A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Federal Economic Chaos Hurting Indiana

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Tariffs and the recent economic chaos is resulting in a projected $2 billion less in revenue for the State of Indiana than previously projected. That’s going to leave a mark.
“What happened?
The December forecast data included roughly $800 million in new revenue for the state over the next two years, though nearly all of that came in the first year. Now even that marginal growth is gone. Much of the loss can be attributed to economic uncertainty, including worries about the impact of tariffs in the country’s most manufacturing-intensive state.
…
According to an analysis from Axios Indianapolis, Indiana is the third-most reliant state when it comes to China, which imported $6.1 billion in Hoosier goods in 2023. More than half of that was in pharmaceuticals and medicines followed by oilseeds and grains.”
This is a far cry from America’s economic prospects six months ago.
Two front pages of the Economist side by side. The first from October 2024 has a roll of dollar bills rocketing to the sky with the headline “The Envy of the World”.The second is this week’s front page which is a version of Munch’s Scream painting but the face is instead an upside down sack of dollar bills. The headline says “How a dollar crisis would unfold.”

What a difference six months makes.

Turning Pain into a Virtue and Spreading It

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Posted this in a Facebook thread and it’s a theme I mention from time to time, but for posterity:

The context was a debate in the Indiana Senate about whether teachers learning about and using techniques having to do with emotional intelligence is valuable for instruction. The General Assembly is removing “social emotional learning” provisions from the Indiana Code. Near as I can tell “SEL” is one of those pieces of jargon that, regardless of its true or original meaning, has turned into a shibboleth. One of the things being projected onto it from the right is the idea that it means coddling the kids, making them weak, emasculating the boys, and so forth.
This leads me to one of my periodic observations where I feel like a fair amount of the bad in the world we see is adults trying to rationalize their childhood trauma. Their parents beat them, neglected them, or otherwise treated them poorly in ways that may have, in retrospect, been unnecessary. But it can be unbearable to think that the pain and hurt inflicted by one’s parents may have been needless. So, they project virtue onto some of this stuff to give the pain value. Once pain becomes valuable, it becomes not just permissible but virtuous to spread it.

Hoosier Demographics: Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying

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Ball State Economist, Michael Hicks, has a good column that I saw in the Indiana Citizen entitled “What the census tells Hoosiers about the Future.” I don’t know that there is a ton of new information in there, but one point that he lays out more bluntly than I usually see is that communities basically have a choice between growing or shrinking. Maintaining the status quo really isn’t an option. Either path has consequences. The growth consequences tend to present a happier set of challenges than the consequences of decline.

We see that most of the growth opportunities in Indiana come from immigration (70%) and lesser amounts from births (21%) and in-migration from other states (9%). And the places that attract growth feature strong public services, particularly schools. These features are paid for with taxes. A community seeing shrinking population usually sees the people with human capital leaving first (i.e. “brain drain.”) In general, therefore, it stands to reason that places in Indiana that oppose immigrants and taxes, are probably going to have a bad time in the coming years.

The entire column is well worth reading, but Hicks concludes:

The ability to make a choice to grow on your own terms, or decline, should be carefully guarded and nurtured by elected officials—particularly at the state level.

Still, any column about growth and decline needs to be honest about the future. Six of the 10 fastest-growing counties are in the Indianapolis metropolitan area. Nine of the 10 fastest-growing counties are urban, and nine of the 10 fastest-shrinking counties are rural.

There is room to grow in all the fast-growing places. There is little room to shrink in communities that are in decline.

I know many residents in small Hoosier towns want lower property taxes and are wary of immigration. Just be clear-eyed about the consequences of those choices, and make sure you are planning for smaller, less prosperous towns, school consolidation, longer response times by fire and police and continued brain drain. Those are all policy choices.

Due Process is Where You Go to See if What They Said is So

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“Nashville is where you go to see if what they said is so.”
I’m not anything like a country music fan, but I thought about this lyric from “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” during a discussion about the current administration’s resistance to due process.
I mean, sure, you *say* you’re deporting bad people. But, talk is cheap. Probably cheaper today than maybe ever before. Due process is where you go to see if what they said is so.
“No person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law.” In other words, “put up or shut up” is the American way.

Law is Potential Violence

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Another couple of thoughts I posted over on social media which seemed worth memorializing here.

In light of the ongoing unpleasantness, Peter Sagal on BlueSky posted: “It’s amazing to find out at this late date how much the rule of law depended on people simply deciding, on a voluntary, daily basis, not to break the law.” That prompted me to muse:

Law is, at its core, “potential violence.” You will do this or not do that, else guys with guns will compel compliance. But there isn’t enough violence in the world to compel all of the things we’ve legislated. At least not without completely wrecking the joint.

So, we absolutely rely on daily, voluntary compliance with law. And, for the most part, it’s a rational social contract. For most of us, most of the time, law offers more benefits than costs.

As that proposition breaks down – perhaps because the laws become more burdensome or because of too many free riders – more and more violence will be necessary to enforce compliance.

At a certain point, if law becomes little more than a violent burden, the system breaks. You just have warlords.

I’ve made similar observations in the past. I think I got the “potential violence” idea from the writings of Alvin Toffler.

If you don’t abide by the law, ultimately, guys with guns will come and force compliance; either on behalf of the state, in criminal cases or on behalf of other citizens in civil cases. Part of the social contract is that we have all handed our right to do violence over to the State in return for its protection and the expectation that the State will, if necessary, do violence on our behalf to protect our rights. Part of the reason we agree to this bargain is because the alternative is a Hobbesian state of nature where our lives are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. In such a state, the only property you could truly call yours would be only so much as you could hold by force against the force of others.

…

Part of the trick of our legal system is the fact that, by and large, Government use of violence is needed only rarely. Most people go along with the system without the need for actual force. If the Government had to force compliance with every order, the system would collapse. Most people go along with the system because at some level, even if they lose their particular case, they believe it is more or less fair.

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If too many people become alienated from the system, the system starts unraveling. More and more, people reconsider using violence on their own behalf. We start slipping back toward the Hobbesian state of nature.

So, aside from altruism, it’s in all of our best interests to make sure as many people as possible believe in the notion of the basic fairness of our legal system. And, as much as people grumble about it, you’ll notice that most folks will give the legal system a whirl rather than take matters into their own hands when they are unable to resolve the matter through some sort of private agreement. We don’t want that to change.

Filed Under: Law

Incarnating the Inchoate to Kill It

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"The Scapegoat" by William Holman Hunt (1854)

“The Scapegoat” by William Holman Hunt (1854)

I posted this over on social media, but it seemed worth preserving in some form:

I’m suddenly fascinated with the concept of the scapegoat. There seems to be a psychological need to incarnate the inchoate and kill it.

I’d never given it a ton of thought. It seemed like a quaint religious ceremony. And, of course, it’s a metaphor we use for imposing undeserved blame on others.

But the metaphor and the religious ceremony almost certainly come from the same impulse – likely to satisfy the need to feel like you’re acting against forces which are harming you but are otherwise too remote or abstract to fight in a tangible way.

So, you pile up the anxieties, formless ideas, and unreachable offenses onto somebody or something that you can hurt and you make them sacrificial in the hopes that your life will improve as a result. If I had to guess, it’s probably something to do with soothing one’s fight or flight instinct.

Good Government: The World’s Only Free Lunch

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John Krull, writing in the State House File, has a great column entitled “To coin a phrase” that you should go read. The passage that prompted me to write this post:

Because conservatives have spent the better part of the past century equating taxation with theft—and arguing, along the way, that good government is the world’s only free lunch—they always find themselves in a quandary when they have to pay for something.

The free lunch line is a good way of capturing the dynamic you frequently see out of libertarians and “small government” champions. Typically they’ll rail against government in the abstract. When pushed on examples of the many necessary and useful things that government does, they’ll often retreat to some variant “oh, I’m not advocating for anarchy, obviously *some* government is necessary.” The massive amounts of fraud, waste, and abuse that they are sure exists usually lies elusively just over the horizon. Or maybe they’ll extrapolate anecdata into something systemic.

And, as Krull points out, “the entire civilian federal government payroll in 2022 came to $271 billion. Even if Musk and Trump fired everyone and allowed meat to go uninspected, Social Security checks to go unprocessed and planes to fall from the sky every day, they still would be $130 billion short of paying for that tax cut that will help them line their own pockets.”

Whatever sound and fury gets kicked up, I think we’ll find that the point of the exercise is for Musk, Trump, and their cronies to rob us blind so that they can stuff a few more billion dollars into their pockets. (I always like the counterargument that “they are so rich that they’ll be incorruptible, they couldn’t possibly want more money.” As if the guy with 57 guitars couldn’t possibly want a 58th guitar.)

All Politics is Local – SB 249 and Teacher’s Compensation

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In one sense, Sen. Deery’s SB 249 is nothing too novel. It’s a teacher compensation bill that continues the effort to undermine collective bargaining by educators, something that’s obviously nothing new to Indiana’s General Assembly. It would allow school corporations to segregate certain amounts from the pot of money available to pay teachers under collective bargaining agreements. The amounts taken out of the pot available to pay teachers generally would instead be used by schools to pay extra money to specific teachers if the school characterizes that money as being necessary to compensate those specific teachers based on certain enumerated factors. One of the existing factors is “the academic needs of students in the school corporation.”

This legislation modifies that factor to specify that “academic needs of students” includes “employment in a high need area such as those identified under IC 20-29-3-15(b)(27)” and specifies that this factor must be at least 10% of the weight used by the school in determining the extra compensation for the particular teacher or teachers. That subdivision in the statute is part of an annual financial report which requires the school indicate “the number of vacant teaching positions by [grade, subject, and required credential] with critical shortage areas, as determined by unfilled vacancies, highlighted for each school corporation.”

The legislation reflects a general anti-labor sentiment, distrustful or resentful of collective bargaining, and a philosophy of education whereby schools can be treated as a business and students as so many widgets. By negotiating with individual teachers, you can weaken their overall bargaining power. Pretty standard fare in Indiana.

What makes this more interesting to me is how the marketing from Sen. Deery, who represents my school district, aligns pretty closely with sentiments expressed by one of our school board members with whom I have disagreed on any number of occasions.

It’s not really too surprising inasmuch as these two have worked together on other West Lafayette-inspired legislation, seeking to limit local control of schools statewide on a matter where she was unable to persuade her fellow board members here locally. It’s my understanding that the two are also connected socially, go to the same church, have Purdue business school connections, and so forth.

The Indiana Capital Chronicle had the story on SB 249.

Republicans united behind “market force” teacher pay legislation with implications for unions, passing it on a 39-10 vote.

Sen. Spencer Deery, R-Lafayette, told of how a school in his district struggled to retain special education teachers — but was paying them like other educators.

“At the same time in that school district, the highest-paid teacher was a gym teacher,” Deery said. “… I became kind of obsessed with this fact that our schools are not adequately using market forces to differentiate pay to attract and retain teachers in the highest-need areas, or the highest-value teachers that are most essential for the school.”

His Senate Bill 249 would let schools divert revenue available for collective bargaining toward supplemental pay. It would also require that “employment in a high need area” account for at least 10% of the calculations used to determine supplemental increases and increments.

(Emphasis added). The shift to putting special education teachers in the forefront is a new twist. Usually the argument is that schools have to be free to pay, for example, chemistry teachers more. That argument has not, apparently gotten much traction. This new, stated focus on special education tracks to some degree with that anti-local control legislation I mentioned above. In that legislation, he was working with one of the parents who is frequently aggrieved with our school corporation. Perhaps the Senator is seeking to activate the parents of children with special education needs to advance a measure that is not, in any way, limited to special education?

In any event, the side-swipe at the gym teacher is remarkable. You’d normally expect a politician to leave any particular teacher out of things and maybe go with a superficially plausible, generic explanation about wanting to give schools the flexibility to allocate their resources (never mind for a moment the myriad ways in which the General Assembly deprives schools of flexibility.)

That teacher whose tenure was reflected in his compensation is Lane Custer. (You can go to Gateway’s report on teacher compensation, select 2022, and sort by compensation to verify this.) He worked for the corporation for 45 years and his contributions were pretty phenomenal – as highlighted in this Journal & Courier story. Dismissing Lane as “a gym teacher” whose compensation after 45 years represented some kind of problem to be solved is mind-blowing.

The accolades are darn near endless.

Twenty-six City/County team titles. Fifty-six Hoosier Conference team championships. Nineteen sectional titles. Individually, he’s coached 153 individual state qualifiers and 57 state-qualifying relays. Eleven of those — four individuals and seven relays — won a state championship.

Custer received a total of 10 — five boys and five girls — track coach of the year honors, an ode to him taking a school with an enrollment of 700 to 800 students and routinely ranking alongside the largest schools in the state.

…

“I have just been enamored with measurements and timing and improving ever since. We teach in our PE class, it doesn’t matter where you start and where you end. It’s the in between. It is improving. It doesn’t matter how high a level you are, the feeling of improving, that is measurable is awesome to everybody.“

(Emphasis added). So, he was very successful in athletics. That’s not nothing.

On top of that, the training he helped give all of the school district’s kids has allowed West Side to punch way above its weight in athletics generally – not just track. That’s not nothing, either.

But, in my mind, his greatest contribution has been to the students of West Lafayette who maybe didn’t even perform athletically. First of all, he was teaching lessons about how to relate to physical activity. But also, he was teaching lessons applicable in contexts that aren’t even physical. Pay attention to your own progress, try to get better, don’t worry so much about the rest of the world.

Doing that decade after decade for hundreds and hundreds of kids. Seriously, your view of the world is twisted if you think paying the guy is a problem. Line up all the people this teacher influenced in a positive way & have them tell their stories, we could filibuster all the General Assembly’s nonsense for the next couple of sessions.

But, all politics is local. The denigration of this “gym teacher” also echoes the sentiments about specials teachers previously expressed by the school board member who has Sen. Deery’s ear and who, as I mentioned, hasn’t gotten much traction for her ideas with the school board in West Lafayette. Back in 2023, she wrote to the public:

“There is a pattern in our school district where classroom teachers want to move out of the classroom while remaining a teacher covered by the union contract. A PE teacher is a sought-after job where the teacher does not have to deal with grading homework, holding case conferences, etc. There are other similar positions (for example, the librarians) who are paid the same as classroom teachers, but have fewer responsibilities.”

She later edited this comment to cast a broader net saying “When a specials position (librarian, physical education, etc.) is posted, it is a sought-after job….”

In any event, the clear implication of this is the sentiment that some animals are more equal than others. It’s a mistake to view teachers as discrete units or specials as somehow distinct. They are better viewed a group coming together as part of a system that educates children. A healthy body strengthens the mind. An appreciation for music finds its way into computer programming. Joy in art informs an understanding of history. And so forth.

The idea of viewing individual teacher compensation through the lens of “market forces” not having much resonance in West Lafayette, it then finds its way to Indianapolis, into Sen. Deery’s comments and SB 249, becoming a tool for undermining our teacher’s ability to bargain collectively and something the entire state has to deal with.

(I should mention, there is not much love lost between this school board member, Dacia, and Lane – they were on opposite sides of the most recent school board campaign.) [Also, also author’s note: Dacia doxxed my kids last summer, so I have my own biases.]

Portugal Day Eight: Back to Lisbon and Return Home

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We woke up at about 7:30 a.m. to pack, clean up the Airbnb, and head down to the bus station. There had been warnings about potential strike activity affecting the trains, so we had cancelled our original train tickets and used a FlixBus instead. It was quicker and the accommodations were nicer. I believe the prices were comparable. Initially, the trip was slow with several stops along winding roads. I did not like that part. But, once the bus had run its traps, picking up people in various towns in the Algarve, the route became more direct to Lisbon on the main highway. Someone, possibly the driver, had some kind of news station on very audibly. It was in Portuguese, but had that loud and overbearing “BREAKING NEWS” urgency to it.

When we got back to Lisbon, we checked into the Tivoli hotel  just across from the train station. Initially, they had the kids booked for a king sized bed, but we fixed that. We went to the Skytop bar for some snacks and drinks. The view was good but the prices were high and the service was indifferent.

Fortifying ourselves at the Skytop Bar.

However, properly fortified, we were ready to do something with the day. It was incredibly hot out, but we didn’t really have any indoor ideas. So, using the metro for – I believe – the first time all trip, we went down to the Praca do Commercio and generally wandered around in that area. I enjoyed a busker playing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” while I dipped my feet in the water.

Cole at the Praca do Commercio

 

Harper and I at the Praca do Commercio

One good find was a place called Bizzarro Gelato which had a variety of oddball flavors (onion-mango, for example) along with the usual ones. The temperatures made it a great day for gelato. From there, we continued making our way up hill, stopping for drinks at “the Little Wine Shop,” a place where Amy, Harper, and Kenza had stopped in 2022 back when Harper and I were encountering the never ending stairway. In fact, we found the record store where Harper had picked up some 45s and I regretted not buying the “Rapper’s Delight” knockoff by “Chagrill’s Gang.” Unfortunately, it was closed on Tuesdays.

They know something about tsunamis in Lisbon.

After enjoying some views at the top of the hill, we wound our way back down and had ginjinha at A Ginjinha which is a few steps away from the Memorial of the Jewish Massacre of 1506. The ginjinha shop is pretty literally a hole in the wall. Just a small alcove where a guy is slinging shots. There is a handwashing station there because the drink is so sticky. Rounding out the day, I had some prawn and cod stew at a nearby restaurant we picked more or less at random. Once again, the fish bones were a bit of a problem for me. And then, we took the train back to our hotel. We were all good and tired at this point.

A Ginjinha – pretty literally a hole in the wall.

 

The family that ginjinha’s together, stays together.

The next morning, we woke up at 6:30 for a 7:45 a.m. departure. Going to bed, I had inadvertently turned off the main power to the room without realizing it. So, Amy had to take a shower mostly in the dark. (I figured out the switch later.) We got the kids up and moving without too much trouble, and the journey home was mostly uneventful except that the connection through Heathrow is a cluster. We were literally running for the gate and, fortunately, made our connection.  Chicago was easy. Total travel time was just over twenty hours door to door. And, as per usual, the dogs were glad to see us return!

 

The trip home: just over 20 hours door-to-door.

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Portugal Day Seven: Sunrise Kayak and Lagos Food Tour

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Our third day in Lagos and seventh day overall started with an extremely early morning. Our big activity was a sunrise kayak tour, so we had a lot to do before sunrise! Amy got up at about 4:45 a.m. and started making breakfast. The kids and I woke up at 5 a.m. Both kids understood that the timeline was such that we couldn’t mess around too much and got moving without a fuss.

Ocean kayaking in the early morning.

Our Uber picked us up at 5:55 so we could get to Lagoa at about 6:30 and hit the ocean at 7. In retrospect, given our activities with two day trips to the Lagoa area, it might have made more sense to stay in Lagoa and then maybe make a day trip to Lagos. But, live and learn.

The tour was about two hours. Our guide, Caio had a background in geology, spoke about five languages, and was really friendly. We used two-person ocean kayaks, Harper & I in one and Amy & Cole in the other.

Harper and I outside Benagil.

Amy and Cole in their kayak.

The main destination was Benagil Cave (not technically a cave because it is open at the top, but I forget what Caio told us it was called). It is a beautiful rock formation with an open ceiling and an entrance from the ocean onto a beach within the cave. Environmentally, the amount of tourism it gets is not sustainable.

Benagil Cave

When we were there in the morning, with just a few kayaks, the impact was fairly minimal and it was a great time to enjoy the site. But, when we had been hiking the day before, we were able to see the area from the cliffs above. The crowds of pontoons and jet skis and what have you were overwhelming. Technically I think tours are supposed to have permits but that rule is either ignored or they are getting as close as they can without violating the letter of the law.

But the morning set up was great. We basically had the place all to ourselves. To make landfall in the cave, Caio had us come in one kayak at a time so he could help us out. Harper and I got to the beach without incident. Amy and Cole came in hot with a wave at their back, running over Caio and dumping the kayak. They got wet, but nobody got hurt, and none of the gear was lost. So it ended up just being a funny little incident.

Benagil Cave. This time with faces!

After about 20 minutes in the cave, we headed out and explored some other caves and rock formations in the area. After we got back, climbed up to the parking lot, stowed the gear and whatnot, it was breakfast time. Rather than getting an Uber right away, Caio took us into Lagoa in the cargo van and dropped us off at a breakfast place he recommended. Once again, a Waffle House would have been just the thing for my dumb American palate, but the place had artisanal toast and whatnot.

Another one of Harper & I.

After we got back to Lagos and the Airbnb, I caught a nap. The rest of the family went out for supplies. Remembering how well it hit the spot during our boat tour in Lisbon, they brought back Bugles! I was so happy. After quite a bit of downtime – early mornings create a lot of extra time in the day – we went on a food tour in Lagos.

Our tour guide was Juan. He’d been doing this for about five years and said that he’d been doing lunch and dinner 6x per week. He made a lot of jokes about his wife. In our group were two groups of Canadians – one with four teachers from Ottawa and one group of four from Toronto. The teachers were just having the best time. It very much felt like they were taking advantage of being away from the responsibilities of home to cut loose.

Cole & Amy at Matobiche.

The group from Toronto was a pair of friends and their two daughters. Very Kate & Allie! Apparently they figure out where Pearl Jam will be performing out of the country and make a destination of it every year. This time, it was Lisbon. Rounding out our group was David from Bristol, England.

Our first stop was Matobiche where we had fish soup, green wine, chorizo, and octopus salad. The fish soup was so good!

Our next stop was Cervejaria Ferradura, a small bar with a giant, horseshoe shaped bar top dominating the room (“ferradura” means “horseshoe.”) It was run by, as Juan put it, “the grumpy lady.” One member of our group got in trouble with “the grumpy lady” for using too many napkins. It was hot in there, but of all the places, probably my favorite ambiance. Here we had Sagres, razor clams, and bifanhas. (Best bifanhas yet, with mustard and hot sauce.) While we were there, a group of on duty cops came and had some beers. At the end of the meal, we capped it off with a shot of “moonshine.” It was supposedly 120 proof and tasted like vodka.

Most of the tour group at the Horseshoe bar.

 

The family at the Horseshoe.

Our third stop was the “Imperio” which, I thought, was a little touristy. But, what are you going to do? Lagos is a tourist town. To eat, we had green beans tempura. They were good. Juan told us these were influenced by the Portuguese / Japanese connection during Portugal’s imperial period in the 16th century. I always take these tidbits with a grain of salt, but it seems plausible anyway. Those were paired with white wine.

At the end of the day, if you ply the people on the food tours with enough booze, we’ll probably end up happy no matter what the food is like. We were all getting pretty full at this point, and our last stop was for dessert at a place where I neglected to take note of the name. (Possibly the alcohol contributed to this oversight!) Dessert was an almond tart, I believe.

As we were walking through Lagos during the food tour, the kids and I started joking about the “ATM Cash Zone” in Mountain Dew commercial tones – “EXTREME CASH!” Laughing about how it would be funny if the ATM just releases your savings at high velocity and you had to capture it before it blew away.

It was a good day. We capped it off with yet more Cobra Kai and then bed.
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