what the public option would mean for Michiana

According to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, passing the America's Affordable Health Choices Act would mean in the 2nd district of Indiana:

up to 13,500 small businesses could receive tax credits to provide coverage to their employees; 10,200 seniors would avoid the donut hole in Medicare Part D; 1,770 families could escape bankruptcy each year due to unaffordable health care costs; health care providers would receive payment for $104 million in uncompensated care each year; and 95,000 uninsured individuals would gain access to high-quality, affordable health insurance.

That would be the one with the public option. These numbers are pretty staggering.

Here's the one for TX-19 (Randy Neugebauer, R - Lubbock), and here for TX-32 (North Dallas, Pete Sessions). The rest of you can look your districts up here.

Indiana politics: Rokita was part of Bush's 2000 election theft

Go figure. From TPM:

Yesterday we told you about an effort by Indiana's Republican secretary of state, Todd Rokita, to press federal and state authorities to prosecute ACORN for voter fraud. Rokita had said a review by his office of forms submitted by ACORN found "multiple criminal violations."

But it turns out that Rokita hardly has a reputation as a non-partisan public official. In October 2002, the South Bend Tribune reported (via nexis):

Working on his own time, [Rokita] also assisted George W. Bush's campaign during the infamous Florida election recount in 2000. Rokita is proud of that, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court cited Indiana election law when it decided the election in Bush's favor.

late night in Hoosierville

So...much...egg...on face...

Barack's popular vote margin in North Carolina eclipses Hillary's in Pennsylvania. And at the moment, the mayor of Gary is claiming that the city may have brought high enough turnout to cover Obama's statewide deficit.

Holy God. Tim Russert on MSNBC:

"We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, and nobody is going to dispute that."

Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann agree that the race is over.

Hillary has canceled all public appearances tomorrow. This is a big deal.

voting day in Hoosierland

Alright, Hoosiers, make your mamas proud!

My predictions: Indiana looks more like Ohio than any other state. Clinton has played on Hoosiers' fears well, though she's been pretty egregiously craven about it, floating this gas tax holiday foolishness and whatnot. Furthermore, Evan Bayh has been going all out for Clinton, and he's the big dog in Indiana Democratic politics, being a current popular Senator and former popular governor. Obama's got the northwest probably as deep in as South Bend, plus Indianapolis and Bloomington, but every poll shows him capping at around 44%. I think Indiana screws the pooch, 53-47 Clinton.

Also, in the gubernatorial primary, I'm going with Long Thompson over Schellinger by 10. Long Thompson is playing Clinton's gas tax game, and my gut tells me Hoosier Democrats don't pay enough attention to see through the ruse. Clearly, the Clinton and Thompson pollsters feel it, too, or they wouldn't have suggested a position that exposes the candidates as panderers on both the the budget and the environment. Jill also has higher name recognition having already run for virtually every office Indiana has to offer.

In North Carolina, Obama should win out, but it will be closer than it should have been. What can I say? When you're getting tag teamed by the the governor, the Crazy Train, Clinton, and her 527, while the media's replaying Rev. Wright's greatest hits nonstop, it's gonna hold your numbers down a bit. A team of this size demolished Howard Dean's campaign in a couple of weeks. The Tarheel State goes for Barack, 52-48.

Tony Zirkle: the commercial

Yes, folks, there is a campaign commercial, and it's delicious. Unfortunately I couldn't find any video of it, but I did find a transcript on Tony Zirkle: the website. It shows the Z-man on a black background saying, super-fast so as to fit it all in before the next commercial:

Hello, I’m Tony Zirkle, Republican Candidate for Congress

Some of you have been deeply offended at my campaign tactics, and for inciting your legitimate feelings, I am truly sorry and do apologize.

However, it is my sincere hope that some day that many of you will finally realize why I had to do what I did because the Republican non-leadership would not let Toth, Chocola, or this new good-hearted guy, who seems to help his opponents almost every time he attacks less than fully cocked, debate me fairly in the public square.

You have to fight with the weapons you have.

The truth is that I only said I’d be willing to debate, in stage 4 [of Zirkle's proposed 4-tiered system of criminal justice], "the idea" of the guillotine for 4 or more time serial pre-aged 12 child rapists.

Self-determination slavery reparation segregation is a human right honored in International law and is neither racist nor bigoted. What could be less loving than to ignore the high crime, single parent and std rates in that community?

No father of 3 beautiful Jewish Christian children (their mother converted) is going to be voting to gas innocent ones.

If you want a politician, you’ll have to vote for someone else. If you want a statesman in training, you’ll have to just hold your nose, take a risk and vote for Tony Zirkle on May 6 because I’m the only one on the ballot.

Please visit my campaign site.

I’m Tony Zirkle and this pro-life, anti-porn message now stands approved.

His campaign site says he also plans to run for senator and president! How exciting is that?!

gas taxes and basic economics

Riddle me this, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Jill Long Thompson:

After you dispense with the gas tax, thus lowering the price some $.18, what's to stop the oil companies from raising the price back to where it was before and pocketing that 18 cents for themselves?

I'm not the only one wondering. Paul Krugman:

Why doesn’t cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It’s Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers.
...
The Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it’s pointless, not evil. But it is pointless, and disappointing.

Meanwhile, Tom Friedman is apoplectic at the very suggestion of a holiday and what it says about our long-term priorities.

Hey Hoosiers: before you let the gas tax holiday sell you on these clowns, consider that the gas tax fuels (no pun intended) the highway trust fund, which is used by states and localities to build and maintain roads. How were your potholes this winter? Your snow plowing? De-icing? What if next winter is as bad as this past one? Would you rather have your snow plowed and your pot holes filled like last year or would you rather save 18 cents on the gallon at the pump?

You can't have both.

IN-02: isn't SCHIP a government-run program?

From The South Bend Tribune:

SOUTH BEND -- The health care system needs reform but U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly, D-Granger, says it shouldn't be through a government-run program.

Insurance companies currently have a lot of control in the system and the playing field needs to be more level with patients, Donnelly said in a phone interview with The Tribune on Wednesday.

He said he supports the re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada to help senior citizens save money.

Donnelly said Medicare Part D must be changed to remove the coverage gap, or the "doughnut hole." The hole lies between $2,250 and $5,726 in total prescription drug spending, where a participant has to pay for all of their drug costs until they reach the out-of-pocket protection threshold.

If Congress could negotiate drug prices with drug companies, prescription drug prices would drop, Donnelly said, shrinking the doughnut hole and helping senior citizens save money. He said seniors eligible for the Veterans Affairs program are already paying 42 percent less on their drugs, because the VA negotiates prices with pharmaceutical companies.

Donnelly said he supported renewal of the national State Children's Health Insurance Program, which would have provided health care for 98,000 children in Indiana. SCHIP was enacted in 1997 to last for 10 years and expired last September.

These Hoosiercrats piss me off to no end. Using "government-run" as a pejorative? What is this, 1985? News flash, Donnelly, people vote for Democrats because they don't want the government to be run by free market fundamentalists and corporatist sellouts. Or were we not supposed to notice that you don't support programs competing with corporate middle-men, but you do support programs subsidizing their profits?

Heil Zirkle!

Ah, how we've missed you Tony Zirkle! From WSBT South Bend:

SOUTH BEND – Tony Zirkle, Republican candidate for 2nd District congressman, said he is willing to talk to any group that invites him, and that’s why he addressed a weekend gathering in Chicago of the American National Socialist Workers Party.

The occasion was a celebration of the 119th anniversary of the birth of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

That would be a pretty fun article by itself, but Der Zirklefuehrer didn't stop there. He also let them take pictures.


And that, of course, is awesome. Especially awesome here is the children's party store "Happy Birthday" strung across the table. But not nearly as awesome as THE FREAKIN' VIDEO OF HIS SPEECH.

For those of you not familiar with South Bend politics, this is another famous episode in the saga of the Zirkle:

Tony Zirkle says we should talk about segregating the United States by race.

So then you work out the percent of white people and give them a certain number of states. Same for blacks. Same for Asians and other hues of humanity.

Zirkle, who’s seeking the Republican nomination for Congress’ 2nd District, believes it’s worth debating.

“I’m not going to say which side of the debate I fall on,” Zirkle told The Tribune on Monday. But he did say the idea is worth looking into - that segregation could create a new sense of community.

Zirkle is known for suggesting controversial ideas, as in 2006 when he said there should be a debate over using the guillotine to punish "porn pimps" who prey on children.

Indiana Dems: like Republican wannabes

Yesterday Democratic gubernatorial candidates Jill Long Thompson and Jim Schellinger debated in Fort Wayne. One of them is a gajillionaire who wants to run the government like a business and the other one boasts that she's never ever raised a single tax, which is going to be extremely helpful in a period when schools are overcrowded, all the roads are covered with potholes, and the same candidate wants to extend broadband lines to rural communities.

What I've really been looking for in a governor is someone who's either going to a) punt on all the truly difficult decision-making and leave it to someone else to cover the budget, or b) someone who will approach every difficult decision thinking to himself, "Hmm, what would someone who does a job with completely different objectives than mine do?"

The problem with Indiana Democrats is they honestly believe everyone's a Republican, so they just run as more sensible (or, in some cases, less sensible) Republicans, trying to slip the occasional logical position into a plan that's otherwise designed to out-Republican the Republicans.

"Yeah, I might be the guy who's against selling off all the state's property to foreign investors, but I'll run the government as a for-profit entity that operates purely out of self-interest! Out-capitalism that, bitchez!"

"Sure, I believe that the government should create some kind of, ya know, infrastructure, but don't worry, I'll make sure it does so without spending money!"

"Yes, admittedly, I'm not sure all liberals should be put to death, but I've built an entire church out of guns!"

I'm not sanguine about this gubernatorial election.

Obamarama is right around the Bend

That's right, folks, Barack Obama is coming to South Bend! We've got "tickets," though we're a little worried about early we have to get in line (doors open at 8pm). I say "tickets" in quotation marks because I have a suspicion that it's totally open to the public and the "tickets" were just an excuse to snag our contact info and of whomever we invited. It's fine, though, they already had all that info.

And for you Benders, no, it's not "hypocritical" for the South Bend School Corp. to allow Obama to use Washington High. Their reason for keeping Clinton out was that it was a "distraction" to students and that they would be a "captive audience," and that there would be security concerns for them. This week, however, is spring break so there will be no students, which obviates the reasons for keeping the politicians out. My understanding is that this is a longstanding policy, so there's no indication of changing the rules for Obama. More likely, the policy was made back when no one would ever have thought that two candidates of this caliber would still be fighting for the nomination by the time Indiana's number came up, and when the call came from the Clinton campaign, the bureaucrat who answered the phone lacked the sense or the initiative to defy policy for such an event.

The policy is stupid, and I hope the school corp. has learned a lesson from this mess, but as the adage goes, there is no need to ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence.

Mitch Daniels losing to Dem candidates

Wouldn't this be exciting?

Lueck'ed

Congrats to Mayor Steve Luecke on his almost overly successful re-election bid, 60%-38%. Anyone else think the South Bend Tribune oversamples Republicans a wee bit?

Congrats as well to Jeff Rea, who isn't too bad as far as Republicans go.

Hoosier politics: in which Juan Manigault cries me a river

Is it just me, or are these Republican mayoral candidates fragile little wilting flowers? Jeff Rea has at least not been in the mudfight, but for Juan Manigault to cry foul about negative campaigning and "personal attacks" (which is, apparently, GOP-speak for criticizing a Republican's job performance) is pretty rich.

Sauce for the goose, Juan. Sauce for the goose.

[post edited to unmix the metaphors and add clarity.]

Hoosier politics: Governor Daniels' property tax plan

Here's the text of it. I've also found a pretty good LA Times article on the subject here that focuses on the role of overly numerous and unqualified tax assessors in the problem, an issue Daniels appears to be trying to fix. There's a particularly interesting episode they recount (in maddening little detail) about business properties in Marion County that were significantly undervalued. If this is a common phenomenon, then I suspect that may go a long way toward explaining just why local and state revenues keep falling so short.

What can I say? I have a sneaking suspicion the shortfall isn't due to overly lavish attention being paid to Indiana schools. Nor to cracking down on Indiana's very average crime rating.

I have one serious issue with it, though: what's up with capping taxes on rental property higher than other homes? Is this not asking the poor to carry a disproportionally high property tax burden, i.e., making property taxes regressive? Anyone got an answer for this?

Come to think of it, I'm also surprised about the insistence on a constitutional amendment. Why is simple legislation not good enough, especially in case the government falls on real hard times at some point and needs a temporary increase? Then again, the Indy Star reports that a constitutional amendment would send a tax cutting referendum to the people at the same time as the governor's own election.

Suddenly it all becomes clear.

WSBT (I believe) interviewed John Broden, my local rep, and he had something especially interesting to say: several of Daniels' proposals have already been legislated. So much for the no-nonsense problem solving of my man Mitch.

South Bend on the Daily Show

Well, not really, but this segment has a GI from SB in it.

ANOTHER pervert in the GOP moral police-- in Indiana

From Taking Down Words:

Clark County GOP Chair and newly elected Young Republican National Federation Chair Glenn Murphy is under investigation for criminal deviate conduct, a Class B felony, for allegedly engaging in oral sex with a sleeping victim. This is not his first run-in with the law for this kind of offense.

Read the investigative report and a prior arrest for sexual battery in 1998 here: glennmurphy.pdf

Naturally, he's since resigned from all his positions, "for business reasons." Heh. Hehe. HeheheheWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!

The trolls at TDW are pretty funny, too. The best ones prove how this story shows that Democrats are hypocrites. Oh, and about how the liberal Supreme Court is enforcing its morality on good conservatives, or something.