A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Taibbi on MERS

by 1 Comment

I’ve written about the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) a couple of times around here. The post I remember most is this one. It’s basically a holding company that mortgage companies would sign up with that allows member companies to trade mortgages among themselves without bothering with paperwork such as recording transfers at the county recorder’s office. MERS would be the lienholder of record as “nominee” for whoever the real owner was.

Matt Taibbi has a post discussing MERS. I particularly liked this observation:

The problem with MERS is a paradox at the heart of the “ownership” question. On the one hand, MERS is the legal assignee of a lot of these mortgage notes. On the other hand, it’s not the “real” owner of the notes, in any way that could ever help you, or the state, or the investors in mortgage-backed securities.
. . .
In short, the mortgage industry considers MERS owner enough to foreclose on you, but not owner enough to be sued, or reasoned with, or even to provide basic customer service.

SB 50 – Ultrasound Before Abortion

by 22 Comments

SB 50, introduced by Sen. Leising is one of those anti-abortion measures that makes me think the proponent doesn’t actually have a serious moral position against abortion but, rather, is just playing some kind of game with it.

This bill would require a pregnant woman seeking an abortion to obtain a fetal ultrasound imaging at least 18 hours prior to the abortion, to listen to the heart beat if audible, and view and receive a copy of the imaging. And, of course, foot the bill for this mandate herself.

The only justification for this proposed government micromanagement of a woman’s medical decisions is the notion that abortion involves the termination of a human life. But, if you do subscribe to the notion that a fetus is a human life, fully entitled to the moral rights of other humans, then this legislation is monstrous. Can you imagine the outrage if Sen. Leising proposed legislation that required, before murdering a child between the ages of 6 and 10 years old, the murderer watched film and listened to audio of his or her victim at least 18 hours in advance? It’s like a mandatory snuff film.

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the proponents of this sort of thing don’t regard fetal life as fully human. In which case, government should stay out of our medical decisions.

Colts Go to the Playoffs Again

by Leave a Comment

So, the hospital ward masquerading as the 2010 Indianapolis Colts has torn off four straight wins, won the AFC South, and captured the #3 seed for the playoffs. And, in the last four wins, they’ve obliterated opposing running backs and discovered a running game of their own.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call them dominant, but who the hell knows what they can do. I had pretty well given up on the season after Cowboys game where I learned about the “leverage” penalty which enabled Dallas to finally punch it in on about their 9th play from the 1 yard line.

The Jets and their loud mouth coach will come to Indy to play on Saturday night at 8. This is Indy’s 9th straight season going to the playoffs, tying a record set by Dallas during the Landry years. For a city that didn’t host its first playoff game until 1999, this is fairly significant. If nothing else, it’s another week of football; and that’s a good thing.

HB 1043 – Prohibition of Union Shops

by 19 Comments

HB 1043, introduced by Rep. Torr, seeks to restrict an employer’s ability to negotiate employment contracts through so-called “right to work” legislation. It subjects an employer to criminal penalties and civil suits if it seeks to require payment of union dues as a condition of employment – I believe this is traditionally known as a union shop clause.

Specifically, an employer may not require an individual to become or remain a member of a labor organization; pay dues, fees, assessments, or other charges of any kind or amount to a labor organization; or pay an amount to a charity or third party that is equivalent to or a pro rata part of dues, fees, assessments, or other charges regularly required of members of a labor organization as a condition of employment or continuation of employment.

I’ve never been part of a union and have mixed feelings about them, but I don’t think this kind of legislation will do anything to help alleviate the downward pressure on wages that has been afflicting the middle class for the better part of the last 30 years.

HB 1040 – Support Obligations During Incarceration

by 3 Comments

Rep. Cheatam has introduced HB 1040 which would prohibit a court from modifying a parent’s support obligation due to a reduction in income that occurs because of the parent’s incarceration. I understand the motivation – you don’t want to “reward” a guy for going to jail – but this is ill advised.

In most situations involving incarceration, you probably have a guy who was living close to the financial edge anyway and is otherwise somewhat marginal as a member of society. So, he does his time, and, meanwhile, the court’s support order continues to accrue arrearages unabated. It’s pretty easy for someone to rack up many thousands of dollars in arrearages which are owed on top of the person’s ongoing support obligations. I am sympathetic to the “sucks for him, but it shouldn’t be the kid’s problem” line of thinking. But, as I know all too well, it’s tough to get blood out of a turnip. If you put a guy too far down in the hole, eventually, he’s going to just say “screw it,” and walk away the best he can. To maintain steady payments, generally you need to give the person some hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

End of 2010

by 3 Comments

So, if you’re reading this, you made it to the end of 2010. (Or someone not yet born has really obscure reading habits.) For me, personally, it felt like a hard old year, but not without redeeming qualities. We moved to a new house which probably explains the hard-but-rewarding quality of the year well enough. Our firm brought on an associate. I coached my son’s soccer team. The family had a series of (thankfully) short-lived but disruptive medical issues. My golf game was ignored. My kids started at a new school. My daughter began reading. My son continued to impress me with how bright he is. My wife’s business jumped to a new level. I ran 333 miles. I made a couple of really good pots of chili.

But, the blog fell by the wayside a bit. I won’t do anything silly like resolve to make the blog a bigger priority. For example, I started drafting this post yesterday, and it just didn’t get done. Then, a sentence into resuming the post this morning, I was called upon to help with preparing a New Year’s breakfast for the family. I enjoy blogging, but, as the man said, the world will little note nor long remember what we say here. Better to concentrate on the more important things as they come along.

My predictions for 2011 politics are cynical. The Congressional Republicans will experience the inevitable backlash from actually having people in office instead of merely being some abstract Alternative to the Democrats who had to operate in the real world for the last two years. Congressional Democrats will continue to step in it as they continue to be a mix of disorganized, afraid, and venal.

On the state level, Republicans will suffer from not having Democrats to act as a brake to their throttle. I suspect Hoosiers will be reasonably tolerant of legislation that erodes schools or makes the wealthy and well-connected more comfortable, but less tolerant the more the General Assembly goes bumbling about in hot-button social issues. State Democrats need to find leadership, fast. They aren’t doing themselves any favors drifting along with comfortable guys like Bayh and Bauer. On the front end, I think they need to find someone hungry and charismatic; if anyone like that exists in the party. On the back end, they need to get some organization.

As a practical matter, most Hoosiers won’t see a whole lot of difference in their own lives as a result of legislative activity. Some will, of course, and they’ll be loudest and we’ll hear about them. But, for most of us, legislative activity nibbles along the edges and the main trajectory of our lives isn’t altered a great deal. Never was this more clear to me than when I went to a Blog Indiana conference where it came crashing home to me that political blogging was something of a ghetto of the blogosphere. This is probably a pretty good analog of politics’ relationship to social activity generally. For all the talk of the vitality of politics as a civic duty, in practice it mostly ends up being more of a shabby alternative to team sports. Where lawmakers and citizens simply focus on fixing problems and making our communities function well, politics usually ends up being largely incidental except as a countermeasure to other political activity.

With those cheery thoughts, have a happy 2011 everybody!

SB 70 – Public Access Issues

by 4 Comments

SB 70, introduced by Sen. Landske, would make some changes to the public meetings and public records laws. Among other things, it would impose a civil penalty of $100 for the first violation and $500 for subsequent violations on a public official, personally, who violated various aspects of the public meeting laws.

If a public records complaint to a court alleges improper redaction, it requires the court to review the unredacted records in camera. (Meaning by the judge, in chambers, outside of the presence of the other party.) Judges will love this – they enjoy dealing with discovery issues. The bill would also allow the judge to impose a fine on a public official who: improperly discloses information in public records that is required to be withheld; or improperly withholds information in public records that is required to be disclosed.

The problem with this approach is that the General Assembly is not nearly specific enough with the language of the public records laws to reasonably impose a fine on a public official who fails to properly thread the needle the General Assembly has created for public records. Withhold this, don’t withhold that, make a mistake, get fined. Maybe they could create a safe harbor where they just require the General Assembly to come look at the records itself and disclose whatever it thinks appropriate and pay the fine if it can’t properly implement its own laws.

There is another provision that provides for inspection of records by the public access counselor that requires the public agency to deliver unredacted copies and prepare an index of claimed privilege. I’m sure the public access counselor is excited about the prospect of dealing with enormous document dumps. And, I doubt public agencies will receive any money to fund the costs of complying with this law. It’s dead easy to craft a public records request that requires thousands of dollars worth of time to respond to. This law will increase that asymmetry.

Tea Party Opposes Referendum on Vanderburgh County Government Consolidation

by 4 Comments

Thomas Langhorne, reporting for the Evansville Courier Press, has an article about the Tea Party opposition to a referendum as to whether Vanderburgh County and Evansville City governments should be consolidated.

Less government? A will-of-the-people referendum? What’s not for a tea-partier to like? The official story is “too much power in one person’s hands.” My suspicion is that, if the consolidation resulted in a conservative having more power, the local tea party activists wouldn’t be opposed. For all their talk of principles, the only unifying theme I can see in the Tea Party is electing Republicans. A more efficient government is great until the efficiencies come in the form of more power for Democrats.

I’m not unsympathetic to concerns about consolidation of power. But, if you’re going to streamline government, it is almost necessarily going to involve removing power from many hands and putting them into few or one pair of hands. Mussolini, they say, made the trains run on time; but that efficiency came at a price. That’s a down-side to running government like a business.

As an aside, the descriptions of the various Tea Party factions in the article remind me of the various Jewish liberation splinter groups in Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian”: Tea Party Patriots, Hoosier Patriots, Tri-state Tea Party, United Freedom Makers . . . might well be the People’s Front of Judea, the Judean People’s Front, the Judean Popular People’s Front, and the Campaign for a Free Galilee.

Keeping What You Earn

by 2 Comments

So, Andrea Neal has a column where she talks about Gov. Daniels’ vision for a “rebate” of tax money. His formulation reminds me a lot of what we heard when the Bush administration was using the Clinton-era surpluses as an excuse to restructure the tax burden to tax low income people a little less and upper income people a lot less.

After government has (achieved) a balanced budget and a savings account to protect it, you quit collecting money. Just leave it with the folks who earned it.

What will never be discussed in this sort of formulation is much consideration of what it means to “earn” your money. A lot of folks will say that it’s not up to government to determine whether you earned your money. And maybe they’re right. But, I think it’s a little disingenuous to automatically conclude that, because someone acquired money – even legally – that they necessarily earned it. What Daniels is really saying here is, leave it with the people who have it, regardless of whether they earned it.

Beyond that, I stopped reading Neal’s column when she regurgitated some of the talking points of the Daniels Economic Miracle ™ about Indiana weathering the economic storm better than its neighbors. Apparently she didn’t get the memo that the “hot streak” talking points are non-operative following the 2008 election, what with Indiana’s dismal job situation. Having a balanced government budget while your citizens flounder is a little like having a box of money buried in the back yard while your children go hungry.