A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

John Russell has a good story in the Indy Star about the cozy relationship between Duke Energy and the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission’s general counsel who recently took a job with Duke. What is more interesting to me are the raw e-mails posted by the Star. (h/t Indiana Law Blog).

Option #1, clearly, is not to get so cozy with the people you’re supposed to be regulating. Be friendly – you have to work with the people; there’s no shame in polite chit chat here and there, but these e-mails seem to reflect a camaraderie that goes beyond the pale.

Option #2, don’t put this yukking it up between government entity and regulatory agency in e-mails going to the government e-mail account. At that point, you’re not even trying.

And both of these things don’t even address the horrible conflicts presented by having a job offer on the table from what is (or should be), in effect, a party adverse to your client.

Today is apparently National Coming Out Day. My thinking has really evolved over the years on the issue of gay rights. (“Gay rights” is something of a misnomer, I think — what I mean by it is basically the notion that you should treat gays with the same respect and decency that you’d show to anyone else.) I grew up thinking I was homophobic, probably into college somewhere.

Anyway, I think my evolution on the subject was triggered when I actually knew real people who were gay – gays weren’t just abstract, notional others upon whom I could project fears and prejudices. Once they were real people, I had to start thinking about them as such.

The thinking went from “gays are bad and icky; I dislike them.” To, “that guy seems pretty decent; oh, he’s gay; no skin off my nose.” After that first encounter, and the advent of Facebook, I came to learn that I knew a lot of gay men. (Oddly, the only friends I know to be lesbians are online – as opposed to in-person – acquaintances.) I suppose I don’t know what I would have done with that information had I known they were gay in high school or college or whatever. (Maybe they weren’t quite sure, themselves.) Regardless, I’m glad they are friends now. From my perspective, the value of gays “coming out” is that most of us have an easier time hating abstract strangers who are different; it’s a whole different story when it is your friends and family. Maybe when we have a more accurate idea of how many people, and who, are actually gay; we will treat the issue a little more rationally. A guy can dream anyway.

A lot of the antipathy toward government comes from a sense that it is something alien, spending our money outside of the tribe. I’ve been trying to figure out what I see as a disconnect between stated reasons for disliking government spending and the things that actually seem to get people riled up. Some kinds of spending seem to get folks agitated – e.g., Reagan’s famous Cadillac driving welfare queen and the young bucks eating T-bones. Others, not so much, e.g., bombing foreigners. (The latter often seems draw opposition based more on anti-war sentiments than a visceral reaction to the money spent on bombers.)

I don’t think people generally mind spending more in taxes than they personally get back, necessarily. What they mind is having their money taken for the benefit of what they regard as people who are more properly characterized as “them” than “us.” And if the money is being spent for “them,” then pretty much any amount is too much.

So, I think one’s animosity toward government is a decent gauge of whether a person thinks of government as being “of the people, for the people, and by the people;” or as an alien force, subjugating “us” for the benefit of “them.”