Per recommendation of John Cole over at Balloon Juice, I took the OK Cupid Politics Test with the following results:
You are a Social Liberal (78% permissive) and an… You are best described as a: Libertarian
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Masson's Blog
Per recommendation of John Cole over at Balloon Juice, I took the OK Cupid Politics Test with the following results:
You are a Social Liberal (78% permissive) and an… You are best described as a: Libertarian
|
Not hard news, at all, but I enjoyed USA Today’s article on Crown Hill. It’s a neat cemetery with notable denizens including John Dillinger, President Benjamin Harrison, and James Whitcomb Riley.
Of course, it also has others of particular importance to me, including Manfield Ross Masson, Harriett Eva Masson, J. Edward Masson, and Pauline Masson (a/k/a Meemaw).
The Indiana Election Board is sending out the message loud and clear that Indiana’s election laws are not to be trifled with. It fined Representative Billy Bright (R-North Vernon) a staggering three hundred and twelve dollars and fifty cents ($312.50) for campaign reporting violations.
Near the end of last year’s campaign, Bright failed to report three contributions of $1,000 within 48 hours, as required by law. The donations came from the Terre Haute-based group All Children Matter; the Volunteer Political Action Committee, based in Tennessee; and Noah Sodrel of New Albany.
O.k., so the election board figured Bright made a rookie mistake and let him off the hook. So, politicians should remember that the first one is (nearly) free.
Kevin Corcoran for the Indy Star has an article entitled GOP aide gets one year for theft of campaign funds
Bradley Hiller, 33, was given a year in prison after pleading guilty to two felonies in connection with $146,775 in spending he couldn’t account for while running the Indiana Senate Republicans’ fund-raising committee.
Hiller admitted stealing from the Indiana Senate Majority Campaign Committee while he served as its director from January 2001 to November 2003. Hiller also served on the Indiana Election Commission, which punishes election-law violations.
The Senate committee is a fund-raising organization devoted to electing Republicans to Indiana’s Senate. It was Hiller’s job to help recruit candidates, solicit contributions and plan fund-raising events.
I don’t know Hiller, but just the basic stats: 33 year old political type seems very much like someone I could have hung around with. Every so often, you start feeling like maybe only chumps play it straight. But then, for my part, I realize that I’m doing o.k., not really lacking for anything important, and the stuff I really end up enjoying are all the cliches: family, friends, a good joke, nice weather, maybe a round of golf on a nice course every so often and a really good beer. I don’t need to steal to get any of that stuff, and frankly, a life of crime wouldn’t be for me as I’m too lazy to remember my lies. So, God willing, I’ll never find myself in a court room throwing up into a trash can as a judge sentences me to a year in jail like Mr. Hiller did.
(Just an aside, but if you ever want to feel good about what you do have, wander into your local courthouse when they’re doing arraignments. See guys facing hard time for rapes, assaults, and major drug charges, and you’ll realize your worries are pretty paltry by comparison.)
The Journal & Courier reports that Donald Currie will succeed Judge Carey as judge of the Carroll Circuit Court. Seems like a pretty good choice by Gov. Daniels.
A project designed to coordinate online docket access for the State’s court systems has hit a major snag. The Indy Star has an article entitled, State deal with software firm is dead. The report states:
The state of Indiana has ended its connection with [Computer Associates] hired to create a statewide system linking courts in all 92 counties. The end came after software designed by contractor Computer Associates International was found to be unworkable for Indiana’s disparate and often-antiquated court practices.
. . .
Computer Associates was hired in 2002 to link Indiana’s roughly 400 civil and criminal courts. The project was ambitious: Some of the state’s smallest counties still don’t have computers.
. . .
The planned system was to help judges find a suspect’s criminal history in other counties as they make bond and sentencing decisions; allow more residents to access court records online; and connect the courts with other agencies, such as the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Indiana Department of Correction.
But a breakdown surfaced in December as Marion County officials tested software designed for civil courts. They found it lacked the ability to track court fines and costs.. . .
DePrez said the Supreme Court would announce new plans for coordinating Indiana courts within 30 days.
I sympathize with those involved. It’s a daunting task. Besides the technical challenges involved with coordinating 92 counties (most of which have more than one court which may or may not share the same system), there are political-bureaucratic challenges involved. It’s awfully difficult to persuade a judge to run his or her court differently if he or she is set on running the court in a particular way. Even in the absence of outright obstinancy there are other issues — for starters, rearranging the docketing system will necessarily be a lower priority than hearing cases and dispensing justice. I suspect it can be done if the technical issues are worked out in advance and with plenty of input from the trial courts. Once the technical issues are decided upon, the Supreme Court will have to put its muscle into implementing the system. But those are some big ifs and probably a lot more money down the road.
Nothing like a little grave digging to help eliminate a tax that is applied only to substantial amounts of wealth. Time has a story entitled, Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case: Senators look for a wealthy casualty of Katrina as evidence against the estate tax.
Federal troops aren’t the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions’ legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky’s voice mail: “[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with.”
If legislative ambulance chasing looks like a desperate measure, for the backers of repealing the estate tax, these are desperate times. Just three weeks ago, their long-sought goal of repeal seemed within reach, but Katrina dashed their hopes when Republican leaders put off an expected vote.
. . .
Only a tiny percentage of people are affected by the estate tax—in 2001 only 534 Alabamans were subject to it. And for Hill backers of repeal, that’s only part of the problem. Last year, the tax brought in $24.8 billion to the federal government. With Katrina’s cost soaring, estate tax opponents need to find a way to make up the potential lost income.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of Red-Ink Republicans among the majority party in D.C. Bush II has done a good job of outstripping the jaw-dropping deficits left behind by Reagan and Bush I. The fiscal conservatives in Washington, if any are left, have been awfully quiet since the Clinton years. I guess bloated spending is just one of the many attractive features of one-party rule.
In any case, I always like to single out repeal of the estate tax has a remarkably stupid (or greedy, depending on your perspective) way of reducing government revenue. First, only a remarkably small segment of the American population pay much in the way of the estate tax. It doesn’t even start to kick in until you get over (I believe) $2 million dollars left to heirs. And I’ve never seen any justification for reducing taxes on great wealth left to heirs before reducing taxes on a laborer’s income. Both have legitimate claims to the money, but the laborer has a much, much stronger claim to the money he worked for at the end of the week than the heir has to the money somebody else worked for at the end of that other person’s life. Given that we cannot eliminate all taxes, I’d say we shouldn’t even begin looking at reducing or eliminating the estate tax until we’ve figured out how to eliminate the income tax.
The Journal Gazette’s Niki Kelly’s ongoing series on state government. Today, an article entitled Math geek grabs FSSA challenge with gusto which discusses Family and Social Services Administration director, Mitch Roob.
If ever there was an Indiana agency that needed reform, it’s FSSA. However, the root problem, I’m afraid, is that providing social services is difficult and expensive. It’s labor intensive, it’s depressing, and results are slow and subtle. The article doesn’t get into this much, but Roob has said in a couple of places that he intends to turn FSSA into a “healthcare financing agency.” The response in that case was a fear that this “change in philosophy” could really just be a way to sugar coat a reduction in services to those in need of social services. “Reductions in service to the mentally ill are historically a false economy. They shift the costs to other places, such as law enforcement or social welfare.”
My prediction is that a shift toward privatized social services will result in a somewhat reduced cost to the State, decent to big profits for politically connected businesses, reduced services for the needy, and increased costs to local government which ultimately has to deal with these folks in one way or another.
Jennifer Whitson, for the Courier Press, has a post-deadline time zone article entitled Solving time-zone puzzle: requested shifts would put nearly a third of the state in Central Zone Most notable was Gov. Daniels reaction.
Rep. Bauer, with no politics on his mind at all, I’m sure, thinks the jagged line is a mess “that never should have happened.”
But Gov. Mitch Daniels, who pushed the Legislature to pass the daylight-saving time bill that opened the debate on time zones, said he had no concerns with how the time-zone debate is playing out.
“From what I’ve seen, it looks to make common sense,” Daniels said.
Even if all counties petitioning for Central are moved, he said, the state will still be better off and less divided, because all of it will be on daylight-saving time.
But there’s no denying that some Hoosiers are holding Daniels responsible for the outcome, including several who wrote to the U.S. Department of Transportation about the issue.
Frances DeJoy of Noblesville wrote of her preference for Central time, closing with:
“P.S. to Governor Daniels: I voted for you for daylight-saving time because you said you favored Central time, that is, until you flip-flopped.”
The Chamber of Commerce is on record making another prediction — He’s confident the USDOT will not add any counties to Central Time. Then again, Chamber spokesperson Brinegar predicted that few counties would ask for a change because he suggested this would create political wrath that would chase them from office. Doing nothing, he is on record as saying, is safer politically than stepping forward and doing something.
Niki Kelly has an article for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette entitled State lobbying plan comes under scrutiny.
State officials are considering watering down a proposed rule that would require lobbyists to register with the Indiana Department of Administration when trying to influence the executive branch.
. . .
There is nothing in the rule that precludes communication with state officials, but it does require a form to be filed once a year that identifies who is lobbying whom and for what.
According to the proposal, any person who is employed and receives payment exceeding $1,000 a year for the purpose of lobbying the executive branch must file with the state Department of Administration – an agency with the primary function of guiding state government contracts for goods and public services through the system.
There are many exceptions, such as an attorney representing a person on a tax matter, a person acting on his or her own behalf and any communications with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.
Lobbyists apparently feel the rule would be unduly burdensome with respect to their communications to the executive branch during the rule-making process and want to water it down. Julia Vaughn, of Common Cause Indiana, has what looks to be a good modification. She suggests exempting any lobbying with respect to rule-making that is taken in meetings subject to the state’s public access law but that other behind-the-scenes negotiations would still fall under the rule.