A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Fort Wayne News Sentinel: Last One Out, Turn Off the Lights

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Idea: Local journalists covering local beats for locally owned newspapers is probably the only viable long-term strategy for newspapers.

Kaitor Kay, writing for WANE, reports that the Fort Wayne News Sentinel is down to one employee, conservative columnist Kevin Leininger. Retention of Leininger apparently (or at least arguably) fulfills the News Sentinel’s obligations under a joint operating agreement with the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette originally signed in 1950. Under that agreement (per Wikipedia anyway), “each newspaper is separately managed and has separate editorial staffs, but Fort Wayne Newspapers provides advertising sales, circulation, and printing services used by both newspapers.” The agreement seems to have been updated about a year ago when the News-Sentinel stopped distributing a print edition and moved to digital only except that some print content was included with distribution of the Journal Gazette. In a statement released at the time, Mike Christman, the publisher, said, “the News-Sentinel will now have the ability to reach a wider range of audiences in Fort Wayne, while focusing exclusively on creating great, engaging content.” Maintaining its commitment to the unique character and voice of The News-Sentinel was a priority, Christman said. The updated agreement runs through 2075.

Less than a year later, however, the News-Sentinel abruptly laid off everyone but Leininger. The employees were called into a meeting and told that they were being let go. Per the WANE story:

Tom Davis, a current reporter and former sports editor for the newspaper, was one of the employees let go. He said they were called into a meeting for the announcement, adding that they “had no idea this was coming.”
. . .
The general manager at Fort Wayne Newspapers, Pete Van Baalen, would only confirm personnel changes, but did say the News-Sentinel would maintain their online presence, and its page inside the Journal Gazette.

I can’t pretend any deep familiarity with the Fort Wayne news market, but it came on my radar when I started blogging 13+ years ago. It was a decent size metro area with two substantial newspapers, and neither of them were part of the Gannett hive organism. That seemed like a throwback. I had a notion that the competition between the two papers made each of them better. And, again, I’m speculating, but the blog activity in the area was different and better than what I saw elsewhere. Pound-for-pound, the Fort Wayne blogosphere punched way above its weight. In my mind, that was related to the newspaper activity. I don’t know that one caused the other, but I had a general notion that whatever was in the water that made Fort Wayne a two newspaper town in an era when that had long stopped being the norm was also producing more blogs.

The blogs came and went, seemingly long ago. The News-Sentinel is going to live a shadow existence. (I’m envisioning Leininger as the Ancient Mariner aboard some kind of ghost ship). Hopefully, the Journal Gazette will be able to continue its good work and the News-Sentinel employees who lost their jobs will bounce back quickly. I continue to believe that, for newspapers to remain strong, they have to put local reporters on local beats. Certainly that’s more expensive than opinion columns, wire services, and classified ads, but if you don’t have boots on the ground as a local presence, you’re dispensable. All that other stuff, I can get from almost anyplace else in the world, but the local reporting is valuable to the community and difficult to replace. Which does not, of course, mean that non-local owners will give a damn. Local ownership probably wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Indiana Voucher System Hurts Math Education for Voucher Students

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Vouchers don’t work. Copy the methods of school systems in other countries that are outperforming our own.

A post from Diane Ravitch’s blog on a study from Joseph Waddington and Mark Berends. The Study is called, “Impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Achievement Effects for Students in Upper Elementary and Middle School.”

Overall, voucher students experienced an average achievement loss of 0.15 SDs in mathematics during their first year of attending a private school compared with matched students who remained in a public school. This loss persisted regardless of the length of time spent in a private school. In English/Language Arts, we did not observe statistically meaningful effects. Although school vouchers aim to provide greater educational opportunities for students, the goal of improving the academic performance of low?income students who use a voucher to move to a private school has not yet been realized in Indiana.

I do take issue with one of the study’s assumptions, however. The abstract says that improving the academic performance of low-income students is a goal. My contention has long been that this stated goal for Indiana’s voucher system is a pretext. My working theory is that the real goals are primarily: a) reduce the influence of teacher’s unions; b) redirect education money to friends and well-wishers of pro-voucher policymakers; and c) subsidize private, religious education.

A brief aside – I know that sounds cynical. And I’m not a fan of knee-jerk cynicism when it comes to politics. It’s too easy, corrosive to public discourse, and so often doesn’t capture what’s happening. Too many lawmakers and other policymakers — even those with whom I disagree — are subjected to being unfairly painted as these cartoonish supervillains by members of the public who can’t be bothered to deal with nuance. In my experience most public servants honestly have their hearts in the right place. So, I would be delighted to learn that my cynicism is misplaced. Maybe lawmakers will review these studies and reconsider the state voucher program. Maybe they’ll restructure their voucher initiatives in a way that’s contrary to the big three “real” reasons for vouchers I’ve listed above. If that happens, I’ll certainly reconsider my cynical take on the matter.

Ravitch also mentions a study by Robert Planta and Arya Ansari showing that apparent advantages of going to a private school disappear when one controls for socio-economic advantages of the kids going to those schools. In other words, the private school wasn’t particularly responsible for the high performance of the kids; the advantages the kids had outside the school were responsible.

[I]n unadjusted models, children with a history of enrollment in private schools performed better on nearly all outcomes assessed in adolescence. However, by simply controlling for the socio-demographic characteristics that selected children and families into these schools, all of the advantages of private school education were eliminated. There was also no evidence to suggest that low-income children, or children enrolled in urban schools, benefited more from private school enrollment.

So, we’re diverting funds from traditional public schools and adding administrative burdens for a voucher system that doesn’t help kids’ educational performance and might even hurt it. There are higher performing public school systems all over the world that we could be copying — but, doing so might not hurt teacher’s unions, might not redirect education funds to friends and well-wishers of voucher advocates, and might not provide a subsidy to private, religious education. The link in the previous system is to a blog post I did from 2016 on an National Conference of State Legislatures study that looked at Finland, Singapore, Ontario, Alberta, Estonia, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Shanghai, and Taiwan. My take aways from the report:

1. The U.S. is falling behind when compared to the rest of the world. This can’t be explained away by hand waving about apples-and-oranges.

2. The good news, of sorts, is that there are now lots of countries doing better than we are, so we don’t have to re-invent the wheel. We can see what works and copy it.

3. There needs to be a support structure in place so that kids come to school ready to learn. In other places, that can take the form of government support to families with young children or extended family structures or the community generally. The upshot is that the kids are healthy and the kids are being educated before they get to school. Extra resources are devoted to struggling kids once they get to school.

4. Access to elite teachers. The system recruits high quality educators; implements a rigorous system of preparation and licensure; pays them well; develops a mentor system; gives them a professional environment to work in; selects high quality administrators; and develop standards benchmarked to other countries.

5. Develop a Career and Technical Education path for those students preferring more of an applied education rather than a more academic approach. This shouldn’t be an educational backwater like so many vocational programs. It should be geared to boosting the national economy and providing a higher standard of living for a broader base of the population.

6. These reforms should be part of a comprehensive plan. It will probably be the case that not all problems can be tackled at once, but the plan implementation should not be erratic or arbitrary.

This may be simplistic, but my current thinking is that our biggest obstacle to achieving a world-class education system (and a world-class health system for that matter) is the legacy of centuries of slavery in the U.S. It has left the civic equivalent of psychological scars that results in social dysfunction and seemingly insurmountable division. “We” are perfectly happy to spend huge amounts of Our money to help Us. But, We get really parsimonious when They might get some of Our money. Places where the public mostly regards everyone in the country as Us have any easier time providing for the welfare of the general public (as the preamble to the Constitution puts it) than places where the public has a significant division between Us and Them.

Chicago Tribune: Indiana has the number one source of industrial lead pollution in the nation

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I love the smell of lead in the morning. Smells like . . . victory.

Michael Hawthorne, writing for the Chicago Tribune (and accessed by me via the South Bend Tribune) has a lead paragraph (no pun intended) that you probably never want to see in connection with your company:

The nation’s largest source of industrial lead pollution is 20 miles down the Lake Michigan shore from Chicago in Indiana, churning more than twice as much of the brain-damaging metal into the air each year as all other factories in the region combined.

This is in relation to ArcerlorMittal’s Burns Harbor plant. According to the article, the plant emitted nearly 18,000 pounds of lead and has topped the list since 2013.

I suppose this is as good a place as any for my occasional rant about how libertarians and free marketers don’t tend to have a good answer for pollution. They chafe against environmental regulations. But without such regulations, it’s difficult to avoid infringing on the rights of others and preserving the efficiency of the market. Without such regulations, it’s cheaper to pollute the air that others breathe than to dispose of the waste from your manufacturing process in a manner that doesn’t harm others.

By emitting the pollutants, you’re harming others, but usually your doing it in a way that is subtle and difficult to prove. When you  punch someone in the nose, you know it immediately, and it’s a pretty simple thing to attribute the damaged nose to the person who punched you. The criminal law imposes penalties against the person throwing the punch and the civil law gives you the opportunity to collect damages against the person. With a polluter, whether the pollution constitutes a crime is more ambiguous; proving damages is more difficult; and, the legal protections of the corporate form shield the polluter from individual liability.

Meanwhile, pollution means that the market is getting incomplete information about the cost of (in this case) the steel being produced. They offload some of the costs of their production onto the people suffering brain damage from the lead pollution. Those people are, in effect, subsidizing the cost of production. Because the cost of the pollution is not reflected in the price of the steel, the market gets the signal that this form of production is more efficient than it really is. Polluters are rewarded and, consequently, environmentally sound production processes are put at a competitive disadvantage because they don’t force nearby residents to subsidize the process by breathing in the tainted air.

That said, it also bears mentioning that industry generally and the steel industry in particular has gotten cleaner over the years. It’s certainly not perfect, there are outliers and backsliding and more work to be done, but compare pollution now to pollution 25 or 50 years ago, and it seems clear that progress has been made. I would argue that such progress is in no small part because of environmental regulations.

Charter Schools: Accountability Won’t Happen Anytime Soon

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The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial entitled Overdue Accountability: Online Charters’ Abysmal Record Scrutinized. The editorial makes the very reasonable suggestion that online charter schools should be held accountable for poor performance and held to the same standards as traditional public schools. This comes in the wake of virtual charter schools generally, and Indiana Virtual School in particular, performing poorly. IVS graduated 63 of 985 students. Says the FWJG:

Nearly a decade later, virtual charter schools represent the very worst of Indiana’s public education system, with the state’s three online schools finishing in the bottom 3 percent statewide for test improvement. Each received F’s under the most recent round of grades assigned by the state. Graduation rates are abysmal: Indiana Virtual School had the worst rate in the state, graduating just 63 of 985 students.

But as a committee of the Indiana State Board of Education reviewed their performance last week, virtual charter school officials cried foul – claiming they haven’t had time to prove themselves and arguing they shouldn’t be held to the standards of other public schools because of the students they serve.

“We should be held accountable in more than just the academic arena,” Percy Clark, superintendent for Indiana Virtual School, told committee members. “Every ill that you want to name plagues our students.”

Public schools will surely be crying a river. That’s not to say that external factors don’t affect a school’s performance. They absolutely do. The socioeconomic status of students going into a school are a great predictor of how the school will perform. Some kids are much easier to educate than others (which is why the money-follows-the-child model of school funding is so problematic.) But, traditional public schools are no strangers to being judged based on socioeconomic factors well out of their control.

Rigorous accountability measures can lead to charter schools doing some good. Massachusetts seems to be the primary example of this.

It appears that Massachusetts’ charter laws are responsible, at least in large part, for the superior performance of the state’s charter schools. Indeed, Massachusetts prohibits for-profit Education Management Organizations (EMOs), and its process for authorizing charter schools is particularly rigorous. According to Alison Bagg, director of charter schools and school redesign at the Massachusetts Department of Education, Massachusetts is one of the few states in which the Department of Education serves as the sole authorizer of charter schools. “You have some states that have hundreds and hundreds of charters schools, all authorized by these districts or non-profits,” Bagg explained to the HPR. In Massachusetts, by contrast, “it has been historically very difficult to get a charter,” and the state has been recognized by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers as “one of the leaders in charter school authorizing nationwide.”

The charter renewal process is also quite rigorous, according to Bagg. The state monitors charter schools closely and has the ability to close charter schools that have achieved poor results—a practice that is not universal across states.

Indiana is unlikely to implement Massachusetts’ approach because the quality of educational opportunities appears to be mostly incidental to the motivations of voucher and charter school enthusiasts in Indiana. Higher priorities seem to be: a) reducing the influence of teachers unions; b) redirecting the flow of education money to friends and well-wishers of policymakers supporting charters; and c) using public money to subsidize religious education. So, I’ll make the bold prediction that the accountability urged by the FWJG editorial board won’t be happening any time soon. (Also, pessimism is often confused for wisdom, and if I’m wrong, I’ll be happy. So, I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.)

SBT and ProPublica Piece on Convictions of Chris Parish and Keith Cooper

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Christian Sheckler, writing for the South Bend Tribune, and Ken Armstrong, writing for ProPublica have a long, well-written piece on the investigations and subsequent convictions of Chris Parish and Keith Cooper in Elkhart County. If you enjoyed Making a Murderer, you’ll probably enjoy this article. The convictions arose out of an attempt to murder Michael Kershner in 1996. Cooper’s conviction was the subject of a pardon by Governor Holcomb in early 2017. Prior to that, it had become an election controversy when Governor Pence dragged his feet on making a decision about the pardon because he was running for Vice-President. Attorney General Hill also figured in the process since he was the Elkhart County Prosecutor, running for the AG position during the 2016 election. He had also run the Prosecutor’s office when it resisted some of Parish and Cooper’s efforts to have the conviction overturned.

Both Parish and Cooper were convicted as a result of a poor investigative process. Only after the convictions were they able to get reviewing courts to give the defects in the process the attention they deserved. That resulted in Cooper getting a deal that left the conviction in place but let him out of jail for time-served and, consequently, pursuing the pardon process to clear the conviction. Parish’s process was a little different. While Cooper had taken a deal for time-served, Parish took a chance after the initial conviction was overturned. He didn’t take a deal at that point — meaning he could have been prosecuted again. However, prosecutor’s declined to re-open the case against him at that point. He then was able to sue the City of Elkhart for the wrongdoing of its police officers and obtain a $4.9 million settlement.

Anyway, the story is worth a read. It’s deeply investigated and well-written. My only critique — and I may be off base here — is that the story has a “just so” feel to it; where the bad guys are a little too bad and the good guys are a little too good. Life’s messy, and I didn’t detect much of that messiness here – it’s pretty much bad cops and callous government officials railroading a couple of innocent guys. Which is maybe a minor critique. It seems pretty clear that Parish and Cooper had their lives upended and served significant amounts of time in jail for a crime they didn’t commit. This article does a solid job of explaining how that came to pass.

 

The Kids are All Right: Part the Millionth

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Bands gathering on the track awaiting the results of the first session.

I know I don’t write that much here anymore, and often when I do it’s to push back against the idea that “kids these days” are somehow defective. But, like Paul McCartney said when he finally freed himself of that Beatles albatross and joined the Wings juggernaut, “what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know, because here I go, again.”

Yesterday, I went to the Indiana State Fair for band day. My son is a member of The Sound of West Side Marching Band. For the past two weeks, those kids just busted their collective asses from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, more practice the first Friday followed by a competition in Noblesville that night that brought them home around midnight, more practice the second Friday from 8 a.m. through 4:30 in the afternoon, and then a State Fair band day that had them reporting at 10 a.m. and getting back at about 1:15 a.m. Sunday morning. This is during summer vacation. With that work, they placed 11th at the State band competition. Clearly I’m biased and proud of those kids. But we were just one school with one band. All over the state, there are kids putting in similar kinds of effort. I don’t know what they’re putting in the water in Wayne County, but their bands made up 25% of the top 16: Richmond, Northeastern, Hagerstown, and Centerville. One of my favorites last night, Winchester, isn’t too far away in Randolph County. And — while I have no background in this stuff and don’t necessarily have an expert eye – Jay County, Anderson, and champion Noblesville seemed to be a cut above the other outstanding schools. (Oh, and honorable mention to Monroe Central which didn’t compete in the night show, but led the 1-A schools and just killed it, particularly when you consider how few kids they probably have to work with.)

And that’s just the bands. One of the things I’ll miss next year when my daughter is in the marching band is walking the exhibit halls with her. These are halls filled with the winning crafts and projects. Kids all over the state are doing great work. (One of the categories this year was aerospace — I was hoping Tippecanoe County would dominate, but no such luck!) Beyond a quick trip through the cow barns, I didn’t even get to the livestock, which similarly consumes a great deal of time for the “kids these days.”

Sure, you can say I’m cherry-picking because only a small percentage of kids are involved in the things I’ve mentioned above. But, I think I’m less guilty of cherry-picking here than those who bellyache about how kids are “these days.” What’s the ratio of band kids to kids who eat tide pods? Which have you heard more about this year? And, in a slightly different way, it’s cherry-picking when the oldsters use the past as a comparison. Nostalgia has softened the bad parts and enhanced the good parts. So, it’s easy to miss the improvements that have taken place over time. The improvements are subtle and whereas the negatives tend to stand out. But, in what other time and place would you really prefer living? If you love sanitation and dislike polio, your options are limited. I’m an educated, upper middle class white guy living in the United States, and I struggle to think of a time period more than, say, 20 years ago when I’d prefer to live.  Other than, maybe blue collar white guys from the United States, I doubt there are many other demographics who can say things were better for them at other time periods either.

Encourage your kids. Be proud of them. Be hopeful for the future. I figure one mark of good parenting is producing a child who is more capable than you were. It should be the fervent hope of each generation that the next generation will be an improvement on their own. That, more than victory in war, rising skylines, accumulated wealth, or even a moon-landing, is a mark of greatness. And that, my friends, is why we have band day at the State Fair!

Without Elaboration on Underlying Facts, AG Hill Attacks Groping Allegations and Process

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Dan Carden, writing for NWI.com, has a new story about the Attorney General Curtis Hill groping scandal that Tony Cook, Ryan Martin, and Kaitlin Lange initially broke for the Indy Star. The story is that Hill came into AJ’s Bar after sine die where legislative types were having an end-of-session celebration. According to the memo prepared by a law firm that investigated the complaint for the General Assembly, Hill was described as “very intoxicated.” While there, Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon says that Hill groped her. Specifically, she says:

He greeted me and the staffer that was with me. While I do not know him personally, we had met before. As we were exchanging pleasantries, Curtis Hill leaned toward me as if he could not hear me and placed his hand on my back and slid his hand down to my buttocks and grabbed it. I said “back off,” and walked away, as the staffer with me stood shocked.

Later in the evening, I was standing with a group of people, and he approached the group. Hill came up behind me and put his hand on my back again and said, “That skin. That back.” I recoiled away before he could touch my buttocks again.

Hill has not said what, if any, part of Rep. Reardon’s account is false.

Niki DaSilva is a staffer for the Indiana Republican Senate Caucus. She says that Hill groped her and told her she had to show a little skin to get service at the bar. Specifically, she says:

Attorney General Hill seemed rather gregarious that night and asked us what we were doing standing at the bar.

We answered that we were waiting to order a drink and Attorney General Hill, without hesitation, remarked, “Ah, come on ladies! You haven’t figured out how to get a drink yet? You’ve got to show a little skin!”

. . .

[A]ttorney General Hill put his hand on my back. I was taken aback by this gesture as we had never held a conversation before that night. I felt his hand start to slide slowly down my back.

I didn’t want to bring attention to his actions, so I tried to push his hand away inconspicuously using my free hand.

When our hands met, instead of taking this nudge as a cue to remove his hand from my lower back, he grabbed my hand and moved both of our hands over my butt, lingering there before releasing me.

Hill has not said what, if any, part of DaSilva’s account is false.

Gabrielle McLemore is the Communications Director for the Indiana Senate Democrats. She says Hill cornered her and rubbed her back. Specifically, she says:

“Do you know who I am?”

That’s what he said when he pulled a stool up next to me and forced me to move uncomfortably closer to the bar’s ledge on my right with people both in front and behind me. I was cornered by Indiana’s attorney general, who I had never previously met, and he began rubbing my back.

McLemore appears to be “Legislative Employee B” from the investigative memo. According to the memo the back rubbing went on for about two minutes. Hill has not said what, if any, part of McLemore’s account is false.

The investigative memo talks about another staffer who alleges that Hill hugged her at the bar in an inappropriate fashion and a couple of others who witnessed him talking about how they should show some skin to get faster service at the bar.

Hill’s initial response was:

“I have never been contacted by any investigator,” he said. “I have not been informed of who made these allegations nor have I been provided any due process with regard to these vicious allegations.”

Generally, he seems to be saying that the claims are false, that he was never given an opportunity to present his side of the story, and he has not been afforded due process. However, since the story broke, Hill has not — at least so far as I’ve been able to tell — explained his side of the story. And there doesn’t seem to be any process which he regards as satisfactory. Per the most recent Carden story, Hill’s lawyers are challenging the efforts of the Marion County prosecutor to have a special prosecutor appointed. Previously, Hill had demanded that Marion County Prosecutor, Terry Curry, spearhead an independent investigation. Curry demurred because his office is represented in ongoing litigation by the Attorney General’s office. But, he did request the special prosecutor. Hill’s lawyers are also challenging the propriety of an investigation by the Inspector General. They cite some statutory scope of authority concerns, but Hill’s initial objection to the IG’s investigation was that Gov. Holcomb appoints the Inspector General and Holcomb has already called for Hill’s resignation. [Side note: It might be amusing for a lawmaker to request an Attorney General’s opinion on what sort of legal process is appropriate for a hypothetical situation that looks a lot like this one.]

If this is all just a big set up and all of these women are lying, then Hill’s response would be appropriate. If Hill went to the bar, was mostly sober, kept his hands to himself, and then left, he would have every right to be pissed off about this whole thing. But, he hasn’t said that’s what happened, and I’m not particularly inclined to believe that all these women are lying. I’m no political adviser, but it seems to me that had he said, “I drank too much, acted inappropriately, and I apologize” — maybe followed by seeking treatment through JLAP (Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program) or some other substance abuse treatment provider — I think he could weather this particular storm. Instead, he has opted for a Trumpian attack strategy. And, I guess it’s paying off in some circles. Cook, Lange, Martin, and Shari Rudavsky, writing for the Indy Star, say that the pastor at Hill’s Church in Elkhart, Indiana is attempting to rally the congregation in support of Hill — drawing parallels between Hill and Christian martyrs, particularly the arrest of Peter and the martyrdom of Stephen. “Satan is at work and there’s a real war going on. He’s trying to discourage our brother Curtis,” says pastor Phil Byers. (Herod arrested Peter for being a member of the Christian church, and  Stephen was martyred in connection with an internecine dispute about whether Stephen’s message about Christianity was contrary to Mosaic law. Neither, to my knowledge, was accused of being drunk and handsy in a bar.) This strategy could work, of course. Inciting tribal passions is a good way to get people to overlook misbehavior that they would not otherwise excuse.

Privatized Profit, Socialized Risk: Kiel Bros and the Pence Family

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Brian Slodysko, writing for the Associated Press, reports that the State of Indiana has had to spend $21 million and counting on the cleanup of Kiel Bros. Oil Company sites. The company operated widely under the name “Tobacco Road.”

The collapse of Kiel Bros. Oil Co. in 2004 was widely publicized. Less known is that the state of Indiana — and, to a smaller extent, Kentucky and Illinois — are still on the hook for millions of dollars to clean up more than 85 contaminated sites across the three states, including underground tanks that leaked toxic chemicals into soil, streams and wells.

Indiana alone has spent at least $21 million on the cleanup thus far, or an average of about $500,000 per site, according to an analysis of records by The Associated Press. And the work is nowhere near complete.

The federal government, meanwhile, plans to clean up a plume of cancer-causing solvent discovered beneath a former Kiel Bros. station that threatens drinking water near the Pence family’s hometown.

Mike Pence is, of course, the Vice President and former governor of Indiana. His brother, Greg Pence, is the GOP candidate to take Mike’s former seat in Congress. Greg was running the company when it went bankrupt in 2004. According to the AP report, the company was founded by Carl Kiel in the 1960s. Pence father, Edward, became corporate vice-president. Mike and Greg worked for the company as well with Greg eventually became president of the company after Edward died in 1988.

The corporate bankruptcy filing and environmental damage in this story underlie a lot of what I find problematic about conservative and libertarian rhetoric about personal responsibility and small government. The rhetoric often involves a lot of talk about personal responsibility, the evils of government, and the wisdom of allowing people to keep their money away from the prying hands of the state. And, you know, that sounds great. Often there is truth to it. But it’s far too simplistic.

Let’s start with the corporation. It is a legal fiction created by and made available by the government and enforced by the government to shield individuals from personal responsibility. The individuals who owned Kiel Bros. were thereby allowed to cause damage to the environment, presumably pocket money from those activities, then retain the money after the bankruptcy was filed and the damage came to light. Bankruptcy is similar — a government created loophole to the enforceability of government created property rights that shields people from their obligations.

Then there is the environmental damage. Libertarians in particular, but often conservatives as well, have always been very weak in terms of their ability to reconcile their philosophy with an ability to deal with pollution. The general notion is that property owners should be allowed to do what they want with their own property without government interference (putting aside for a moment the fact that property is a legal creation that has no practical existence without the force of the government backing it up.) They might generally assert that if pollution caused by someone else’s property hurts you, you should be able to recover damages to compensate you. But, in practice, the culprits can be long gone before the damage comes to light, and the problems of proof and recovery can be immense. Meanwhile, pollution distorts the marketplace which is generally held in high regard by libertarians and conservatives. If you pollute, you are externalizing the costs of your operations. Operations cost more if they’re done in a way that doesn’t contaminate other people’s air and water. Because you’ve externalized that cost, the cost is not reflected in the price of your product. So, the market doesn’t get accurate information about the true cost of the service or product and money flows to people who are externalizing their costs. In this case, money is flowing to the Kiel and Pence families rather than to other oil companies or energy producers who create their product without surreptitiously harming others.

Which brings us to the last point about allowing people to keep what they’ve earned. If the State were to raise taxes on the Pence family to help mitigate these environmental costs, they would definitely moan about big government. I don’t know if they’d go so far as to say “taxation is theft,” but there is definitely a libertarian contingent who goes that far. Can the Pence family be said to have “earned” money that comes, in part, from offloading the environmental costs of their operation? They’ve earned some but not all of it. And I think that’s probably true of a lot of economic activity and its relationship to government and society at large. It’s complicated. You’ve earned some but not all of it. Sometimes you’ve offloaded costs. Sometimes you’ve skimmed off the value created by an employee. Sometimes you’re profiting from the infrastructure put in place by the government. So, sometimes taxes are too high. Sometimes, they’re too low. And, in any event, calling taxation theft just doesn’t capture the true dynamic.

Curtis Hill Under Fire (updated)

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Lindsey Erdody, reporting for the IBJ, writes that Gov. Holcomb, Rep. Bosma, and Sen. Long are all calling for state Attorney General Curtis Hill to resign. This follows a story broken by Tony Cook, Ryan Martin, and Kaitlin Lange, writing for the Indianapolis Star. They obtained a legal memo written as part of an investigation commissioned by legislative leaders concerning alleged sexual harassment by Hill.

The events in question apparently took place on March 15 at a bar near the State House following adjournment of the General Assembly sine die (Folks may remember that the adjournment was a bit of a shit show with bills turning into pumpkins as the clock struck midnight, requiring a special session.) According to the memo obtained by the Star, Hill grabbed a female lawmaker’s butt under her clothes, she told him to back off, he walked away, then he came and grabbed her again. (Update: Dan Carden, writing for NWI.com, reports that legislator in question was Mara Candelaria-Reardon.) Hill groped a legislative employee in a similar fashion, resisting her efforts to move his hand. He grabbed a second legislative employee around the waist and hugged her toward him. And, he rubbed the back of a third legislative employee for an extended period of time until she fled to the ladies room. And, he told women at the bar they needed to show skin or leg to get served at the bar.

Hill has apparently decided to defend with the Shaggy “wasn’t me” defense. Technically, his response was, “At no time was my behavior inappropriate nor did I touch anyone in an inappropriate manner.” In court — should the matter lead to criminal charges — Hill is entitled to a presumption of innocence. In the court of public opinion, the power of the State to deprive an individual of liberty is not at issue, so the burden of proof is not so steep. Right now, it looks like there is at least a prima facie case against Hill. The idea that this many people would so wildly misconstrue innocent interactions with Hill at the same time or conspire against him in a way that pulls the wool over the eyes of Bosma, Long, and Holcomb, seems implausible. Hill could theoretically come forth with information to rebut these charges, but the ball is in his court, and “nuh-uh” isn’t going to cut it.

This should go without saying, but women should be able to go to a bar without people pawing at them. (Anyone should, but in the vast majority of these situations, it’s men making unwelcome advances on women.) I went to a couple of post-sine die back when I worked at LSA. All I wanted to do at the end of session is have a few beers, enjoy the feeling of being finished, and then go sleep for about a million hours. And nobody got in my way or made it weird. That’s a privilege I took for granted. If the #MeToo movement has done nothing else, it’s made clear to a generally oblivious guy such as myself that the problem is far more pervasive than I would have guessed.

State GOP Platform Excludes Same Sex Couples from ‘Strong Families’ Formulation

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Thomas Langhorne, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has a report on the Indiana Republican convention where the group came up with the party platform. One plank states as follows:

“We believe that strong families, based on marriage between a man and a woman, are the foundation of society. We also recognize that some families are much more diverse and we support the blended families, grandparents, guardians, single parents and loving adults who successfully raise and nurture children to reach their full potential every day.”

The language is notable for its insistence on the “a man and a woman” composition for strong families. I’ll get to the exclusion of same-sex couples in a second, but the way this thing is drafted, the support for everyone but married, heterosexual couples is really backhanded. I don’t know that this was the intent, but shoe-horning the man/woman language into the text changes the message for everyone else. If the language said, “we believe strong families are the foundation of society. We recognize families are diverse and support . . . ” that would be an indication that families, of whatever composition, are critical to society and we’re going to support them. As it is, the language says that families not centered upon a heterosexual, married couple are not foundational. They are incidental — at least by implication. Saying that marriages ought to be heterosexual is one thing (a thing with which I disagree), but saying that families composed of grandparents and guardians and whatnot are something other than foundational is fairly startling.

As for the idea of same-sex marriage, I was originally thinking of picking holes in the rationales for opposing same-sex marriage: their Biblical interpretation is rigid on this point where they  re-interpret or ignore other parts of the Bible; their historical analysis ignores many times, places, and aspects of marriage in our past; the State’s interest in marriage is not the same as that of the Church; and so forth. But, that’s probably somewhat disingenuous of me. Whatever the merits of the arguments I could muster on those points, that’s ultimately not why I support same-sex marriage. I support it, pretty simply, because I have gay friends and family members. I grew up in a time when being gay was regarded as aberrant and immoral, and nobody I knew admitted to being gay. Fortunately, in my lifetime, being gay has more-and-more come to be regarded as more or less just another variable in the human condition. Some people are blonde, some people like beets, some people are gay, etc. We’re obviously not completely there yet and, because our culture has a lot of hang-ups about sex, it’s probably going to take awhile. But, at the end of the day, people who are gay are every bit as deserving of marital rights, duties, and societal support as people who are not gay. Extending them the legal recognition of marriage doesn’t hurt me and doesn’t weaken society. In fact, I believe it strengthens society. As such, I think the platform language adopted by the state GOP is misguided.