A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded: Property Tax Edition

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Rachel Blakeman, writing in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has a column entitled “Lower taxes as population driver: myth versus reality.”

Indiana is 20 years into its low-tax experiment as a driver of growth and prosperity. So this county property tax summary provides a nice table to compare taxes to population growth, especially since Indiana’s property taxes are based on market values.

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If the notion that low taxes create growth holds true, the counties with the lowest taxes should see the greatest growth, right? Wrong.

Of the twenty-four counties with the highest tax bills, only two lost population. The twelve counties with the lowest tax bills all lost people. To the extent people are voting with their feet, they’re going to higher taxed areas. Quality of life issues are more likely to determine where people want to live.

There are surely diminishing returns, but by and large, a community should be willing to invest in itself to improve its schools, roads, trails, arts, parks, museums, and in all of the other stuff that make life worth living.

 

Steve Buyer Sentenced for Insider Trading

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Following up on this July 2022 post concerning former Congressman Steve Buyer being charged with insider trading, former Congressman Buyer has now been sentenced to 22 months in prison for those charges. Buyer left office, ostensibly because of family health issues, but hot on the heels of reports of sketchy financial practices having to do with his “Frontier Foundation.” The organization was nominally in place for student scholarships but seemed to raise a lot of money from lobbyists and spend a lot of money on the Buyer family.

According to an SEC press release when the charges were brought:

After Congress, Buyer went to work as a lobbyist. He obtained inside information that T-Mobile planned to acquire Sprint. In 2018, he bought a bunch of Sprint stock and spread it around “his own personal accounts, a joint account with his cousin, and an acquaintance’s account.” When the news became public, he sold and netted $107,000. Similarly, in 2019, he obtained inside information that Navigant Consulting would be acquired by Guidehouse LLP, bought a bunch of Navigant stock and spread it around “his own accounts, joint accounts with his wife and son, his wife’s personal account, and the same acquaintance’s account involved in the Sprint trading.” When the news became public, he sold and netted $227,000.

The AP report on his sentencing relates that the judge in the case said Buyer’s conviction by a jury in March was not a close call because the evidence against him “screams guilty.” The AP also reports:

Prior to being sentenced, Buyer, who is from Noblesville, Indiana, told the judge he should visit Indiana, where someone buying a dozen ears of corn for $6 off the back of an unmanned trailer might put the money in a container that already has $300 in it without worrying that anybody will snatch the cash.

“It’s an honor system. It’s how we live. It’s how I’ve lived my life,” he said.

I don’t know how to respond to that. I have, in fact, visited Indiana. And, being a Hoosier, I know that stashing three hundred bucks in legal corn money without sweating it too much has fuck all to do with pulling in $300,000 in ill-gotten, illegal, insider trades. And, furthermore, maybe a guy who made money that way doesn’t have the best grasp on the concept of an “honor system.” Honestly, I’m probably more irritated about him dragging Indiana into this conversation and trying to sell some cornball story about his honor than about his skimming off the stock market.

People like their own public schools

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I just read a post by Steve Hinnefeld reporting on recent polling about attitudes about schools. While attitudes about schools in the abstract are very negative, people like the schools where they send their own kids.

In the recent Gallup poll, 76% of parents said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the school attended by their oldest child. But, among all respondents, only 36% were satisfied with the nation’s schools, tying the all-time low. That’s a huge gap: 40 percentage points.

Gallup has been polling about education since 1999, and the divide between parents and others has been a consistent finding. Most parents have always given high marks to their own children’s schools, but they tend to be more skeptical of the nation’s schools. People with no direct experience with schools are the most likely to give America’s schools low grades.

I don’t know exactly what that says when real-world experience with a thing is largely positive while thinking about the same thing in the abstract ends up being significantly more negative. I suppose that means that a lot of fiction about schools is being thrown at people which persuades them until they actually find themselves dealing with the objective reality. For those Lord of the Rings fans out there, I have the image of Gríma Wormtongue whispering into the ear of Theoden; turning him into a bitter, decrepit old man who sits around inside all day. This, in turn, poisons the atmosphere of Rohan and saps its strength.

So, I don’t know, maybe turn off the cable news, get outside and go find a way to volunteer with your local school system.

Political Activists Hinder Mental Healthcare for Students

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Dylan Peers McCoy, writing for WFYI, has a report on the need for mental healthcare among Indiana’s students and the political activists who are standing in the way. Per the article:

Mental health needs are at a peak among U.S. children and teens. A 2021 national survey found that nearly half of Indiana high schoolers felt persistently sad or hopeless — the highest rate in two decades of surveys. The same survey found that three out of every 10 Indiana students said they had considered suicide.

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Yet despite the growing need, the kind of mental health support Dodds found at school is facing an onslaught of criticism from conservative parent activists. They say schools should focus on academic instruction. And they caution that mental healthcare and social and emotional learning may promote ideas that conflict with parents’ values.

“A small but loud and politically savvy group of — and it’s not just of parents, it’s really of political activists — are hijacking and spreading a lot of misinformation about mental health and social emotional learning in schools and really leveraging people’s fear,” said Sharon Hoover, co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health.

In Indiana this year, Republicans passed a law that restricts school districts’ ability to survey students as to their mental health and emotional well-being. It has to do with a push against “social and emotional learning” which helps students with skills such as managing their emotions and feeling empathy for others.

I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, but this right-wing push against social emotional learning seems to be kind of a buzzword driven thing. Activists sort of project their anxieties onto some jargon, turn it into something it’s not, and then crusade against the straw man they have created. In this situation, I think they’ve associated the approach to mental wellness with their usual uneasiness over things having to do with gender, race, and interpersonal relationships. So maybe they think they’re fighting a shadowy cabal of educators trying to convince their kid that they are really transgender or maybe that they should be ashamed of being white. But really they’re taking away a tool that might help kids feel a little less miserable as they’re learning to navigate the world.

7th Circuit Affirms District Court Injunction on Use of School Bathrooms by Transgender Students

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The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has a very thoughtful opinion pertaining to use of school bathrooms by transgender students. The outcome was that the 7th Circuit affirmed District Court opinions in two cases that entered injunctions against Martinsville schools and against Vigo County School District which require the schools to allow the Plaintiffs, transgender boys in both cases, to use the boys bathroom in the schools.

They based their opinion on a few things:

  • A) There is 7th Circuit precedent from a Wisconsin case that supports this result.
  • B) The precedent stands for the proposition that when Title IX prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex,” it is talking about “sex” in the social context (i.e. gender) and not just as a biological matter;

  • C) There is already a split in opinion between the 4th and 11th Circuits on the subject of whether Title IX means “sex” solely as a matter of biology. The 7th Circuit and the 4th are currently aligned in thinking “sex” means something more than just chromosomal make up. Shifting gears and joining the 11th Circuit would still leave a split among Circuits. One way or another, the Supreme Court or Congress is going to have to reconcile the split.

  • D) When considering injunctions, courts are required to balance harms. The students have pointed to very real harms they are experiencing by being required to either use the girls’ bathrooms or the unisex bathroom in the nurse’s office. Meanwhile, the schools are “fighting a phantom.”

    “Gender-affirming facility access does not implicate the interest in preventing bodily exposure, because there is no such exposure. . . . There is no evidence that any students will be exposed to A.C. or vice versa. Common sense tells us that the communal restroom is a place where individuals act in a discreet manner to protect their privacy and those who have true privacy concerns are able to utilize a stall.”

Judge Easterbrook concurred in the result but not in the opinion. He thinks they should follow precedent and, therefore, affirm the injunction. That said, he thinks the 11th Circuit is probably right that the authors of Title IX probably had biological sex in mind when they wrote it. Even though he holds that view of the law, he observes:

Like my colleagues, I’m puzzled that the school districts did not act on the logical implication of these orders. Much of life reflects social relations and desires rather than instructions encoded in DNA. Nurture and nature both play large roles in human life. Classifying as ‘boys’ youngsters who are socially boys (even if not genetically male) is an act of kindness without serious costs to third parties.

 

2023 West Lafayette Community School Corporation Referendum

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West Lafayette Schools will be putting their school tax rate referendum on the November ballot. If you are a voter in the District, please vote “yes.”

Introduction

West Lafayette Schools get 18% of their current funding through a referendum approved property tax rate. Voters in the district need to renew this rate periodically or it goes away. Of the 290 school districts in Indiana, West Lafayette ranks 288th in support from the State under the State School Funding Formula. To maintain the kinds of schools we want, we need to renew the referendum property tax rate.

The State changed the way schools were funded in 2009. The new funding mechanisms put West Lafayette at a disadvantage.  In response, to adequately fund our schools, the community took advantage of the new (in 2009) referendum tool, adopting a tax rate in 2010 and again in 2017. Absent money from the referendum tax rate, our schools would not  be able to provide the quality of education our community wants. The rate is up for renewal again in November 2023. Non-renewal would mean an 18% reduction in funding, fewer teachers, larger class sizes, and fewer opportunities for our students.

West Lafayette gets less education funding from the State than just about any other school district, even as our district has the highest expectations and ambitions for the quality of education in our community. Renewal of the referendum means that we leave the current tax structure in place and can maintain our excellent schools. The tax rate will remain the same as it has been since the first referendum was approved in 2010. When the time comes, please vote “yes” to approve the referendum.

Vote “yes” to continue the excellence of West Lafayette’s schools. The tax rate will stay the same. State law requires that we vote to renew it periodically.

School Funding in Indiana

In 2008, the Indiana General Assembly substantially restructured its property tax laws. This was in response to an Indiana Supreme Court decision which required the State to change the way it handled real estate assessments. For a variety of reasons, this led to a politically unpopular level of real estate taxes and prompted the State to shift away from real estate taxes in favor of a greater reliance on other types of taxes such as income taxes and sales taxes. This had a significant impact on how schools are funded.

Each school district has three main funds: the education fund, the operations fund, and the debt service fund. School districts like West Lafayette which have adopted a referendum tax rate also have a fourth, referendum fund.

Education Fund – funded by the State through sales taxes

As part of this transition away from real estate taxes, because schools had relied so heavily on such taxes, the State took over the bulk of school funding and increased the statewide sales tax to pay for it. Money provided by the State goes into each school’s “Education Fund.” This is the fund that pays for expenses allocated to student instruction and learning.

The State uses a per-student formula to determine how much money it will put into a school’s Education Fund.  This formula is revised every budget year. But, generally, there is a base (foundation) rate which is the same for every school district. Added to this is a “complexity” rate which is tied to a district’s socioeconomic condition. (The number of students eligible for free and reduced lunch subsidies are pretty well correlated with the size of a district’s complexity rate.) (Edit 7/12/2022: I believe I’m out of date on the “complexity rate.” Starting in 2020, the base amount is supplemented with a special education grant, a career and technical grant, and an honors grant — West Side’s supplemental funding above the base rate remains small compared to other districts.)

Because West Lafayette is in better shape economically than most of the rest of Indiana, our supplemental funding from the state above the base rate is small. Consequently, our school district gets the third least amount per student. In 2022, the State contributed $6,470 per West Side student; an amount which ranked 288th out of 290 school districts in the State. The median rate is around $7,250 and the highest per student rate is IPS with $11,281 per student. West Lafayette has approximately 2,420 students meaning the State’s contribution to the Education Fund under this formula would be around $15.6 million. There are some other State contributions that add to this fund and, for 2023, the certified Education Fund budget was $17.5 million.

West Lafayette is nearly last in per pupil funding received by the State. We need to renew our local referendum rate if we want to maintain the quality of our schools.

Operation Fund – funded by local real estate taxes

The school Operation Fund is funded by revenues from local real estate taxes. Schools are inevitably going to have non-classroom operational expenses (e.g. buses, administration, utilities, and a lot of other things needed to support the classroom operations). These sorts of expenses are paid for using the Operation Fund. The 2023 certified budget for this fund was $5.8 million.

The revenues in this fund come from local property taxes which are subject to Indiana’s tax cap laws. (Generally, the total local taxes assessed on a property cannot exceed 1% of the assessed value for residential property, 2% for rental property and agricultural property, and 3% for other kinds of commercial property.)

Debt Service Fund – funded by local real estate taxes

The Debt Service Fund pays for capital expenses, usually bonds and long-term leases for building construction and renovation. Construction costs are an inevitable fact of life for school corporations. Buildings only last so long and sometimes schools need greater capacity. Indiana’s municipal funding rules do not generally permit schools to accumulate taxes in order to save up prior to doing major construction. Therefore these expenses are usually paid for through bond issuances or (for arcane historical reasons) long-term leases with a municipal building corporation (which are functionally the same thing as bonds.)

The 2023 certified budget for WLCSC’s debt service fund was $6.2 million. Revenues in this fund are not permitted to be used for non-capital purposes such as teacher salaries. Occasionally when school funding is discussed, people argue that teachers could be paid more if the school buildings were not so nice. Leaving aside the fact that kids don’t learn well in squalor, taxes imposed for the debt service fund are not permitted to be used for operational purposes such as increasing teacher pay.

The taxes levied to support the debt service fund are also subject to Indiana’s tax cap laws. (1% cap on owner-occupied residential, 2% cap on rental and agricultural property, and 3% on other commercial property). In Indiana, debt service on bonds is usually protected. Therefore, if the tax caps cause a shortfall in revenues, bonds will get paid and the shortfall will be taken out of the other funds. For West Lafayette, this means that the Operation Fund bears the brunt of these “circuit breaker” credits. Due to tax caps, the Operation Fund  gets reduced by approximately 31% of what would otherwise be generated.

Referendum Fund – funded by local real estate taxes

The Referendum fund consists of money from a referendum approved tax rate. This is the rate that will be on the ballot because the State requires it to be renewed by voters periodically. This rate is not subject to the tax caps. In 2010, when the district first approved the rate, the voters approved a referendum tax rate of up to $0.43 per hundred dollars of assessed value. Even though the rate was approved at up to that level, in practice the school board never approved a budget imposing a tax rate that high. The approved rate ends up being a maximum. The actual amount is based on the budget approved by the school board each year.  Between 2010 and 2017, the budget approved by the school board each year never included a referendum rate that exceeded $0.37 per hundred dollars of assessed value. Therefore, when it came time to renew the tax rate, the maximum referendum rate on the ballot was lowered by the school board from $0.43 to $0.37 per hundred dollars of assessed value. (This did not stop the Journal and Courier from running a headline at the time suggesting that the School Board was trying to raise taxes.)

Money in the current referendum fund (approved, as it was, via the process in place in 2017) can be used for any lawful school expense. Historically money from that rate has been used in West Lafayette for student instruction and learning. In recent years, the State created certain incentives making it beneficial for the schools to spend less State money on non-instructional operations. (As a political matter, it’s more popular to declare that money is spent on instruction rather than on the more mundane administrative expenses that make instruction possible). So, West Lafayette removed some operational expenses from the Education Fund and began paying for them from the Referendum Fund and moved some educational expenses from the Referendum Fund to the Education Fund.

Changes in the referendum process since 2017 require the school to specify the uses in the referendum question. The upcoming referendum will likely specify that revenues will be used “for the purpose of retaining and attracting teachers and staff and funding academic programming and operating expenditures.” Functionally, this would appear to permit paying for expenses that would otherwise be payable out of the Education or Operation funds but not for expenses that would be payable out of the Debt Service fund.

Referendum funds make up 18% of the School’s total budget. If the referendum rate goes away, so does 18% of the school’s funding and, with it, manageable class sizes and many of the programs that make West Side great.

The Property Tax Bill

The referendum tax rate has an impact on local real estate tax bills. Those can be confusing, so it might be useful to look at how the tax bill works.

A real estate tax bill for a homeowner starts with the gross assessed value of the home. In rough terms, this should be something like the market value of the home. That assessed value is reduced by a series of deductions (most commonly, the homestead deduction, the “supplemental standard” deduction, and a mortgage deduction). The gross assessed value minus the deductions results in the net assessed value. The net assessed value is multiplied by a tax rate to generate the amount of tax owed. The tax rate consists of the combined tax rates of the taxing jurisdictions in which a home is located – generally, the city, the county, the school district, the township, the library district and the solid waste management district. If the resulting tax bill exceeds (in the case of an owner-occupied home) 1% of the gross assessed value, then the tax caps kick in and generate a “circuit breaker” credit in an amount sufficient to lower the tax bill to the cap amount.

I know, I know. This stuff gets confusing.

Let’s take as an example, a home with a $200,000 gross assessed value. That property is entitled to a homestead deduction of $45,000. It is also entitled to a “supplemental standard” deduction of 35% of the assessed value (after the homestead deduction). That would be another $54,200 deduction. A mortgage deduction of $3,000 would result in total deductions of $102,200 and a net assessed value of $97,800. (The $200,000 gross assessed value minus the combined deductions.)

The net assessed value is multiplied by the tax rate to determine the amount of tax owed. Each parcel of real estate exists within the jurisdiction of multiple taxing units. Most (but not all) real estate in the West Lafayette school district also exists within Tippecanoe County, the City of West Lafayette, the West Lafayette Library District, Wabash Township, and the Tippecanoe County Solid Waste Management District. Each of those jurisdictions impose a tax rate. Tax rates are expressed in terms of dollars per hundred dollars of assessed value. For 2022/pay 2023 (taxes in Indiana are assessed in one year and paid the following year), those tax rates were:

  • County 0.4156
  • Township 0.0026
  • School 1.2555*
  • City 0.8729
  • Library 0.1768
  • Solid Waste 0.0503
  • Total: 2.7737

*Of the 1.2555 School tax rate, 0.37 comes from the referendum, 0.5375 comes from the debt service fund, and 0.3480 comes from the operations fund. Because the referendum fund is not subject to tax caps, only 0.8855 of the school tax rate and 2.4037 of the total tax rate is subject to the 1% tax cap. That becomes important in a moment.

The $2.7737 per $100 of assessed value is multiplied by the $97,800 net assessed value ($978 * 2.7737) to generate a tax bill of $2,712.68. There is yet another tax deduction having to do with a local income tax imposed in Tippecanoe County for the purpose of providing property tax relief. That provides another deduction which amounts to about $223 and a tax bill of $2,489.68. Now the tax caps kick in. For an owner-occupied residence with a gross assessed value of $200,000, a 1% — $2,000 – cap applies.

Recall that $361.86 from the referendum ($978 * .37) is outside of the tax cap. The remaining $2,127.82 ($2,489.68 – $361.86) is governed by the cap. Because of the cap, the taxpayer gets an additional “circuit breaker” credit of $127.82 resulting in a total tax bill of $2,361.86. If the referendum rate were not in place, the total tax bill would be $2,000.

West Lafayette’s Need

The referendum fund will generate approximately $7 million or about $2,900 per student for West Lafayette Schools in 2023. This represents approximately 18% of the school’s $39 million annual budget. Reducing the budget by 18% would have a severe impact on our students and on our community. It would mean fewer teachers, larger classes, and a reduction in art, music, and extra-curriculars.

The referendum question that is likely to appear on the ballot would specify that money from the referendum rate would be “for the purpose of retaining and attracting teachers and staff and funding academic programming and operating expenditures.”

A variety of factors make West Lafayette a good candidate for the referendum rate:

  • Low State funding. West Lafayette gets the third lowest per student funding in the State.
  • Landlocked District. The State funds schools on a per-student basis. West Lafayette already has the highest population density in the State. There is not a significant opportunity for further development in the school boundaries that is likely to add substantially more students.
  • High real estate values. The “supplemental standard” tax deduction is a percentage of a property’s value, meaning that addition of this deduction by the General Assembly removes more assessed value from the West Lafayette school district than average. High values also mean that, in general, the residents of West Lafayette have greater wherewithal to fund a referendum rate.
  • TIF Districts. A TIF District is an economic development tool that (more or less) sets a base assessed value for a specified geographic area at a particular moment in time. When that assessed value grows, the additional tax revenue is used for economic development rather than for other tax purposes (such as for school funding.) More of West Lafayette than average is locked up in TIF Districts. In West Lafayette, 39% of the net assessed value is in TIF districts compared to a statewide average of 9%.  This means that growing assessed value does not assist the operations fund or the education fund. Referendum rates are not subject to the TIF limitations.
  • Rental properties. West Lafayette has more rental properties than usual. They are subject to a 2% tax cap rather than the 3% cap that applies to other types of commercial property.
  • Textbook and curricular fees. A new wrinkle in State law this year is that schools are prohibited from charging fees for textbooks and other curricular materials. The State will provide some funding to compensate for the lost revenue, but at the time I write this, it seems likely that state funding will fall short of the lost revenue.

Conclusion

As Caleb Mills said on the subject of Indiana education in 1848, “There is but one way to secure good schools, and that is to pay for them.” But there is a related quote from Dr. Mills that is even more relevant to the referendum question: “Awaken the public mind, and concentrate it on the question, ‘Am I not interested in the proper education of all that are socially and politically connected with me?’” 

A good education is not just a benefit to those students who happen to be in the school district at the moment. Quality schools benefit the community generally. They attract people who want the best for their children. They produce adults who are productive, creative, and give back to the community. Whether you have students in the schools or not, our great schools make West Lafayette a better place to live.

The State provides West Lafayette with less education funding than other school districts in Indiana. By voting “yes” to the referendum question, we will ensure that the tax rate remains the same and our schools will continue to be funded adequately.

(I drew a great deal of information from Dr. Larry DeBoer’s May 22, 2023, presentation to the West Lafayette School Board. His power point is available here.)

RDP! Vote “Yes” and keep our schools strong.

 

Purdue Exponent on Perennial Cursive Legislation Attempts

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The Exponent has an article on Sen. Leising’s perennial efforts to mandate cursive in Indiana’s schools. It’s of local interest since Rep. Klinker joined her in a sort of compromise measure to have schools report data on cursive instruction. The article didn’t really give any voice to the people (like me) who oppose a cursive mandate, so I thought I’d go ahead an comment yet again on the issue.

Knowing how to read and write cursive is not as important as it once was. Even when I was a kid, the time spent on the subject was out of line with its value. Now, cursive has much less value than it once did. Schools should decide for themselves how much time is justified as compared to other subjects. The proponents concerns are generally over-wrought appeals to emotion. “They won’t be able to read the Constitution!” There are digital copies and if it’s really important you can teach them to read the Constitution in a fairly rapid amount of time. But, keep in mind, almost none of us could make sense of Magna Carta and it’s pretty foundational to Western Democracies. “Kids won’t be able to sign their names!” As the article involved demonstrates, this can be taught in a matter of minutes.

I think cursive is on its way out. As more and more people find the form of communication archaic, the burden will shift to people inclined to write in cursive to communicate in a different way. I think I still have some 5 1/4 floppies in the basement, but I would never transmit information using them, expecting that a recipient will have a 1541 floppy drive available. Also, not really in this article, but a lot of times proponents will dive into arguments about memory and motor skills. Those benefits are largely realized when the form of writing is printing rather than cursive.

The bottom line is that time is a limited resource. Time spent learning cursive is time not spent learning something else. I trust my local teachers and school officials to weigh the costs and benefits a lot more than I do the folks in the General Assembly.

From Satanic Panic to Elective Transgender Surgeries for Minors

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I don’t care if this makes me unpopular. Unlike SOME in our country, I am FIRMLY against burning kittens.

I think we all have a soft spot for the moral panics of our youth. For me, that’s the Satanic Panics of the eighties. My small Indiana town was not at all unique in having a rumored Devil’s House somewhere out in the country. A kid heard from another kid whose aunt knew somebody who said that’s where Satanists worshiped the Devil. Back in the day, news outlets ran with lurid stories of sexual abuse and torture of children in the name of Lucifer. The evidence was always sketchy — recovered memories and so forth — but what a great story. As Fred Clark has discussed, there is a need among some in this country to believe that there are lurking hordes of would-be kitten burners in our midst.

A few years ago there was a particularly horrifying kitten-burning incident involving a barbecue grill and, astonishingly, a video camera. That sordid episode took place far from the place where I work, yet the paper’s editorial board nonetheless felt compelled to editorialize on the subject. They were, happily, against it. Unambiguously so.

I agreed with that stance, of course. Who doesn’t? But despite agreeing with the side they took, I couldn’t help but be amused by the editorial’s inordinately proud pose of courageous truth-telling. The lowest common denominator of minimal morality was being held up as though it were a prophetic example of speaking truth to power.

…

But here was the weird part: Most of the commenters and letter-writers didn’t seem to notice that they were expressing a unanimous and noncontroversial sentiment. Their comments and letters were contentious and sort of aggressively defensive. Or maybe defensively aggressive. They were angry, and that anger didn’t seem to be directed only at the kitten-burners, but also at some larger group of others whom they imagined must condone this sort of thing.

So, maybe you’re too young for the Satanic Panics. Maybe your first moral panic has to do with an extensive but elusive network of the nation’s elite kidnapping, raping, and torturing kids in the Comet Ping Pong basement and elsewhere to get their adrenochrome fix. The specifics probably don’t matter that much, but some common ingredients seem to be sex, kids, abuse, and a poorly defined but surely very large group of people who derive profit and/or pleasure from such bad behavior.

Enter the gender affirming care debate. This one is a little weird because on the surface, there is the knotty issue of what kind of care is best for transgender kids. Puberty blockers and hormone therapy aren’t risk free propositions. But then, depriving kids with gender dysmorphia of such treatments is not risk free either. When do the risks of one justify the risks of the other? That seems like the kind of things you let kids, their parents, and their physicians sort out. The Indiana General Assembly has stepped in and forbidden families from getting this kind of treatment. SB 480-2023 is cruel. It helps no one and makes many people’s lives harder.

But the way the debate was framed was perplexing. Elective sex reassignment surgery for kids just wasn’t happening in Indiana. Indiana physicians and medical providers testified to as much before the General Assembly. (Nationwide: “56 youth between the ages of 13 and 17 had genital surgeries over the course of three years. Testimony has affirmed that surgeries on minors don’t occur in Indiana.”) And yet, legislators and even Gov. Holcomb fixated on this non-existent kind of surgery when justifying their actions.

Recently I was reading a message board (not focused on Indiana) where there was a discussion about treatment for transgender children. And, I have to say, the intensity of the focus on “genital mutilation” caught me off guard. That’s what triggered my memory of the Satanic Panic and the QAnon adrenochrome conspiracy, and I realized that I should not have been surprised. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. People want to believe that they are righteously standing up to the shadowy forces of liberals, atheists, communists, and other undesirables who are mutilating kids’ genitals when they get a break from comic books, reefer, Dungeons & Dragons, the knock out game, Tide pods, kitten burning and jazz music.

I don’t want to suggest that the right course of action for helping a transgender kid or a kid who thinks they might be transgender is necessarily straight forward. I think there are plenty of people who are legitimately concerned about the well being of children. But those kinds of concerns would presumably lead a person to support better funding for studying treatments. Maybe more robust supports for families striving to do their best for kids. Possibly even some additional regulatory hoops to jump through depending on the risks of the treatment being sought.

Something else is at work with the intensity of feeling among people eager to eliminate access to puberty blockers under the rhetoric of banning non-existent elective surgeries. It has a very Anti-Kitten Burning Coalition feel to it.

Kennedy and Marcus: From Property to Partner – Women’s Progress and Political Resistance

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Cover of book entitled "From Property to Partner: Women's Progress and Political Resistance" by Sheilas Suess Kennedy and Morton J. Marcus

Reading is Fundamental: Pick up a copy today!

I just finished a good book (From Property to Partner: Women’s Progress and Political Resistance) on feminist history, economics, and future challenges. The authors are two of Indiana’s best scholars and academic voices: Sheila Kennedy and Morton Marcus. I’d urge folks not to shut down at the mention of “feminism” or “academics.”

The book is not an inaccessible meditation on postmodern alienation, performative social constructs, symbolic discourse, or whatever the kids are going on about these days. It’s a plain English discussion of social, legal, economic, and technological trends describing women’s progress from subordinates to (increasingly) equal members of society. It also describes the backlash we’re seeing to those developments.

I’m honestly a little late to the game on feminism. I never doubted women’s right to equal status. But, as a white male born in the seventies, I tended to regard descriptions of male privilege and female disadvantages as overstated. Those things were in the past. Looking around me anecdotally while I was an adolescent in the late 80s, early 90s, there wasn’t (from my limited perspective) a ton of evidence of either. Similarly, I regarded talk of the forces of patriarchy as something like conspiracy theory.

As I got older, the privileges of being a male started to accrue and my horizons broadened. I was better able to see the disparate treatment of men and women. And, of late, the forces of patriarchy have been frantically active and more difficult to ignore.

With that as background, this book was a good primer. It’s a plain-English read and not too long. While the social and legal efforts to obtain more equality for women shouldn’t be discounted, I particularly appreciated the discussion of the various ways in which technology has contributed to progress for women.

Industrialization meant brute strength was no longer as significant a factor for earning a living. The birth control pill allowed women greater control over their bodies and over whether and when to become pregnant. The knock-on effects of that control are difficult to overstate. Unexpected and unwanted pregnancies and the responsibilities of child care (which disproportionately fall on women) have a huge impact on a woman’s autonomy and her equal participation in society. Additionally, advances in household technologies (where women have traditionally been expected to do most of the labor) opened up time for women to make a living outside the home. The authors take a two-pronged approach. They alternate chapters and focus on their respective areas of expertise. Sheila Kennedy’s background is as a lawyer and professor of law and public policy. Morton Marcus is an economist. Together they’re able to cover a lot of ground.

The political backlash to women’s progress has become more pronounced in recent years. A lot of the red/blue, rural/urban divide, particularly on culture war issues, can be viewed as a fight over gender roles. State level gerrymandering, the electoral college, and the Senate’s arbitrary filibuster rules give the forces of tradition that favor a subordinate role for women more leverage.

Also, until recently, the political incentives surrounding abortion favored the political right. The issue galvanized white evangelicals while those on the left mostly ignored the issue in favor of other issues. Despite dire warnings to the contrary, the assumption was that Roe would continue to protect women’s right to bodily autonomy. After all, political activists had warned that Roe’s demise was imminent for decades. With the Dobbs decision and state legislatures (including Indiana’s) rolling back women’s reproductive rights, those political incentives may have shifted. Even in red states, abortion bans appear to be deeply unpopular.

The authors differ on how decisively they have shifted. Neither pretends anything like certainty. Kennedy tends to think that Dobbs may have awakened a sleeping giant in the form of women who, as it happens, enjoy having rights and who vote. Marcus seems less optimistic about whether the shift will have the longevity and the numbers necessary to restore what was lost.

In any event, it was a good read, and I can recommend it.

Berlin Day 7 & 8: Bonus Day in Berlin and Travel Home

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The Berlin Series:

Berlin Day 7 (March 17-18, 2023)

Cozy accommodations

With our travel plans derailed by SAS, our final day of vacation (March 17) was planned on the fly. We took a car with our luggage to the Charlottenburg area of Berlin where we had a room at the B&B hotel. It was not at all roomy for four people, but I have to say that they make great use of the space. It reminded me of a cruise ship cabin in terms of efficiency. The kids had a bunk bed while Amy and I had a double. It didn’t matter too much since we wouldn’t be spending a lot of time here. During the day, we’d be out and about; then we’d have to head for the airport at about 3:30 a.m.

After storing our stuff, we got lunch on our way to see the Charlottenburg Palace. We ate at a restaurant called Trattoria Toscana. It was a fantastic place for lunch, but it was cash only which was a drawback. I’d been making an effort to burn our cash the day before because we hadn’t really needed many Euros for the prior week, and we thought we would be leaving a day earlier. Despite hearing that Berlin was a fairly cash intensive place compared to other parts of Europe, that hadn’t been our experience. I think that may have had to do with our spending most of our time in the central part of Berlin. In Charlottenburg, we saw more cash places. Anyway, we had enough for lunch, but just barely. We skipped the beer and wine that looked fairly appealing, and went with water (which still cost something, because that’s the way it goes in Europe.) The service was outstanding, and the food was good. No offense to the Germans, but I think the best food they have is from other traditions.

Understated and simple.

Following lunch, we made our way up the street to Charlottenburg Palace. My family loves a good palace. The palace was commissioned by Sophie-Charlotte at the end of the 17th century. This captured my interest since she features somewhat prominently as a character in one of my favorite series, Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. He highlighted her relationship to Gottfried Liebniz who was an all around genius. One of the reasons I love the series is that Stephenson underscores just how much of our modern world in terms of things like science, industry, banking, economics, and communications were given form during the hundred years or so between 1650-1750. That appreciation fed into my enjoyment of Charlottenburg.

The palace itself is the scene of some of the activity in the story. The palace is baroque and busy and, we joked, has a lot of anterooms. “It’s anterooms all the way down!” My favorite part of the palace was the palace chapel which includes an impressive looking organ. Much as I enjoyed our tour, I probably would have preferred more information about the history of the palace residents and maybe less information about the furnishings. During the tour, I was stopped to take a survey about our visit, our reasons for coming, and our impression of the palace. Most of the survey was a matter of picking one of the pre-written answers, but there was a spot where you could offer any thought you wanted, and mine was out of left field. There was a great deal of Chinese imported or influenced material that struck me as dating from earlier than I would have expected much commerce. Not based on any real solid chronology, but I wouldn’t have expected too much of that until the late 1700s, early 1800s. But I think I was seeing Chinese themes from the early 1700s and I suggested that maybe they could provide information about Sino-Prussian relationships in the early 18th century.

Anterooms all the way down!

After a good long time in the palace, we exited onto the grounds. They were beautiful and impressive, but suffered (as any place at that latitude does) from it being mid-March. A few weeks later would have been stunning. At a pond with some ducks, Harper was having a great time and getting silly and giggly which, from my perspective as a Dad, is just the best thing ever.

Killer duck pond

After Charlottenburg, we took a break at Cafe la Mouche, got some coffee and spent the absolute last of our cash. Properly fortified, we made our way to the Computer Game Museum. As I recall, Amy and I were maybe a little low on energy. It had been an active week and the change in travel plans had thrown a wrench in the works. The Computer Game Museum is about 45 minutes away from Charlottenburg using public transit, and it seemed like a bit of a journey. Cole, in particular, however really wanted to go. And I’m glad we did because it was a great place.

Hanging in my WELL sweatshirt next to the Zork display.

I grew up with video games and video game hardware in the 70s and 80s which was really the focus of this museum. In addition to the exhibits and plaques, they have a couple of arcades and some of the exhibits are playable. I think we all had a good time. I played some old school Asteroids and Paper Boy. There was some trick to getting Pac Man to register credits that we never quite figured out, but eventually the kids were able to piggyback off of someone else who got the game going. Also, as luck would have it, I had my WELL sweatshirt on. I’ve been a member of that community for about twenty-four centuries. So, it was great to see a quote on one of the exhibits by Howard Rheingold (who goes by <hlr> on the WELL) at one of the exhibits.

After a couple of hours of video games, we were ready for dinner. Amy found us a Greek place nearby called Kos House. We walked the quarter mile down Karl-Marx-Allee to the restaurant. (And, yes, I included the name of the street because having a respectable street named after Karl Marx in the U.S. would be unthinkable!) One of our waiters spoke no English, and I’m not entirely sure his German was too strong. Cole sent the waiter running when Cole botched a German word or two. There were plenty of people who spoke English at the restaurant, but it was a good reminder that we were visitors. Cole and I both got Mythos beers. Not German, but neither of us had had it before. It was a pleasant lager. The whole family ordered gyros. Not terribly exotic, but maybe we were getting travel weary.

Fight!

Many of you can probably hear the Pole Position starting sounds right now.

Zelda on the big screen!

Following dinner, we headed back to the hotel to catch a few hours of sleep. It was probably 10 p.m. when we got to bed and the alarm was set for 3 a.m. There wasn’t an outlet near my side of the bed, so when I woke up in the middle of the night, my phone and watch were not within arm’s reach. I couldn’t get back to sleep because I kept wondering what time it was. Eventually, I got up and looked. It was 2:30. I had received a text from Mom that #1 seed Purdue had lost to #16 seed Farleigh Dickinson. (I come from a die-hard Hoosiers family, so Purdue falling on its face was a subject of some schadenfreude.)  I don’t think I got back to sleep after that. I let everyone know about the Purdue game first thing when the alarm went off. We had ordered a car that picked us up promptly – was, in fact, waiting for us – when we got down to the street at 3:45. We traveled to the Berlin airport. The security folks were unnecessarily gruff about their arbitrary rules for how many trays your computers and liquids and metal objects need to be distributed among. I guess they can be like that anywhere in the world.

There was no lounge we could use with our fancy-pants travel card, but it did get us a certain amount of credit at a particular cafe in the airport. We weren’t really all that hungry at that hour of the morning, so we weren’t coming anywhere close to maxing it out. This offended the sensibilities of the lady running the cash register, so she piled us up with extra candy bars and whatever was within arm’s reach that could get us closer to the limit. Cole and I both got breakfast beers, because who the hell knows what time it is anymore? We were following the late night (back home) IU versus Kent State game and were happy to celebrate that win.

Hoo-hoo-Hoosiers!

Our first leg was a short flight to Brussels. We were trying not to check bags but, claiming limited overhead space, they made us do so. I’m sure they had their reasons, but there was a *lot* of available overhead space. Once in Brussels, I think we had a two hour layover before the flight to Chicago took off, but between clearing passport control and a bonus passport check by United, they were boarding by the time we got to the gate. In Chicago, customs and baggage claim couldn’t have been easier. Our bags were some of the first ones out and were already on the carousel by the time we reached it. The guy at customs barely looked at us. Drove home and arrived at 4:30 p.m. local. The dogs were very happy to see us! Our total travel time had been a little over eighteen hours. Amy crashed at about 8:30 that night; I managed to stay awake until 11; and the kids had friends over until about 1 a.m. (Although Harper and Cole seem to have been dozing off on their guests from time to time.) It was good to sleep in our own beds.

Home again, home again jiggity-jig