A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

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Without Elaboration on Underlying Facts, AG Hill Attacks Groping Allegations and Process

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Dan Carden, writing for NWI.com, has a new story about the Attorney General Curtis Hill groping scandal that Tony Cook, Ryan Martin, and Kaitlin Lange initially broke for the Indy Star. The story is that Hill came into AJ’s Bar after sine die where legislative types were having an end-of-session celebration. According to the memo prepared by a law firm that investigated the complaint for the General Assembly, Hill was described as “very intoxicated.” While there, Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon says that Hill groped her. Specifically, she says:

He greeted me and the staffer that was with me. While I do not know him personally, we had met before. As we were exchanging pleasantries, Curtis Hill leaned toward me as if he could not hear me and placed his hand on my back and slid his hand down to my buttocks and grabbed it. I said “back off,” and walked away, as the staffer with me stood shocked.

Later in the evening, I was standing with a group of people, and he approached the group. Hill came up behind me and put his hand on my back again and said, “That skin. That back.” I recoiled away before he could touch my buttocks again.

Hill has not said what, if any, part of Rep. Reardon’s account is false.

Niki DaSilva is a staffer for the Indiana Republican Senate Caucus. She says that Hill groped her and told her she had to show a little skin to get service at the bar. Specifically, she says:

Attorney General Hill seemed rather gregarious that night and asked us what we were doing standing at the bar.

We answered that we were waiting to order a drink and Attorney General Hill, without hesitation, remarked, “Ah, come on ladies! You haven’t figured out how to get a drink yet? You’ve got to show a little skin!”

. . .

[A]ttorney General Hill put his hand on my back. I was taken aback by this gesture as we had never held a conversation before that night. I felt his hand start to slide slowly down my back.

I didn’t want to bring attention to his actions, so I tried to push his hand away inconspicuously using my free hand.

When our hands met, instead of taking this nudge as a cue to remove his hand from my lower back, he grabbed my hand and moved both of our hands over my butt, lingering there before releasing me.

Hill has not said what, if any, part of DaSilva’s account is false.

Gabrielle McLemore is the Communications Director for the Indiana Senate Democrats. She says Hill cornered her and rubbed her back. Specifically, she says:

“Do you know who I am?”

That’s what he said when he pulled a stool up next to me and forced me to move uncomfortably closer to the bar’s ledge on my right with people both in front and behind me. I was cornered by Indiana’s attorney general, who I had never previously met, and he began rubbing my back.

McLemore appears to be “Legislative Employee B” from the investigative memo. According to the memo the back rubbing went on for about two minutes. Hill has not said what, if any, part of McLemore’s account is false.

The investigative memo talks about another staffer who alleges that Hill hugged her at the bar in an inappropriate fashion and a couple of others who witnessed him talking about how they should show some skin to get faster service at the bar.

Hill’s initial response was:

“I have never been contacted by any investigator,” he said. “I have not been informed of who made these allegations nor have I been provided any due process with regard to these vicious allegations.”

Generally, he seems to be saying that the claims are false, that he was never given an opportunity to present his side of the story, and he has not been afforded due process. However, since the story broke, Hill has not — at least so far as I’ve been able to tell — explained his side of the story. And there doesn’t seem to be any process which he regards as satisfactory. Per the most recent Carden story, Hill’s lawyers are challenging the efforts of the Marion County prosecutor to have a special prosecutor appointed. Previously, Hill had demanded that Marion County Prosecutor, Terry Curry, spearhead an independent investigation. Curry demurred because his office is represented in ongoing litigation by the Attorney General’s office. But, he did request the special prosecutor. Hill’s lawyers are also challenging the propriety of an investigation by the Inspector General. They cite some statutory scope of authority concerns, but Hill’s initial objection to the IG’s investigation was that Gov. Holcomb appoints the Inspector General and Holcomb has already called for Hill’s resignation. [Side note: It might be amusing for a lawmaker to request an Attorney General’s opinion on what sort of legal process is appropriate for a hypothetical situation that looks a lot like this one.]

If this is all just a big set up and all of these women are lying, then Hill’s response would be appropriate. If Hill went to the bar, was mostly sober, kept his hands to himself, and then left, he would have every right to be pissed off about this whole thing. But, he hasn’t said that’s what happened, and I’m not particularly inclined to believe that all these women are lying. I’m no political adviser, but it seems to me that had he said, “I drank too much, acted inappropriately, and I apologize” — maybe followed by seeking treatment through JLAP (Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program) or some other substance abuse treatment provider — I think he could weather this particular storm. Instead, he has opted for a Trumpian attack strategy. And, I guess it’s paying off in some circles. Cook, Lange, Martin, and Shari Rudavsky, writing for the Indy Star, say that the pastor at Hill’s Church in Elkhart, Indiana is attempting to rally the congregation in support of Hill — drawing parallels between Hill and Christian martyrs, particularly the arrest of Peter and the martyrdom of Stephen. “Satan is at work and there’s a real war going on. He’s trying to discourage our brother Curtis,” says pastor Phil Byers. (Herod arrested Peter for being a member of the Christian church, and  Stephen was martyred in connection with an internecine dispute about whether Stephen’s message about Christianity was contrary to Mosaic law. Neither, to my knowledge, was accused of being drunk and handsy in a bar.) This strategy could work, of course. Inciting tribal passions is a good way to get people to overlook misbehavior that they would not otherwise excuse.

Privatized Profit, Socialized Risk: Kiel Bros and the Pence Family

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Brian Slodysko, writing for the Associated Press, reports that the State of Indiana has had to spend $21 million and counting on the cleanup of Kiel Bros. Oil Company sites. The company operated widely under the name “Tobacco Road.”

The collapse of Kiel Bros. Oil Co. in 2004 was widely publicized. Less known is that the state of Indiana — and, to a smaller extent, Kentucky and Illinois — are still on the hook for millions of dollars to clean up more than 85 contaminated sites across the three states, including underground tanks that leaked toxic chemicals into soil, streams and wells.

Indiana alone has spent at least $21 million on the cleanup thus far, or an average of about $500,000 per site, according to an analysis of records by The Associated Press. And the work is nowhere near complete.

The federal government, meanwhile, plans to clean up a plume of cancer-causing solvent discovered beneath a former Kiel Bros. station that threatens drinking water near the Pence family’s hometown.

Mike Pence is, of course, the Vice President and former governor of Indiana. His brother, Greg Pence, is the GOP candidate to take Mike’s former seat in Congress. Greg was running the company when it went bankrupt in 2004. According to the AP report, the company was founded by Carl Kiel in the 1960s. Pence father, Edward, became corporate vice-president. Mike and Greg worked for the company as well with Greg eventually became president of the company after Edward died in 1988.

The corporate bankruptcy filing and environmental damage in this story underlie a lot of what I find problematic about conservative and libertarian rhetoric about personal responsibility and small government. The rhetoric often involves a lot of talk about personal responsibility, the evils of government, and the wisdom of allowing people to keep their money away from the prying hands of the state. And, you know, that sounds great. Often there is truth to it. But it’s far too simplistic.

Let’s start with the corporation. It is a legal fiction created by and made available by the government and enforced by the government to shield individuals from personal responsibility. The individuals who owned Kiel Bros. were thereby allowed to cause damage to the environment, presumably pocket money from those activities, then retain the money after the bankruptcy was filed and the damage came to light. Bankruptcy is similar — a government created loophole to the enforceability of government created property rights that shields people from their obligations.

Then there is the environmental damage. Libertarians in particular, but often conservatives as well, have always been very weak in terms of their ability to reconcile their philosophy with an ability to deal with pollution. The general notion is that property owners should be allowed to do what they want with their own property without government interference (putting aside for a moment the fact that property is a legal creation that has no practical existence without the force of the government backing it up.) They might generally assert that if pollution caused by someone else’s property hurts you, you should be able to recover damages to compensate you. But, in practice, the culprits can be long gone before the damage comes to light, and the problems of proof and recovery can be immense. Meanwhile, pollution distorts the marketplace which is generally held in high regard by libertarians and conservatives. If you pollute, you are externalizing the costs of your operations. Operations cost more if they’re done in a way that doesn’t contaminate other people’s air and water. Because you’ve externalized that cost, the cost is not reflected in the price of your product. So, the market doesn’t get accurate information about the true cost of the service or product and money flows to people who are externalizing their costs. In this case, money is flowing to the Kiel and Pence families rather than to other oil companies or energy producers who create their product without surreptitiously harming others.

Which brings us to the last point about allowing people to keep what they’ve earned. If the State were to raise taxes on the Pence family to help mitigate these environmental costs, they would definitely moan about big government. I don’t know if they’d go so far as to say “taxation is theft,” but there is definitely a libertarian contingent who goes that far. Can the Pence family be said to have “earned” money that comes, in part, from offloading the environmental costs of their operation? They’ve earned some but not all of it. And I think that’s probably true of a lot of economic activity and its relationship to government and society at large. It’s complicated. You’ve earned some but not all of it. Sometimes you’ve offloaded costs. Sometimes you’ve skimmed off the value created by an employee. Sometimes you’re profiting from the infrastructure put in place by the government. So, sometimes taxes are too high. Sometimes, they’re too low. And, in any event, calling taxation theft just doesn’t capture the true dynamic.

Curtis Hill Under Fire (updated)

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Lindsey Erdody, reporting for the IBJ, writes that Gov. Holcomb, Rep. Bosma, and Sen. Long are all calling for state Attorney General Curtis Hill to resign. This follows a story broken by Tony Cook, Ryan Martin, and Kaitlin Lange, writing for the Indianapolis Star. They obtained a legal memo written as part of an investigation commissioned by legislative leaders concerning alleged sexual harassment by Hill.

The events in question apparently took place on March 15 at a bar near the State House following adjournment of the General Assembly sine die (Folks may remember that the adjournment was a bit of a shit show with bills turning into pumpkins as the clock struck midnight, requiring a special session.) According to the memo obtained by the Star, Hill grabbed a female lawmaker’s butt under her clothes, she told him to back off, he walked away, then he came and grabbed her again. (Update: Dan Carden, writing for NWI.com, reports that legislator in question was Mara Candelaria-Reardon.) Hill groped a legislative employee in a similar fashion, resisting her efforts to move his hand. He grabbed a second legislative employee around the waist and hugged her toward him. And, he rubbed the back of a third legislative employee for an extended period of time until she fled to the ladies room. And, he told women at the bar they needed to show skin or leg to get served at the bar.

Hill has apparently decided to defend with the Shaggy “wasn’t me” defense. Technically, his response was, “At no time was my behavior inappropriate nor did I touch anyone in an inappropriate manner.” In court — should the matter lead to criminal charges — Hill is entitled to a presumption of innocence. In the court of public opinion, the power of the State to deprive an individual of liberty is not at issue, so the burden of proof is not so steep. Right now, it looks like there is at least a prima facie case against Hill. The idea that this many people would so wildly misconstrue innocent interactions with Hill at the same time or conspire against him in a way that pulls the wool over the eyes of Bosma, Long, and Holcomb, seems implausible. Hill could theoretically come forth with information to rebut these charges, but the ball is in his court, and “nuh-uh” isn’t going to cut it.

This should go without saying, but women should be able to go to a bar without people pawing at them. (Anyone should, but in the vast majority of these situations, it’s men making unwelcome advances on women.) I went to a couple of post-sine die back when I worked at LSA. All I wanted to do at the end of session is have a few beers, enjoy the feeling of being finished, and then go sleep for about a million hours. And nobody got in my way or made it weird. That’s a privilege I took for granted. If the #MeToo movement has done nothing else, it’s made clear to a generally oblivious guy such as myself that the problem is far more pervasive than I would have guessed.

State GOP Platform Excludes Same Sex Couples from ‘Strong Families’ Formulation

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Thomas Langhorne, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has a report on the Indiana Republican convention where the group came up with the party platform. One plank states as follows:

“We believe that strong families, based on marriage between a man and a woman, are the foundation of society. We also recognize that some families are much more diverse and we support the blended families, grandparents, guardians, single parents and loving adults who successfully raise and nurture children to reach their full potential every day.”

The language is notable for its insistence on the “a man and a woman” composition for strong families. I’ll get to the exclusion of same-sex couples in a second, but the way this thing is drafted, the support for everyone but married, heterosexual couples is really backhanded. I don’t know that this was the intent, but shoe-horning the man/woman language into the text changes the message for everyone else. If the language said, “we believe strong families are the foundation of society. We recognize families are diverse and support . . . ” that would be an indication that families, of whatever composition, are critical to society and we’re going to support them. As it is, the language says that families not centered upon a heterosexual, married couple are not foundational. They are incidental — at least by implication. Saying that marriages ought to be heterosexual is one thing (a thing with which I disagree), but saying that families composed of grandparents and guardians and whatnot are something other than foundational is fairly startling.

As for the idea of same-sex marriage, I was originally thinking of picking holes in the rationales for opposing same-sex marriage: their Biblical interpretation is rigid on this point where they  re-interpret or ignore other parts of the Bible; their historical analysis ignores many times, places, and aspects of marriage in our past; the State’s interest in marriage is not the same as that of the Church; and so forth. But, that’s probably somewhat disingenuous of me. Whatever the merits of the arguments I could muster on those points, that’s ultimately not why I support same-sex marriage. I support it, pretty simply, because I have gay friends and family members. I grew up in a time when being gay was regarded as aberrant and immoral, and nobody I knew admitted to being gay. Fortunately, in my lifetime, being gay has more-and-more come to be regarded as more or less just another variable in the human condition. Some people are blonde, some people like beets, some people are gay, etc. We’re obviously not completely there yet and, because our culture has a lot of hang-ups about sex, it’s probably going to take awhile. But, at the end of the day, people who are gay are every bit as deserving of marital rights, duties, and societal support as people who are not gay. Extending them the legal recognition of marriage doesn’t hurt me and doesn’t weaken society. In fact, I believe it strengthens society. As such, I think the platform language adopted by the state GOP is misguided.

 

On Self-Pardon and the Rule of Law

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So, Trump has declared that he has the power to pardon himself, and a lot of very serious people are scratching their heads and some are saying it’s an open question. In terms of statutory language and precedent, the question is maybe a blank slate where the normal tools of legal analysis don’t shed much light. The analysis I’ve seen, however, seems to look at the law as an abstraction with right and wrong answers hidden in the back closet somewhere. And that’s the wrong way to look at the law. As a younger lawyer, I had this vague notion that I could work cases like a geometry proof — if I cited cases with the correct language, then the court had no choice but to find in my favor, irrespective of the real world consequences and subjective concerns like the perception of fairness.   But that’s not how it works.

The law has no independent existence. We have to give it power. In my role as an attorney for the Legislative Services Agency, I wrote statutory language on my computer. The words were conjured up in my head. But that didn’t mean I was personally creating law. The process of going through committee hearings, through one chamber, then the other and then past the governor, full of people who had been elected to the position — that’s the magic dust that turned the words I typed on my computer into law binding on the entire community. And, even then, the process wasn’t done — there is a huge apparatus of judges, law enforcement officials, and other bureaucrats who give life to the law. Ultimately, the law lacks meaning unless enough of us believe in its legitimacy.

Does a self-pardon have that sort of legitimacy? Can you point convincingly to the intent of the Founding Fathers to create an executive who could pardon himself for his own crimes? No. They were attempting to move away from monarchy, not toward it. Can you point to good policy reasons for giving a person the power to excuse himself from obeying the law? No.

Of course you’ll have partisans who will twist and turn and desperately contort their principles in an effort to make it o.k. But, any fair minded person is going to agree that, if the rule of law means anything, it means that a citizen will not sit in judgment of him or herself while everyone else is subject to the force of external legal processes. Of course, the law could obviously be circumvented by an amoral executive, a feckless Congress, and a complicit judiciary. The primary remedy for that is at the ballot box.

Fight Should’ve Been Stopped . . . Man could’ve been killed: Muncie Schools Edition

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Steve Hinnefeld has a good post on HB 1315 which allowed, among other things, Ball State to take over the Muncie Community Schools. (The citizens of Gary also lose their ability to govern their school corporation.)  Yesterday, I had tweeted some of the arbitrary, but mostly incidental exemptions the General Assembly decided to give Muncie Schools. For example, while they are still required to fly the flag, Muncie Schools are no longer required to sing the national anthem or offer a moment of silence for prayer like other public schools are required to do. Steve’s post gets into some more substantive exemptions:

The state law that calls for schools to receive A-to-F grades on the basis of student test scores and other measures? Muncie schools will be exempt. The law requiring state intervention and potential takeover for schools that consistently get low grades? Exempt from that too.

The post also says, “Behning said drastic measures were called for after the Muncie and Gary school districts dug themselves in deep financial holes.” The conceit that Gary and Muncie simply did this to themselves reminds me of a post-fight interview I watched a long time ago. “Merciless” Ray Mercer had knocked out Tommy “Machine Gun” Morrison. As Wikipedia put it, “With Morrison backed up into the corner, Mercer was able to land a 15–punch combination. Clearly hurt from the exchange, Morrison slumped against the ropes, but the referee allowed Mercer to land several more punishing blows to a now defenseless Morrison before finally ending the fight.” After the fight, Mercer was asked about it. He replied, “fight should’ve been stopped. Man could’ve been killed.” The phrasing stuck with me. As if he had no responsibility for the punishment inflicted on Morrison.

I’m sure Gary and Muncie could have done better, but as the post points out: “Both districts have lost considerable state revenue, in part because of changes in the school funding formula and in part because of the growth of charter schools, vouchers and inter-district public school transfers. Both had their local tax revenue cut dramatically by Indiana’s property tax caps.” Those have to be analogous to a good 9 or 10 of these punches:

Let the Teens Sleep: Noblesville Schools

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Emma Kate Fittes, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article on a plan by Noblesville Schools to basically flip their elementary and high school start times to accommodate research showing that teens are wired to sleep later. “In 2019, elementary schoolers will start their day almost an hour earlier, at 7:50 a.m., and middle and high schoolers will begin more than an hour later, at 8:40 a.m.” This comports with a recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics that school start times for adolescents be 8:30 or later.

Studies show that adolescents who don’t get enough sleep often suffer physical and mental health problems, an increased risk of automobile accidents and a decline in academic performance. But getting enough sleep each night can be hard for teens whose natural sleep cycles make it difficult for them to fall asleep before 11 p.m. – and who face a  first-period class at 7:30 a.m. or earlier the next day.  . . . [T]he American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends middle and high schools delay the start of class to 8:30 a.m. or later. Doing so will align school schedules to the biological sleep rhythms of adolescents, whose sleep-wake cycles begin to shift up to two hours later at the start of puberty.

I suspect this move will cue the chorus of people who routinely complain about how we’re coddling kids these days. That chorus, I further suspect, has a significant overlap with the population which isn’t likely to be convinced by “research” and “science.” Their gut says that if we don’t make life hard for kids then we’re ruining them. Making them soft. Also, early start times were good enough for the older generations. (Also, walking to school uphill both ways in the snow, outhouses, leechcraft, etc. Probably.)

One parent asked, “if students would have access to wifi on the bus, to get a jump start on homework instead of waiting until they get home.” This was not part of the article, but . . . about homework: There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that it’s helpful. So, we could probably free up some sleep time by thinning out the amount of homework being assigned. But, again, that probably would offend our cultural sensitivity about the evils of sloth, virtue of work, and weird need to believe that each generation is worse than the last.

Needle Exchanges in the News

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I won’t say too much about this since it involves a local issue where I might be called upon professionally, but I saw two mentions of needle exchange programs in the news, back-to-back, and it seemed worth noting.

Scott Miley, reporting for CNHI, had an article about recommendations as to where potential opioid settlement money should go. (The lawsuits are fairly fresh, so discussions about settlement money might be a little premature). In that article, there was a discussion of needle exchanges:

The IU study also suggests that policymakers recognize the critical importance of syringe exchange and similar safe-space programs, which can provide Naloxone and treatment options.

“The state’s syringe exchange program (SEP) remains incoherent with major county-by-county variations,” the report states. “This is despite the clear evidence base for exchanges as recognized by, for example, the Surgeon-General’s Report (of 2016), their proven role in reducing the transmission of HIV/AIDS and overall cost effectiveness.”

Researcher Ross Silverman, professor of health policy and management, said that syringe and safe-space programs need to build trust with their communities. But policymakers, too, should evaluate Indiana law affecting those trying to seek help for addictions.

“The way that Indiana law is structured, when an individual can now be charged with a level 6 felony for possession of drug paraphernalia, sends a very contrary message to getting people to be actively involved in syringe exchange programs,” Silverman said.

The other story I happened to see was on the local Tippecanoe County needle exchange program, written by Jeong Park for the Lafayette Journal & Courier. There have been a variety of objections to that program locally, mostly centering on either the location of the program or on whether this encourages drug use. Fear of dirty needles has also been a prominent concern. This report is on the rate of return of needles to the program which is apparently up since the program’s inception last summer.

About 14,000 out of 19,700 needles given out have been returned as of March 31, according to the data released Thursday. That’s a return rate of 71 percent, an 11.5 percentage point increase from about four months ago. The county expects the rate to increase as more return to the program.

As of March 31, 230 people have used the program, an increase from 138 as of Dec. 31.

“We’ve been a bit surprised,” said Tippecanoe County’s health officer Jeremy Adler. “It’s a reflection of how bad the epidemic has hit our community. It’s an eye-opening number.”

Gateway to Hope, the needle exchange program, started in August to address the hepatitis C epidemic and other health challenges that come with the opioid crisis.

 

Intellect, Emotion, Glorious Justice, and Tricksy Hobbitses

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Sheila and Tipsy have recent posts that perhaps oddly seemed to mesh in my mind as having a theme in mind. Tipsy’s post touched on the role of Hell in Evangelical cosmology. This part stood out:

In fact, despite my own Calvinist background, just about the only people in these debates about hell who totally creep me out are those who seem to feel some deep emotional need for hell to exist and for most people to go there. This classic statement from Section VII of Article III of the Westminster Confession (which Confession I loved and which statement I accepted, albeit with little enthusiasm) captures something of that feeling:

The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.”

(Emphasis added) Maybe I’m reading it anachronistically, but that bolded phrase now gives me the willies. Eternal wrath and “glorious justice” seem difficult to reconcile in a way that would permit a decent human being, at least in our current state of seeing as through a glass, darkly, to exult in anyone’s eternal torment.

Meanwhile, Sheila quoted from Michael Gerson, former speech writer for George W. Bush, and discussed the struggle, perhaps the impossibility, of reconciling principled conservatism with Trumpian Republicanism. Principled conservatism has something to say about the desirability of tariffs and regulating immigration. But Trump isn’t coming at this from an angle that has anything to do with considered policy positions. She quotes Gerson as saying:

Trump’s policy proposals — the details of which Trump himself seems unconcerned and uninformed about — are symbolic expressions of a certain approach to politics. The stated purpose of Trump’s border wall is to keep out a contagion of Mexican rapists and murderers. His argument is not taken from Heritage Foundation policy papers. He makes it by quoting the racist poem “The Snake,” which compares migrants to dangerous vermin. Trump proposes to ban migration from some Muslim-majority countries because Muslim refugees, as he sees it, are a Trojan-horse threat of terrorism. Trump’s policy ideas are incidental to his message of dehumanization.

Both of these put me in mind of history books I’ve read which talk about the back and forth in Western European Christianity between the intellectual doctrine guiding Church leaders versus the more emotion-based narratives that motivated the rank & file. (I’m fairly certain I’ve read of similar dynamics for other religions, but Western European history is more home turf for me.) While scholars attempt to divine God’s will through carefully approved texts, the rank & file might be more appreciative of adventure stories featuring Saints. While intellectuals grapple with what it all means, the common person was more likely looking for something to help with the random horrors of day-to-day life. There often seemed to be a back-and-forth as the Church went up and down the spectrum from intellectual rigor to satisfying the emotional needs of adherents.

For those who value their faith more as an emotional balm than as an intellectual exercise, Hell often seems not to be incidental to God’s glorious justice. For too many people, punishing those who broke the rules and the smug satisfaction it brings to those who chose correctly is practically the whole point of the exercise.

I believe similar tension exists between principled conservatives and those who think a Trump Presidency is a good idea. Intellectually, tariffs and stronger immigration policy might have their place in the conservative toolbox but only where analytically necessary. For Trump, the positions seem no more rigorous than Gollum’s opinion of hobbits:

They’re thieves. They’re thieves, they’re filthy little thieves. Where is it? Where is it? They stole it from us. My Precious. Curse them, we hates them! It’s ours it is, and we wants it.
. . .
We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little Hobbitses. Wicked. Tricksy. False.

And this has appeal to many Trump supporters in a way that Heritage Foundation papers don’t. They feel that the world has wronged them and seek a vent to this rage. Whether that vent is productive or intellectually coherent is quite beside the point. Perhaps any organization based on ideology is going to bounce between id and superego.

(The more I think of it, the more the Gollum analogy holds up better than it should. Gollum had a legitimate beef about Bilbo’s “what I have I got in my pocket?” question during the riddle game. Total b.s. as a riddle. But, looking at the larger picture, Gollum only had the ring because he murdered Déagol to get it, and his efforts to reclaim it were antisocial and counterproductive. Hopefully the Trump Presidency is merely the finger we have to sacrifice on the road to wise leadership and a more just future. If that’s going to happen in 2020, we’re still waiting for Aragorn to emerge from the wastelands.)

Phil Downs on the Cumulative Effect of Vouchers

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We’ll be better off if we make sure that our kids become smarter than we are.

Phil Downs, Superintendent of the Southwest Allen County Schools, has a column in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that very patiently works through some of the funding issues with the voucher system in Indiana. Generally, he says that overall state funding of education hasn’t kept up with inflation and, in addition, vouchers have an impact on your school even if none of the kids in your school district use a voucher to go to private school.

It is conventional wisdom that the voucher program only affects big cities. While voucher usage is higher in big cities, the financial effect is felt in every school district because the voucher dollars come out of Tuition Support, in effect reducing the dollars supporting students in all public schools.

Recall that vouchers were initially sold as a way for public school kids to get out of struggling schools. From that premise, it has grown to be one of the most expansive voucher programs in the nation. Now we have a system where it’s not necessary for a kid to have ever attended public school and it’s not necessary for the school to be struggling for the kid’s parents to divert money from the public school. (Downs says that, of approximately 35,500 voucher students, only 274 were used to leave an F-rated school). Now, we see it’s not even necessary for kids in your district to flee to voucher schools in order for your district to suffer from the voucher program.  He suggests that Peru Community Schools had no vouchers used within its system and, even so, the state’s voucher program cost Peru $321,000 in funding. This reduced funding does not, by the way, result in a better education for the voucher kids.

It’s no secret that I’m critical of the money-follows-the-child philosophy on which the voucher system is premised. People with no children pay into this system. We fund education to build our communities. We do this, in part of course, by educating the individual students. But our schools are also part of the fabric of our cities, towns, and counties. They help tie us together and make us a community rather than a mere collection of individuals.