A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Looks like there is a shake up afoot in Congress. Dan Coats, the Once & Future Senator, has reclaimed his seat. Dan Burton has held his seat in the Fifth Congressional District. Watch out D.C.! Reform is on its way! (Just throwing this out there, a new Washington reality show: “The Two Dans.” Maybe have a running gag featuring Vince Foster pumpkins.)

In other news, the 9th District has cooled in its on-again, off-again relationship with Baron Hill. Larry Bucshon will be occupying the seat for Indiana’s 8th District, following Brad Ellsworth’s ill-advised decision to chase after the Senate seat abandoned by Evan Bayh. Jackie Walorski couldn’t displace Joe Donnelly, even in this environment. That kind of rejection has to sting a little. Mike Pence, Todd Rokita, Pete Visclosky, and Andre Carson cruised. So, the Indiana Congressional delegation moves to a 6-3 split.

Nationally, it looks like the Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives but not the Senate. As a philosophical matter, split control of the government isn’t generally a bad thing. It’s just that I’m fairly confident that this bunch will go right back to their predilection for stupid investigations. (E.g., the Vince Foster pumpkin; impeachments for blowjobs, etc.)

Justin Mack, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, has an article about a public meeting in Lafayette discussing a planned mail processing consolidation which would result in a Kokomo facility handling outgoing mail now processed in Lafayette.

I don’t know anything about the issue, so don’t have anything to say about the particulars. But the contentiousness of the meeting underscores how tough it is for government to take action when it changes the status quo. Postal officials say the move would save the postal service $500,000. Members of the public and postal employees expressed concerns that this move will slow down distribution of Lafayette mail, and raised concerns about local jobs.

I wasn’t at the meeting, but the story suggests to me that there were not any clear rules set forth about how the meeting would be conducted. When the meeting is serving the function of allowing concerns to be expressed and addressed, it’s working. But, when it devolves into people bickering with each other, it’s worse than useless.

Eric Weddle, writing for the Journal & Courier, has an article about caffeinated alcoholic beverages. Apparently they’re sweetened malt liquors, caffeinated, and have a higher alcohol content than, say, beer. Folks pound them, and then keep going because, with the caffeine, they don’t go down when they’re too drunk.

Because of the recent hospitalizations in connection with some Central Washington students’ use of the drink, we can probably expect some “ripped from the headlines” approach to lawmaking in the near future. But, from personal experience, I can say that this mix of booze & caffeine is nothing new. During my stupidest level of college drinking, it wasn’t unusual for me to rotate between beers and coffee toward the end of the night. Keeping myself awake long enough to get myself drunker was clearly a Bad Idea. If your body is trying to shut down to deal with all the alcohol you’ve been pumping in, don’t be a hero. Just go down.

Mahon said the drink’s caffeine content prevents the body from combating alcohol, a depressant, with sleep. That leads to people consuming more alcohol and becoming even more intoxicated.

Mahon said research shows that mixing caffeine and alcohol makes people more likely to ride with an intoxicated driver or to be taken advantage of sexually.

In my case, it’s possible the former may have happened, but I’m reasonably confident the latter never did.

In any case, after I’d passed that point in my drinking habits, I had some friends who were into drinking Red Bull and vodka. That was never appealing to me; but I guess these new drinks are just a continuation.

Fred Clark at the Slacktivist has a good post up about how being right doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to convince anyone. The specific issue is climate change, but I think it applies in a lot of areas. Facts will persuade the merely uninformed or honestly misinformed. They will not, alone anyway, persuade the liars or the deluded.

The case of the liars is not very interesting. It’s the old Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” The deluded are a more interesting case. A person’s mental framework can simply get in a state where it resists persuasion by facts. Say a person really, really hates Al Gore for whatever reason. They’ll reject facts that tend to suggest he’s right.

One such “ideology” or framework that I’m convinced plays a large role in American climate-change denialism is the quasi-religious desire to believe that harmful consequences can only result from deliberately malicious actions. If climate change were shown to be the work of a clearly identifiable villain — something more along the lines of the pollution narratives of A Civil Action or Erin Brockovich — then they might be more receptive to the idea. But they cannot accommodate facts that suggest the possibility of calamity due to the aggregate effects of billions of mostly innocent decisions.

Another related one that has stuck with me since I read a blog post is the notion that it’s “arrogant” to think that humans could cause such global devastation. As if it would, in the author’s mind, diminish the worth of God’s creation if puny humans could muster up the strength to screw it up.

Anyway, if you care, here is NASA’s page with a bunch of evidence for global warming. I don’t have any trouble believing it since the geological record shows that humans are extremely incidental to the history of the earth. The planet being particularly habitable for the likes of us might be the exception rather than the rule.

Ken Kusmer, writing for the Associated Press, has a reasonably appalling story about state workers suggesting to parents that their disabled children might receive help at homeless shelters if they can’t be cared for at home.

They said workers at Indiana’s Bureau of Developmental Disabilities Services have told parents that’s one option they have when families can no longer care for children at home and haven’t received Medicaid waivers that pay for services that support disabled children living independently.

This appears to come from a combination of tough economic times and government budget cuts. Medicaid waiting lists have grown as Gov. Daniels has cut the budget. Front line state workers are on the receiving end of families’ frustration at being told to wait; and these sorts of suggestions are probably the state workers’ frazzled responses. Private care providers are getting stuck too; continuing to provide care in some cases even when the money dries up.

I don’t know that there are any great solutions. Not using tax money to fund stadiums for rich sports team owners will only get you so far. It’s entirely possible that the needs actually exceed the resources. But, even if we can’t or won’t provide for necessary care, we shouldn’t be allowed to pretend that this economic reality doesn’t come with awful consequences. We should be made fully aware of the consequences of our choices.

I assume the vote to carve the current property tax structure into the Constitution for future generations is a done deal, so I haven’t said much about it lately. I’m against it. We’re starting to see some problems with structured tax caps of 1% for residential property, 2% for non-residential rental property and agricultural property, and 3% for anything else – mostly business. But, good policy or bad policy, we’re looking to lock them in, removing flexibility for future generations when conditions change.

John Seidel of the Post-Tribune has a good article summarizing the current state of the tax cap situation. Abdul argues that because the General Assembly didn’t eliminate townships, future generations deserve to be hamstrung with respect to funding local government services. Or something.

Morton Marcus, meanwhile, argues against Constitutionalizing the tax caps. Rather than more government efficiency, the caps will likely result in deteriorating local services. The county option income tax the General Assembly provided as a replacement option isn’t all that great. Among other things, it allows only a tax on households and not business. This is just further degradation of local control; more and more local decisions have to run through Indianapolis. Marcus traces this back at least to 1973.

As far back as the property tax reforms of 1973, Indiana degraded local government and shifted power to state government. The legislature has increased its control of our schools. Cities and towns have become prisoners of the state in the tax wars. Libraries have been forced to defend their very existence.

Finally, the benefits of the caps are primarily enjoyed by owners of small rental housing units, commercial apartments and second homes (60%) with about 36% going to commercial and industrial properties. Only about 4% of existing cap benefits go to homeowners.

Marcus has the better argument, but Abdul’s side is going to win the day. Voters aren’t well informed about local government financing. They just hear “tax caps” and think, “yippee!”