A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

One of the pervasive problems in America these days (yup, I’m doing one of *those* posts) is that we don’t trust each other.

Conservatives don’t trust that poor people are actually trying very hard. Liberals don’t trust that financiers are actually doing anything other than skimming off the top. Labor doesn’t trust that wage concessions are necessary to stay competitive – they think Management is just trying to up its take. Republicans don’t trust Democrats and vice versa. Young people don’t trust that working hard and playing by the rules is anything more than a formula for chumps. Old people don’t trust the young to be grateful for the opportunities they’re given. Insureds don’t trust insurance companies to act in good faith; insurance companies don’t trust doctors and patients to make reasonable choices. Public employees don’t trust that their pensions will be available when promised. The public doesn’t trust that public employees worked sufficiently hard for the pensions they were promised as compensation. Etc.

How do we fix this? I don’t know. Consistently reward good behavior and penalize bad behavior and do so publicly. Easier said than done, I suppose.

I am writing this in haste and without full information; which is rarely a recipe for success. But, I’m ticked, so I’m doing it anyway.

A bad storm with some tornado activity was coming our way right as school was scheduled to let out. The county weather sirens blew just before school let out. Our kids walk, but my wife comes to get them. So, she calls the school to ask what is going on. The school reports that they are being held until the weather passes. The tornado warning that caused the sirens is scheduled to end at 3:30 p.m. My wife sees kids running down the street at 3:20 p.m. and so she high tails it to the school.

At 3:25 p.m., the weather has not passed, the really bad stuff is coming, and the tornado warning is being extended until 4:15. Nevertheless, my kids have apparently been released to go home. They would have walked out into some really awful weather except for some heads up action by my daughter’s old kindergarten teacher who knew my kids and how they came and went from school. She grabbed them as they were headed out the door and told them to stay put. Because the weather was so bad, my wife headed back with the car. By that time, the sirens were going off, hail was coming down, and everyone had to take shelter in the bathroom. The kids were apparently terrified.

Bus riding kids were apparently sent out in buses into the teeth of the storm, only to have the buses recalled. Parents of those kids were in limbo, wondering whether their kids were safe.

What a cluster.

Update It gets better. Apparently the kids weren’t just allowed to go when the brunt of the storm was approaching; they were actively instructed to do so. Someone announced over the PA that the kids were to “Leave School Immediately.”

Update #2 The principal sent out a response that seemed a little heavy on the “mistakes were made” variety of the passive voice. In her defense, she was not present at school today. But, the letter failed to address what seems to me to be the central screw up of the whole thing. The tornado sirens went off. The tornado warning was on until 3:30. Looking at a weather map, it was clear at 3:10 that something was coming, but a little more slowly than anticipated. Releasing the kids at 3:20 was a Bad Idea. Not only that, they were told to “Leave School Immediately.” No mention of that in the principal’s explanation.

The plan was to have the students remain in the building using our safety protocols until the Tornado Warning expired at 3:30 pm.
. . .
While preparing to go home, there was an announcement made that indicated all should leave, and this created coordination difficulties with our dismissal procedures.
. . .
Students were dismissed and then there was an additional warning given by the National Weather Service at 3:36 pm.

I understand the CYA instinct; but this time line just completely dodges the central fact of the “leave immediately” announcement at 3:20. . . sending the kids out into the teeth of the storm on foot. I had calmed down because everybody got home safe and sound; but the response is getting me riled up again.

Everyone and their dog is reporting that the United States Supreme Court has granted certiorari to consider aspects of the health care form reform law. Scotusblog is consistently one of the best sources for information about the Supreme Court, so I recommend its entry here. The Court has set aside 5.5 hours for argument which is a record for modern court proceedings. Somewhat oddly, I believe, the court is picking for review various issues from more than one of the challenges.

Here, in summary, is what the Court’s orders on Monday did:

* Granted, the issue of “severability” of the insurance mandate from the other provisions of the law, if the mandate is nullified (the only question in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius [docket 11-393] and question 3 in Florida, et al., v. Health & Human Services Department [11-400]), cases consolidated for 90 minutes of oral argument.

* Granted, the constitutionality of the insurance mandate (question 1 in the government case, Health & Human Services Department v. Florida, et al.), two hours of oral argument.

* Parties directed to brief and argue whether the lawsuit brought by the states to the insurance mandate is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act (an added question in the government case, 11-398); one hour of oral argument. (That order appeared to be limited to reviewing whether that Act only bars states from challenging the mandate; the question of whether that Act bars private entities from challenging the mandate was raised in the Liberty University case, and the Court did not grant that petition.)

* Granted, the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion (question 1 in the Florida, et al., case, 11-400, one hour of oral argument.

I don’t have a lot to add at this point except that, if the Supreme Court overturns the health care reform law, it will likely be disastrous. I’m not saying I have a high level of confidence about the good the reform law will ultimately do. It’s a mish-mash of what was politically feasible at the time. If it’s discarded, we can be certain that there will be no substantial reform efforts for another generation. And we all know for a certainty that the current system is broken. That might not be quite true; maybe some are arguing that what we have now is good. But I don’t see how that argument can be made convincingly. Under the current system, our country pays more for healthcare and gets the same or less than just about anyone else in the industrialized world. Tales of bad faith denials are legion. Health care expense is an anvil around the necks of business, government, and individuals alike.

The other interesting suggestion I have heard is that opponents are making the individual mandate out to be more complicated than it is. Congress could have imposed a straight on tax to pay for health care. If you make more than $x, then you have to pay $y as a tax. Objecting to the individual mandate approach, whereby individuals are required to acquire insurance of some kind – even it it’s through a private insurer, seems like an objection that government isn’t involved enough in health care. Now, I suppose some would argue that the federal government couldn’t even impose a tax to pay for citizen health care; but, that seems very far outside the commerce clause jurisprudence of the last century, if not century and a half.

John Russell, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article on a high level meeting between Duke executives and Gov. Daniels, seeking the Governor’s help in dealing with General Electric and Bechtel on issues having to do with cost overruns in the construction of Duke’s new plant at Edwardsport.

I don’t know that this reveals much of anything other than the fact that Duke has much better access to the Governor than Duke’s consumer advocate critics do. But, that was already pretty clear. Duke and Edwardsport have been in the news lately because the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission is having hearings to determine whether Duke can pass those cost overruns to ratepayers or whether the company has to absorb the cost itself. I haven’t been paying much attention to the issue, but I suspect I should be. Snarky Indiana’s Twitter feed has been pretty educational on the subject, however.

Some days, you wake up and realize there is nothing you want for yourself; that getting up will do nothing more than prompt others to ask you to do stuff for them. Just staying in bed seems like a viable strategy. Or maybe that’s just me. Is that a sign of clinical depression?

No matter. Matt Taibbi’s latest analysis of the Occupy Wall Street movement appears to be that they’re doing the social protest equivalent of staying in bed. Just a bone-deep weariness of the culture in which we live.

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don’t care what we think they’re about, or should be about. They just want something different.

We’re all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob’s Ladder nightmare with no end; we’re entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.

He concludes that, at some point, OWS will have to get specific and offer solutions to the problems but that, for now, it just needs to grow.

And if it wants to sleep on the streets for a while and not structure itself into a traditional campaign of grassroots organizing, it should. It doesn’t need to tell the world what it wants. It is succeeding, for now, just by being something different.

He also revisits his thought that the OWS movement was aiming its frustrations in the wrong direction – why hassle the police when they’re just blue collar guys trying to do their jobs? (In the immortal words of Herman Cain, “you want a job, don’t you?”) But, Taibbi is willing to cut them at least a little slack by comparing the response and police resources expended on OWS as compared to those spent policing Wall Street itself. You get a much sterner response for protesting in the wrong spot than you do ripping off millions in the Wall Street casino.

But, the police thing is an aside. Weariness of the system and a desire to check out reminds me, once again, of Nenslo’s “Hateword” from years ago, one of the Rants of the Subgenius:

“They,” the Conspiracy, want you to buy all their crap, work hard all day at a mindless slave-task to pay for more machines to play their indoctrination programs on, to fill your home with pseudo-collectables in a limited numbered edition of a goddamn zillion. YOU KNOW ALL THAT!! We’ve told you and told you all that and if you don’t believe it by now there’s NO HOPE FOR YOU AT ALL and you might as well climb back over the fence and roll in the mud with the rest of the slavish porkers, right?? So you say to yourself, “Okay, I know what the Conspiracy wants from me, I know how they work, and what they do, and I’m NOT BUYING IT!! By gabbs, I’m gonna NOT do what they tell me to! I’m THROWIN’ AWAY MY TEEVEE, smashing my porcelain thimble collection, frisbeeing my CDs off lover’s leap and joining the radical anti-government party to learn how to make bombs!! I’m shaving my head and burning my house down and the more they tell me not to the more I’ll LAUGH in their faces and echo the noble sentiments of whoever it was that said FREE AT LAST FREE AT LAST THANK BLOB ALMIGHTY I’M FREE AT LAST!!” Right?

Sucker.

You think they didn’t plan for that? You think they’ll be surprised, huddling around their long mahogany table, appalled that one tenth of one percent of the population has “caught on” and won’t go up the slaughterhouse ramp like good little lambies?? Har dee har har. Listen, they know they can’t dupe everyone with the same turd-brain programming system. They know there are going to be a few who are just sharp enough to shake themselves awake and look around to see that the green pastures and still waters they were lying down by are actually a clanking conveyor belt carrying them relentlessly toward The Whirling Blades. They had that worked out a long time ago! They LOVE it when the ones who see the horror of the conspiracy program “go public” with their ghastly revelations or join radical anarchist communes or otherwise render themselves ENTIRELY UNBELIEVABLE!! Who do you think INVENTED hippies, punk rock, anarchism, youth gangs, “grafitti art,” rock and roll, hallucinogenic drugs, the New Age Movement, Christianity, cult films, alternative what-have-you?? Sure, it was some lone radical disillusioned soul at first, for about six months, but by the time WE heard about it, it was already a pre-packaged Official Conspiracy Product!!

For my part, I suspect Hegel’s thesis, antithesis, synthesis thing is just chugging along and our task is just to continue surfing the resulting waves as best we can.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the War to End All Wars came to an end. I’ve always wondered how many soldiers died in service to that bit of numerology. “We’ve agreed to stop fighting, but let’s just keep shooting at each other for a little longer until the numbers line up.” Armistice Day. Now Veteran’s Day.

I want to honor the veterans – those folks who put their own lives in danger in service of an idea, or hell, even those who put their lives in danger in service of a paycheck but in a way that advances the idea. The idea of our country; all men are created equal; life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness. No kings. All of that. And I do.

But, I’m constitutionally incapable of leaving it at that when I hear so many of my fellow citizens mouthing what sound to me like reflexive platitudes; like they don’t even stop to turn the words over in their head to see what might be crawling around underneath. Because, while I definitely honor those veterans who died for my freedom; it’s not as if all veterans who died in service or fought in service did so to protect our freedoms. That’s just not their job. Their job is to follow orders, and a lot of times the orders they are given have nothing to do with freedom or defending our country. There are other policy goals that involve neither of those things, and a good soldier does not really have the luxury of declining to follow orders that are legal but which advance policy goals having nothing to do with defense or freedom.

I have these thoughts going through my head every year. Today, I have to give a big hat tip to my friend Marc who linked to an article entitled “It’s Veteran’s Day” by Jude at First Draft. It captures a lot of what I’m thinking; and, I suppose he is on more solid ground saying these things since he was a soldier and I never have been.

Reflexive military worship is a cancer on society. Unscrupulous people use it to justify their actions and avoid any criticism. That shit makes the act of asking why we should send young people to absorb bullets and get blown to pieces into some kind of subversion and/or sedition.

So, thank you to all of those veterans who died in service to our country, whether defending it, preserving its freedoms, or just executing orders to the best of their ability. But, let’s not allow our gratitude to deter critical thinking about the policies that resulted in those deaths.

I like the Urbanophile’s summary of the different economic approaches the Great Lakes States (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan) are taking to the recent economic challenges they are all having.

1. Indiana. We’ll be the South-lite. Think K-Mart, not Wal-Mart. Bare bones and proud of it, though unlike Texas and Tennessee we don’t have right to work but we do have a state income tax.

Reminds me of Morton Marcus’s comment about how Indiana is the middle finger of the South thrust into the north.

I don’t have much in the way of commentary about last night’s elections. They were municipal and important, but local issues that effect these kinds of elections vary so much from place to place, I think it’s foolish to try to draw broad lessons about “what it all means.”

For my part, I’m happy with the results in Tippecanoe County. We seem to have competent management in Lafayette and West Lafayette, and the voters, with an exception in maybe one race, seem to have returned the incumbents to office.

Heather Gillers has an interesting article in the Indy Star on the Daniels’ administration’s failure to execute a 2005 law concerning the expansion of birth control available through Medicaid to women at or near the poverty level.

Current law is that pregnant women with income at 200% of the poverty level or less qualify for Medicaid during pregnancy. After the pregnancy, in order to qualify for birth control assistance, they have to be making 23% of the poverty level or less. The 2005 legislation intended to change that system so that, following the birth of their child, women eligible for Medicaid during their pregnancy would continue to be eligible for Medicaid funded birth control (but no other services) for a period of two years following the birth of their child. This is not a novel concept; apparently some 20 odd states structure their Medicaid plans in this fashion. The experience of those states suggests that Indiana would have realized savings in excess of $1 million per year because it would be paying for fewer subsequent births; because second births within two years of the first are more likely to result in medical complications; and the like.

In order to make a change to a state’s Medicaid plan, the state has to apply to the federal government for approval. There were also, apparently, some start up costs involved – such that the state would be about $1 million in the red before the savings started kicking in.

The article says that it’s not entirely clear why the Daniels administration’s application to the federal government was late and inadequate, but that’s apparently what happened and why the changes were never implemented. But, when it’s a snafu at FSSA during the Daniels administration, the first two words that have to jump to mind are “Mitch Roob”, who you might remember from such public sector cautionary tales as “Privatizing Welfare Eligibility Determinations” and “Phantom Economic Development Jobs,” and “Indiana Doesn’t Do Studies, It Does Deals (Just Not Very Well)”. And, indeed, his tenure was from 2005-2008 which seems to be the most relevant time period to this discussion.

The two justifications for this failure seem to be “it’s the Feds’ fault” and “we couldn’t afford it.” The feds dispute that it’s their fault, and, that seems to be a more recent explanation. The start up costs would have been about a million dollars, but would have saved $7 million. (And, the article says that the data is pretty solid on the savings.)

The article also points out that the FSSA knows how to move rapidly on a Medicaid change application when it wants to. The legislation told FSSA to submit the application by Jan 1, 2006. It didn’t submit anything until 2007, and then the submission was inadequate and has been withdrawn and resubmitted and withdrawn again. By contrast, when the General Assembly told the governor to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood; FSSA managed that within five days.

Some parts of the Republican coalition are simply not happy with the idea of birth control or family planning in general. But, I don’t really peg Daniels or Roob as holding that view. However, I can definitely see them not being excited about any additional services being provided by Medicaid or the government — even if doing so actually saves the government money. It goes against a dogmatic belief that government can’t (and almost shouldn’t) do anything well; certainly not act in a way that saves taxpayers money. That combined with Roob’s track record in his other government endeavors probably go a long way toward explaining the failure in this case. The administration could have come up with the start up money if it had really wanted to (after all, Mourdock and the Treasurer’s office managed to scrape together $2 million for a doomed legal challenge to the Chrysler bankruptcy restructuring.) So, I doubt lack of money is the real answer.