A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Everything That’s Not Nailed Down: South Shore Line Privatization

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Patrick Guinane has a story in the Northwest Indiana Times (warning – known for links going stale) reporting that advisers have told Governor Mitch Daniels that the State should consider selling off or lesing the South Shore Line – the commuter railroad from South Bend to Chicago.

The state should consider selling off or leasing out the South Shore Line, advisers have told Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels.

And the state already has begun to explore privatization of the South Bend-to-Chicago commuter railroad, the South Shore’s top executive told The Times on Tuesday.

“We’ve had a very preliminary conversation (about a month ago) with (state Transportation Commissioner) Tom Sharp,” said Gerald Hanas, general manager of the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District — the state entity that owns and operates the South Shore Line.

“I think he wanted us to kind of just do a general scoping to see if there’s anything similar to the toll road that we could do — in terms of leveraging a long-term lease,” Hanas said. “We certainly are looking at it. There are certain models in Europe where certain parts of railroad have been privatized, but, in all cases, we find that there’s still a significant public involvement in all the railroad, whether they be commuter or national railroads.”

Meanwhile, Indiana Department of Transportation spokesman Gary Abell flatly denies that a privatization conversation ever took place. Jane Jankowski, the governor’s press secretary, was asked about the South Shore suggestion but offered only a general statement on the findings the Government Efficiency Commission delivered on Monday.

IN-08: More information on ISU poll

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Jim Beck, writing for the Evansville Courier Press did a follow up on the poll showing Ellsworth leading Hostettler by 15%. The poll was questioned by many because of the huge gender discrepancy: 63.5% women and 36.5% men. However, the follow up reveals that gender was not a significant factor in which candidate was preferred. In fact, the men were slightly more likely to favor Ellsworth: 48.2% versus 47.1% of women. By contrast, Hostettler was polling at something like 32%.

Dems campaigning on DST & Toll Road

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Mary Beth Schneider has an article in the Indy Star on the Democrats’ efforts to retake control of the state House of Representatives. Time & the Toll Road are two major themes of that effort. In particular, Troy “I’ll Never Vote for It” Woodruff is in jeopardy.

Two years ago, the Vincennes resident’s vote for Republican Troy A. Woodruff helped him eke out a victory over the Democratic incumbent state representative by fewer than 200 votes.

But the 70-year-old Barnes said she won’t do that again. Woodruff switched his vote in 2005 to put Indiana on daylight-saving time. She said that’s all she needs to know.

When Woodruff’s Democratic challenger, Kreg Battles, showed up at her doorstep last week asking if she had any questions about his candidacy, she said:

“No, because I’m going to vote for you. You’d do as well or better as the one we have now.”

. . .
At the Mouzin Barber Shop in Vincennes, a state map on the wall is marked with the time zones to help customers. Nearby Illinois is on Central Time, and the adoption of daylight-saving time is changing all the rules residents have used to tell time, whether they’re in Indiana or Illinois.

Barber Larry Mouzin, asked whom he will support for state representative said bluntly: “Not Woodruff.”

“He said he wouldn’t vote for it. Then, whammo!” Mouzin said.

The article goes on to discuss the fact that immigration is also on people’s minds, but that the issue cuts both ways for the political parties. For example, Republican Don Eaton doesn’t think Republicans in Washington have done enough to secure the border and he doesn’t like handing over the Indiana Toll Road to foreign management. When asked about his views on Daniels, Eaton said, “How much time do you have?”

Eaton intends to vote for Dave Crooks, a Democrat who vigorously opposed the time change and the Toll Road privatization in Republican dominated Daviess County; and apparently a great number of others intend to vote for him as well.

Republicans have targeted Crooks, a Democrat in Republican-dominated Daviess County, who aggressively opposed the time change and the Toll Road lease. But there are hundreds of Crooks yard signs in the district, and it’s difficult to find one for his Republican opponent, local economic development official Ron Arnold.
While Crooks was out campaigning last week, Arnold was on vacation.

DST to darken October school days

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Kelly Soderlund, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article entitled “Daylight time to darken October school days.” She begins:

It’s 6:35 a.m. on Sept. 25, and there isn’t a hint of sunlight in Fort Wayne. A light drizzle sprinkles down on car windows, and a mist of fog hovers close to the ground, masking the signs leading cars to the Coldwater Road entrance to Interstate 69.

Farther west on U.S. 30 toward Columbia City, the fog thickens, making it almost impossible to see landmarks on both sides of the road. A stoplight at the border of Allen and Whitley counties is surrounded by a red halo, appearing blurry to drivers.

Forty minutes earlier, 15 area school districts made the call to delay the opening of school by two hours: The fog is too thick for bus drivers to be on the road, for students to be standing on the side of hazy roads and for inexperienced teen drivers to be making their way to school.

She goes on to note that sunrise won’t occur until 7:31 a.m. Many superintendents predict having to delay school more days than in years past, especially in October, because of Daylight Saving Time and the resulting lost hour of daylight in the morning. The delays are seen to be less of a problem in urban areas and more of a problem in rural areas. If schools begin using a lot of three-hour delays, they may face fines from the Indiana Department of Education.

The problem of darkness of DST-induced darkness in the fall and spring will be compounded in 2007 when DST is extended by a month.

“I’ve always been opposed to any plan that would put kids in the dark for a longer period of time waiting for buses. That’s a safety issue, and I’m opposed to anything that puts kids in situations where their safety is a concern,” Northwest Allen County Schools Superintendent Steve Yager said. “We lobbied against the change, and if it comes up again, we will lobby to put kids on buses closer to daylight.”

St. Joseph County Councilman Mark Catanzarite made a strong submission to the USDOT Time Zone docket pointing out the dangers to school children arising out of the extra hour of darkness in the mornings. In making its determination, the Department of Transportation was mindful of this concern, but at the end of the day, the USDOT’s charge is the “convenience of commerce,” not the safety of our children, and so the argument did not carry the day.

White House “in crisis” over Woodward’s allegations of deception about Iraq

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A Guardian story about Woodward’s new book. It says that the White House is “in crisis” over Woodward’s allegations that the Bush administration hasn’t been playing straight with America over the War in Iraq. Permit me to be skeptical that anyone in the Bush administration cares what Bob Woodward has to say — or over what anyone in America might think about its actions, or really over whether its actions are actually beneficial to the country. From what I can tell, Bush is mainly concerned about being “resolute.”

What a week for Congress

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What a wild week it’s been in D.C. You have the Congress taking a firm stand in favor of torture and against the Great Writ. Mostly along party lines, Congress passed legislation that:

  • Bars bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through habeas corpus petitions.
  • Allows prosecutors to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions.
  • Empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone the executive branch determines to have “purposefully and materially” supported anti-U.S. hostilities. (While non-citizens are the only ones who can be tried by military tribunals, apparently U.S. citizens can be detained indefinitely under the legislation.)

The way the legislation is written, coupled with the relevant Geneva Conventions, the President is empowered to determine what forms of sexual assault, short of actual penetration, are permissible as interrogation techniques.

Which brings us to Friday of this week when Florida Republican Mark Foley’s hasty resignation from Congress after the “icky e-mails” began to surface. Apparently the e-mails were sexually explicit and directed to a 16 year old male Congressional page. This is particularly egregious since Foley was, among other things, a former co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children and one of the most vocal opponents of child pornography. Even more problematic in some ways is the fact that House leaders, including Dennis Hastert and John Boehner, knew of Foley’s e-mails to the House page since at least Spring of this year and did nothing about it.

And, finally, just to add to the mix, Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said that what is wrong with the Republican Congress these days is that they bow to the “thugs and bullies” who lead the Christian Right.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey has launched an attack on Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, saying Dobson and his “band of thugs” are “nasty bullies” and accusing the Republicans of pandering to the Christian right.

He said that the GOP was adrift and rudderless in its commitment to small government. He went on to say:

“The criteria of choice in just about every behavior you see in Congress today is politics. Where in the hell did this Terri Schiavo thing come from? There’s not a conservative, Constitution-loving, separation-of-powers guy alive in the world that could have wanted that bill on the floor.

“That was pure, blatant pandering to James Dobson. That’s all it was. It was silly, stupid, and irresponsible. Nobody serious about the Constitution would do that. But the question was will this energize our Christian conservative base for the next election.”

Sager asked why it seems that Christian conservatives are more powerful now than in the 1990s. Armey replied: “To a large extent because Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies. I pray devoutly every day, but being a Christian is no excuse for being stupid. There’s a high demagoguery coefficient to issues like prayer in schools. Demagoguery doesn’t work unless it’s dumb . . . These issues are easy for the intellectually lazy and can appeal to a large demographic.”

Amen, brother. Which is probably why we’re starting to see groups like the First Republicans try to steer the party back to its small government, fiscally conservative, socially tolerant roots.

Tim Joyce’s rebuttal to Southwest Indiana Counties’ re-petition

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Tim Joyce has posted a lengthy rebuttal (pdf) to the re-petition submitted by the Southwest Indiana counties, paying particular attention to Knox County, on the subject of switching from the Central Time Zone to the Eastern Time Zone. The introductory paragraph:

I hope the following information will prove that the Knox County Commissioners with the help of the Law firm Ice Miller LLP and the other petitioning counties have chose to mislead the Federal Department of Transportation in their quest to change to Eastern Time. I do not understand why they were allowed to petition as a group as it is each county that should petition on their own. I will start by saying that all these counties do have one huge connection and that connection is Evansville, IN. Knox County by itself has very little in common with the other petitioning counties after that. I hope to show that a majority of our workers either come from or go to Central Time Zones even if you take away the other petitioning counties. Our Healthcare Industry, the number one industry in Knox County, has the biggest part of their patients coming from the Central time zone even if you take away the other petitioning counties. Knox County has more people working at just one of our local McDonalds then we have working at Crane Naval Base. Toyota is more of a driving force then the Crane Naval Base or any other industry in any of the petitioning counties. I believe that all the counties should be left on Central but Knox County has the greatest case to stay on Central and I hope to prove that.

A thought of my own on procedure: I don’t really think any of this stuff is correctly put on the old 2005 docket. In my mind, the rule making process stopped when USDOT adopted the rule shifting the time line. Now, you’ve got a new petition from that group of Southwestern Indiana counties. The USDOT should first decide whether a joint petition of this kind is acceptable in the first place. If it is, they should then decide whether the petition makes a case sufficient to begin the rule making process once again. If it does, then and only then should USDOT open a docket with their Notice of Proposed Rule Making after having let citizens know what they have in mind.

I don’t know if following that procedure helps or hurts Central Time proponents. But I don’t think lumping the re-petition in with the old rule making docket is appropriate. I could just be talking out of my hat though; I certainly haven’t done any research on the subject.

Gender confusion for the Count

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Ouch. From the South Bend Tribune:

The good news for U.S. Rep. Chris Chocola, R-2nd, is that his campaign against Democrat Joe Donnelly is mentioned prominently in today’s editions of the New York Times.

The bad news is that the paper apparently tried to change his gender.

A front-page caption under a photo of a Chocola campaign ad, says: “Representative Chris Chocola, a Republican, criticizes her opponent on illegal immigration.”

Dems run against Daniels, DST & the Toll Road

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Amy Hillenberg has an article in the Reporter Times entitled “House Democrat Strategy Targets Daniels”. (Hmm, the same story ran in the South Bend Tribune and elsewhere under Mike Smith’s name.) The story takes a look at Rep. Dave Crooks campaign strategy. His first ad features woman complaining about Gov. Daniels and how he was able to pass Daylight Saving Time and privatize Indiana’s Toll Road:

“Mitch Daniels is going around changing our clocks, and he let foreign companies take over our highways,” a woman says in the ad. It looks past the election, saying that’s when “we got rid of a bunch of boys who were just rubber stamps for ol’ Mitch.”

The “boys” refers to Republicans who control the House, 52-48. All but a handful helped Daniels win passage of statewide daylight-saving time. And it took 51 of the 52 to pass a bill letting Daniels lease the Indiana Toll Road to a private, foreign venture. No House Democrat voted for it.

Hoosiers oppose Daylight Saving Time 49% to 44% and oppose the Toll Road privatization 55% to 39%. These issues have affected at least one voter, according to the story:

[Daniels] has certainly turned off Dale Shake of Washington, Ind., who said he was a lifelong Republican who voted for Daniels in 2004. He said he received a poll call that asked him to rate the governor’s performance between one and five.

“I came back and said, ‘Do you have anything below that one?”’ said Shake, 65. He said he was upset about the northern Indiana toll road lease – even though he lives in Daviess County in southwest Indiana – and the time switch.

He said he had known and liked Crooks’ Republican opponent, Ron Arnold, for years. But because of Daniels, he’s going to vote for Crooks.