A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Grassley investigates ministries for compliance with nonprofit rules

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The AP has an article on Sen. Chuck Grassley’s investigation of 6 ministries to determine whether they are complying with rules governing nonprofit institutions. (h/t Dispatches from the Culture Wars).

A month ago, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley sent pointed questions to a half-dozen high-profile ministries asking about salaries, perks and private jets in a quest to determine whether rules governing tax-exempt groups had been broken.

Only two of the six have responded. Some of the non-respondents have said simply that they need more time. Others have suggested that they will resist on grounds of separation of church & state. As to the latter, “Grassley has emphasized that he is not investigating doctrine but making sure organizations enjoying the benefits of tax-exempt status are playing by the rules. Grassley dismissed the religious liberty argument.

“Forget it,” he said. “They don’t have a leg to stand on.””

Apparently the IRS has different rules for religious institutions than it does for other non-profits and does not require churches to make its financial records public. During Grassley’s tenure on the Senate Finance Committee, he says that it’s only been necessary to issue subpoenas in two investigations — Enron and Jack Abramoff. If I were a nonprofit enjoying a preferential tax status, I’d be hesitant to join the company of the likes of Enron and Abramoff and would probably be inclined to err on the side of disclosure.

HB 1038 – Time Referendum

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HB 1038 which calls for a referendum on Indiana’s time has been introduced, appropriately enough by Rep. Kreg Battles. Battles took the seat of former Rep. Troy “I’ll never vote for it” Woodruff. Woodruff reneged on his promise to his constituents not to vote for Daylight Saving Time. By doing so, he became the deciding vote in passing the Daylight Saving Time bill which had apparently sustained more fatal blows than Rasputin only to keep coming back. Woodruff effectively traded his political life for that of the DST bill.

Battles’ referendum bill calls for a public question on the ballot that asks (1) whether all Indiana should be located in the same time zone; and (2) if all Indiana could be located in the same time zone, whether it should be located in the Central Time Zone or the Eastern Time Zone.

I don’t particularly like the chances of this bill passing, but I don’t see any downside to reminding voters of how DST was adopted without any real consensus.

Tight as a Tick in Iowa

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The Democratic primary fight in Iowa is “tight as a tick.” John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton are essentially in a 3-way tie. Several polls have the three candidates polling at levels within the margin of error of one another. Given how tough it is to poll in Iowa, this probably means it’s anybody’s race. The interesting thing will be how secondary candidates’ supporters peel off to support the primary candidates — in the Iowa caucuses, if a candidate doesn’t get above a certain level of support, that candidate’s supporters are supposed to go to their second choice among the candidates that did get more than the threshold level of support. I seem to recall something from 2004 about Edwards and Kucinich striking a deal whereby Kucinich supporters ended up going over to Edwards.

December 7th: Still living in infamy

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A repost from last year.

This is the 66th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Imperial Navy. Wikipedia has a pretty good entry.

The Imperial Japanese Navy made its attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, was aimed at the Pacific Fleet of the United States Navy and its defending Army Air Corps and Marine air forces. The attack damaged or destroyed twelve U.S. warships, destroyed 188 aircraft, and killed 2,403 American servicemen and 68 civilians. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto planned the raid as the start of the Pacific Campaign of World War II, and it was commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, who lost 64 servicemen. However, the Pacific Fleet’s three aircraft carriers were not in port and so were undamaged, as were oil tank farms and machine shops. Using these resources the United States was able to rebound within six months to a year. The U.S. public saw the attack as a treacherous act and rallied strongly against the Japanese Empire, resulting in its later defeat.

When you think about it, it’s pretty remarkable that it took us only 1,347 days from being sucker punched on 12/7/1941 to having defeated the combined might of the Axis powers by VJ Day – August 15, 1945; a span of 3 years, 8 months, and 8 days.

Shepard-Kernan Commission to Release Report

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Via a press release:

Former Governor Joe Kernan and Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard, co-chairs of the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform, will hold five news conferences around the state to present the Commission’s report, Streamlining Local Government: We’ve got to stop governing like this.

Apparently, they’re intending to hold the report and begin the news conferences on December 11, 2007 because that will be the anniversary of Indiana becoming a state. I’m o.k. with the symbolism, but my suggestion would be for them to release the report now so that people could educate themselves on its contents and be prepared to ask meaningful questions when the press conferences are held.

Blame the locals

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(H/t Blue Indiana) The Daniels Administration’s “blame the locals” approach to the recent property tax increases is getting a little old.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Cheryl Musgrave, who heads the state Department of Local Government Finance, said having one professional assessor appointed in each county, rather than 1,008 township assessors and 92 elected county assessors, would be a big step toward providing the consistency and fairness taxpayers want.

Asked by Sen. Mike Delph, R-Indianapolis, if Daniels’ proposed changes would have prevented any of the property tax mess the state experienced this year, Musgrave said: “Yes. It would have made the biggest difference of all.”

Of the 24% average increase in property taxes, only 6% is attributable to local government spending. The remaining 18% was caused by a shift in the tax burden from state to local (the state balanced its budget on the backs of local government) and from business to residential property.

As stAllio! put it:

the governor’s office began mocking local governments because their spending went up. that’s like me pushing you down into the snow and then laughing at your lack of balance.

Update Here is a somewhat related article I read this morning. Senators considering the part of the Governor’s proposal to assume Department of Children’s services expenses are reluctant to do so without having some controls available.

“This is an entitlement program,” said Cathy Graham, with the Indiana Association of Residential Child Care Agencies. “If children are abused or neglected and need to come into care, the state has an obligation to provide that care.”

State-paid county judges make final determinations on what happens to those children and what services they need, such as foster care or counseling.

If State officials are concerned that the current model would give them, as the bill payers, too few controls over how much money is spent, just think of the position local officials are in currently. The State at least has some legislative options for guiding the judges who have to make these tough decisions for abused or neglected children. County officials have much less power.

At the end of the day, neglected kids are really, really expensive. It’s a cost we have to pay both because of moral obligations and because it’s penny-wise but pound-foolish to totally abandon these kids. But the results are mixed and hard to point to and so taxes used to pay for such things will always be a source of resentment.

Romney and Religion

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So, Mitt Romney gave a speech on religion. But, it didn’t really seem to be a speech about his religion. It was kind of a universalist, love thy neighbor kind of thing. For the moment, it seems to be well-received, but ultimately, I don’t think it will do him a lot of good.

He wasn’t losing ground in Iowa to Huckabee because people had doubts about whether he believed enough in the good things Jesus had to say in the Sermon on the Mount. He was losing ground because he is a Mormon. That means that his religion’s miracles are weirder than other religion’s miracles.

At the end of the day, I think Romney has a better chance of appealing to a non-religious guy like myself who doesn’t regard Jesus coming to America and turning Native Americans’ skin red as a curse for not believing in the right God as inherently less credible than, say, a Virgin Birth or transubstantiation of wine and bread into Jesus’ blood and skin.

I think Republicans benefit from the general truthiness that they’re the party of religion. I think all of that falls apart the second folks start comparing the teachings of Jesus to Republican policies. I also don’t think they can benefit from a close examination of the particular articles of faith that distinguish one religion from the next. If they go too far down the road Romney started down, basically suggesting that the particulars of the religious differences don’t really matter, that might get fundamentalist hackles up since they purport to believe that every word of the Bible is very important. Suggesting that faithful Mormons will be made Gods of their own planets might to beyond the ability of fundamentalist Christians to live-and-let-live. And, of course, if they go the other way and start arguing about whose faith is actually true, the whole religio-political house of cards implodes.

Should be interesting to watch.

Update Doghouse Riley, as per usual, has a good take on Romney’s speech.

You just knew this was where he was headed, didn’t you? “Let us come together as a freedom-loving people and really hate the atheists?” The only surprising thing–okay, not that surprising–is that we’ve reached a point where this sort of thing passes for public discourse. I don’t expect Willard to address the real issues involved. I ‘d just like it if someone would either answer the question without tapdancing clogging for an hour, or tell everyone else to go piss up a rope. Anything but Jell-O mold faux-theism. If Romney had pulled a random six items from The Big Book of Really, Really Crackpot Shit Mormons Are Supposed To Believe, Really, and said, “Yes, I believe those, because I’m a Mormon,” I’d consider voting for him. That would have shown some character.

South Shore Progressive on Tax Restructuring

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South Shore Progressive has a good post on the discussion of The Daniels Plan for tax restructuring from the perspective of northern Indiana. He passes along that Rep. Chet Dobis wants to revisit how casino money is shared among the state and local governments. Rep. Charlie Brown wants to revisit the tax breaks given to big business in Lake County in 2003 which many blame for higher property taxes in that area. Rep. Reardon from Munster wants income taxes thrown into the mix. “When you exclude income tax from the discussion, I think you’re missing something.”

That made me think of a recent post by Buzzcut at “Blue County in a Red State.” He notes the regressivity of a sales tax and suggests as an alternative a progressive statewide income tax (as opposed to flat county-by-county income taxes.)

It’s good to hear about the tax perspective from other areas of the state. Perhaps it’s my own fault for what I read and listen to, but all to often it seems I’m hearing about property taxes through a heavy Indianapolis filter. And, I think that kind of filter skews the analysis since it sounds like Indianapolis’s property tax problems are an order of magnitude greater than most of the rest of the state.

Edwards and the New Partnership with Local Government

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MassEyesandEars at MyDD has
a post up on the subject of John Edwards and his proposed “New Partnership” with local government.

The post points out:

Local governments are day to day the face of government for most Americans and provide the services most people rely on the most. More than that, the struggles of our local governments are largely a reflection of the struggles of our communities and the disdainful treatment of the locals by the feds reflects the disdain the DC system has for everyone outside of it.

It also goes on to note two items in Edwards’ proposal having to do with health care costs — costs that are killing local government as they struggle to live within their means and, at the same time, honor their commitment to employees to provide health care coverage; and having to do with special education funding — apparently Washington is supposed to pay something like 40% of the cost of special education but routinely fails to provide even 20% of the cost, resulting in increased burdens on school districts and property taxpayers.

I haven’t read Edwards’ proposal, so I won’t comment specifically on it. I will say that, at a gut level, it feels wrong to pay so much in federal taxes relative to what I pay in local taxes given how much more I appear to be served by local government as opposed to federal government. Some of that is just an illusion, of course, — without a national defense, things would be quite different if the Canadian hordes came howling down from the northlands, for example. But, some of it has to do with criminally stupid expenditures of money. (See, e.g., Iraq, invasion and occupation of; Alaskan bridges, etc.)