A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Model legislation is not at all confined to conservative causes or nefarious lobbyists; but I have seen the issue in the news lately (see also Indiana Law Blog) with respect to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC is an organization through which conservative model legislation is routed.

As I said, there is other model legislation. A prominent organization is the Uniform Law Commission which strives to provide model, non-partisan legislation on a variety of subjects (Indiana’s delegation includes James Bopp and Vi Simpson so, it’s got range in terms of partisanship.) Various institutions and lobbying interests advance their own model legislation.

As a legislative drafter, my primary concern with model legislation was that it created a “magic word” view of the topic. Often, the legislator advancing the model legislation in Indiana wasn’t comfortable making the call on what the bill should or shouldn’t accomplish; they had a general notion, but when it came to addressing particular difficulties, they were uncomfortable modifying the language. So, if the model legislation interacted with existing Indiana law in some troublesome way, it was sometimes difficult to know how to resolve the problem.

A hide-bound devotion to the language itself, sometimes bordering on idolatry, obviously is not a good approach to legislating. You have to grok the idea behind the language so you can make the language serve the idea rather than blindly serving the language as an end in itself. This is more difficult when the legislator is not the one creating the idea or the language. The idea, at times, comes from some group who creates the language and then is not available for consultation when it’s time to modify the language. And that can create a problem.

It occurs to me that an unstated premise of the government debt debate is that bond holders have a morally superior claim on future tax revenues than do social security annuitants.

If this is so, I think it has something to do with a philosophical mindset that values rights concerning property above other sorts of rights. But, I haven’t quite worked out the details yet.

The Urbanophile has an interesting post entitled “Are States An Anachronism?” The whole thing is worth a read, but I’ll relay a couple of thoughts here. He notes that state/city legislative power is different from state-to-state. In Illinois, Chicago dominates and the state laws tend to reflect this with policies that help a major, international city, but, in so doing, harm smaller cities in the state that have to compete against cities in Indiana. Tax policies that actually help Chicago and allow it to compete globally might harm small cities that have no hope of competing globally but have to look for economic opportunities more locally.

The reverse, he argues, is true in Indiana where, apparently despite the gripes of non-Indianapolis types like me, the state dominates the city. This allows policies that may help rural areas and smaller cities while hindering Marion County’s ability to compete globally. (He gives examples.)

Definitely worth a read.

but you can’t make him pass constitutionally sound legislation. I had the pleasure of speaking with the AP’s Tom Lobianco a couple of days ago and, in return, got a mention in one of his stories about the General Assembly.

The gist is that the General Assembly has staff, both in their political caucus and through the non-partisan Legislative Services Agency. Those staffers try to point out constitutional and other difficulties proposed legislation might have. Often enough, the problems simply aren’t spotted in the first place. But, at other times, the legislator doesn’t agree or wants to push the envelope. As a legislative staffer, if you’ve provided sound legal advice, and the legislator proceeds anyway; you’ve done your job. From there, it’s up to the political process to either work or not.

But in the end, whether to pass a law is a political decision made collectively by the state’s lawmakers, Papa said.

“They could ask for anything in the world to be drafted, whether it’s a good idea, a constitutional idea, or a bad idea,” he said. “Then it’s up to the political process where you go from there.”

Senator Greg “The Flogger” Walker seems to regard pesky “laws” and “Constitutional protections” as minor things when his judgment says that his view of things is more important.

In the Planned Parenthood case, pro-choice advocates and the Obama administration have argued that the new law clearly violates federal law regulating how billions in Medicaid dollars can be used.

But for people who believe strongly about an issue like abortion, abridging a man-made construct like a federal law is a low hurdle, Walker said.

So, the exchange in that situation would be something like:
Staffer: “That’s unconstitutional.”
Senator: “I don’t care.”
Staffer: “O.k.”

Today is scheduled to be the end of the shuttle program. There is some happy talk about future space missions — when President Bush started the process to decommission the shuttle fleet, it was bases on the moon; now that President Obama has scuttled the moon bases, it’s private space flight. But, I get the feeling that we as a country are simply finished with space flight for the foreseeable future. It’s like the talk of a long distance relationship when you and your high school sweetheart go off to college. Maybe your intentions are good, but in all likelihood, the relationship is over.

I can understand the argument that space flight was expensive and maybe didn’t return a great deal. (I could argue with the latter – intensive government funded R&D on the space program had some remarkable returns). But, really, space flight is what made us great. When America finally crumbles into history (in the hopefully very distant future), if there are still humans around to do the remembering, one of the first things we’ll be remembered for is putting a man on the moon. In terms of achievements, that’s up there with Magellan circumnavigating the globe.

But, abandoning the space program seems to be part of a larger symptom. We’ve given up on being great and improving. Far from being committed to improving the things and society we’ve created, we seem resigned to the idea that we can’t even keep what we have, and that we should be content merely trying to slow the deterioration. Social Security, Medicare, a living wage, infrastructure, housing, education — all must be less than they were. We are not at present a people who could have put a man on the moon; at present, we couldn’t even build an interstate system or a transcontinental rail system. We can barely remain committed to maintaining the ones we have. I read too much science fiction, so I’m reminded of the decaying Empire based in Trantor from Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series. There is also a whiff of fatalism, as if we’ve Fallen from an Edenic state of grace and have been deteriorating ever since.

My tendency is to blame a commitment to low taxes on the ultra-wealthy above all else. Others tend to blame the rise of the rest of the world coupled with a laziness and softening of the American people. There is probably some truth to all of it (though, obviously, my belief is that the scale is tilted in favor of my tendency!). Nevertheless, I see a disturbing lack of optimism among Americans. As if we will never again attempt something transcendent because it would cost too much. As the man said, we know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Update Someone sent me this graph of NASA’s budget as compared to what we spend on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan:

I’m not going to indulge in one of those “I’m superior because I wasn’t paying attention to the Casey Anthony trial” posts. Obviously, it caught my attention to some degree and has prompted me to comment. It came to my attention when a local bug expert testified at the trial and our paper mentioned that fact. From there, the matter percolated into my consciousness one way or another. But, the extent of my “knowledge” is that the daughter of the accused died; the mother didn’t report it for a month; and, in the interim, she apparently went to bars and entered a hot body contest. That last detail is the tell, I suppose. Maybe it says that I’m superficial for remembering something so frivolous. Alternatively, it might be a major point of the exercise.

If this child had been the daughter of someone poor, non-white, and ugly would it have gotten the same coverage? Tipsy makes a point:

Everyone in the country seems to know what happened except the jury. Everyone in the country’s full of it.

The jury system is deeply flawed and unreliable, no doubt, but the press is worse. You, gentle reader, are the product the press “sells.” You’re not paying them anything, but they sell your eyes, ears, and every carnal passion to buyers called “advertisers.” And they’ll feed you poisonous junk food to make sure they’ve got a good supply of eyes, ears and passions to sell.

Goodlookingbabykillingsociopathmother is a very tasty dish, don’t you think? It’s right up there with Hornyashellfrenchbillionairerapist.

Let’s unpack that a little. The point about everyone in the country knowing what happened is very well taken. I am extremely skeptical of the jury system. You just don’t know what you’re getting when you put those twelve people in the box. You don’t know what they’re paying attention to. You don’t know if they understand the legal instructions they’re given; let alone inclined or able to apply those instructions. But anyone who has ever been part of a story that the media has reported knows that what gets reported sometimes bears only a nodding acquaintance with what actually transpired. That’s not usually through any kind of malfeasance of the reporter – things get lost in translation – but, sometimes it is. This is the same media that gave us the unrelenting drumbeat about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq; and that was important. This is just titillation.

The point about what the media is selling I once saw summed up as “if you’re not paying, and you don’t know what’s being sold; it’s probably you.” That being the case, I think the fact that the mother wasn’t ugly was crucial to the story being reported. An unattractive person from a bad part of town wouldn’t have captured the eyeballs for advertisers. It would have been just another tale of misery.

What captured my attention enough to post was the vehemence of the response. It’s easy to talk big on the Internet, but it had the feel of a virtual lynch mob out there. “The jury done wrong; but we’re gonna git her!” Maybe the jury did do wrong; maybe Nancy Grace and the rest of the jackals did a great job of reporting and the Mom is guilty as sin. But I sure wouldn’t want to bet someone’s life on the accuracy of the reporting on something like that.