A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Whether to eliminate the state income tax

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Mike Kole had an interesting statement in a recent post:

Any time the Daniels Administration wants to turn Indiana into a jobs, wealth, and population magnet, it can take some very simple steps.

1. Cut or eliminate the state income tax. Seven other states have no income tax. Indiana should become the 8th.
2. Cut or eliminate the corporate taxes. Business go off-shore or to other states to flee the tax burden. Eliminate that burden, and they will flock here instead.

The seven states that have no state income tax are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. According to this chart, these states have the following ranks for household median income: Alaska – 6, Washington – 13, Nevada – 18, Wyoming – 33, Texas – 35, Florida – 39, South Dakota – 41.

I don’t think Alaska is representative since its citizens are greatly subsidized by oil checks from the government. The remaining state rankings do not give me great confidence that eliminating state income taxes is very helpful in attracting high paying jobs for working families.

Instead, perhaps we should look at what the top ranked states are doing: Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. My guess is that the tax structures there are distasteful to libertarian ideology and yet somehow their citizens, on average, do better than citizens in more ideologically palatable states.

This’ll teach ya not to protest

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Hot on the heels of massive protests of potentially abusive revisions of the immigration laws, federal officials conducted immigration raids in Indianapolis and other cities in the United States. The raids included arrests and detentions of hundreds of employees, including 7 executives, of IFCO Systems which apparently manufacturers pallets in Indianapolis.

stAllio! has a good roundup (so to speak).
(Updated stAllio! has good followup post as well.)

I imagine Representative Hostettler, who wanted the feds to arrest the protesters, must be pleased.

IN-08: Hostettler calls for the arrest of brown people

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John Hostettler is in the paper today criticizing the Bush administration for not arresting people at Monday’s rallies.

“It was stunning to realize that so many lawbreakers concentrated in one area were given a free pass by federal law enforcement,” said Rep. John Hostettler, chairman of the immigration and border security panel on the House Judiciary Committee.

If Hostettler knew of a particular individual committing a crime at Monday’s immigration rallies, he had a duty to advise the proper authorities of that crime. If he’s suggesting that the Bush administration should infringe upon the right of the people peacebly to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances by having police harass citizens for their papers because they are brown and may be in the vicinity of non-citizens, perhaps he should spend less time talking and more time reading his Constitution.

Could Steve Buyer facilitate nuclear war with Iran?

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O.k., I’ll grant you that the title of the post is inflammatory. But, for maybe the first time, I’m actually scared rather than extremely disgruntled. Sy Hersch has an article in the New Yorker reporting that a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran is being considered as a serious option. You might recall Hersch is the reporter who first unearthed the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

This is the part that really made me nervous:

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has to be stopped.” He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to high levels.” The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.”

The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in such situations has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “They’re telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 with more blast and less radiation,” he said.

Reading the article called to mind Steve Buyer’s support for using nuclear weapons in Afghanistan.

Buyer said Thursday that it’s too risky to send large numbers of ground troops into mountain hideouts. Instead, small special operation forces could fight their way into caves and bunkers and plant timer-detonated tactical nuclear devices powerful enough to bring down entire mountains.

Add to those things the Bush administration’s recent drumbeat against Iran that has a striking resemblance to the drumbeat leading up to war with Iraq that for the first time makes me legitimately concerned that this lameduck President with minimal support at home, all of his policy initiatives in shambles, and a messianic notion that he is an instrument of the Almighty might actually drop a nuclear bomb in Iran and that he would have the support of members of Congress like Steve Buyer.

Tim F over at Balloon Juice has a good post on this subject. In particular, I agree with the sentiment reflected in the exchange between one of the commenters on that post and Tim F.:

I’m willing to entertain the notion that this is part of a grand bluff to Iran – look how nutty Bush is, he’ll do anything.

However such a plan would require a disipline and coordination that, given the observations of the last 5 1/2 years, does not exist in this administration.

However, if it isn’t an attempt to bluff, that leaves us with the only other explanation – the entire administration is batshit insane.

You can call that the Mel Gibson strategy, a la Lethal Weapon. Many of us figured that was what he was up to in Iraq, but – oops – it turned out that he was serious as a heart attack. Don’t make that bet unless you want to lose money.

You know, it’s a sign of the times where, in a bet between bluff and batshit insane, the smart money’s on batshit insane.

Coddling Criminals

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Is it just me or have defenders of the Bush administration and Republicans in the House of Representatives suddenly become staunch civil libertarians? When I listen to C-Span and read message boards, I keep hearing a lot of “innocent until proven guilty.” I mean, sure, I agree. But I thought it was the Democrats who were supposed to be soft on crime.

Talking Point’s Memo’s Grand Old Docket is a great resource for keeping track of the ever-growing list of national (and Ohio) Republicans caught up in indictments and investigations.

Among others:

  • Jack Abramoff – super-lobbyist for GOP interests. Bribery.
  • Claude Allen – #2 at Bush admin’s Dept. of Health & Human Services. Shoplifting.
  • Ed Buckham – Former Chief of Staff to House Republican leader Tom DeLay. Money laundering.
  • John Colyandro – Executive Director of DeLay’s political action committee. Money laundering
  • Duke Cunningham – Republican Representative from California. Bribery.
  • Tom DeLay – Republican Representative from Texas, former House Majority Leader. Money laundering.
  • Brian Doyle – press secretary at Bush admin’s Dept. of Homeland Security. Attempting to seduce a 14 year old girl.
  • Scooter Libby – V.P. Cheney’s chief of staff. Perjury, obstruction of justice.
  • Bob Ney – Republican Representative from Ohio. Bribery.

    That site does not mention:

  • Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) under investigation for possible security violations.
  • Head of Tampa Immigration and Customs Enforcement (a branch of DHS) Frank Figueroa was caught exposing himself to a girl in a mall food court. (There’s a third DHS official in addition to Doyle and Figueroa caught up child sex allegations)

    And of course, you have ongoing questions about whether President Bush himself did anything wrong by authorizing warrantless domestic wiretaps of U.S. citizens in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and by apparently authorizing the Vice President’s office to leak the name of a covert CIA agent in an effort discredit a political enemy of the Bush administration.

    So I can see why they would be sensitive to the rights of the accused just about now. I’ve heard it said that a Republican is a Democrat who was mugged and a Democrat is a Republican who has been arrested.

    • More on the War on Science

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    Last week when linking to the website of Fourth Congressional District candidate David Sanders, I digressed into a discussion of the Bush administration’s War on Science. Dr. Sanders was kind enough to copy me on a letter to the editor he recently submitted to the Indianapolis Star with respect to a column they ran today representing George Will’s attempts to cast doubt on global warming.

    George Will in “Journalism Takes the Heat” continues to be a willing foot soldier in the Bush administration War on Science. His assault on the scientific consensus on the effects of human activities on climate change is filled with irrelevancies and half-truths. The quotation from Science magazine (which Will has been using for years) stating that scientists in 1976 warned of “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation” is a distortion; the full statement concerns “the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years” and explicitly does not include “effects as those due to the burning of fossil fuels.”

    Meanwhile, I came across a Scripps Howard editorial in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette on the Bush administration’s anti-science efforts. I had forgotten to mention the one about the 24 year old Bush administration flack who instructed NASA to make sure that “theory” appeared everywhere NASA talked about the Big Bang on the grounds that this widely accepted explanation of the origins of the universe was a religious issue. In addition, NASA’s public relations department had been instructed to restrict James Hansen’s access to the press, sit in on any interviews and monitor his lectures and writings lest he express views on global warming that didn’t square with those of the Bush administration.

    I’m not a huge fan of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, but I’m reminded of John Galt’s big speech in Atlas Shrugged where he talks about “A” equals “A.” I took that part of the speech to mean that there are objective facts which have to be dealt with and one fails to acknowledge those facts at one’s own peril. Burning fossil fuels either does or does not contribute to global warming. The scientific method is probably the best tool we have to determine the reality of the situation. If we deliberately ignore the information obtained through our observations, then we’ll pay the consequences. Reality will not change simply because we ignore it.

    IN-04: Sanders for Congress website upgraded (with a digression into the War on Science)

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    David Sanders, one of the Democratic candidates seeking to unseat Steve Buyer in Indiana’s Fourth Congressional District has upgraded his website. In a prior post, I believe I was mildly critical of the content at the old site. I give the new site a thumbs-up: a nice clean layout with plenty of information. Seems to have all of the essentials without being oppressively busy.

    Indiana’s Fourth Congressional District includes some or all of Boone, Clinton, Fountain, Hendricks, Johnson, Lawrence, Marion, Monroe, Montgomery, Morgan, Tippecanoe, and White Counties.

    Definitely worth checking out if you’re from one of those counties or just think Rep. Buyer has been in D.C. long enough.

    Of particular interest to me is Dr. Sanders’ scientific background. He is an associate professor of biology at Purdue. While he makes no specific statement to this effect on his website, I believe he could be trusted to resist what Chris Mooney has characterized as the Republican War on Science. You have Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, claiming that, scientific consensus on the matter notwithstanding, global warming is a “hoax perpetrated on the American people.” You have the Bush administration tampering with reports on climate change, suppressing science within the U.S. Department of Fish & Wildlife, and radically misrepresenting the research potential of existing stem cell lines.

    Mooney’s book argues:

    [D]isregard for scientists and the scientific method has grown and ripened with the modern conservative movement. From Barry Goldwater’s anti-intellectualism, through Ronald Reagan’s sympathy for creationism and Newt Gingrich’s passion for science “skeptics,” on through the present day, Republicans have shown a marked preference for politically inspired fringe theories over the findings of long-established and world-renowned scientific bodies.

    The problem, I think, is that, as President Reagan said, “facts are stupid things,” and the scientific method reveals facts. To the dismay of tobacco companies, cigarettes cause cancer. To the dismay of oil and car companies, burning fossil fuels causes global warming. To the dismay of Christians who believe the Bible is to be read literally, evolution contradicts the creation story in Genesis.

    The solution has been to kill the messenger. Because the scientific method reveals all of these inconvenient truths, inconvenienced politicians have sought to undermine the authority of science as a tool in helping us understand how things work. But, when they do this, I think they do more than poison science. I think they diminish the value we place on rationality and the principles of the Enlightenment generally and, therefore, diminishes our democratic traditions.

    Central to the Enlightenment tradition is the idea that there is objective truth, independent of the observer. The Wikipedia entry puts it this way:

    The Enlightenment began then, from the belief in a rational, orderly and comprehensible universe—then proceeded, in stages, to form a rational and orderly organization of knowledge and the state, such as what is found in the idea of Deism. This began from the assertion that law governed both heavenly and human affairs, and that law invested the king with his power, rather than the king’s power giving force to law. The conception of law as a relationship between individuals, rather than families, came to the fore, and with it the increasing focus on individual liberty as a fundamental right of man, given by “Nature and Nature’s God,” which, in the ideal state, would encompass as many people as possible. Thus The Enlightenment extolled the ideals of liberty, property and rationality which are still recognizable as the basis for most political philosophies even in the present era; that is, of a free individual being mostly free within the dominion of the state whose role is to provide stability to those natural laws.

    This has been something of a disjointed digression, but suffice it to say that I believe the same things that weaken the value we place on science also weaken the value we place on democracy and liberty. Dr. Sanders is a scientist and, as such, it would be my hope that he would help to combat the forces that wish to weaken our respect for science and the scientific method.

    The Blogosphere never sleeps

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    The New York Times has a story on the relentlessness of the blogosphere once it gets going. The New York Times references Talking Points Memo, but I saw it at this Daily Kos story.

    A Republican candidate in California’s 50th Congressional District, Howard Kaloogian, posted a photo “to illustrate a peaceful and prosperous Baghdad that he claims the antiwar liberals who run the so-called mainstream news media never show.”

    [The photo is of] a bustling street corner with a variety of shops, billboards and fashionably dressed pedestrians. The caption reads, “Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But each day, the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it — in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.”

    The problem. The street corner isn’t in Baghdad, it’s in Istanbul (cue “They Might Be Giants”) A commenter at Daily Kos found and posted a picture of the Istanbul intersection that Kaloogian claimed was evidence of a peaceful and prosperous Baghdad. “Within hours, Mr. Kaloogian withdrew the picture, blamed an unnamed staff member for the blunder and apologized.”

    D’oh!

    Advance Indiana on Katzenberger on Snow

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    When I post titles like this, I realize how recursive the Web and the blogosphere are. Anyway, Advance Indiana has a good post on John Ketzeberger’s column criticizing Treasury Secretary John Snow’s assertion that the current economy is beneficial to everybody.

    The market, Snow explained, is rewarding the nation’s most productive people with the highest compensation. And the rising tide, he argued, is lifting all boats.

    I’m a collection attorney. I can tell you that the tide is not lifting all boats. I’ve boarded and captured a few myself after they’d run aground. I’d say it’s more like a hurricane that’s moving the biggest ships along at a nice clip while sinking or waterlogging the rest.