The Colts beat the Raiders to go 12-2. With a Jaguars victory over the Steelers, the Colts also locked up the #2 position in the playoffs, getting a first round bye. New England locked up the #1 slot. The Colts won’t play a meaningful game for about 4 weeks (Houston & Tennessee both irrelevant then the first round bye in the playoffs). Historically, the Colts haven’t done well with so much time off. So, hopefully the coaching staff will be able to balance the right amount of rest with the right amount of playing time to have the team healthy and ready to go in the middle of January.
We rock!
Say what you will about stagnating wages and a mushrooming national debt, the U.S. has the richest rich people anywhere. And, apparently, they’re getting richer faster than ever.
The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 ($524.8 billion) exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans ($383.4 billion), according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office. “On average, incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by $465,700 each, or 42.6 percent after adjusting for inflation. The incomes of the poorest fifth rose by $200, or 1.3 percent, and the middle fifth increased by $2,400 or 4.3 percent.†[NYT/Think Progress]
Rift in the GOP
John Cole and some others see a rift in the GOP centering on Huckabee’s Old Time Religion. Personally, I don’t think it would be as noticeable without Romney. It’s easier to make vague statements about religion and claim that you’re only against those dreaded human secularists when you don’t have to explain why Romney’s Mormonism is a problem. Then it becomes apparent that a non-trivial segment of the GOP’s constituents want to promote a particular kind of religion. And that’s when the problems start. Could be a fun election year.
Update Blue Indiana has an excellent post on a column by Sylvia Smith that reports on the small-minded Mark Souder.
Says Souder:
“I’m unhappy that (President) Bush says we all serve the same God. I don’t agree with that. We have freedom to worship. We have freedom of expression. But that does not mean every religion is equal and good and right.
“Fundamentally, it’s wrong,” Souder said of Islam because part of the Quran refers to killing infidels. “I find their religion offensive.”
“The fundamentals of their religion is they want to kill Jews and wipe them off the face of the earth and any other allies. I simply am not going to praise a religion that believes that. I believe Jews are God’s chosen people,” Souder said. “It’s fundamental in their faith, from the very beginning, that Jews are dogs and should be wiped from the face of the earth. Why is that great?”
Souder is an ignorant piece of crap if he thinks that is the fundamental basis of Islam. Yup, just like Christians are all about bombing abortion clinics. I mean, I don’t subscribe to either religion. But, jeeze, if you’re going to condemn a religion, at least bother to know something about it.
Local Government Restructuring: Whose Baby is This?
Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article on the Shepard-Kernan recommendations for restructuring local government. She notes that it’s not clear whose responsibility it is to promote and shepherd legislation to implement the recommendations. That’s a hard job to sell, I would think. Quite apart from whether the recommendations are good policy (in my view, some are, some aren’t), support for the recommendations will be general and abstract. Opposition to the recommendations will be personal and fierce. That’s hard to fight against, especially during an election year.
If anyone has a duty to spearhead this thing, it’s the Governor (assuming, of course, that he agrees with the recommendations). Given that it’s an election year and how invisible he was on the property tax debate last session, I’m not sure if we can expect that kind of leadership from him. I don’t know if his absence from the property tax debate in 2007 was because he was too scarred from the Daylight Saving Time and Toll Road battles from previous sessions or what. I guess my sense is that he is following in the footsteps of his mentor, George W. Bush. Molly Ivins pointed out, before Bush became President, that Bush would take hard lines and push controversial measures the first year of a term. As the term progressed and elections approached, he would become more moderate in his positions and actions. I think Daniels would like to follow a similar path, but had the property tax issue thrust upon him due, in large part, to Marion County’s awful handling of the matter. Other counties can be ignored, but Marion County has way more influence on State government than any other locality.
More immediate tax restructuring proposals will take precedence, I imagine. Local government restructuring, billed as providing longer term property tax reductions, will probably have a hard time getting room in this short session during a big election year. (I’ll be interested to see numbers on how much money these proposals are supposed to save.) Just a guess. I’ve been wrong before.
Update The Indianapolis Star has a story on the proposal. Incidentally, a pet peeve of mine is use of the term “reform” by reporters writing supposedly objective news articles. “Reform” is a value laden word implying improvement. Maybe the proposals would result in improvements, maybe they wouldn’t. But I don’t think this is something that reporters can know.
My back is aching preemptively
Big snow last night. I’m glad it’s Sunday, so we can all dig out without worrying about the work week. I only saw the mound of snow up near the back door that the dog had to wallow through to go do her business this morning, but it looks to be 10 inches to a foot, I’d guess. Our good friends in the neighborhood who hail from Minnesota will be sneering at the “dusting,” I’m sure. But for an Indiana-boy such as myself, it’s respectable.
Fortunately, the boy is an excellent shoveler:
(From last February.)
Update Fortunately Mom was there to take pictures:
Hard at work.
Fortunately, I had help.
Hard work comes with rewards. In this case, some yummy hot chocolate.
IN-07: Julia Carson passes away
U.S. Representative Julia Carson (D IN-07) passed away today shortly after announcing she was suffering from lung cancer. She was 69.
Manufactured Reality
The Christian Science Monitor has an article on a recent House Committee report that the White House has been manipulating the work of the government’s environmental scientists.
At least since 2003, and especially after hurricane Katrina hit, the White House has broadly attempted to control which climate scientists could speak with reporters, as well as editing scientists’ congressional testimony on climate science and key legal opinions, according to a new report by a House committee.
“The Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policy makers and the public about the dangers of global warming,” said the report, which is the result of a 16-month probe by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “The White House exerted unusual control over the public statements of federal scientists on climate change issues.”
I’m not a big fan of Ayn Rand, but I think some of her ideas were useful. (Eh? I thought we were talking about the White House?) One of those ideas was one the John Galt character apparently took from Aristotle — the somewhat obvious law that “A” equals “A”. And, no matter what you say about “A” — it’s still going to equal “A”. No matter how off base physicists may be in describing the laws of physics, a mechanic is going to have to deal with those laws as they are and not as they are described.
So, the environmental situation is what it is, and the Bush administration’s deceptive descriptions are not going to change it. We’d better do our best to accurately observe what “A” equals.
Three years
Looks like I missed my three year blogoversary. My first Indiana government blog entry was November 29th, 2004. Presumably untold riches and power would’ve been mine had I spent my time productively. Too late now, I guess. Might as well keep blogging along.
Column on Mike Huckabee
Bonnie Erbe of the Scripps Howard News Service has a column in the Evansville Courier Press on Mike Huckabee. She describes him as a knuckle dragger. The basis for this harsh assessment was his endorsement of Southern Baptist teachings about the role of women in marriage. Wives are to “graciously submit” to their husbands.
Says Erbe:
Husbands who believe they sacrificially “love and lead” their wives clearly do not view their wives as partners in life but as servants. Wives who “graciously submit” to their husbands are most often not submitting graciously, but because they have neither the economic wherewithal nor the education to be economically self-sufficient.
Souder: Stick our noses into baseball
I’ve never really understood the particular fascination of Congress for Major League Baseball. I have a vague understanding that MLB has a Congressionally sanctioned monopoly of some sort. Anyway, Sylvia Smith has an article on Mark Souder’s interest in baseball’s steroid scandal. Souder says that MLB has to make serious changes on its drug screens or Congress will apparently micromanage this process.
First, doesn’t he have anything better to do? Fight against the expansion of government authority, perhaps? Second, shouldn’t the free market be taking care of this? The way I hear it from Souder’s brethren, the free market is infallible.
I don’t have strong feelings about the well-being of baseball, but I figured I’d point out the discrepancy between Souder’s proposed intervention and small-government, free market rhetoric.
[tags]IN-03[/tags]
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