion – essentially forcing legislators to buy a pig in poke. But, the context of the quote was simply that, at the time, the particulars of the legislation was a moving target – as negotiations amended this or that; which – and this was the point of the quote – made it difficult to defend against false allegations about what was in there. (See, e.g. “death panels.”) It’s even harder to prove a negative about a document when the contents of that document are in flux.

But the Courier Press makes a good point – it’s time to stop using Obamacare for scoring political points. It’s the law now, and, like it or not, the best course of action now is to optimize its implementation. Make the best of a bad situation if you were opposed to it. The alternative is to make things worse for Hoosiers. However, the paper makes another good point – it’s hard to know whether federally run exchanges or locally run exchanges are ultimately better for Hoosiers.

It’s probably even tougher because many lawmakers and politicians have wasted the past few years trying to wish away Obamacare – time we could have spent preparing for implementation. (On a much larger scale, I expect we’ll see a similar dynamic when it comes to the impact of global warming – cursing the time we wasted pretending it wasn’t true.)

Kind of phoning it in today with a re-run, but my Thanksgiving post from last year was solid, and I’m not sure I can improve on it at the moment. So, Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

—–

I’ve blogged about this before – 2007, in particular, but in the recent past, I’ve come to learn that the “First Thanksgiving” has only a nodding acquaintance with the mythology we’re taught in school. At the end of the day, it boils down to our country’s harvest festival and, as such, the literal history probably isn’t that important.

As I recall the version I learned in school, the Pilgrims left England because they hated religious oppression, they arrived a Plymouth Rock, hewed a settlement out of the wilderness, received the help of some friendly Indians; in particular an English speaking one named Squanto; they were taught how to plant corn with the help of fish fertilizer; and then, at harvest time, had a feast to celebrate.

The reality is a little more complicated. The Pilgrims mostly did not think the right kind of religious oppression was underway in England. The Pilgrims had left England and settled in Holland for about 10 years; but, among other things, they thought the environment was a little too permissive for the kids and that the congregation was losing its identity. Their trip was poorly timed, bringing them to New England in November 1620. While on the Mayflower, the Mayflower Compact was created and signed in response to the suggestion of certain passengers that, once in the New World, they would be at liberty to do as they pleased.

Arriving in New England at the beginning of winter was a bad idea. Fortunately for the Pilgrims, the Native Americans along the coast had been decimated by disease – leaving empty villages with at least a little in the way of food and supplies. The eventual site of Plymouth Colony was in an area that had been cleared by the Patuxet before they had been ravaged by smallpox.

The Pilgrims were assisted by Squanto (Tisquantum), a Patuxet who had been kidnapped years earlier and enslaved by Thomas Hunt and taken to Spain to be sold. Some friars intervened, and Squanto was not sold. He made his way to England and worked for some time as a shipbuilder. After about 5 years away from America, he got back to find his tribe had been wiped out by disease. Shortly thereafter, he seems to have been captured by the Wampanoag people and may have still been a captive when he was acting as an intermediary between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims; leading to some tension later on between Squanto and Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader. Squanto may have been playing the two sides against each other to some extent. I even read that the actual Thanksgiving feast was as much a display of arms and strength among the competing sides as a celebration of the harvest. I’m not sure how much to credit that.

Regardless of the beginnings, what I think is important to remember is that the tradition stems from a time where people can and did starve. Survival was uncertain from year to year where a bad harvest could mean famine in the winter. People had an incomplete understanding of the science behind weather and agriculture, so Native Americans and Europeans mixed their gratitude with a fair amount of superstition, believing, perhaps, that angry gods would cause famine in the future and gods who felt well respected would be more beneficent. Even without incorporating the supernatural, gratitude is entirely appropriate. I am thankful to live in a society (if not necessarily a world) with a secure food supply. And, of course, I have a lot of other things for which to be grateful – a loving family, a good job, and a warm place to sleep primary among them.

So, take stock of what you have going for you; and if you’re not cold and hungry tonight, you have it a lot better than a good chunk of the multitudes that have lived over the course of human history. And, if you think your good fortune is attributable to God or the Great Spirit or Ceres or Demeter or being responsible for good harvest; by all means offer thanks to them as well. Gratitude isn’t a limited resource; but should be spent freely.

Michael Hainey at GQ asked Marco Rubio a “gotcha” question:

GQ: How old do you think the Earth is?

Marco Rubio: I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.

The problem isn’t with Rubio, exactly. I don’t believe that he’s actually mystified. The problem is with a political constituency that regards the answer as controversial or as an affront that would cause them to withdraw their support.

The answer is only a mystery if you insist on it being so. Human ingenuity has developed methods of thinking and tools for ascertaining the age of the earth. The earth is 4.54 billion years old. Not 6,000. That the fact doesn’t comport with the mythology of bronze age shepherds shouldn’t pose a significant problem for a major 21st century political figure in the strongest country on the planet. And, yet, it does.

I’m not pretending to be a policy wonk on health issues, just regurgitating what I read from more informed people. Some key rule proposals under Obamacare have been released.

An important one has to do with premium protection and sets criteria and boundaries within which insurers can adjust premiums. Most importantly is that the insurance is available to all comers who can pay these premiums — no denials for pre-existing conditions or denial of renewals for people who get sick. This requires a broadening of the insurance pool — the entire point of insurance is for the healthy to subsidize the sick. For more sick people, you need more healthy people (or else higher prices among the healthy people). That’s the reason for the mandate.

One of the rules would limit premium variations to 1) age; 2) tobacco use within limits, 3) family size, and 4) geography.

The factors are, with respect to a particular plan or coverage: (1) whether the plan or coverage applies to an individual or family; (2) rating area; (3) age, limited to a variation of 3:1 for adults; and (4) tobacco use, limited to a variation of 1.5:1. All other rating factors are prohibited. Thus, PHS Act section 2701 effectively prohibits several factors currently in use today, such as health status, claims experience, gender, industry, occupation, and duration of coverage, among others. Other factors that might be considered for rating purposes, such as eligibility for tax credits, prior source of coverage, and credit worthiness, also are prohibited.

Proposed rule at p. 22. A footnote says that the variations are multiplicative — for example, an old smoker could have a premium 4.5 times the base rate.

I think this kind of thing is a move in the right direction. Generally, I think we should either let people die if they don’t have enough money or provide universal coverage. A hybrid of those options tends to gravitate toward the worst features of both.

Today is the 149th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Evansville Courier Press has an editorial noting with approval that a new stretch of I-69 opens today from Evansville to Crane — about 20 miles short of Bloomington.

There are a number of reasons to be critical about this development: the stretch from Bloomington to Indianapolis won’t be financed soon, if ever; what has been built was financed by selling off the Toll Road in Northern Indiana for the next 7 decades; by not using existing roads, the route has an unnecessary environmental impact. Interstates generally have led to decline of towns around other highways, have represented a policy choice to subsidize automobile travel over other kinds of transportation, and have often been developed in a way that is unmindful of the communities through which they pass.

Still, this seems like something of a big deal. Evansville is right that it’s cut off from the rest of Indiana. I, for one, have never been there because, without business taking me directly to the city, travel doesn’t take me past the city. Also, whereas once we as a country were prodigious road builders, now we seem to struggle just to maintain the ones we have. It’s nice to see us actually building something from time to time.