A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Candidates Miss Filing Deadlines

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For people auditioning to become one of the foremost lawmakers in the country and, really, among the most powerful people on the planet, these fellas aren’t inspiring a lot of confidence in their organizational skills or legal acumen.

Four of the five GOP candidates in the May 4 U.S. Senate primary in Indiana failed to file their personal financial disclosure statements by the required deadline this month.

Marlin Stutzman is the only one who met the deadline. Dan Coats “relied on faulty advice.” Don Bates claimed “some ambiguity in the deadline.” John Hostettler was waiting on someone to send him a packet. Richard Behney didn’t provide any information.

If one of these guys becomes Senator, that person will, no doubt, contribute to a legal system where the little people get hamstrung when they blow a deadline.

Court of Appeals Upholds Frivolous Litigant Fee Requirement

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In the case of Smith v. Wrigley, the Indiana Court of Appeals has upheld the constitutionality of IC 34-10-1-3 which provides:

If an offender has filed at least three (3) civil actions in which a state court has dismissed the action or a claim under IC 34-58-1-2, the offender may not file a new complaint or petition as an indigent person under this chapter, unless a court determines the offender is in immediate danger of serious bodily injury.

Basically, this means that an inmate has to pay a filing fee before pursuing a suit after having had three prior suits dismissed as frivolous. This statute was passed after the Supreme Court struck down, at Mr. Smith’s request, a prior statute designed to limit frivolous litigation. That prior statute prohibited pursuing the claim at all. This statute just says the inmate has to pay the filing fee.

Mr. Smith, the most active appellate litigant in the state, so far as I can tell, will undoubtedly ask the Supreme Court to review this decision. I get the sense that the Court of Appeals is more annoyed by shotgun litigation by inmates than the Supreme Court, so it will be interesting to see if the Court of Appeals decision gets reviewed and, if so, whether it will stand.

What Would Happen if Taxes Were Really Low?

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Mike Kole has a good piece up over at Kole Hard Facts of Life on jobs, taxes, and declining population. Be sure to check out the comments.

One thing that I realized while reading that piece was that I have an assumption about what would happen in communities where we drop taxes to skeletal levels. And that assumption is a lot different than what I think I see from Mike and certainly from other libertarians. I don’t have a lot of proof that my assumptions are right. I suspect that the libertarians do not, either. And there are always other factors at work, so I’m not certain we’ll ever get a properly controlled experiment.

My ideal economic world is a place where those who work hard and/or cleverly will prosper, where those who don’t work hard and/or work stupidly will suffer, and where the vast middle who work reasonably hard do reasonably well. In this desire, I believe I’m aligned with most of my libertarian friends and many others.

The difference is in opinions to the most feasible path to that place. I think libertarians, by and large, believe that if you lower taxes and limit regulation enough, that economic world will pretty much materialize. With the resulting solid base of industrious middle class citizens, communities will thrive.

Meanwhile, I guess I have more of a dystopian view that if you lower taxes and/or regulation much from current levels, you’ll end up in an economic world more like the Gilded Age or Mexico where a tiny few will amass wealth and have sufficient leverage to ensure that the vast majority work extremely hard just to survive and add to the vast wealth of those few who have the leverage and resources. These subsistence level citizens will not have the time or the money to tend to their communities which will fall into squalor and disrepair.

I would love to find out that my fears are misplaced and their view is correct.

Riverboat Casinos: Largest Job Creation Program Ever

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I’m not going to have time to do justice to this article by Pam Tharp about a candidate forum in West College Corner, Indiana, but I had to at least take the time to highlight an interesting statement by state Senator Johnny Nugent in response to a question about things he’s done to create jobs in his district.

Nugent said he authored the largest job creation program ever — riverboat casinos — with gambling revenue the third-largest contributor to the state treasury.

Makes me think of the good old days of American prosperity, Dad heading off to work early, hard hat and lunch pail in hand, ready for a long day of dealing blackjack and making this country strong.

(The rest of the article is worth a read and brings up some substantive points I really ought to address.)

IN-04: Education & Federal Policy

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The Journal & Courier is probably the best place to go for information about the extremely crowded ballot for Indiana’s Fourth Congressional District. Steve Buyer decided to step down, leaving an open seat. This started a run to fill it. The Journal & Courier asked the candidates about federal education spending.

On the Democratic side, Tara Nelson suggested that the federal government should be available to shore up shortfalls locally, particularly ensuring things like language, arts, music and sports as well as providing for four year community colleges for middle and lower income families. David Sanders recommended more equitable funding, eliminating unfunded mandates and giving local control to the schools. Federal loans should improve affordability and reliance on standardized tests should be reduced.

On the Republican side, Jon Acton says stakeholders should be “held accountable for future success.” He is also against unfunded mandates, and thinks communities that desire local control should not be punished.

I didn’t really understand Cheryl Denise Allen’s response, but here it is: “I am pleased with the grant programs issued by the government. Any student that needs money is provided for through this program. Some funds similar to these are initiated through K-12. Maybe make tuition programs for the lower grades might be a possibility.”

Jim Hass wants school boards to set standards for themselves, wants parents to set standards for their children, and wants children to govern their own behavior. He thinks the federal government should encourage efforts in math and science and thinks that experimentation should be allowed by lower levels of government.

Brandt Hershman says that, for the most part, he wants state and local government rather than the federal government setting standards for education. (That’s pretty much the status quo, right?)

Todd Rokita’s answer started off pretty boilerplate then got a little garbled: ” I support expanding the affordability of higher education, simplifying the financial aid system and undoing the government takeover of student loans to increase access to financial aid.” The federal government made changes to the federal student loan program. Not sure how the federal government can “take over” its own program. There are efforts afoot to cut out the middle man for federally guaranteed loans. So, the most charitable I can be is to conclude that Secretary of State Rokita doesn’t understand the issue terribly well.

Mark Seitz says that federal funding should be used to support K-12 education but money accepted comes with a requirement that certain standards should be met.

PJ Steffens & Eric Wathen want to get rid of the Department of Education and unfunded mandates.

Daniel Dunham, Charlie Henderson, and Mike Young think the federal government has no business doing anything with education. Henderson supports “states rights.” (Follow up for Mr. Henderson or any states’ rights purist: does the sanctity of states rights extend to drug legalization?)

Facebook (and Twitter) Killed the Blogging Star

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(With apologies to the Buggles). I have noticed that the upswing in Facebook and Twitter has really diminished my impulse to blog. In the past, I guess putting up a blog post was the most efficient way for me to get an idea out there and get some feed back, scratching whatever mental itch makes me want to bat around ideas with folks.

Now it seems that, more often than not, Facebook or Twitter is a faster way to do that. Funny how often 140 characters is enough for me to say, in broad terms, what I have on my mind. For instance, on this one, I could have just Twittered “Facebook is to Blogging as Video is to the Radio Star” or whatever. That would have propagated to my Facebook status bar, and then if that prompted ideas from my friends on either system, a discussion would ensue. For a blog entry, the interface (at least my WordPress based blog) is cludgier and the format seems to compel elaboration.

I still like my blog, and I still intend to maintain it. But I feel like it’s lost a bit of its vitality and, I might be projecting, but I feel like the blogosphere generally has dimmed a bit.

Tipsy Teetotaler

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For those of you who like reading a true conservative’s take on things, I’ll go ahead and recommend Tipsy Teetotaler. I don’t agree with him with very much, politically, but when I’ve had discussions with this blogger, he’s been unfailingly civil – friendly, really – and he’s dead smart. Those nice things said, once again, I don’t agree with him on much politically. So, if you like my blog and bias reinforcement is your thing, maybe Tipsy isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you’re a thesis + antithesis = synthesis kind of person, this may be just the thing.

Update In retrospect, I probably over-hyped the disagreement angle. We find some common ground on the subject of “movement conservatives” as Tipsy puts it – Fox, Townhall, etc. He also did a double take at a Heritage Foundation suggestion that bigger military = smaller government. And, of course, I’ve found with even with my mainstream, Fox News watching Republican friends that when we get off the “my team versus your team” discussions and focus on particulars, there is often a lot of common ground.

They Don’t Get It

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I think that there is honestly a blind spot in these Southern political leaders where they just don’t get why folks are upset about them celebrating their treasonous past. The simple fact is that their predecessors took up arms against the United States to preserve their right to own people. Sure, they had their reasons. Everyone has their reasons when they take up arms against others. With a time machine, maybe we could have a great time listening to the folks who fired on Sumter and the folks who destroyed the World Trade Center argue about who had the greater justification. But, as it’s my country fired upon in both cases, I’m nationalistic enough not to care too much about the particulars of their respective grievances.

Now we have the governor of Mississippi rushing to the defense of the governor of Virginia’s decision to revive a celebration of the Confederacy in that state. The linked article suggests that people are upset that it’s “insensitive.” My objections to the Confederacy isn’t that remembering it hurts my feelings. Rather, I have these old fashioned notions that both treason and owning people is wrong. Combining the two is really wrong. And getting sentimental about the combination is appalling. I’m happy enough to let bygones be bygones, but if elected officials from Confederate states insist on bringing up the past unpleasantness, it should be to apologize and to thank the northern states for bringing a forcible end to their peculiar institution.

Haley Barbour doesn’t think celebrating the taking up arms against the United States means “diddly.” He goes on:

I don’t really see what to say about slavery, but anybody that thinks that you have to explain to some people that slavery is a bad thing, I think that goes without saying,” Barbour said.

Goes without saying? Then why, pray tell, did we have to fight the bloodiest war in our history to get your predecessors – who you want to celebrate – to remain part of the United States rather than defect, primarily for the purpose of continuing the practice and expanding it into the territories?

Please excuse me. This “Lost Cause” crap just drives me nuts.

Primary Season: Senate

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Primary season is in full swing and most of the action, at least for federal races, seems to be on the Republican end. I think I’m one of the few residents of IN-04 who isn’t running for Congress. There is also a lot of activity for the Senate race, IN-05 to challenge incumbent Dan Burton, and IN-08 to take advantage of Brad Ellsworth’s departure and challenge presumed Democratic nominee Trent VanHaaften.

Initially, I’d meant to turn this into a run down of all of the primary races, but that’s a lot of work, so I’ll just discuss the Senate for the moment.

Writing for the Indianapolis Star, Mary Beth Schneider summarized the responses of Republican Senate primary candidates on three major topics. Don Bates wants to change social security, particularly for people under 40 (not sure what those changes are, exactly) and cut federal salaries by 5%. Richard Behney, somewhat unhelpfully, says “everything is on the table.” John Hostetler is unwilling to cut military expenditures but everything else is fair game. And, The Once and Future Senator, Dan Coates, perhaps inevitably, goes retro bringing us Republican budgetary hits of yesteryear such as a balanced budget amendment and the line item veto. (My memory is fuzzy here, but I seem to remember the line-item veto being struck down as unconstitutional.) Marlin Stutzman likes those but also threw in the new anti-earmark panacea.

On illegal immigration, as you might expect, they’re all against it. Bates wants to round ’em all up and deport them immediately. Behney added a gratuitously violent metaphor, suggesting that if you try to sneak in through the back door you’re likely to be shot. Coats was a little more bland, being the son of Swedish immigrants, apparently (do we have his birth certificate?) Hostettler suggests that we go after the companies hiring illegal immigrants (a “drain the swamp” approach, I would suggest.) And Stutzman, like the rest, emphasizes “securing the borders.” No word on how any of them will do this with their insistence that government needs to be smaller and we cut spending across the board.

On gays in the military, Bates seems to be out of touch. He says the President should listen to military advisers, that he wouldn’t have implemented “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the first place, but now that it’s in place, it shouldn’t be repealed. In fact, top military commanders have recently said that don’t ask, don’t tell should go. Behney had an answer that was refreshingly honest and suggests that he’s someone folks might want to pay attention to, even if they ultimately disagree with his positions and choose to vote for another.

He said he’d been in the Navy. “I served with gay men and gay women,” he said. “Quite frankly, I’ve known gay men and women that I would trust with my very life. . . . As long as you can do the job, I think you should be allowed to serve.”

Coats, once again, goes retro, embracing the idea that gays should serve secretly in the military, thereby, somehow, alleviating sexual tension in the ranks. Hostettler wants to root out gays in the military and disallow them from serving. Stutzman wants to avoid controversy by ignoring it. (As Bullwinkle’s pal, Rocky, liked to tell us, “that trick never works.”)

Hoosier Advocate cites a poll that the Once and Future candidate, lobbyist and North Carolinian, Dan Coats is currently leading the pack with Hostettler coming in a close second. Stutzman is apparently fairly close. None of them has a commanding lead in this poll, Coats pulling in 29%, Hostettler at 26%, and Stutzman pulling in 18%. Abdul isn’t necessarily convinced of the soundness of the polling, but says that, in any event, it confirms his sense of how the race is going. There is a lot of wiggle room though, with almost 20% undecided.

Not that anyone is going to take political advice from me, but it seems to me that Coats and Hostettler are damaged for the current political environment. Coats is the GOP establishment. He is a lobbyist. And, he hasn’t really been a Hoosier for quite some time. Hostettler is a closer bet because he stuck to his ideological guns (no matter how misguided), but the fact remains he was part of the D.C. clusterfuck in the early 00s. I still figure Stutzman to be the Republicans’ best bet, but maybe that’s because I don’t know a whole lot about him. After that debate, Bates and Behney warrant closer watching than I would have anticipated.

Just an aside since I confined this post to the Senate race, but Thomas Langhorne, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, always provides outstanding coverage of the southwestern Indiana political scene. In this case, he is writing about the debate between candidates for the Republican nomination in IN-08.

Strict Construction

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Justice Stevens’ decision to retire prompted the age old discussion of “strict construction” by judges. The idea is that judges are supposed to strictly apply the law to the facts at hand and not do much in the way of reflection on the law or the desirability of the outcome. During that discussion, I suggested that I hadn’t actually had the pleasure of observing a strict constructionist, regardless of how a particular judge might describe him or herself. Hugo Black is probably as close as we’ve gotten.

What occurred to me only later is what immense responsibility this would place on legislators if they were actually forced to deal with nothing but strict constructionist judges. They’d have to think through the full implications of what they wrote into law without being able to trust that judges would be, well, judicious in how the law was applied. It reminded me of a passage from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon:

This “sir, yes sir” business, which would probably sound like horseshit to any civilian in his right mind, makes sense to Shaftoe and to the officers in a deep and important way. …he has come to understand the [military] culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process. The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is deciding what you want me to do, and my problem, sir, is doing it. My gung-ho posture says that once you give the order I’m not going to bother you with any of the details – and your half of the bargain is you had better stay on your side of the line, sir, and not bother me with any of the chickenshit politics that you have to deal with for a living. The implied responsibility placed upon the officer’s shoulders by the subordinate’s unhesitating willingness to follow orders is a withering burden to any officer with half a brain, and Shaftoe has more than once seen seasoned noncoms reduce green lieutenants to quivering blobs simply by standing before them and agreeing, cheerfully, to carry out their orders.

I’ve read enough legislation and draft legislation in my time to shudder a bit at the thought of judges applying the language absolutely in all situations unless the text specifically instructs them not to regardless of whether doing so makes sense or seems remotely just. That would really up the pressure on legislators to craft legislation meticulously, being sure to describe every caveat and exception.

Filed Under: Law