Head on over to Bats Left Throws Right for a deft evisceration of Peggy Noonan’s latest efforts to mythologize former President Reagan. If I could write half as well as Doghouse Riley, I’d be a pretty good writer.

Craig at Reverent & Free has a genius post that riffs on Rep. Mike Pence’s suggestion that the Iraq War is like football and the citizenry wants body counts from both sides to know who is winning and losing.

Craig offers a number of sporting analogies. Just a few of my favorites here:

Basketball – Your top guard made a “slam dunk” in the first quarter, but it was in the other team’s hoop. Since then both hoops have been destroyed. The other team’s coaches and starters are all either dead or in jail. Several hundred spectators have been injured by members of both teams. The ball occasionally explodes.

. . .

Fencing – You’ve lost a leg, but your opponent has lost two arms. You’re laying on top of him, but his saber is in your liver. The equipment manager stole $7 billion from you.

. . .

Hacky Sack – You have either killed or maimed all of the other players. Your violent behavior has left you with a broken arm and a seeping chest wound. There never was a hacky sack.

Josh Clayborn at In The Agora has a post discussing tricks that create the illusion of balancing the federal budget without actually doing it. The thrust of his post is to chide Taking Down Words for grilling Mitch Daniels, formerly Bush’s budget director, over his budgetary shenanigans but not, apparently reacting in kind to budgetary gimmicks Congressional Democrats are apparently proposing to use, according to a Washington Post article from Tuesday.

The intrablogospheric (yeah, I made that word up) food fight is not terribly interesting. But the discussion about balancing the budget is. Back when we were trying to decide whether to dive into the Iraqi bog, Mitch Daniels characterized the proposed war as “an affordable endeavour” and opined that an estimate that the war would cost between $100 and $200 billion as “very, very high.” The cost of the war is already north of the $200 billion mark and climbing. (Though, my favorite gross underestimation of the Iraq War was the Bush administration’s insistence that Iraq could be reconstructed at a maximum expense of $1.7 billion.)

The Washington Post article says that the Democrats are using tricks similar to those used by the Bush administration to create an illusory plan to balance the budget — chiefly ignoring the long-term costs of the war in Iraq and ignoring the need to fix the AMT tax. Bush’s proposed budget has $50 billion for Iraq in 2009 and nothing after that. The Democrats’ plan does the same thing.

At the moment, however, I don’t know that we can conclude that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans with respect to fiscal responsibility. Time will tell. We do know how the budget looked when Clinton and the Republican Congress became Bush and the Republican Congress in January 2001. The budget looked orders of magnitude better than it does now. We weren’t talking about taking 5 years to balance the budget. We were talking about actually reducing the national debt. There were some financial tricks involved with that as well — mostly involving how Social Security was accounted for — but nothing like the financial mess we’re in now, after 6 years of Bush and his enablers exploding the deficit.

As I wrote to Josh in response to his post, “Can’t we just balance the [expletive] budget already? Cut until it hurts. Raise taxes until it hurts. Let’s just right the ship. (Easier said than done. Politicians who followed this strategy would probably be run out on a rail — we get the government we deserve.) “

It’s officially spring now, as we pass the vernal equinox. Lafayette had a nice afternoon and evening, and after an absolutely brutal work day, the kids and wife being down in Indy today, I was able to run four or five miles and listen to some tunes on my iPod to unwind. Now I’m sitting on my back deck with a beer and a laptop. So, maybe it’s the endorphins, maybe it’s the nice day, or maybe it’s the alcohol that has me in an especially live and let live kind of mood.

But, now more than ever, I’m befuddled by the proponents of SJR 7 which would not only prevent same sex couples from getting married, but would also prevent a court from deciding that Indiana law requires an incident of marriage to be conferred upon an unmarried couple even if, and let’s be clear about this, the General Assembly passes a law requiring an incident of marriage to be conferred upon an unmarried couple.

What, exactly, is the evil that SJR 7 proponents are attempting to forestall with this kind of regulation? If it were only the marriage thing, I could almost understand it. The Church worked really hard to get a monopoly on marriage in the Middle Ages, and it’s a shame to see that monopoly eroded after less than a millenium.

But, this provision goes further. It stakes a claim on the entire bundle of rights encompassed by a marriage, and attempts to say that nothing in that bundle can be shared with unmarried couples. What’s wrong, in principle, with the legislature being able to pass a law –and equally important, the court being able to enforce a law that is passed– that confers estate planning or tax benefits, for example, upon unmarried couples; even if those benefits are currently reserved for married couples?

And, in my mind, what it comes down to, again and again, is that a particular stripe of conservative Christian really, really dislikes homosexuality, spending more energy worrying about and acting against that one form of perceived immorality more than practically all of the others combined. “The Bible tells me homosexuality is wrong” doesn’t really get us closer to an explanation of why this is. The Bible also tells me I’m not supposed to hug my wife while she’s menstruating (Leviticus 15:19-24), that I can own slaves as long as they’re from neighboring nations (Leviticus 25:44), that eating shellfish is an abomination (Leviticus 11:10 — abomination is also the term used for homosexuality), and that those who work on the Sabbath should be put to death (Exodus 35:2). By and large, those Biblical immoralities have been dismissed by just about everybody. So, the special passion about the immorality of homosexuality needs back up. What is the principled moral argument against homosexuality that requires this stripe of conservative Christian to spend amazing amounts of time and energy seeking to amend our state Constitution to make sure that gays don’t end up with any of the rights enjoyed by married people?

Lot’s of blogging on the House hearing on SJR 7, but I’ll just refer you to Advance Indiana, and bilerico.

The Associated Press has an article entitled Methadone clinic ban wins OK in House.

New methadone clinics would be banned temporarily in Indiana under legislation passed by the House on Monday.

The House voted 90-8 for the bill, which would place a moratorium on new clinics through Dec. 31, 2008, while the state studies whether regulations on them are sufficient.
. . .
Indiana has 13 clinics that administer methadone, a synthetic opiate that eases withdrawal pain for users of heroin or prescription painkillers such as OxyContin. The state approved two more clinics last year – one in Valparaiso and one in Indianapolis – after lawmakers partly lifted a previous moratorium that had banned new clinics for at least 10 years.
. . .
[Rep. Steve] Stemler said the state should step back and determine whether Indiana regulations are too lax.

Probably comparing apples and oranges here, but the story about methadone clinics, for some reason, struck me as similar to the debate about CAFOs, particularly as I read about the debate at a site called “Hoosier Ag Today” with Gary Truitt.

Apparently a bill requiring a moratorium on CAFOs is not going anywhere and even Phil Pflum’s HB 1197 which imposes a set back requirement faces tough sledding. Sen. Beverly Gard, chairperson of the Senate Energy and Environmental Affairs Committee says that the bill has too many loose ends to pass.

There are a number of CAFO bills going through the legislature, so who knows what we’ll end up with in the end. But, the approach to moratoria for CAFOs versus methadone clinics is interesting. The sense seems to be that methadone clinics ought to stop until we have proof that they aren’t too burdensome to the surrounding community whereas CAFOs ought to continue until we have proof that they are too burdensome to the surrounding community.

Maureen Groppe, writing for Gannett News Service has an article entitled Bill targets Indiana welfare overhaul. Apparently there is a provision stuck into the emergency spending bill, primarily concerning funding the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, that would require closer federal monitoring of Indiana’s welfare privatization.

The bill says the federal government approved the state’s contract with The IBM Group “without a clear understanding of the details of the program, including its implementation, effect on state employees, daily operation of the program or even whether the program complied with federal law.”

Curt Slyder, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, has an article on property tax relief. At the moment, property tax relief proposals are mostly dead, but such things can generally be resurrected with enough legislative effort.

Everybody’s favorite economist, Larry DeBoer (follow “Capital Comments” link), explains why this is a big issue:

The reasons why property tax reform is on people’s minds go back a few years, said Larry DeBoer, a Purdue University professor of agricultural economics.

The Indiana Supreme Court decided in 1999 that the state’s property tax assessment methods were in need of reform.

“Since then, there have been many changes,” he said.

A reassessment in 2002 shifted property assessment to a market-value basis. In 2006, properties were assessed again to show market value changes since the initial Supreme Court decision.

This year, counties will complete elimination of the business inventory tax, which will shift taxes to homeowners. At a recent meeting of county treasurers, DeBoer predicted residential taxes will go up 15 percent on average this year compared to last.

Those tax bills are due out in the next few weeks and could increase pressure on legislators before the session ends April 29.

Senator Kenley has a plan that consists of three components:

The state would pick up local governments’ share of funding for juvenile incarceration, 100 percent of the child welfare expenses and 100 percent of general fund expenses for public schools.

The State would use money from the property tax replacement fund to pay for the state’s new obligations. So, on the one hand, counties would lose a significant amount of income, but on the other hand, they would lose a significant amount of liability. The state doesn’t necessarily need to rely on property taxes to meet its obligations. Counties are limited by the General Assembly as to their taxing authority and, therefore, they have less flexibility in how they can pay for their obligations.

Reliance on property taxes is problematic. The property has value, but it doesn’t necessarily generate the wealth needed to pay a tax. On the other hand, the taxes are going to come from somewhere. If we shift it to an income tax, are we unfairly adding to the burden of wage earners who own no property while unfairly benefiting owners of large amounts of property? I guess that’s for our elected representatives to decide.

Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article entitled Picking up the tab, but at what price? on the subject of lobbying reform, or the lack thereof. It’s apparently legal for lobbyists to give legislators whatever they want so long as the gifts (in excess of $100) are disclosed. According to the legislators, the lobbyists are deeply stupid individuals for giving the legislators all this free stuff because, say the legislators, the free stuff doesn’t gain a thing. Absolutely no influence at all. Poor, dumb lobbyists.

In my mind, the way it typically works is this. The legislators aren’t corrupt. They probably don’t even consciously favor a generous lobbyist when considering policy. However, legislators are ordinary people asked to shape policy on a bewildering scope of subjects. Inevitably, they are going to have to make decisions on subjects they know little about. When they need more information, as it turns out, they know someone who knows a lot about a particular issue — the lobbyist working for an affected industry. And, because they’ve created a relationship through donations and gift giving and going to a ball game or dinner or two, it’s really, really easy to pick up the phone and ask the person for information. The lobbyist is probably going to even shoot straight as far as the information provided — lying to a legislator really is a dumb thing to do for a lobbyist — but the information is going to be framed in a way that benefits the industry represented by the lobbyist. Subsequently, the information is probably not going to be balanced out with opposing information coming from the point of view of an amorphous public who is affected by the issue, but not terribly well-defined as a constituency. And, suddenly, the playing field has been tipped just a little bit more.

Julie Creek, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an informative column on the subject of health care entitled Critical condition. Among other things, it lays out the difference between a “single payer” system, a socialized system, and the current “system” of health care. Some interesting statistics:

The amount the federal government’s Medicare program spends on administrative costs: 3%.
The amount the health care system over all spends on administrative costs: 30%.
The amount, per capita, Canadians with their single payer system spend on health care: $2,998.
The amount, per capita, Americans with our “free market” system spend on health care: $5,711.

We’re paying for it. We’re just not getting it. Friday afternoon, as I was driving up Meridian Street toward Carmel in the low 100s, I looked at the buildings on the street corners and thought to myself, “they’re pretty much giving away the game here, aren’t they?” Seemed like every big, lavish building was either an insurance company or a hospital. For myself, if I was taking an obscene rake off the health care dollars of the American people, I’d probably try to conduct my business from unassuming structures in strip malls. Because, if you have an opulent building, seems to me, when Americans finally get riled up, after they stop off to get their pitch forks and torches, they’re going to know exactly where to go.
[tags]health care[/tags]