Archives for May 2010

Looks like active Indiana blogger and attorney, Paul Ogden, suffered a set back from the 7th Circuit in the case of Odgen v. Atterholt (pdf).

In the course of his employment as manager of the title insurance division at the Indiana Department of Insurance, Mr. Ogden wrote a memo laying out criticisms of Chief Deputy Commissioner Carol Mihalik who had oversight of the the title insurance division by virtue of her responsibilities with the Consumer Protection Unit of which the division was part. The memo was submitted to James Atterholt, the director of the Department of Insurance and requested that the title insurance division be removed from the Consumer Protection Unit. Shortly thereafter Atterholt gave Mr. Ogden a choice between resigning or being terminated. A lawsuit followed.

The complaint apparently had a lot of state law claims as well as a federal claim that being forced out based on a whistle-blowing memo was a free speech violation. The district court and the 7th Circuit disagreed, holding that because this speech was in the course of government employment, the government as employer could terminate the employment without committing a First Amendment violation.

The federal claims having been resolved, the state law claims have been remanded to a state court.

I was busy with paying work when news of the Souder resignation broke. It’s been maybe 9 or 10 hours, and it already feels like old news. But, it seems momentous enough that I figure I should comment.

Souder has been committing adultery with one of his staff members (female), and he got caught. Because he got caught, he is resigning. The rumor I heard was that a newspaper was sniffing around about Souder and his mistress getting caught having sex in a public park. But, I hasten to add, if this has been confirmed, I haven’t seen it yet. (TPM Muckraker has a story on this – they say that DNR searched its records and didn’t find an official record.)

Sanctimonious public officials grate on me, so it’s somewhat satisfying when a little petard hoisting sends them packing. But my amusement at this sort of thing is tempered by the realization that Souder isn’t some abstract character in a story. He’s a real person with, and this is the important part, a real family. His family members are no doubt hurting from this, and I have no particular cause to wish them ill.

So, in the course of 5 years, we are seeing a dramatic sea change in Indiana’s Congressional delegation. Of the 11 Representatives and Senators representing Indiana in 2006, only Senator Lugar, Mike Pence, Dan Burton (barely), and Pete Visclosky (if a corruption investigation doesn’t bring him down) seem likely to be serving in 2011. Sen. Bayh is stepping down. Chris Chocola was defeated by Joe Donnelly. Steve Buyer is resigning ostensibly to take care of his wife, but also under the cloud of his sketchy Frontier Foundation funding. Julia Carson passed away in 2007 and was replaced by her grandson, Andre. John Hostetler was beaten by Brad Ellsworth. And Mike Sodrel was beaten by Baron Hill.

I’ve already seen one of the standard defenses to the sanctimonious hypocrite scandal. It goes something like, “it’s not wrong for someone like Mark Souder to proclaim the sanctity of marriage and good, wholesome values even if he falls short in his personal life.” I’m always puzzled by the lack of concern for integrity this defense implies. It’s enough, apparently, that a public figure says the right things about morality and pretends to believe those things because hearing those things and seeing the pretense is “good for us” somehow.

The problem, as I see it, is with condemnation of those who don’t necessarily speak the approved words about proper morality or engage in the pretense that everyone adheres (or should adhere) to that particular code.

If the family values crowd characterized their version of morality as worthy aspirations instead of imperatives, the departure from which is sinful, I would probably agree. And if guys like Souder said that these aspirations were good ideas that he, personally, was lousy at attaining, I wouldn’t have much to hold over his head right now. But there seems to be a judgment of unworthiness applied to others who are not members of the tribe that is rarely applied as vigorously to folks like Souder.

Now, at least, Souder appears prepared to honor his term limit pledge about four years late. Maybe that will allow him to focus on whatever marital pledges he may have made.

The Urbanophile, always worth reading, has a post about The Brookings’ Institution’s report on the State of Metropolitan America. Cities within regions are diverse and don’t necessarily share the same problems simply because they’re geographically near one another. “Columbus is not Toledo.” Brookings recommends an approach where federal government deals with some national issues on its own but lets a lot of the detail work fall to cities themselves. One problem with this approach, that the Urbanophile notes, is that this effectively means putting policy in the hands of the states which have a tendency toward hostility toward municipalities:

Generally I’m a fan of devolution. However, in this case what we are really talking about is devolving de facto to the states. And as we’ve seen repeatedly, state governments are to varying degrees implicitly or explicitly hostile to cities. There are almost no effective or empowered regional entities in America and municipalities are often hamstrung by state laws that limit their ability to deal with their own problems. In a choice between federal vs. state government, I’m usually a state and local kind of guy, but when it comes to metro policy, I’d probably have to say the feds are more likely to get it right, alas.

In Indiana, local government is micromanaged to a large degree from Indianapolis. One popular tactic recently (and quite possibly for a long time) is to impose a list of requirements and severely limit the available methods for paying – all but mandating that local government officials vote for a particular funding option (e.g. raising local option income taxes to deal with property tax freezes coupled with the state mandated requirement of paying for various local services.)

Also of note, the Urbanophile points out that “healthy” cities in the area – Indianapolis and Pittsburgh – have experienced a good deal of increase in their immigrant population and have seen their population with educational degrees increase. One difference between Indy and Pittsburgh is the under-18 population. Indianapolis seems to have a healthy number of youngsters whereas Pittsburgh is aging.

(That ‘under-18’ statistic makes me think of a post for another day. I wonder how the ‘families make adults’ v. ‘adults make families’ culture war debates play out in terms of immigrant populations. A lot of the youthful vitality in American cities these days comes from immigrant populations with larger families; but these populations are more likely to vote “blue.”)

Sometimes we, by which I mean Americans generally, remind me of the children of successful entrepreneurs. We have been given an awful lot without having to work that hard for it. This warps one’s perspective and creates an awful sense of entitlement.

This article out of USA Today reinforces that notion.

Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.

The cries of “taxed enough already” are echoes of the child who has so damn many toys it’s just such a burden being asked to pick them up. Our prosperity is the result of abundant resources clawed at great effort from the wilderness and native peoples. It is the result of sweatshops, ingenuity, hard work, and thrift. It is the result of the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors.

It’s true enough that many of us work fairly hard and have contributed in some measure to the overall bounty. But, I get the sense that our individual efforts are the tip of the iceberg. If we’d been born in, say, Somalia, is there any doubt that a similar level of individual effort would have left any of us far more impoverished than we are in the U.S.?

We need to get our financial house in order. We need to stop sending good money after bad. But, we also need to tone down the incessant whining about the level of taxes in light of the fact that, historically (not to mention comparatively with respect to the rest of the world), they’re pretty low.

President Obama has nominated Solicitor General and former dean of the Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan, to replace Justice Stevens on the United States Supreme Court. At this level, however, the name of the nominee seems almost incidental. The opposing party will try to drag out the process as long as possible, citing a grave need to gather information and deliberate – this is a lifetime appointment, after all! Nevermind that, when a President from their own party makes a nomination, they need all of about 20 seconds to make their decision.

Eventually, two or three sound bites will rise to the fore, largely taken out of context, and we will hear dire warnings of extremism from the minority opposing party. The majority nominating party will describe the nominee as a flowering of legal thought in our time.

Eventually, the President’s party will tell us about the sanctity of the “up or down vote,” forgetting about filibusters when they were in the minority. And, the reverse is true of the minority opposing party, filibustering while forgetting their red-faced demands for an “up or down vote” when they were in the majority. favor of the nomination. More often than not, there will be a vote, and the President’s nominee will be confirmed.

Secretary of Health & Human Services suggests that state departments of insurance may be able to protect citizens by checking insurance company Wellpoint’s math when it asks for rate increases. The reason is that, in California, the insurance giant asked for a 39% premium increase in California which was turned down when it’s submission attempting to justify the rate increase was found to have substantial errors.

“In light of this recent finding, I urge that, to the extent you have authority to do so, you re-examine any WellPoint rate increases in your state to determine whether any mistaken assumptions similar to those made in California were made in your state,” Sebelius wrote to the governors. “Even small errors can mean unaffordable premiums for policyholders.”

Here in Indiana, the Daniels administration seems to be taking the somewhat childish stance that it is not inclined to do so because the request is coming from the Obama administration, with whom Gov. Daniels has a political disagreement about health care:

Gov. Daniels does not plan on responding to the letter, according to Jane Jankowski, a spokeswoman.

“When we feel the need for advice about health-care costs, we won’t start with the people who just passed this disastrously expensive and backward federal legislation,” Daniels said in a statement e-mailed by Jankowski.

BrianK at Blue Indiana points out that this response is coming from the person whose math on the cost of the Iraq War, as President Bush’s director of the Office of Management & Budget, was so staggeringly wrong. (Not even mentioning the consistently wrong budget projections here locally.)

It’s a bad idea to let politics trump math. Eventually the math is always going to win.

Checking in to see how I did on my prognostications:

Senate – Dan Coats.
Coats won handily, getting 45,000 more votes than his next closest rival, Marlin Stutzman. (Coats had about 185k versus Stuzman’s 140k.)

IN-01: Mark Leyva (no idea, but that was the one name I recognized)
This one is a tentative Leyva win. The Secretary of State count is reflecting a 27 vote margin above Peter Lindemulder. A news article I read said something about a 600 vote margin.

IN-02: Jackie Walorski (though Tony “Illinois Nazi birthday party” Zirkle would be fun)
Jackie Walorski won handily, pretty much doubling the count of her next closest opponent, Jack Jordan.

IN-03: Mark Souder (could be close though, he is not well liked and has some legitimate competition.)

Not really all that close. Souder had 35,750 votes to his next closest challenger, Bob Thomas, with 25,000.

IN-04: Toss-up, but I’ll guess Rokita – just from the name recognition he garnered by plastering his name on heavy Secretary of State advertising.

Not a toss-up. Rokita won by an enormous margin, more than doubling Brandt Hersman’s total.

IN-05: Dan Burton because all of the anti-Burton votes will cancel out.

Burton won with about 30,000; about 10,000 votes to spare above John McGoff’s 20,000.

IN-07: No idea, I’ll say Carlos May.

Wrong. Marvin Scott.

IN-08: No idea, I’ll pick Larry Bucshon out of a hat.

Looks like Bucshon narrowly beat Kristi Risk.

IN-09: Mike Sodrel for the re-re-re (I lost count) match against Baron Hill.
Wrong. Todd Young won this one. But, the Indiana Secretary of State’s office currently lists Travis Hankins as leading the vote count. But all of the newspapers list Young as the winner, so that pretty much calls into question all of the vote totals I’ve mentioned above. But, I think I’ve at least gotten the victors correct.