A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Another strike against Clinton

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Not that my little Indiana primary vote in the depths of May will make any difference, but Ms. Rodham Clinton just created another strike against herself in my estimation. She’s trying to change the rules of the Democratic primary in the middle of the game.

In an effort to keep a check on the ever accelerating primary schedule, the Democratic National Committee sanctioned Florida and Michigan for moving their primaries up in the schedule. The sanction was that their delegates would not count. The Edwards, Obama, and Clinton campaigns agreed to the sanctions. However, Clinton kept her name on the ballot in Michigan which, as one might expect, gave her a distinct advantage. She also happens to lead the polls in Florida where none of them are campaigning. So now, she wants to renege on her agreement and is urging that the Florida and Michigan delegates be seated.

Ezra Klein:

This is the sort of decision that has the potential to tear the party apart. In an attempt to retain some control over the process and keep the various states from accelerating their primaries into last Summer, the Democratic National Committee warned Michigan and Florida that if they insisted on advancing their primary debates, their delegates wouldn’t be seated and the campaigns would be asked not to participate in their primaries. This was agreed to by all parties (save, of course, the states themselves).

With no one campaigning, Clinton, of course, won Michigan — she was the only Democrat to be on the ballot, as I understand it, which is testament to the other campaign’s beliefs that the contest wouldn’t count — and will likely win Florida. And because the race for delegates is likely to be close, she wants those wins to matter. So she’s fighting the DNC’s decision, and asking her delegates — those she’s already won, and those she will win — to overturn it at the convention. She’s doing so right before Florida, to intensify her good press in the state, where Obama is also on the ballot. And since this is a complicated, internal-party matter that sounds weird to those not versed in it (of course Michigan and Florida should count!), she’s adding a public challenge that, if the other Democrats deny, will make them seem anti-Michigan and Florida.

But if this pushes her over the edge, the Obama camp, and their supporters, really will feel that she stole her victory. They didn’t contest those states because they weren’t going to count, not because they were so committed to the DNC’s procedural arguments that they were willing to sacrifice dozens of delegates to support it. It’s as hard as hardball gets, and the end could be unimaginably acrimonious. Imagine if African-American voters feel the rules were changed to prevent Obama’s victory, if young voters feel the delegate counts were shifted to block their candidate.

Colds

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In the language of the intertubes, colds are teh suck. Headaches and a little mild nausea aren’t a big deal to me — I spent a fair chunk of my undergraduate career hungover. But the runny nose just drives me bananas.

Anyway, that’s the reason for the lack of posting last night and this morning despite a fair amount of legislative action. Rumor has it the pharmacist “conscience” bill tied 24 – 24 in the Senate (meaning it is only mostly dead; since it wasn’t defeated by a 26 vote majority, it can be brought up again – this sort of thing happened to the DST bill back in 2005 until the zombie DST bill was finally pushed over the top by Troy “I’ll Never Vote For It” Woodruff.) The effort to move a casino from the Region over to northeastern Indiana failed. And, a Senate Committee went through the pointless exercise of re-approving SJR 7, the proposed anti-unmarried couples amendment.

Subjective intent of the lawmaker does not matter

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Over the past couple of days I have seen a few references discussing what a particular law maker intends with respect to his or her bill. I just thought I’d drop a brief note reminding folks that the subjective intent of the lawmaker is of no consequence. Only the text of the bill is going to matter when police and prosecutors and courts start trying to enforce these things. And it’s not going to matter if Rep. Q. Public testified in committee that when his bill says “up” he really means “down.”

Most recently, I saw a quote from Sen. Delph with respect to (I presume, the article doesn’t say) SB 335. Among other things, the bill would suspend a business license if the business was cited for three or more violations of hiring illegal aliens.

Bill sponsor Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, repeated his stance that the bill is not about race, ethnicity or nationality.

“It’s about one thing and one thing only, and that’s the respect for the rule of law,” he said.

Well, that’s nice that Sen. Delph did not have race on his mind when he crafted this legislation. But it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. The fact is that the legislation will have a disproportionate impact on Hispanic residents, legal and illegal. Employers will undoubtedly be more cautious about hiring legal immigrants for fear that they’ll come under increased government scrutiny if they employ a lot of Hispanic people. At this point, I’m not trying to make an argument about whether that cost does or doesn’t outweigh the benefit of more strictly enforcing our immigration laws. I’m simply trying to point out that, if Sen. Delph doesn’t realize that this bill is necessarily at least partially about race and ethnicity, he is delusional and the bill does what the bill’s text says, regardless of his belief.

There was a similar incident involving Sen. Drozda with respect to his pharmacist bill that allows the pharmacist more or less unfettered discretion to refuse to fill a prescription based on the pharmacist’s belief that the drug might be used to cause an abortion or suicide. During the committee hearing, Sen. Drozda repeatedly said that the legislation didn’t apply to birth control. But, when pressed by Sen. Simpson to amend the bill to state explicitly that the bill didn’t apply to birth control, Sen. Drozda fought the amendment.

And, last year, while debating the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment, SJR 7, any number of its proponents were adamant that the second section of that proposal wouldn’t do what the text said it would do.

So, to the extent possible, I would urge lawmakers to read the text of the bill and make decisions more on that basis than on the representations by the bill’s author.

Time Zone Debate Still Only ‘Mostly Dead’

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Bryan Corbin, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has an article entitled “Voters could decide time zone debate.” HB 1047, authored by Rep. Nancy Dembowski, passed out of committee on a 6-1 vote with Rep. Dennis Avery the lone dissenter.

The bill:

Authorizes the placement of a local public question on the ballot in a county located on the boundary between the Central Time Zone and the Eastern Time Zone asking the voters of the county whether the county executive should petition the United States Department of Transportation to initiate proceedings to change the time zone in which the county is located. Provides that if the voters of the county approve the public question and the governor supports the county’s petition, the county executive shall petition the Department of Transportation to initiate proceedings to change the time zone in which the county is located.

Commissioner Consolidation Clears Committee

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At my high school paper, I was the go-to guy for headlines like that. Says a lot about our high school paper, I think. (We got in a lot of trouble for the “Red Devils Cream Trojans; Scalp Indians” about victories against New Castle and Anderson). But, I digress.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an article by Niki Kelly entitled Bill to abolish commissioners wins early nod. (See, my title is better.) By a 6 to 4 vote, the Senate Local Government and Elections Committee approved Senate Bill 312. The bill would eliminate the three person Board of County Commissioners that currently serves as the county executive in favor of a one person executive. The county council would be expanded and would serve as the legislative body instead of solely as the fiscal body for the county.

K.D. Benson, a commissioner in Tippecanoe County, testified in support of the bill. She is in her eighth year but chose not to run again.

“I don’t have a horse in this race,” she said, noting the change is the first step in modernizing county government.

Several other county commissioners from around the state spoke against the legislation.

Bill Hahn, of the Indiana Association of County Commissioners, said his organization is not taking a position on whether a three-member commissioners’ board is better than a single executive.

But they do believe individual counties should have the right to choose.

“We oppose the bill not to save our position or because we fear change,” Hahn said. “But because one size doesn’t fit all.”

Hoosier Pundit on Property Tax Legislation Logistics

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The Hoosier Pundit has a post up commenting on the logistics of the tax legislation moving through the General Assembly. Basically, he sees a three person struggle – Governor Daniels, Senator Kenley, and Speaker Bauer. He envisions Kenley and Daniels as having egos too big to allow them to work very well together on disagreements despite both being Republicans. Meanwhile, their real enemy looms in the form of the Democratic Speaker, Pat Bauer.

I’ve always seen Sen. Kenley as smarter than he is inflexible (in fact, I haven’t noted any real inflexibility at all — but maybe I wasn’t paying attention) and I’ve seen Gov. Daniels as more inflexible than he is smart. Bauer, having no small ego himself, is definitely more of a legislative gamesman than his Ivy League brethren.

None of these guys is dumb; they all have solid egos; and they all have varying agendas. We’ll see how the average citizen comes out when the giants get finished playing their games.

House Amendments to The Daniels Plan

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Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article in the Louisville Courier Journal discussing the work legislators did yesterday on tax legislation. She reports that the House of Representatives left The Daniels Tax Plan largely intact.

But they left their mark on the bill with amendments to reduce property-tax savings for those who own more expensive homes, provide income-tax savings to the state’s poorest workers and exempt classroom buildings from a requirement that construction projects be approved by voters.

Also, the House approved amendments to increase an income-tax deduction for renters and freeze property-tax bills at 2008 levels for some who are 65 or older and have homes that are assessed at less than $200,000.

The freeze applies to single homeowners with an income of $35,000 or less or married homeowners with joint income of $50,000 or less.

The amended legislation is structured such that the reduction in property taxes is in full force for homes under $245,000 but diminishes for home values between $245,000 and $800,000.

“This creates fairness,” said the amendment’s author, Rep. Russ Stilwell, D-Boonville. “Your friends and neighbors who pay an extra 1 percent in the sales tax shouldn’t be paying for (the savings of) people who are living in $1 (million) or $2 million homes.”

Republicans opposed the proposal, saying many middle-income Hoosiers own homes with assessments greater than $245,000, particularly if they purchased a property at a lower price and it increased in value.

The Meridian Street tax protesters will not like that. And, in fact, I would suspect that this generally hurts big city property owners more than rural property owners since, I presume, middle class Indy homeowners are much more likely to have $200k+ homes than are rural and small town middle class Hoosiers.

SB 146 – Abortion Bureaucracy

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SB 146 is the latest effort by Senators Drozda and Miller to impose more bureaucracy on any woman seeking an abortion. Today, by a voice vote, the Senate rejected an amendment offered by Senator Lanane. (Because it was a voice vote, we can’t see who was for the amendment or who was against it.)

The bill requires that, at least 18 hours before the medical procedure, a woman seeking an abortion be informed that there is “differing medical evidence concerning when a fetus feels pain;” that “many” couples who are “willing and waiting” to adopt a child and that “under certain circumstances” adoptive parents “may” legally pay costs associated with prenatal care, childbirth, and neonatal care; that there are physical risks to the woman having an abortion; and that “an embryo formed by the fertilization of a human ovum by a human sperm immediately begins to divide and grow as human physical life.” (Nice dodge with “human physical life” — technically true, leads to a nasty feeling by Mom that this is murder, and neatly sidesteps the messy debate about what is valuable about human life and whether that value is yet present to be destroyed by the abortion.)

Senator Lanane’s proposed amendment would have added more information – in addition to telling the woman that there are physical risks to an abortion, the doctor would have been obliged to tell the woman that there are physical risks to pregnancy — an inconvenient fact about which the Senate felt the incubators women should not necessarily be aware. The Senate rejected the proposed amendment. Senator Lanane’s amendment also would also have required that a physician advise that a woman should consult with her physician throughout her pregnancy.