A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Buyer back to work after skiing accident

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The Indy Star has an article entitled Rep. Buyer hobbles back to work. He suffered a knee injury while skiing in December and has now returned to D.C. after undergoing physical therapy in Lafayette. I would have liked more detail on the nature of his injury just so I could compare his experience with my own. Back in January 2004, I suffered a knee injury of my own while skiing — it was a tibial plateau fracture. I believe I missed work for about a week.

It’s altogether possible his knee injury was more severe and actually necessitated him missing work for 5 or 6 weeks. The cynical side of me says that he was happy enough to miss votes on some of the popular but non-conservative bills the House Democrats moved forward in their “first 100 hours.”

It occurs to me that Mark Souder and Mike Pence must have been awfully lonely in Congress this past January. Their former colleagues, Chris Chocola, Mike Sodrel, and John Hostettler were voted out of office. Steve Buyer was laid up with a knee injury. And Dan Burton, aside from showing up to cast the lone vote against ethics reform and criticize investigation of the disappearance of billions of dollars, was out on the golf course. Their merry group of 7 had been reduced to 2.

SB 94 – Disability semantics

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Senate Bill 94 Individuals with disabilities. Sen. Landske. Changes terms used to describe individuals with disabilities.

Perhaps I’m not sensitive enough, but this one strikes me as a waste of paper. It changes: “hearing, deaf, and hard of hearing individuals” to “individuals who hear, individuals who are deaf, and individuals who are hard of hearing.”

It changes “participant who was permanently disabled” to “participant who had a permanent disability.”

It changes “children who are mentally retarded” to “children who have mental retardation”.

It changes “developmentally disabled adults” to “adults with a developmental disability.”

And it goes on like this for 177 pages. I mean, I get the point. “My disability doesn’t define me!” But, if you’re picking through the Indiana Code making changes at this level of subtlety, perhaps it does. In any event, it passed the Senate 47 to 0.

[tags]SB94-2007[/tags]

Sending giant pallets of currency into a war zone

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The U.S. Federal Reserve send 363 tons of currency (bills, not coins), totalling $5.5 billion into Baghdad according to an AP story.

“Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that’s exactly what our government did,” [Rep. Henry Waxman] said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.

The story goes on to note that $8.8 billion out of $12 billion disbursed by Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority was unaccounted for.

Indiana Representative Dan Burton, apparently able to drag himself out of the 19th Hole, bothered to show up to comment, “We are in a war against terrorists, to have a blame meeting isn’t, in my opinion, constructive[.]”

All that sun on the golf course must be baking Rep. Burton’s brains. Otherwise, he would surely realize that, if we weren’t pumping billions of dollars into an Iraqi black hole, we might not have to borrow so much money from our grandchildren to try to fight the terrorists, some of whom have probably now made their way to Iraq now that it’s been destabilized. (Nevermind the very real possibility that those recent Iraqi immigrant/terrorists could be funding themselves with the dollars that are unaccounted for.)

Property Tax Plan

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Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article entitled “Business tax load could rise in new bill”.

It’s a Democratic property tax relief plan that would, in turn, give local governments the power to impose higher personal income taxes and to impose corporate income taxes. There is initially a sense of bipartisanship with respect to the bill. Both Sen. Kenley and Gov. Daniels think there are positive aspects to the bill, not least of which is the political courage to provide for a revenue mechanism to replace lost property taxes. But, that’s outside of the House. House Republicans and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce are apparently opposed to the bill.

Sweet gig

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The Indianapolis Star has an editorial excoriating Congressman Dan Burton (the candidate they endorsed for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District). The editorial is a follow up to a Maureen Groppe story on how Burton has been playing hookie from his job as a Congressman, missing votes to go play golf.

The editorial concludes:

So here’s the score: Burton would rather play golf than attend a hearing on Iraq. He shows up for work less often than a 20-year-old slacker who refuses to move out of his parents’ basement. He has little shame when it comes to accepting expensive gifts. And he feels immune from voters’ wrath because he’s been handed a heavily gerrymandered district that might as well hang up “Democrats need not apply” signs.
Sweet gig, Dan.

Pulaski County moving back to Eastern Time

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I certainly missed the boat on the Notice of Proposed Rule Making for moving Pulaski County back to Eastern Time, though searching my blog, I see that several commenters were on it. The NPRM for moving Pulaski back was opened on November 22, 2006.

The final rule was filed today. A turn around time of 76 days, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and Super Bowl Sunday. Pretty efficient.

Effective March 11, 2007, Pulaski County will jump two hours from Central Standard Time to Eastern Daylight Time.

David Hunter on SJR-7

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David Hunter, a blogger at the Star’s INTake Weekly, has a good post entitled “Rejecting Radical Rhetoric on SJR-7.” SJR-7, as readers probably recall, is the proposed amendment to Indiana’s Constitution which would assert that marriage in Indiana consists only of the union of one man and one woman. But, that’s only half of it. It would also prohibit any incident of marriage, whatever that might be precisely, from being extended to unmarried couples.

Hunter reacts to an Expresso entry by Tim Swarens where Swarens asserts “It would be the height of arrogance to think that we could radically redefine an institution that has been the cornerstone not only of families but civilizations for millennia without suffering severe repercussions.” (The height of arrogance, mind you. Not just arrogant, but the most arrogant one can be.)

Responds Hunter:

My gut reaction asks for the next few lines of his argument. What are the “severe repercussions?” Give me a list; give me three repercussions. Mr. Swarens doesn’t list any. He gives nothing specific for his entire argument.

That’s always a good question to ask – “name 3.” I’d probably qualify the question by requiring that these be repercussions not already visited on the sacred institution by Brittany & K-Fed or by Newt serving his first wife with divorce papers while she was in the cancer ward (or requesting a divorce from his second wife over the phone.)

At the moment, I’m not sure family life couldn’t do with a little tweaking. As I was composing this post, I was called away to clean up a poopy diaper followed closely by the need to clean up some dog vomit on the stairs. And that’s probably not the worst of it. The worst of it is that I’ve become so desensitized to such things that I barely batted an eye.

Finally, I take issue with Swarens assertion that marriage, as currently defined, has formed the cornerstone of civilizations for millenia. Check out the brief history of marriage entry over at Wikipedia. Marriage has been redefined quite a bit across cultures and over time. Historically speaking, marriage hasn’t even been a religious matter for all that long. For the first half of Christianity’s history, it wasn’t even a sacrament. The Protestants did their own redefining when they came along. Swarens sweeping statements seem to demonstrate a disinterest in history in favor of an interest in merely arguing for his own personal preferences.

Perhaps redefining marriage does would have unintended consequences we would not like. But, that eventuality notwithstanding, SJR 7 paragraph (b) certainly will have unintended (or at least unadmitted) consequences that we (or at least I) won’t like. I advocate throwing out SJR-7, drafting something coherent, and debating the hell out of it. This is, after all, our Constitution we’re talking about.
[tags]SJR7-2007, culture wars[/tags]

Recent submissions to the USDOT Time Zone Docket

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There have been a number of submissions to the USDOT Time Zone docket that have been posted recently. They include:

1. A September 28, 2006 letter to Mark Shublak, Ice Miller attorney for the petitioning southwestern counties requesting certain technical items, particularly signature pages from the Boards of Commissioners for Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin, and Pike Counties.

2. A November 13, 2006 response (via overnight delivery — you’re paying extra Southwestern Indiana!) from Mark Shublak to Judy Kaleta including the requested materials. The letter notes that Dubois County Commissioner Randall Fleck abstained on their resolution.

3. A November 14, 2006 letter from Judy Kaleta to Mark Shublak with comments and concerns regarding the original petition. There was some prior discussion on that subject here.

4. A December 6, 2006 response to the USDOT letter of November 14, 2006. (This response leads off by saying the Jasper Wal-mart is not open 24 hours per day. Phillip has noted that this is factually incorrect. There are about 23 pages of other stuff to pick over in their response.)

5. A 70 page supplement to the letter of December 6, 2006.

I’m a little curious as to why it took so long to get this stuff posted to the docket.