Think About It with Michael Leppert: Recent Episodes
Michael Leppert
The purpose of this podcast is to convince you to think about it. What exactly is "it?" "It" will be something that is happening today in our cultural, community, or political space. And “It” will also be how we communicate with, relate to, or exist around each other.
All in just FIVE MINUTES. That’s right, every episode is just FIVE MINUTES.
A quarter century ago, as a young bureaucrat, I had a disagreement with my bosses. Energy commodities markets were going through an historic price spike, and my agency set the final rates customers would pay. I wanted rates to mirror the market to send “price signals” to consumers and provoke a reduction in consumption. The bosses wanted to spread costs over a long period to mitigate “rate shock.” They feared the infinitely possible responses that could come from an angry public.
The bosses won, as bosses usually do, and we kept rates flat, and the public remained calm.
Governing has changed since then.
Last Thursday, June 12th, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, was forcibly removed from a news conference being conducted by the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. He was ultimately tackled and handcuffed before being released. Why? He wanted to ask Noem some questions, and there were no questions to ask her that she would have been able to easily answer, so her security detail overreacted early. Where? In Los Angeles, where Padilla is arguably far more important than Noem.
This wasn’t a mistake on Noem’s part or on her security detail’s part. It was purposeful theater. While Padilla was being restrained unnecessarily, Noem was saying this according to NBC News: "We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country," referring to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats.
The Trump Administration is declaring war on state and local government in California. Or was Noem just trying to see what the reaction to that possibility would be?
On Friday, June 13th, Israel began firing missiles into Iran. As reported by Reuters, “The air war between Iran and Israel - which began on Friday when Israel attacked Iran with air strikes - has raised alarms in a region that had already been on edge since the start of Israel's military assault on Gaza in October 2023.”
Israel claims the bombing was necessary to preempt Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Yes, this issue had been addressed during the Obama Administration when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was signed, specifically to prevent it. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement during his first term and failed to craft a new nuclear deal with Iran to replace it.
Now we have a replacement: war. The U.S. has been working to avoid this conflict since the Reagan Administration.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
I am working on publishing a new book this year. So, I’m spending time with other writers, readers, editors and consultants to make sure the finished product is as good as it can be. While online the other day, an editor wrote: “The purpose of fiction is to ask the audience questions to consider; the purpose of non-fiction, is to give them answers.”
I assumed that was a famous quote, because it’s so wonderful, but I can’t find its originator for attribution. “Who said that?” is a question in need of an answer. I don’t ever seem to run out of questions, and neither does humanity. Answers, on the other hand, are scarce and precious. We should treat them that way.
As reported by the Indianapolis Star on June 5th, “Purdue University announced it will no longer help distribute its student newspaper on campus — one of a handful (of) decisions distancing itself from the independent student publication.” The Purdue Exponent has been a vital news publication during my 30-year career in the Indiana media space. The student newspaper is 135-years-old and has been invaluable to students, the Purdue community and to the state for the entirety of that time.
This decision by Purdue follows similar moves made by Indiana University in 2024 directed toward its student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student.
A particularly curious part of the Purdue announcement is the instruction that the newspaper “should” omit the use of “Purdue” in its name moving forward, even though the publication has the name trademarked until 2029. Expansive explanations for this kind of hostility toward the paper have not been provided yet, but questions about that specifically are things we all should ponder.
On June 8th, Lauren Tomasi, a correspondent for 9News of Australia was shot by a rubber bullet while covering the Los Angeles protests. The video of the incident can be seen here.
On the same day in LA, British photojournalist, Nick Stern was also struck by “non-lethal” rounds fired by law enforcement. He said in an interview with The Guardian, “I’m walking around taking photos…walking across the road when I felt a mighty pain in my leg. I put my hand down and felt a lump kind of sticking out the back of my leg.” He is currently recovering from surgery that was necessary to treat his injury.
Questions abound. Here, in the once shiny city on the hill known as America, our institutions of authority are turning on our nation’s “Fourth Estate.”
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
I love June in Indianapolis. School’s out for me. The gardens, flowers and lawns around town are blooming and greening with optimism. And the city is quiet as it recovers from its traditionally hectic month of May. As my favorite performer, David Ryan Harris, sang in concert many years ago, this time of year transforms “slow like the breezes of springtime melt into summer’s grace.”
As a dad, I am treated well in June. As a golfer, Indiana’s greens rarely run smoother. As a proud downtown dweller, my neighbors never love each other better. And that last one is all because of Indy Pride.
Indy Pride is celebrating thirty years as an organization in 2025. Its founding preceded President Bill Clinton’s declaration of June as Pride Month in 1999. Yes, there are organizations all over America holding events during this wonderful month. I’ve had comparative conversations with people from other cities countless times. They usually go like this: “Our Pride is the best because…” An opening that often leads to an interruption of, “No, ours is better because…”
The truth is all of them are special, and while I love mine the most, Indiana is not all that different from the rest of America. Cities and towns all over the state also have events of their own. From Fort Wayne to Spencer, from Greenwood to River City Pride in Warrick County, Hoosiers celebrate the LGBTQ community, and importantly, our collective love of it this month.
That is why it so truly evil that Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith hates it so much.
I recognize Beckwith’s hatefulness. It grows from ignorance, and his relentless commitment to it. On May 30th, he posted “PRIDE MONTH ALERT: The Rainbow Beast is Coming For Your Kids” on his Micah Beckwith for Indiana Facebook page. The kooky post is largely lifted from the story posted on an equally kooky website called “The Dissenter.”
It’s difficult to editorialize on the lunatic rantings of, again, the sitting lieutenant governor of the State of Indiana. It’s akin to arguing with an idiot; there’s not much to be gained in the exercise.
But as humanity begins the loving and celebratory month of June, it is important to bring attention to a primary reason why Pride exists. It is the ignorance, the lunacy, and the hatefulness from the smallest of people, like Beckwith, that should motivate those of us who love Pride’s celebrations to stay focused on its absolute necessity.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
In the 1983 classic film, “Trading Places,” Louis Winthorpe III and Billy Ray Valentine are victims of a scientific experiment that is thrust upon them by the elite bosses of a Philadelphia commodities brokerage. Winthorpe is a young, snobby broker at the firm, with all the right credentials and upbringing. He is comprehensively replaced by Valentine, a streetwise but uneducated nobody. The amateur sociological experiment aimed to prove that environment is more predictive than genetics in determining personal success or failure.
After the switch, Winthorpe spots Valentine wearing the clothes he once owned, specifically his Harvard tie. Only the cream of the crop, the elites among the elite are worthy of wearing the school’s crest. An enraged Winthorpe exclaims, “Like oh sure, he went to Harvard!”
I used to repeat the line out loud anytime I saw Harvard gear being worn by anyone, anywhere--especially to friends who actually did go to school there. It used to be fun.
In 2025, Donald Trump is trying to destroy arguably our most reputable institution of higher education based on his “claims that Harvard has failed to stamp out antisemitism on campus,” as reported by NPR’s Steve Inskeep, in the Morning Edition on Tuesday.
It’s nonsense of course.
Pretend for a moment that a specific ground zero of all American antisemitism actually existed. Where would that place be? I might look at the places flying Nazi or Confederate flags. I might look at the places where historic hostilities toward minorities of any kind thrive. I might look where hate crimes are being committed and civil rights are under threat.
Trump has chosen to look at Harvard, a university with a Jewish population among undergraduates of approximately 26%, according to Hillel International. That’s where the MAGA crowd believes antisemitism needs thwarted. More importantly, they believe the make-believe crisis is worthy of annihilating one of the world’s most respected institutions to solve it.
Again, it’s all nonsense. No one actually believes any of this. However, Trump’s supporters love destroying things. The destruction of our global reputation, the U.S. Capitol, the rule of law, etc. are proof of that. Damn the consequences, they primarily enjoy burning stuff down.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
Bureaucracy is a word that is often used as an excuse. It is the bogeyman that serves as the source of mysterious and insurmountable odds preventing government from delivering the obvious good and right things to its people.
Why are the streets in Indianapolis so horrible? Why is school funding seemingly always distributed unfairly? Eventually, the answers to those questions lead to the faceless phantom, known as bureaucracy. However, sometimes that phantom is identified, making accountability possible for whatever ails us. That’s when we point at an actual person, the sinister “bureaucrat.”
On May 7th, Whitney Downard reported for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, “’A giant leap backwards’: Indiana opts out of summer program for hungry schoolchildren.” She reported that in 2024, Hoosier families who qualify for food benefits and reduced-price school meals got a summertime boost: $120 per child monthly for food while schools were closed. It provided that assistance to 669,000 children.
What made it news earlier this month is that Indiana’s participation last year, won’t be repeated this year. The reason? You guessed it, bureaucracy. Downard asked “three state entities” about the withdrawal from the SUN Bucks program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including the important question: why? At that time, no reasoning was provided.
I was hopeful more reporting would follow, and on May 16th, it did.
Rachel Fradette reported for WFYI that in a statement from Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration, that “clear direction” was needed from state leadership last year for the program to be rolled out in a timely manner. “Upon taking office, this administration quickly submitted a waiver application to the Food and Nutrition Service to explore all possible avenues for launching the program this summer…However, our review revealed that the gaps in prior preparations prevented implementation in time for Summer 2025.”
That’s the classic blaming of bureaucracy. But there’s a face here, and that face is Governor Mike Braun. Could this Trump loyalist have made a phone call to the White House? Yes. Did he?
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
In the opening scene of the film, “The Hate U Give,” a father is having The Talk with his two young children. It is a common discussion Black families have in America to prepare for the inevitable contact with law enforcement they will face, and how to stay safe in those situations. It is a sad necessity, but a necessity all the same.
The movie was based on the 2017 award-winning novel by Angie Thomas. It was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, though plenty of important things have happened in real life since then.
In The Talk, the father is instructing his kids how to be submissive when confronted by an armed aggressor with governmental authority. That submissiveness communicates to the authority the intent to be compliant and peaceful and is designed to lower the temperature of the moment. The goal is to survive the moment and then worry about justice through due process later.
It’s good advice. At least it used to be. Before 2025, the advice from The Talk made some assumptions. Primarily, that those claiming to be the police were exactly that.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has apparently made mask-wearing part of the standard attire when detaining people. Sometimes they are in military style clothing, and sometimes they are in plain clothes, an inconsistency that makes them even less trustworthy. The agents are often armed with semi-automatic rifles adding to the fear factor of the costumes being worn when capturing their targets.
When I first noticed it earlier this year, I was surprised and curious. With each passing video, my initial concern has evolved into outrage. It is disturbing how this approach to law enforcement has quickly become the norm at the Department of Homeland Security, the governing department of ICE.
We cannot stand for this practice to spread to other law enforcement agencies, or for it to continue with DHS. And The Talk won’t work for this.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
In “Mother Night,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” I might add: “And for how long.”
I was invited to join a small group of students last week to celebrate the completion of their undergraduate degrees. We first met four years ago, and I remember the moment vividly. It was my first day as a full-time instructor at an elite business school and they were freshmen in their first week of classes.
Heading into the fourth lecture of that first day, I wasn’t convinced I had made the right decision to leave a lucrative private sector career to teach. I didn’t know how the technology in the classroom worked. I didn’t know I could move the furniture around any way I wanted. I was so consumed with my own ignorance that I hadn’t even considered the far more unsettled condition of these young people. They expected me to be brilliant, to be a source of stability in the middle of the chaos of their first week of college.
I wasn’t brilliant. I was pretending. And I wasn’t pretending very well.
The first three classes that day were filled with students who were nervously silent. My own nervousness didn’t help. But when I entered that last class of the day, the students were talking and laughing with each other like they were old friends, hardly noticing that the evil professor had arrived. One of them made eye contact with me and I asked, “What, did all of you go to high school together?” She looked at me curiously, seemingly wondering if I had forgotten that it was the first day of school, and said, “uh, we just met.” That moment changed everything for me.
Four years later, the first days of my semesters are wildly different. I am a little evil, but not accidentally. I am a little anxious, but only because I know the fun that lies ahead. I’m more than a little curious about my new students. I’m truly fascinated by them. And that curiosity is everything.
I teach speech and writing to students who didn’t go to college to learn either. They can all follow instruction on rhetoric and persuasiveness, and they all know what a complete sentence is. Teaching that stuff has become the easy part. The real challenge is helping them find their voice.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
Since the measure was first coined by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, the “First 100 Days” is the standard we exclusively give new presidents “as a symbolic window to set the tone” of their administration. “It represents a kind of political version of a first impression,” according to History.com. In 2025 though, the new president isn’t really new, the first impression isn’t actually the first one, and the symbolic window is less about the tone and more about the zone.
That zone is being flooded right now, a strategic mantra of President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again, ex-con adviser, Steve Bannon. Monday, April 28th, was a classic day from this playbook. Two national stories detailed an attack on the Civil Rights Act from two different federal agencies and on two different targets. The stories were written as if the perpetrators of them were independent of one another, operating without a hint of knowledge that both were attacking the same iconic American standard: equal rights.
On April 23rd, Trump signed an Executive Order titled, “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy.” As Newsweek reported: “It calls for an evaluation of all pending proceedings under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), which was first passed in 1974 and amended in 1976 to prevent lenders from discriminating against women based on marital status.” The obvious, rational question this EO provokes is a simple one: why?
The EO is attacking the principle of “disparate-impact liability,” or “the idea that racism, sexism, or some other form of discrimination can occur without explicit intent.” Bluntly, the Trump administration is concerned that the protections against discrimination created by ECOA half a century ago might be resulting in negative consequences for those clearly responsible for the original problem.
Ben Olinsky, senior vice president of Structural Reform and Governance at the Center for American Progress explains that the Trump team’s justification of reviewing the laws this way: "Because that somehow might, in individual cases, cause a white young man to lose out because the criteria has been shifted."
Yes, of course. The ridiculous notion of “reverse discrimination” is often described with terms like “meritocracy” by those known for ridiculous notions. And no, an EO cannot repeal a law. But it can direct federal agencies to behave differently, and in this case, the primary enforcement agency of ECOA is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Trump team apparently wants to take the “protection” out of that agency’s mission across the board. Specifically in this example, protecting women, any and all women, is being rolled back.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
I have often wondered where the phrase “spinning a yarn” came from, and what differentiates the descriptive from the blunter, “making stuff up.” This week’s absurd spin, courtesy of Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, finally inspired me to do a little search for it.
Merriam-Webster theorizes that “it may be connected to the sailor's task of rope making,” because of the path of the term’s traceable usage through the maritime world. The tedious process of twisting fibers into yarns, yarns into strands, and then strands into rope by hand must have been torturous in the early 1800s, when the term first appeared in print. “It is likely that tales were told by the sailors while making rope, leading to the figurative use ‘spinning a yarn’ for storytelling.”
Piles of rope were apparently made in the Indiana Statehouse last week in response to the updated and gloomy revenue forecast. Some mysterious set of circumstances turned the December forecast of $800 million in growth for the next biennium into more than $2 billion of expected losses. Hmm. What changed?
As reported by Arika Herron for Axios Indianapolis, “The dismal forecast is driven by slower than expected growth in jobs and wages, stock market declines and the effects of federal policies around tariffs, immigration and spending cuts.” Uh, yea. That was as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise. But while the forecast is truly dismal, it is still just a forecast. There is no reason to be certain in it because the source of its dismal nature is uncertainty itself. Reality could be worse.
And here’s where the fibers-to-yarns process begins.
Gov. Braun issued a statement the day the forecast was released. He said: “Today’s forecast reflects what we are dealing with in the aftermath of disastrous Bidenflation. There will be some tough times ahead, but the America First economic policies we are pursuing here and in Washington will unleash an economic boom.”
Wow. In those two prepared sentences, and I emphasize that they were prepared, the Indiana governor is blaming the former president for the problem, acknowledging tough times ahead, and topping it off with baseless economic optimism that the state’s own forecasters won’t predict. That’s an awful lot of rope.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
“Bridge of Spies” is a 2015 movie about an insurance attorney, James Donovan, who finds himself representing a Soviet spy, Rudolph Abel, in a highly publicized espionage trial in 1957. Yes, it’s directed by Steven Spielberg, and Tom Hanks stars in it, so, of course, there are Academy Awards involved. And yes, there were dramatic embellishments in the storytelling sprinkled throughout the film with one important exception: The government never betrayed its duty to the U.S. Constitution.
Imagine 1950’s America. We were at war with the Soviet Union. No one could be more unanimously seen as evil than that ominous enemy and their soldiers. And Rudolph Abel was guilty. Not because J. Edgar Hoover said so, but because he was convicted in a court of law.
I have immense pride in the things that make my home what it is. I have traveled abroad and met people where they live, and I have met an abundance of people here, who are not from here. The circumstances of our lives are what fascinates us with one another. And I have always preferred mine to theirs.
Those circumstances changed on Monday. History will date it.
Last Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis instructing the government to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador where he was erroneously deported. SCOTUS specifically instructed the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who had been living in Maryland and has had a work permit since 2019.
The Department of Justice had been fighting the lawsuit filed by Garcia’s family in response to the deportation, even though it acknowledged it was done in error. The legal wrangling of the government to avoid righting its wrong in this case has been absurd for weeks. However, when the highest court in the land issued its decision last week, the American in me had a brief rush of hope that our constitution would hold.
That hope is now gone.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
The term “glad handing” appeared in the American vernacular at the beginning of the 20th century, through the phrase, “to give the glad hand,” or extend a welcome. But that type of welcome has generally come with a twist, an intention, or an agenda.
Merriam-Webster defines the term as “a warm welcome or greeting often prompted by ulterior reasons.” It makes sense that the practice is most often attributed to politicians who are working a room. Even with ulterior motives, the practice would feature a pleasantness and happy charisma to audiences, much like an effective Instagram account would today. Not all politicians are great at it, even though most used to at least try to be.
Not Sen. Jim Banks, R-Indiana though. No, no. His communication strategy flips glad handing on its head. He doesn’t want people, voters, you know, Hoosiers, to see him being insincerely polite or jovial. Not even in a moment of weakness. He’s proudest of his public displays of meanness, or what should now be labeled, “mad handing.”
I’m in the words business, so I’m taking my shot at coining a phrase in hopes of making it into a credible dictionary someday.
ABC reported last week about the now infamous and viral video of Banks telling a man on Capitol Hill who identified himself as a recently fired Health and Human Services employee that he "probably deserved it" because "you seem like a clown." The freshman senator is proudly refusing to apologize and is even promoting the video himself as some sort of achievement.
Why? I went on a search to try to identify the phenomenon and there actually is some science out there that is helpful.
Dr. Mark Travers wrote “When Anger is a Strategy” for Psychology Today in 2022. The article reviewed a study published in the medical journal, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. The sports-based study found that low competitive status is linked with higher aggression. Dr. Macià Buades-Rotger of the University of Barcelona and co-author of the research said, “Put bluntly, losers are more aggressive than winners on average, and that makes sense: If your rival outperforms you, you must resort to aggression to try and stop them.”
Yes, it makes perfect sense and in so many ways. Not just on the playing field of sports, but in the constant jockeying for fame and favor in right-wing politics. In the Banks example from last week, he didn’t have the confidence or courage to defend the haphazard and mass firings that have decimated many vital federal institutions, so he defaulted to aggression. Not by mistake, but by design.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
A friend sent me a link to an episode of “Pod Save America” on Sunday with the short message, “This is worth your time.” The podcast is a favorite among the left, hosted by a small group of former Obama advisers who describe the show as being for people “who are not ready to give up or go insane.” I have occasionally listened to it, but frankly, I didn’t want to give it an entire, torturous hour of my precious weekend.
A few hours later, I find myself in the middle of a project: learning about the “abundance agenda.” Jon Favreau hosted the episode featuring authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson and a discussion of their new book, “Abundance.” The blurb describes it as “a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.”
The challenge in that description is obvious. Liberals have to face up to their failures? Oh no, anything but that!
Commentary and polling data of late is showing a frustration toward what appears to be a void of leadership on the left. It’s a predictable cycle following an election like the one that happened five months ago. The other side won. Electoral minorities don’t get inaugurated. They don’t have black-tie galas to celebrate their defeat and anoint the poohbah of the resistance either. In the spring following an election like 2024, it is customary for the losing team to still be searching for its recovery plan.
However, this moment is clearly different than that typical spring-after. American institutions are being decimated by a Trump administration not because of some ideology or consensus-based ambition of the GOP, but simply for the joy of the decimation itself. Resisting, effective resisting is what the Democrat faithful seem to be demanding more than anything.
Democrats, and mathematically, the majority of Americans, can vividly see what it doesn’t like happening in Washington. What is less clear to both leaders and followers of progressive politics is what the proactive alternative should be. Abundance, as an agenda, could become that alternative.
Basically, the agenda is that blue cites and blue states need to govern better, but not just for the sake of governing. Klein explains on the podcast that abundance, as an agenda, attempts to answer this simple but important question: “what don’t we have enough of and how do we get it?”
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
Henry Reider is a young man from Sierra Leone who recently and miraculously survived tuberculosis. Using the words “recently” and “miraculously” to describe his recovery from a disease that has had a preventive vaccine since 1921 and a cure since 1943 is reason enough to become obsessed with the question: why?
“Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection” is not a book I would choose to read under normal circumstances. Outside of the medical community or those afflicted with it, who would? I am hopeful that, for starters, it will be read by the same people who put other John Green books on the bestseller lists. And then growing from that unusual initial gathering of readers, it reaches the souls of every individual who needs to read it.
Green met Reider and his mother several years ago on a trip to the west African nation, and the families have become friends. Green’s son, not to mention his famous brother, is also named Henry, which has led Reider to refer to both as the “namesakes,” in their regular calls since his recovery. All of the components of that recovery serve as the primary human story and the vehicle for the latest great book in Green’s library of greats.
Reider’s story is fascinating, especially when told by one of the great storytellers of our time. But the history and the evolution of responses to the infection is the real star here. From the now ridiculous sounding strategies and treatments of it, to the way cities and even states, like New Mexico, were developed in large part to combat the infection, are all expertly detailed. Even fashion trends would evolve and modify based on what can only today be seen as irrational theories on how infections function.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
Sun Tzu, the former Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher, is known for his treatise, “The Art of War.” It’s remarkable how valuable the writings, believed to have been written in the 5th century BC, continue to be today. Forget the arguments about whether he is the one who wrote it and when. It doesn’t matter. The lessons are simple, and they still work.
I cannot recall a legislative decision as ridiculous as the one made Friday by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democratic Caucus he leads. After weeks of articulating the awful things contained in the Republican version of the budget continuing resolution, or CR, he abandoned his position at crunch time and chose to give it enough votes to pass. Democrats gained, let me count, zero things in exchange for their acquiescence.
Two days earlier, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, told NBC News, “Democrats had nothing to do with this bill. And we want an opportunity to get an amendment vote or two. And so that’s what we are insisting on.” Apparently not for long.
One of Sun Tzu’s principles of war is to seize opportunity. Democrats failed that one.
They seized nothing by conceding to the Republicans here. Absolutely nothing. Schumer’s stated reasoning for caving was that a shutdown would create opportunity for the White House to do even more unconstitutional and damaging things. Donald Trump and Elon Musk weren’t asking congress for permission before Friday’s vote. Now that the shutdown has been averted, they still aren’t.
I think the mere existence of the filibuster is dumb, and I always have. The 60-vote necessity to proceed, particularly on CRs, served Republicans well throughout Joe Biden’s presidency. Likewise, it should have been used last week by the Democrats to either block the CR or to gain concessions by using it as leverage. It’s the reason it exists. Neither happened.
Worse yet, Schumer and the Democrats gave the Republican budget package ten votes, when all the concession required was seven. By giving the GOP three more votes than they needed, it gave Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, the freedom to vote no on the package for his personal, political reason that the package doesn’t reduce debt. That’s simply malpractice.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
I teach storytelling, though the official titles of the classes are things like presentations, writing or speech for business. But on the first day of school in all of my classes, I put a slide on the screen with this quote from the late Steve Jobs: “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.” Then I ask my new students if they believe that or not
Jason Isbell is one of America’s greatest storytellers, and yes, he’s on one of my first day of school slides too. His latest album, “Foxes in the Snow,” was released Friday morning, and in my opinion, it’s his best album yet. I was predisposed to loving this one because the production is stripped down to nothing but Isbell, his guitar and a microphone. I first became a fan because of the words he writes. Then I noticed he is an incredible guitarist. I love this album most because that’s all we get. The best songs are always at their best in their simplest of forms.
On “Foxes,” Isbell tells the Wall Street Journal: “There’s a lot of heavy stuff on the record, and it felt private…I didn’t really want anybody else in the room for that.” Listeners get to join him there.
I’m not sure this stuff is any heavier than usual, but I get why it’s heavier for him. His recent divorce, his new love interest and his new part time residency in New York City are detailed throughout the song list. What seems to make it heavy is that this is a new world for Isbell, filled with disappointment and excitement, but most of all, newness.
That’s what I hear in all of these songs, particularly in “Open and Close,” in which he sums up the description of his new life with the declaration, “it’s time to be brave.”
What I am trying to get my students to achieve with their audiences is connection. That sounds like a vague, generic term when they hear me use it the first time. But as should be expected, there is a scientific term for it, known as “neural coupling.” This is “the literal synchrony in brain states between speaker and listener. When you’re the speaker, your goal is to replicate the same pattern of brain activity that you have in your head inside the head of your conversational partner,” as described by Dr. Matt Johnson in Psychology Today.
I don’t feel the specific pain of Isbell’s divorce or the specific excitement of his new love, but I mirror many of the components of his emotional state that come from facing a new world. Specifically, the pressure that is felt from the need to be brave.
This is why storytelling is so powerful.
Amanda Zurawski never had plans to describe a profoundly personal slice of her life on a big stage. Yet she was at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington on Friday for a screening of “Zurawski v Texas,” the 2024 documentary about her battle for women’s reproductive rights.
The film’s synopsis captures what has become a familiar modern story: “Women denied abortions under Texas’ ambiguous and unforgiving abortion bans band together with a fearless attorney to sue Texas.” The fearlessness is the thing that connected with me.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
I left public service in 2002. The experiences of the thirteen years I spent as an employee of the State of Indiana help define me. On paper, my career path wouldn’t make immediate sense to most people today. But it makes perfect sense to me. Why? Primarily because I enjoyed serving the public, and importantly, I was good at it. People thanked me for my service when I left.
In less than two months since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, approximately 75,000 federal employees accepted a buyout package offered by the new administration and voluntarily left public service. Another 30,000 have been fired. For context, Delta Airlines employs 100,000 people, and United Airlines Holdings, Inc. employs 107,500.
This will cause significant and widespread suffering in predictable and unpredictable ways. Americans will feel this, one way or another. Even in the post-trust era, this is one thing we can all count on. And Trump and Elon Musk are just getting started.
Included in those breathtaking numbers are individual people who were doing important things, vital things, even life-saving things that are no longer being done. An excellent example is “Emily,” a recently terminated lab technician who worked at the National Institutes of Health. She worked in a cancer research lab, and she worries what these cuts will mean to people who need the treatments NIH is, or was, developing. “People will lose their lives,” she said in an interview with the NBC local affiliate in Washington.
Also commenting was White House spokesperson Kush Desai. He said, “The Trump administration is committed to slashing waste, fraud, and abuse while increasing transparency of where limited taxpayer dollars from NIH are going and how exactly they’re advancing scientific research and development.” The “waste, fraud, and abuse” bit is the go-to storyline for the entire enterprise of this profoundly troubling cleansing of public servants. And while that spin is becoming the new Big Lie, adding the phrase “increasing transparency” makes it even more absurd.
In Indiana, Luke Britt, the state’s longest serving public access counselor, stepped down last week after 12 years in the role following changes to his office by state lawmakers this time last year, as reported by WFYI. Prior to last year’s legislation, Britt’s office was designed to construe disputes about public access to government records in favor of government transparency. His office was created in 1999 in response to public outcry for exactly that, transparency.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
There are so many stars and influencers surrounding us these days, it’s difficult for the uncool to keep up. I don’t know exactly when I crossed over into that territory, but I’m guessing it was shortly after my first son was born. He celebrated his 30th birthday this month.
Back when I was cool, reading was not among the reasons. Now, it might be the coolest thing I do.
In my youth, Dolly Parton wasn’t cool. She was originally a country and bluegrass musician, which in the world of my youth, was cool’s opposite. But after her singing voice slowly became embedded in the fabric of America, her cultural voice followed. That voice is cool as it gets.
Parton started the Imagination Library in 1995 for the children within her home county in East Tennessee, not far from my childhood home. The program delivers one age-appropriate book per month to children five-years old and younger. To recipients, the books arrive via U.S. Mail, free of charge. Do the math. That’s as many as 60 books in a personal library of each participating child. There is no catch, no burden, no problem.
But as the uncool know so well, nothing is truly free. Books cost money, and thirty years since the program started in one county, it is now available in five countries and gives millions of free books each month to children around the world. It’s an intricate operation, involving a long list of operational and funding partners to make it all happen.
Indiana is one of 21 statewide partners in the U.S., though the partnership is now threatened by the Indiana House’s recently passed budget. In 2023, the legislature approved a $6 million expenditure in its budget for the program. That’s a budget item big enough to notice, and small enough that cutting it can’t possibly be celebrated. I am unaware of any public discussion about discontinuing the appropriation during the first half of this year’s legislative session.
So, when the House passed its budget last week and the funding was surprisingly gone, the silence about it ended. I learned about it first from the national media. “We are hopeful that Gov. (Mike) Braun and the Indiana legislature will continue this vital investment by restoring the state’s funding match for local Imagination Library programs,” Jeff Conyers, president of the Dollywood foundation, said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
Conyers was not hysterical about it. He was cool. And while Braun responded quickly to the call out coming from an organization with a big name on it, I found the response to be less than cool, even cold.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
An abundance of adjectives can be used to describe the first 30 days of the second Trump administration. “Chaotic” would be my first choice. But Thesaurus.com provides a list of synonyms to consider in my search for the perfect word. The six strongest matches to my top choice also work. “Tumultuous” or “turbulent?” Yes. “Disorganized” or “helter-skelter?” Ditto. “Lawless” and “anarchic” are the others on that short list, and yes, they both sadly apply as well.
This first month has not been about egg prices or healthcare. Nor has it been about education or justice. And though headlines are big about Ukraine and Gaza, those too are merely components of what today’s true battle is really all about: turf.
America is in the midst of a turf war. It’s so old-school, most don’t even recognize it for what it is. But when Trump’s new leadership at the Department of Justice eviscerated the Republican team in its Southern District of New York to force the dismissal of the corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams, the White House was seizing the local government of the city.
The case against Adams is, or was, about as open and shut as possible. Turkish nationals were pumping campaign funds and luxury travel to the mayor and were receiving favors in return in several easily traceable instances. The corrupt relationship began when Adams was the president of the New York borough of Brooklyn. It intensified during his mayoral campaign, and it continued after he took office. The SDNY has or had the goods on him.
So, what is the motivation for Team Trump to dismiss a corruption case against a prominent Democrat? Again, with the word calisthenics, an oft used political descriptor would be “leverage.” But I think that word is a soft, understatement.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
February 12, 2025
I have been thinking about Winston Churchill since Donald Trump announced his planned seizure of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center last Friday.
In 1938, Churchill said, “The Prime Minister (Neville Chamberlain) …has reminded us of the old saying that it is by art man gets nearest to the angels and farthest from the animals.”
On the floor of the Indiana Senate last Thursday, Minority Leader Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, made a point of order just before the vote on Senate Bill 289. The bill would create a series of prohibitions and requirements regarding diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Indiana. It’s a conglomeration of poorly developed ideas that chaotically attempt to send a message to Hoosiers that the undefined “woke” ideology is being put down in the state for good. It’s a bad-idea bill that is written poorly enough that even four Republicans voted against it.
I am certain I will write about the awfulness of this bill in future columns. Today, I will just label it as a collection of pretzel-like twists of racist gestures designed to comfort a constituency who has demonized DEI programs before bothering to learn what they are. Stay tuned for more on the substance of it.
In the midst of the three-hour Senate debate on SB 289, Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith posted this to his campaign Facebook page: “Indiana just TORPEDOED Woke Indoctrination!” The post goes on about how the rebellion of equal rights has been put down, and how “the left is LOSING IT.” It’s the kind of post to more likely come from a MAGA-cult member standing in line to get into a Lee Greenwood concert. Except it wasn’t. It came from the President of the Indiana Senate, in reference to legislation that was being debated on the Senate floor at that very moment.
And it was written in past tense, as if the vote and the outcome had already occurred. It was at least two hours early.
In Indiana, the lieutenant governor is the nonvoting, presiding officer of the Senate. He or she manages the process and is assisted by a parliamentarian to assure the process is followed in accordance with the state’s constitution and the rules of the Senate. From 1989 through 2004, a Democrat presided over the Republican controlled body. Awkward, right?
Nope. Not at all. Both of those former governors, Frank O’Bannon and Joe Kernan, in their roles as lieutenant governor, did their jobs with a commitment to statesmanship and respect for the body. It is not what either man will be remembered for, primarily because it didn’t take great restraint or character to simply do the damn job as our citizenry has come to expect. And by the way, every Republican LG, dating back to at least 1980, has done the same.
Today, that is apparently too much to ask of Micah Beckwith. He would rather use the position to garner attention for himself, even if it means prejudging outcomes while he presides.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
February 5, 2024 It's an old joke, and though I made a reasonable effort to track down the original source, I failed. However, I did find that early versions of it, dating back to at least 1930, centered on indecent proposals for sex. Not surprisingly, and nearly a century later, the anecdote often is aptly applied to policy dealmaking negotiations in legislative bodies across America. Skipping the indecency of the set-up, this is a family friendly column after all, a version of the punchline goes like this: "We've already established what we are. Now, we're just haggling over the price." Healthcare debates in the Indiana Statehouse are primarily an exercise in "haggling over the price." But like the original version of the joke, the more important part of the debate really is the "establishing what we are" part. Whitney Downard, reporter for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, succinctly reported last week on a hearing of the Indiana Senate Committee on Health and Provider Services that featured five legislative proposals moving forward that were almost entirely about the price. The bills dealt with financial incentives for patient referrals, tracking the average negotiated charge between healthcare providers and insurers, non-compete agreements for physicians, prior authorization of care by insurers, and finally, two bills regarding pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. Whew. I read the story several times and still don't see the part about Hoosiers getting healthier. The most important part of the healthcare debate often doesn't even come up in the rooms where decisions are being made: What can we do to live healthier lives? Anyone who believes that either Indiana or America will magically become healthier by resolving all the debates about price first, should also be shopping for Jack's beanstalk beans. Establishing "the price" isn't the mission. Improving the public's overall health is.
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
January 29, 2025
The word Indiana is literally defined as “the land of the Indians.” When Congress divided the Northwest Territory in 1800, it named the western section the Indiana Territory, and when it became a state in 1816, Indiana became its name.
In 2025, new Governor Mike Braun, in his first budget proposal in office, proposes to end funding for the Native American Indian Affairs Commission. The cut comes as part of his 15% cut to the Indiana Civil Rights Commission. That may sound like a lot of money, but it isn’t. The state is spending less than $3 million a year on the ICRC in the current budget.
A new governor’s first budget proposal is uniquely important. Voters’ eyes often glaze over when this part of governing comes up, and I get that. But budgets are where we as a people proclaim what matters to us. Though the legislature must enact the two-year spending plan, governors generally propose them at the beginning of the law-writing session. The first budget proposal from a newly elected governor is a marker. It defines his priorities to us, and in this case, aptly defines his character as well.
On January 6, 2025, outgoing Governor Eric Holcomb signed a government-to-government agreement with the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. Holcomb said in a news release, “I’ve sincerely enjoyed learning about Pokagon history and culture as well as getting to know and work with Chairman (Matthew) Wesaw.” The state has a relationship with the federally recognized tribe, and our now former governor treated it with respect.
Times have apparently changed.
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Hear ye! Hear ye, America! It’s Inauguration Week! But please don’t confuse it with infrastructure week. The swearing in of a convicted felon actually did happen on Monday.
The striking components of Donald Trump’s second inauguration speech weren’t filled with goodness, with inspiration, or with charm. Of course they weren’t. What child of our nation was expecting a highlight real like that?
The sequel to his 2017 “American Carnage” inauguration address was not terribly different in its tone or in its fundamental wrongness. This speech’s title will likely come from his promise of the beginning of a “Golden Age of America.” Again though, the erroneous assumptions contained in it are strikingly similar to eight years ago: everything is broken and terrible and his presence in office will magically fix all of it and make it wonderful.
Just like eight years ago, it was a speech grounded in civic ignorance directed only at those who share the same fantasy-laden view of the office he reclaimed on Monday. But it is that ignorance that is necessary for much of his agenda, if one can call it that, to become reality.
Exhibit number one is the executive order Trump signed on Monday attempting to end birthright citizenship. No, this constitutional provision cannot be repealed by executive order. If it could, the entire document that effectively defines America, could also be ended by the same pen. This is not new posturing from him, but the certain legal response from an army of litigants will force another branch of government, the courts, to defend the jurisdiction of our founding document again.
Exhibits two and three are not as clearly unconstitutional, but merely illegal.
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January 15, 2025
At a beach in south Florida ten days ago, I was halfway through my daily walk, listening to an excellent book, and occasionally scanning the Gulf of Mexico for any passing dolphins. Public parking at this particular beach is located at both ends, so that’s where the beach camps, picnics, and sandcastle makers tend to gather.
My down-and-back walks there are highlighted by the crowds at each end. On this day, a group of ten people had formed a circle around a large Trump flag flying on a pole at least ten feet high. The shrine was positioned right at the end of the sidewalk leading to the south end of the beach in the middle of a few hundred people who had planned on spending their Saturday free from politics.
A thousand miles to the north in Indianapolis, State Rep. Kyle Miller (D-Ft. Wayne) was preparing to file HB 1259. The bill inserts two words, “a flag,” to Indiana’s statute governing campaign communications. Adding flags to this specific section of the Indiana Code would require that those pesky disclaimers be added to them. The “sponsored by” lingo on yard signs and billboards, and the “I approve this message” sound clips on video and radio ads are already required in Indiana, as they are in most places.
Let’s pretend for a minute that a Democrat-led campaign regulatory initiative can become law in the era of supermajority control by Republicans. What would the impact of a law like this actually be? No, I don’t think it will bring the ridiculous and hostile flags down, but it will require the money making machine of the Trump campaign to at least pretend that the rule of law still applies to it.
Flags have a fascinating history. I’ve researched and written about them before, because it is another unique feature in this political moment in America. They are more demonstrative than bumper stickers and yard signs. They are harder to ignore. They also take more of an effort to fly.
For example, I watch people struggle to put umbrellas up on the beach almost every time I’m there. That ten-foot flagpole I saw ten days ago did take a little effort. I imagine the flags flying behind a Harley Davidson do occasionally get tangled or dragged whenever the bikers approach a speed trap or a stop light.
But these symbols do have a history. As explained in Brittanica, “Flags originally were used mainly in warfare, and to some extent they have remained insignia of leadership, serving for the identification of friend or foe and as rallying points.” And that is still what flags mean to me.
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I vividly remember the first time I heard the expression, “this bill is a solution in search of a problem.” I was a young legislative liaison for a state agency, and we were supporting legislation that the industry we regulated believed was unnecessary. Their spokesperson used the line in his committee testimony against the bill.
“That was a good one,” I thought with an envious smile regarding the quip. But after the hearing, the agency went to work documenting the alleged and elusive “problem.” Then we had a meeting with the industry to discuss solutions that would eliminate the need for the legislation. Problem solved.
That was thirty years ago. Politics and legislative strategy have both changed since then.
The 2025 legislative session in Indiana begins this week. After the holidays have passed and the ceremonial and celebratory dust has settled from the most recent election, the big ideas start landing on paper and become introduced as bills. There are always some doozies. Many of them comically looking for the problem to justify their own hilarious solutions.
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Maggie Rose has landed her first Grammy nomination for her latest album, “No One Gets Out Alive.” It’s nominated for Best Americana Album, a fitting category, though on my first listen of it earlier in the year, I declared it to be the album of the year in every category.
I walked away from cable news after the election two months ago. I just needed a break, I told myself. Now, I can’t imagine ever returning. In my brief time away, I have come to realize that those platforms aren’t all that meaningful to me. Their product is the argument, the disagreement, the conflict. That product wasn’t provoking thoughtfulness in me, it was preventing it. So, that break I needed has become a lifestyle change for which I’m grateful.
There are far better sources for perspective, yes, even coming from this political columnist, than the pundit world. In 2025, I recommend we invest more of our time listening to those better voices.
Rose has a beautiful and powerful voice, and her years of Nashville experience combine to make her a true professional at her craft. The metal-head inside of me was drawn to her hit’s title—I was expecting something dark and nihilistic—which was my mood at the time. Wrong. The title track is a guide on how to embrace life and living, because we only live once. It’s an Americana lesson, through a voice that sounds like a combination of Bonnie Raitt and Aretha Franklin. It’s perfect.
The song is simple. “Call the boy. Ask the girl. Have no regrets when you leave this world. Cause you know no one gets out alive.”
What else is an example of simple? The benefits of a fluoride-enriched public water supply. The CDC has all the data to show how we are healthier as a result of fluoridation, and don’t confuse that term with the state. Collier County in southwest Florida, where I spend some of my wintertime, will remove fluoride from its water supply on January 1. There’s no evidence-based benefit of the move, just barbershop theories that likely came from the cable news playing on the shop’s tv.
Turn it off. Read the data. Don’t trust the CDC? Pick any of the countless other scientific studies that reached the same conclusions. It will be five minutes well spent. Then go listen to some new music, watch a new movie, or read a new book.
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I remember when, as a child, this time of year was filled with unmitigated joy. Like Ralphie in “A Christmas Story,” dreams really could come true. But as a nine-year-old boy, I never thought to ask Santa for a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle. By the time I was nine, I didn’t believe in Santa, and my best friend already had a BB gun. We didn’t need two.
Almost fifty years later, most of that joy has returned for me, and it’s no mystery how. I really only have two holiday goals. First, as a gift to myself, I keep it simple. Next, all of my “shopping” for others is replaced with simple acts of kindness.
Johns Hopkins Medicine writes, “4 Mindful Tips to De-Stress This Holiday Season,” to describe a plan that can make a difference for many. I don’t teach math, but even I can count to four.
The first tip is to “accept imperfection.” Over the years, I’m glad I didn’t keep track of all the angst the drive for the perfect family holiday caused people around me. Clark Griswold’s failed attempt at it in “Christmas Vacation” is hilarious, yes, but only unusual in the details. Hosting or participating in the “perfect” holiday is a goal fraught with peril.
The crowded house I grew up in was the entirety of my holiday universe then. School would be out for two whole weeks, there was no available room for pesky relatives to stay, and the food, oh the food, was the primary feature of every one of those days. The holidays of my childhood were perfect, right? Of course they weren’t, and even though I remember them as if they were, I wasn’t the one creating them. The adults did.
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It’s been fifteen years since the state of Indiana violated the sixth commandment, “you shall not kill,” from Exodus 20:13. The translation of the original text to “you shall not murder” in the last century by many churches is not without controversy. Professor Wilma Ann Bailey of the Christian Theological Seminary devoted an entire book to the debate in 2005.
Either way, Indiana is scheduled to kill Joseph Corcoran on December 18th. His sentence for murdering four men in 1997 was upheld last week by the Indiana Supreme Court.
It’s a sad truth in a modern society that 60% of Americans support this barbaric practice, according to Pew Research. Their research shows minor ebbs and flows of support and opposition over time, which indicates to me that some dramatic change in the national perspective on the matter is unlikely anytime soon.
Twenty-two states use the death penalty as a legal criminal sentence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Take a look at that map of states. Now, take a look at the state map from The Guttmacher Institute showing the new restrictive laws on abortion access. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s close. Life is so precious in these states that an embryo is worth statutorily protecting, to the detriment of a human woman. In primarily the same places, a human adult can be destroyed, specifically by the state’s government, because the people of that state are mad at them.
Yes, the reasons states and the federal government sentence people to death is almost always officially for murder, but not every murder, only the really bad ones. I often wonder why this killing qualifies and that one doesn’t, even though deep down I know the answer. Some horrific killing happened in a state and the people responded angrily by adding that type of act to the list of acts worthy of a death sentence. The anger is the key.
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Fans of the movie, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” will remember the scene. Ben Stein plays a famously boring high school teacher giving a lecture about economics to a room full of teenagers fighting to stay awake. In about a minute, he covers the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and the Laffer Curve, fundamental economic topics, desperately trying to get the students to engage with him.
“Anyone? Anyone…” is the memorable device Stein uses, to no avail, to engage an audience who couldn’t care less.
Some analysts say the economy is the reason voters chose Donald Trump for a second term in last month’s election. His economic plan is rooted in the broad and cavalier use of tariffs on imports from friends and foes alike. Last week, he announced his plan to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The announcement prompted a surprise visit from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and a phone call from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Meanwhile, the American public, particularly Trump voters, remain in an economic daze much like Ben Stein’s class.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed in 1930 in an attempt to thwart the impacts of the Great Depression. It was legislation initially designed to provide relief to the American agriculture sector but became “a means to raise tariffs in all sectors of the economy.” It also marked the end of an entrenched Republican platform of protectionist policy making during that era. The policies ended because they were...anyone…anyone? Failures.
Ignorance has become a vital asset in the political space these days. Yes, it is an asset in politics, but it is the devil in economics.
As a political asset, there are voters who believe that simply throwing a tariff at any nation they are mad at has nothing but benefits. Mad at Mexico because of migration? Slap them with a tariff and border crossings will go down, right? A good number of voters believe the answer is yes. Though this is almost entirely wrong, politically speaking, that ignorance served the pro-tariff candidate in November.
Economically however, the only real certainty that a 25% tariff on Mexico will have, is a 25% price increase in America. There actually is no disagreement on how tariffs functionally work, but I will refer to PBS for a simple explanation. Importers here pay the tariff, otherwise known as a tax, and remit that payment to the U.S. Treasury. How they pass that increase in costs along may vary a little from merchant to merchant, but ultimately it ends up in the price the American consumer pays.
The late John Prine, in his 1971 classic song, “Illegal Smile,” wrote: “You may see me tonight, with an illegal smile. It don’t cost very much, but it lasts a long while.” The journey marijuana has traveled in American culture during my lifetime is a fascinating one. A quick review of the music written about it alone, lays out a chronology of an embattled, yet steady shift in perspective since Prine wrote about it.
Last week, Leslie Bonilla Mũniz wrote for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, “Prominent Republicans back ‘safe and regulated’ marijuana legalization group.” Republicans? Yes, Republicans. This election issue varied in prominence from state to state this year, but one thing that has become clear across the country is that the once prominent partisan lines of disagreement among citizens are gone.
“Safe and Regulated Indiana” has produced a thirty second ad encouraging Hoosiers to contact their legislators to support legalization, though they steer clear of that word. They also don’t announce on their website specifics about who is in their coalition, though I do like the site’s anonymous scroll of individuals, listed by first name and hometown only, showing the volume of support.
It's this anonymity that is easy to identify as a campaign weakness. This is no longer 1971. Supporting a safe and regulated marijuana market in a state surrounded by existing markets, really doesn’t have much risk. More accurately, support is the viewpoint of the majority, just about everywhere in America.
Last year, Ohio voted to legalize marijuana for both medical and recreational use by a 57-43 vote. While Kentucky hasn’t legalized recreational use, legalized medical usage goes into effect on January 1, completing the surrounding of Indiana with markets.
But it’s not just our neighbors. Earlier this month, Florida voted on its own referendum. And while the vote failed to achieve that state’s needed 60% threshold for adoption, it did achieve a 56-44 percent majority of support. Talk about winning by failing.
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I went to see a movie on Friday night. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I can walk to Living Room Theaters from my townhouse in ten minutes, and their popcorn is fantastic. There’s nothing strange about going, except it had been months since I had been there. Now I have been twice in a week.
“A Real Pain” is a new film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, who stars in it with Kieran Culkin. They play a pair of mismatched cousins who go on a Holocaust tour through Poland to retrace the experience of their recently deceased grandmother. They are opposites but are united by their shared loss and the enormity of the history they are experiencing.
Life goes on. That was the message I left the film with, though admittedly, I was primarily at the movie for that very reason myself. I recommend my strategy to anyone struggling with the recent election’s outcome.
On Sunday, I deactivated my Twitter/X account. No big deal, really. Except the app had become a habit and ditching it would mean a change in my daily routine. Oh no, not a change! I will admit that all of what I saw on that cesspool wasn’t terrible. But I really didn’t want to give up the Super 70’s Sports feed or Rex Chapman’s account.
I already had a good sized Threads following, but never really liked the clunky and algorithmic control of it. In the days that followed the election, I quickly became exhausted with the vibe there. Doomscrolling, or as my students refer to it, “rotting,” was absolutely that on my post-election-Threads feed. It was filled with people I agree with politically, but most of them seemed to need a fatherly kick in the ass to encourage them to return to the land of the living.
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There is no substitute for just showing up. Sometimes I wish there was one, but there just isn’t.
The relentless polling that exhausted Americans during the last three months of the presidential campaigns never really swung all that much, no matter what the drama of the day was. By the time Labor Day arrived, the persuasion part of the national campaign was largely over.
I was skeptical of every undecided voter this year. The presidential choices were so stark, remaining voter indecisiveness was really about whether they would vote at all, not whether they would choose Harris or Trump.
10 million fewer Americans voted for president this year than in 2020. Based on the estimated adult population in the country of 271 million, that means about 54% of eligible voters participated in the presidential election. That is down from 60% in 2020 but is an identical participation rate to 2016.
The old adage that Democrats perform better when turnout is better rings true again this year. I believe the adage is true on a macro level, and the swings over the last three elections confirm that. But 2020 was a year like no other, so that likely deserves as asterisk more than a medal.
It is difficult for a civic minded person like me to accept that nearly half of Americans aren’t participating in their inherited gift of self-governance. It is truly a gift. And when I say, “it is difficult” to accept these shameful participation rates, I am editing out the necessary profanity while speaking through grinding teeth. What is truly difficult to me, is forgiving those who don’t show up for this most basic civic duty.
That’s America. And that data is maddening in and of itself. But then there’s Indiana.
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Combine the adjectives of anger, fear and apathy to describe any audience, and it predictably equates to trouble. Those descriptors are the features of the American electorate today.
Imagine any organization of people, of any kind, that makes its decisions while grounded in those emotions. What could that collective mindset possibly accomplish? While I’m sure there are some things, they would be few, and for those few, I expect the value of these accomplishments would be minimal, or simply the result of dumb luck. Really dumb luck.
This year’s election, the latest in a string of the most important election of our lifetimes, delivered a litany of results featuring contradictions and just plain thoughtlessness. But that’s what happens when decision makers are mad, scared and don’t care about productive outcomes.
Donald Trump returns to the White House in January for his second, and last, presidential term. He will be inaugurated two weeks after the four-year anniversary of the coup he inspired at the scene of the crime. I’m sorry, I meant crimes, plural. I’m sure the crowd on January 20, 2025, will be an interesting one. There will almost certainly be people in attendance who are on parole because of what they did the last time they were there.
The January 6, 2021, crowd was angry. With rage and denial over their candidate’s defeat, they exploded. No surprise, really. It was and continues to be a coalition united by shared grievances.
It’s remarkable how committed that coalition is to the bit. But what we are learning about the bit, albeit the hard way, is that those who are fueled by grievance will never be satisfied. To satisfy its grievance-based mindset is to eliminate its purpose, its usefulness and its energy. After all these years of watching the MAGA cult, this truth has become abundantly clear.
So, the anger, and all of the things that come with it, is the cult’s most valuable feature.
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Several weeks ago, two board members from the Pre-Law Association at IU came to my office and asked if I could prepare a workshop for the group in late October. I generally say yes to these kinds of things, and I had done one last year for the group about building and maintaining personal networks. Yea, I know that sounds boring, but I deliver it with a great deal of charisma.
This year though, they had a real challenge for me. They wanted me to help them prepare for the inevitable and uncomfortable conversations they were predicting this Thanksgiving. Yes, they know. These are juniors and seniors in college, which means they were primarily juniors and seniors in high school four years ago. Most of them weren’t old enough to vote in 2020, but they remember Thanksgiving that year.
I don’t talk politics with my students. I teach speech, writing and advocacy. Politics is not part of the curriculum of any of my classes and it wouldn’t endear me with students who agree with my viewpoint any way. Further, I wouldn’t want to lose credibility with the students who disagree with my perspective, because contrary to popular belief, I want to teach them advanced communication skills just as much.
That clarification intensifies the request for me. What they needed was help having difficult conversations. Most do. But in my academic work, I am concerned that we aren’t connecting enough at all. This concern comes from my belief that there is no better way to come to know a person than by having a real conversation with them.
Zara Abrams wrote about the research being done in the arena for the American Psychological Association last year. The opening of her article says it well: “Conversations hold immense power. They help us form new connections and deepen existing ones.” That may not inspire a loud, “Amen!” from you, but it does from me.
And being a “loud” listener is one of the keys to a better conversation. Yes, I mean throwing out the occasional “amen” or “preach” to let your conversation partner know you’re listening. But a simple and thoughtful “hmm,” or an encouraging “mm-hmm,” can be just as productive. Those gestures send valuable messages to your talking partner.
Listening, and showing that you are listening, is the key. And while being a loud listener is helpful, asking questions is gold. Nothing leads to conversational connections better than asking questions.
The problem with questions is that all questions aren’t created equally.
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Every so often, the “beat” I cover treats me to a trip down memory lane to the time when I was a public servant. I was a much younger man when I left the government to become a consultant in 2002. And though the details surrounding my old stomping grounds are different, the regulatory compact remains unchanged.
On October 10th, U.S. Senator Mike Braun sent a letter to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission expressing his concern about AES Indiana’s petition to transition its two remaining coal-fired generating units to natural gas. It’s the kind of letter I used to receive every week as the executive director of the agency, although this one is a bit more awkward than usual.
I could numb Hoosier brains with all the ways the IURC works, but I won’t. The important thing to know about the agency is that it is in the bad news business. It regulates utility rates. That’s right, when rates go up, the commission is responsible. Luckily, it also approves all of the times rates go down, but I’m having a hard time remembering when that ever happened.
The agency exists and is organized the way it is so that politicians like governors and senators don’t have to deliver this specific type of bad news. Trust me, I spent several years giving ratepayers bad utility news, and the elected officials in the statehouse back then appreciated my work. They would beat me up in public over my insensitive quips to their constituents, then afterward, they would whisper in my ear, “thank you.”
So, when elected officials begin staking out positions on what will ultimately be the decision of the appointed utility commissioners, pay attention. It’s dangerous political territory.
Leslie Bonilla Mũniz wrote how “Braun weighs in on utility’s coal plant conversion ask” for the Indiana Capital Chronicle last week. Is an entire article necessary to explain an ambitious politician’s letter to some sleepy state agency? Actually, it’s worthy of two.
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Election Day is only three weeks away, and as Donald Trump’s third full campaign comes to a close, American voters have a pretty good idea who he is. Imagine having a conversation with a voter anywhere and hearing them say, “I wonder what this Trump fellow is really like.”
One could just listen to the tunes that surround him. It’s not a long playlist.
Vice President Kamala Harris was oddly playing a little bit of catch up when she entered the race as the Democrats presumptive nominee in July. Those of us in the political class knew her well, but apparently some voters needed to learn about or adjust to this late entry to the contest. It’s hard for me to accept something as absurd as that, but I’m working through it.
While large numbers of voters didn’t know enough about Harris, I have to admit that I didn’t know much about her campaign’s theme song, Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” Yea, I’d heard it, but I never really listened to it. It’s played at the places I go. The restaurants, stores and the gyms where I spend time have had it in rotation since it came out in 2016.
“Hey! I’ma keep runnin’ cause a winner don’t quit on themselves,” is the last line of the chorus that hits the hardest for me. Put those words with the power of Beyoncé’s sound, look and aura, and you get a walk up, and a mic drop song all wrapped up into one. It’s been used both ways for many causes over the years because of it.
At the other party’s events, in some other swing state, the song being played is, gasp, “God Bless the U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood. I’ve kept it to myself for a long time now, but that ends today. It is simply an awful song. Admittedly, it’s simply not my genre, but I don’t know whose it is. I won’t hear it anywhere I go, and if I did, I would immediately leave. It’s a rip off of “God Bless America,” another song that never comes up in anyone’s shuffle.
My favorite line from it is, “’Cause the flag still stands for freedom, and they can’t take that away.” Aah, the generic “they.” That’s who we need to unite against, whoever “they” are. We need to wrap ourselves in the flag and then get out there and bless something. And the music? It sounds like the kind of stuff that was sold late at night on a 1980’s infomercial. It’s just not cool.
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I watched the first Indiana gubernatorial debate with great interest on October 2nd. The hour long event featuring Jennifer McCormick (D) and Mike Braun (R) was only a few minutes in when I could tell this was likely going to be a good night for Democrats. Only a few minutes later, I found myself disappointed because I knew this important moment was not going to be seen by as many Hoosier voters as it should have been.
Americans expect more from political debates than we often get. This year is quite an exception. Both presidential debates delivered, at a minimum, a clear contrast between the participants that should drive decision making for voters. President Joe Biden’s awful debate performance in late June led to a rallying cry from many in his own party for him to drop out of the race. The performance illustrated his greatest vulnerability; that he was just too old for the job.
Importantly though, polling data after that bad night didn’t move all that much. One could conclude it didn’t matter as much to voters as it did to the political class. More likely though, it confirmed pessimism about Biden’s ability to inspire movement in his already sagging position. His eventual and historic withdrawal from the race, and the rallying around Kamala Harris drastically changed everything.
Debates can do that, though they rarely do. Usually, the contests are exercises in bias confirmation. Dr. Conor Dawling, professor of political science at the University of Buffalo wrote, “Debates can help solidify, or reinforce, choices for folks who are already fairly to very certain which candidate they intend to support.” Yes, this is what we normally get out of them.
However, this year’s battles have delivered more than that several times now.
The McCormick/Braun debate last week is one of them. Any objective viewer should have been able to see several things. McCormick had a better grasp of the details of the job. She was better prepared for the predictable questions, and she was confident in her delivery from start to finish.
Braun gave, at best, a lackluster performance that raised more questions than it answered. I first wrote that the Republicans were running a campaign about nothing in its quest for the governor’s office last October. This is the third time I will remind Hoosiers of that sad truth.
I have seen gubernatorial campaigns, and the governing strategies that followed, which seemed to be designed around a “don’t make any mistakes” sort of game plan. Former Governor Evan Bayh was committed to the strategy, and it served him well. Former Governor Mike Pence was also committed to it, though he did make a few large, damaging mistakes during his one term in office.
Braun’s biggest mistake last week, on admittedly a much smaller scale, was comparable to Biden’s June failure. He appeared unprepared for the predictable questions, and his lack of sharpness made him appear old, a critique that he has largely avoided so far. His non-answers to one specific item made it abundantly clear to me that he would not be defending recent comments made by his running mate, Republican lieutenant governor nominee, Micah Beckwith.
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What is the market rate for a governor? Well, it depends on the market of course. In New York, the rate is $250,000 a year. In Maine, it’s $70,000. That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? These two states might as well be on two different planets after all. It takes five whole hours to drive from Albany to Augusta, a lovely drive that weaves around Boston, where the Massachusetts governor makes $185,000, before the path follows a stretch along the Atlantic coast.
The real answer is there is no “market,” and therefore, there is no “market rate.”
Whitney Downard reported last week for the Indiana Capital Chronicle the details on the new salaries of several Hoosier statewide elected officials. They are hefty raises, featuring the new salary of the governor, of $221,024, making it one of the highest paid in the nation. One market-based argument as to why that is outrageously high could be that the Indiana governor is constitutionally weak and should therefore be compensated weakly.
But let’s be serious. The new salary is still pretty low when considering the demands of the job. So is New York’s. And Maine’s? That salary is absurd.
However, and if I could scream that word I would, being elected to a high-profile position absolutely creates opportunity. It’s just difficult to quantify. These jobs aren’t really jobs. Yes, if done even remotely well, they are work, and a lot of it. But in a market sense, they are more aptly described as “platforms,” not occupations. And so, the salary matters far less than it otherwise would.
Governor Eric Holcomb will end his second term at the end of the year, never receiving the new salary. Tough break, guv. But there will be opportunity for him when his political career is over, assuming this is the end of that. I predict he will do quite well, probably through some sort of “job,” coupled with other income-generating ventures that are minimally reported but highly profitable. After a long career of low and modestly paid political positions, he knows people, he has skills and value, and this is America. Following his post-governor life would be important to Hoosiers, if for no other reason, to contextualize what serving as governor is truly worth.
These salaries, while they are specifically what taxpayers finance, don’t mean much in the end.
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Polling data takes up more space in my world than campaign ads do. It’s truly remarkable. In any presidential election year, I am normally exhausted by every candidate’s pitch on TV by now. Thirty seconds at a time, the sound bites should have already eroded a precious sliver of my soul, and possibly yours as well.
Not this year. Not even on my chosen social platforms am I overwhelmed with the ads, barring a few odd, out-of-state exceptions. Nope. Polling data updates, some reliable and some absurd, is what I see most. Maybe it’s just my algorithm. Maybe I’ve been identified as an unpersuadable, data wonk.
Or maybe the red-state-message in this red state is the problem.
A poll released last week by Destiny Wells, the Democrat nominee for attorney general, was the first public one showing details of two statewide races. The pollster, Lake Research Partners, is reputable. The sampling was appropriate, made up of 51% Republican voters and 36% Democrat. Wells only trails incumbent AG, Todd Rokita, 44-41%. Name identification for the incumbent is understandably twice as high as it is for Wells, which leads me to conclude that the more people know Rokita, the more people don’t like him.
Rokita’s low numbers are easy to explain. He is primarily known for performative antics that deliver nothing of value to Hoosiers, led by his unhinged attack on Dr. Caitlin Bernard for doing her job as an obstetrician. He has solicited complaints against state government, otherwise known as his own client. He has never seen a pro-Trump lawsuit he didn’t volunteer to join. And his law license has been regularly in jeopardy for unlawyerly behavior.
He's simply unpopular. Go figure.
The Indiana governor’s race was also included in the poll, and not surprisingly, it too shows a dead heat. Republican Mike Braun’s 41% to Democrat Jennifer McCormick’s 39% is inside the margin of error. Libertarian Donald Rainwater’s 9% support matters too.
McCormick is polling seven points better than the 2020 Democratic candidate performed. The other two parties are lagging last election’s finish. That’s a meaningful turn.
But Indiana’s still red right? Trump is still the favorite here for president, right? Yes. But his polling strength is also weakening here. He won Indiana by 19 points in 2016, by 16 in 2020, and is polling only 10 points ahead of Kamala Harris in this poll, 52%-42%. Again, this is a meaningful turn.
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Bill Murray once said, “It’s hard to win an argument with a smart person. It’s damn near impossible to win one with a stupid person.” For the objective viewer, whoever that is, I expect Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to feel like this. Afterward, those tuning in to root for their chosen candidate will likely declare victory.
Harris supporters know her and will likely not be surprised by the things she says or the demeanor she displays. Even if she stumbles a little or fails to land the knockout punches Democrats are hoping for, it is unlikely she will lose anyone already on the Harris for President campaign train.
Oh, and she will make her case with the facts. That should matter, plenty, but we’ll just have to wait and see about that.
The contrast Tuesday night’s argument will display most distinctly will be exactly that: fact versus fiction.
Trump will likely try to make his case with hopes of exposing some damaging weakness in Harris. Can he make her seem weak? Can he make her seem unintelligent? Whether he’s having one of his high energy days or another one of the growing number of low ones, it’s unlikely he will make her anything at all.
Most of all though, this debate will be between two people so different in sharpness, age and ability, they won’t appear to be even speaking the same language.
My wife took me to the beach this weekend to celebrate my birthday. On Saturday, an average size boat approached the area where we were camped and dropped its anchor. It had two oversized flags flying from the back of it. One was an old, faded U.S. Marines flag, and the other was a “Trump 2024” flag, that looked fresh out of the box. I couldn’t help wondering what he paid for that one, and how many other versions he had previously bought.
I go to the beach to daydream, so after I cycled through the economics of buying the junk his candidate peddles so shamelessly, I started focusing on the old flag.
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Who is credited with founding the holiday we celebrated Monday? According to History.com, some say it was a man named Peter McGuire, of the American Federation of Labor. Others say it was a man named Matthew Maguire, of the Central Labor Union who proposed it first. If spoken with an average gait, it’s safe to speak either name and still safely sound correct.
Unions have been on a winning streak recently, a trend I expect to continue for the foreseeable future. The trend is good for America, even when it’s inconvenient.
I rolled my eyes a little, OK, a lot, when the Hollywood writers and actors went on strike last year. It was the first time I had a personal stake in a walkout. I had done some, and hoped to do more, consulting on a film that was set to begin shooting in August. The strike caused the project to be shelved, ending my irrational fantasies of fame and fortune. That movie would have been bigger than “Barbie,” according to me.
What could these people who have already “made it” possibly have to strike about? Does Brad Pitt really need better terms? No. But the Writers Guild of America, followed by the Screen Actors Guild, are filled with creators and workers similar to every other industry. And just like industries whose labor struggles have been historically familiar, Hollywood’s impasse was also existential. These strikes became important because they have broadened the discussion.
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It’s the most wonderful time of the year! The fall semester starts this week, and I might be a little too excited. I need to remember to have a little sympathy for my new students, particularly those in my 8:00 am class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For the rest of their lives, when they hear the term, “morning person,” they will immediately think of me.
Even when my professional world revolved around legislation in the Statehouse, I rarely had business in the realm of education policy. Over the years, I only watched that stuff as a citizen. My sons went to Catholic school, so I felt a little detached from the annual wrangling over what the next moves from the Indiana General Assembly and the Indiana Department of Education would be.
Lately though, the biggest two moves seem to have a common theme: aiming lower.
Last year, Senate Bill 202 was a headline-maker that had folks in the realm of higher education all worked up. Conservative lawmakers were trying to address the reality that college professors tend to be more ideologically liberal or progressive than they prefer. You know, leftists like me are “indoctrinating” young people, not teaching them. It’s a “problem” worthy of an eye roll.
From the perspective of a public university faculty member, I only cared a little about the bill in a practical sense. It never appeared to be impactful on what or how I teach. I already make space for diverse ideological viewpoints when appropriate, and honestly, it matters only in the rarest of circumstances. The “problem” the legislature is trying to solve here is incredibly overblown, and their solution is, in fact, not one. More importantly, that non-solution is expensive.
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Political conventions are not for me. I went to my first one, at the state level, last month and I thought I was going to break out in a rash from what felt like life-threatening inefficiency. Of course, I oppose the existence of big graduations, weddings and funerals too, so maybe the problem is me.
I will begrudgingly admit that all of these ceremonies have a purpose.
The Democratic National Convention is meaningful this year, even to me. I’m still glad I’m not going, and I will only watch it a little. But I will be watching the reaction. I will be watching that like a hawk, since that’s all that really matters.
The 2020 conventions were both turned into Zoom meetings due to the pandemic. The “party” part of the political parties was as bland and uninspiring as the year itself was. Some watched them on TV, though viewership was down across the board except Fox for the Republicans and MSNBC for the Democrats. I tried to watch, I guess, but I don’t remember either one of them.
Even so, voter turnout was juiced in 2020. And when turnout rises, Democrats tend to perform better. That rule applied to Indiana just like everywhere else in America. Pay attention to every race in Indiana that appears to be close at this moment. The new excitement on the Democrat side coming from the new nominees, and now the convention, will help the party in all of the close races.
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Indianapolis has had a bright spotlight on it in 2024. The Olympic swimming time trials in Lucas Oil Stadium, the NBA All-Star game, and the arrival of the biggest name in sports, Caitlin Clark. Now the city is ground zero for something shameful.
Mayor Joe Hogsett is under fire for his mishandling of numerous sexual harassment allegations made against former Chief Deputy Mayor Thomas Cook. The first known allegations were made in 2017, and in recent weeks, extensive reporting has been done on the matter by the Indianapolis Star and Mirror Indy. What we already know from their reporting is terrible.
More terrible news is coming. Count on it.
The book, “Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics” and its movie adaptation have been on my mind the last few weeks. This roman é clef, French for “novel with a key,” was first published by Anonymous in 1996. It’s an insider’s tale of a fictitious southern governor, Jack Stanton, and his 1992 primary campaign for the presidency.
Read the book or watch the movie. “Stanton” is Bill Clinton. The author was later to be revealed as Joe Klein, a columnist for Time magazine who covered Clinton’s real-life 1992 campaign. The book detailing this corrupt, womanizing character, and importantly, his campaign team, was published more than two years before the world met Monica Lewinsky.
Lauren Roberts was a deputy campaign manager on Hogsett’s 2015 reelection campaign. She was apparently the first to complain about Cook’s harassment via email in 2017. Hogsett’s initial unresponsiveness led to her direct, in-person report to the mayor in 2019. Hogsett claims action was taken, though it wasn’t ever communicated with Roberts. She has since relocated to Denver. But she kept all of the receipts.
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The impact of even a provocative social media post doesn’t often linger with me for long. In a presidential election year, even less so. But two of them struck me this week, neither of them mentioning Indiana politics, but to this Hoosier columnist, they feel entirely about us.
The first post came from a politico named Mike Madrid on Friday. Madrid is a Latino campaign consultant, a former Republican and co-founder of the anti-Trump group, The Lincoln Project. He wrote: “There was a time when it could be argued that not all Trump voters were racist, but they were comfortable voting for a racist. Not anymore.”
Madrid was referring to Donald Trump’s outburst during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last week questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’s rather uncomplicated and well documented ancestry. The racist nature of it was remarkable in and of itself. What is more remarkable, however, is how GOP leaders immediately began repeating the attacks.
Even those who would rather Trump not say these offensive things out loud also didn’t object. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”
At the top of the GOP ticket in Indiana this election year, are three Trump sycophants: Mike Braun for governor, Jim Banks for U.S. Senate, and Todd Rokita for attorney general. They are all unapologetically devoted to anything and everything the former president says and does. I want their views confirmed on the Harris issue, though I think it’s obvious.
These three Republicans don’t cross their leader. And as Madrid implied, Trump’s racism can no longer be shrugged off as a bug. It’s a feature.
The second post lingering with me came from Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.
Trump was campaigning in Atlanta on Sunday, where he is under indictment for his attempts to steal the 2020 election. While on the stage and in his own social media posts, the former president reignited his attacks on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Kemp, and oddly, Kemp’s wife for their collective disloyalty. It was as odd as the Harris ancestry attack in that it makes no sense how it helps Trump’s campaign. Kemp and Raffensperger are both extremely popular Republicans in that swing state. They both responded, but Kemp’s response was troubling.
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I was in the airport two Sunday afternoons ago when I first saw the news that Joe Biden was ending his presidential campaign. I was still there when he followed up a few minutes later with his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. By the time I happily put my head on my own pillow that night after a long trip, anyone paying attention could already feel it coming.
Everything about the 2024 presidential election changed last week.
In that week, the newly launched Harris for President campaign raised over $200 million, gathered 170,000 new volunteers, held 2,300 events in battleground states, and in two days on TikTok, attracted 2.9 million followers. Those are some “wow” stats. But none of the data really captures the moment contextually.
Every Democrat who matters endorsed her in that first week. The Clintons, the Obamas, and the leaders of both congressional caucuses have jumped on board. Beyoncé has lent the campaign use of her song, “Freedom,” and I’ve heard it dozens of times already.
Then there are the Zoom rallies. It started with a gathering of black women on July 21st, with over 44,000 participants that led to $1.5 million raised. Black men followed the next day with over 20,000. White women refused to be left out when their call last Thursday had 160,000 participants that raised $8.5 million. White men had 50,000 registered for a call Monday night and that number was still growing as I wrote this.
That’s excitement. That’s momentum. And in a campaign that the Republican nominee has long reduced to a battle of ratings and rallies, a race he was winning before Biden’s departure, he is now getting obliterated. Even polling has begun to shift, with Fox News releasing a poll on Sunday showing favorability flipping in several battleground states to now favor Harris.
Democrats would have always been happy to run solely on the Biden administration’s record. It’s a good one. But the campaign was flailing because it had been reduced to the issue of the president’s age. And the truth is, he is too old to persuade Americans that he’s not. I’m glad he stopped trying.
With the uncertainty of a path forward removed on the Democrat side, the post-convention honeymoon for Republicans ended quicker than it should have too. Ten days ago, they were acting like they had already won. They aren’t anymore.
It’s been a whirlwind for Republicans the last three weeks. Let’s recap.
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We had planned a trip to London and Paris in 2020, but it was cancelled by the pandemic. Until last week, we hadn’t left the country since before that awful year. Ironically, the thought of visiting or even living someplace else has never taken up more space in my soul. Even my latest book is fundamentally about the mysterious “what ifs” that come from how life might be different if it were simply spent “someplace else.”
We finally got to go last week. As a much younger person, I used to wonder why people would even go on trips like this, when there really wasn’t some specific reason. Now, I feel true sympathy for those who never do.
First of all, the enormity of London alone is striking, but the best thing about its size is the variety of everything in it. For example, I never thought of London as a great food town. Wrong. There is no food on earth that can’t be found there. The restaurants seem smaller, but the pubs, cafes and ethnic offerings are literally everywhere. I wasn’t looking for Uzbek or Sri Lankan food, but now I know the most convenient place to find it.
In just six days though, the giant city had shrunk for us, primarily because of its phenomenal train system. No area or neighborhood was difficult to get to, including a little town called Paris. Navigating it also couldn’t have been easier.
As a world traveler, I’m a novice. I haven’t been many places. Not yet. But every new place I go these days is less of a vacation and more of an adventure. Seeing unfamiliar places, and spending time with unfamiliar people is the most provocative way for anyone to grow. Every adventure teaches me something unexpected. It is so predictable that I purposely make fewer and fewer plans on each new trip. Why bother? The best parts can’t be planned anyway.
Visiting the Churchill War Rooms Museum, however, was definitely planned. I’m in the words business, English is my language, and Winston Churchill is likely the greatest orator who has ever lived. Yea, yea, he led and won the big war, but his weapon of choice was language.
Our last exhibit there was a display of the anti-Churchill propaganda that was distributed in Nazi Germany and Japan during the war. None of it was all that surprising, particularly by today’s standards, but a museum staffer approached us there and began explaining the depth of the exhibit’s importance.
This elderly man pointed out the racism built into the drawings and the impact of its lessons in faraway places, especially on young people growing up with the imagery. He asked us to imagine young people who only knew of the British through this messaging and how difficult it must have been to overcome for generations. He analogized the struggle then to the one today with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the invasion of Ukraine, and the valuable mission of NATO. My wife and I enjoyed his lesson, but I was fascinated with how comfortably he went there with two people from America who could have just as easily been hostile to his suggestions.
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Thomas Matthew Crooks took his father’s AR-15, climbed a building near former President Donald Trump’s Saturday rally and got several shots off in Trump’s direction before being killed by the U.S. Secret Service. The gun was purchased legally in Pennsylvania by Crooks’ father. Early background reports indicate that the 20-year-old gunman was a loner, a registered Republican, but had also donated to at least one left leaning organization.
There’s no evidence of any political component to anything he did.
Now that I have covered the basics of what occurred, I have one primary question today. What part of those details, if one had precisely predicted them a week, month or year earlier, would have sounded impossible or unlikely at all? Would any of us have struggled to envision such a thing?
I wouldn’t have. Not for one moment.
I first heard the news while fading in and out of an early evening nap on Saturday. A text from a friend at 6:26 pm said “Trump got shot!” I quickly sat up and turned on the news to see it was real. Even though some weirdos on social media committed to doubting its validity for far too long, it was clearly real.
None of it surprised me. I did not feel a single second of astonishment for the first hour I was glued to the screen.
Yes, violent crime is declining in America. However, with the suffocating presence of guns here, particularly the absurdly common AR-15, coupled with a largely unresearched mental health phenomena of these suicide shooters, these horrific episodes have become embedded into our daily lives.
When was the last time a shooting like this really surprised any of us?
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As a new adjunct professor six years ago, the class I was asked to teach was titled “Public law and government relations.” It was a class designed to teach how ideas become laws. The students were public affairs majors, just like I was, thirty years earlier.
Explaining the “how” part is complicated. I’m forced to make hard choices on how to prioritize my lessons. I have learned to focus on two primary ideas: One, that governing is choosing; and two, there is no bigger asset or burden in the public policy process more powerful than time.
The best contemporary policy example to use for understanding American democratic processes is the debate on women’s reproductive health freedom. Not just because of the Dobbs or Roe decisions, but because it is a policy that is truly a governing choice, unimpacted by infinite conditions beyond decision-makers’ control.
Oh sure, we watch Schoolhouse Rock and discuss the school bus railroad crossing example dozens of times too. But if you recall from the video, the “local congressman” uses a typewriter to create the famous “I’m Just a Bill.” As good as the video is, it's old.
Every politician claims a vote for them will lead to a better economy. Sometimes they even explain how. But the truth is that the “economy” has too many variables in it for that platform to be certain. Foreign affairs policies are almost as unpredictable. It’s hilarious to hear Donald Trump and his lemmings explain how the world will absolutely cow tow to America when he’s in charge, or even how it did before, as if none of us paid attention way back when.
Eleven states are headed for referenda votes in November on constitutional proposals to create or protect abortion rights. Nine of them were initiated by voter petition. Four of those states already effectively have bans in place. Even Arkansas reached their threshold of signatures last week just before that state’s deadline.
In states where voters can vote, they either already are, or soon will. And because of the Dobbs decision, a vote on reproductive freedom is no longer a hypothetical discussion. There is data to drive the thinking of those clinging to rational thought on the matter.
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I have never met anyone who I believed to be intelligent who was also humorless. When comedian Nate Bargatze took the stage last week at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis he spent a few moments making sure the crowd knew he was not an educated man.
Bargatze is intelligent though. And he’s as funny they come.
In contrast, the Supreme Court of the United States was once regarded as the sage, learned body, epitomizing intelligence, credibility and thoughtfulness. This once esteemed tribunal personified its “supremacy” for rational, unhumorous reasons. However, as of Monday, July 1, 2024, its self-desecration is complete, and has now become a laughingstock.
The conservative majority of the court has twisted itself into knots to help Donald Trump with the absurdity that he should have some immunity from prosecution for his criminal acts. The mantra of “no man is above the law” ended this week in America.
The 6-3 Trump v. United States ruling produced dissenting language in a tone unheard of in the court’s storied history. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote on behalf of the minority, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”
The cloud of this debacle will feel like a diversion soon though, because there’s so much more.
Let’s discuss nitrous oxide. You’ve likely heard of it. It’s what dentists give patients to relax them before needles and drills are used to bludgeon their mouths. It’s laughing gas. It’s fun. And it should never be confused with nitrogen oxides, which is what the Environmental Protection Agency regulates to control pollution.
Justice Neil Gorsuch famously mistook one for the other, five times, in his Ohio v. EPA ruling on Thursday. Then on Friday, SCOTUS ruled that courts are better positioned to do what regulatory experts have broadly done since 1984. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the supremes ruled that courts are more suited to decide anything and everything, scientific and complicated, than actual experts. Experts like those who know the difference between pollutants and laughing gas.
The 1984 decision, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, established what has become known as the Chevron deference. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was a notorious supporter of the deference, because it provided a dependable “background rule of law against which Congress can legislate.” He believed Congress wanted agencies, or subject matter experts, to exercise discretion on the implementation of their laws. I’ve been a regulator and a legislative consultant, and I know this to be historically true.
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Life in Stephen King’s Shawshank State Prison, at its best, is mundane, repetitive, and stagnant. As is the state of politics in Indiana. Surviving either or both, doesn’t require lightning to strike. It requires hope. Hope that can lead to a movement.
Democrats in Indiana nominated former Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jennifer McCormick as their nominee for governor in May’s primary. Last week, McCormick announced her preferred running mate as former Democrat state representative, Terry Goodin.
The latter was a mistake.
There are three unrelenting, unequivocal policy issues that define what a Democrat is in 2024. To be credible with Democrat voters these days, a candidate must support women’s reproductive freedom, equality for all minority communities, and common sense gun safety measures. This isn’t the entire platform, but when asking a candidate about their support for these three, they are simple “yes/no” questions. And the answer to them must be an unwavering “yes.”
I won’t vote for any candidate, for any office, who answers any of those questions with a “no,” a “sort of,” or even a “generally.”
Yes, that purity test applies to those running for city council, school board and county auditor. Why? Because politics, like culture, is a continuum. That pro-life county auditor might run for U.S. Senate in two years. That pro-gun rights school board member might run for Congress. And then the weakness becomes trouble.
The truth is that these deficiencies are always trouble. They’re indicators a party is willing to bargain with its own morals.
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“Mike and Mike in the Morning” was the last sports radio show I ever regularly listened to. I don’t remember why I stopped. I wasn’t angry about some hot take or uncalled-for disrespect toward the Colts. I simply lost interest. Besides, I know enough about sports, according to me, and don’t need anyone explaining why my team won or lost. And predictions? Everyone is terrible at them, that’s why we watch the games.
Now, the Mike and Micah political show in Indiana will have a whole host of far more serious problems. That’s Mike Braun, the Republican nominee for governor, and Micah Beckwith, the surprise nominee for lieutenant governor. They have a show to put on, and based on the preview, it’s not looking good.
Braun was likely planning on continuing his primary campaign platform, one famously declared by me as being about nothing. However, things changed on Saturday at the Indiana Republican Convention. Braun’s campaign for governor transitioned from being about nothing to being all about his running mate.
Beckwith is a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist. He claims to be a prophet of sorts. He notoriously supports banning books, specifically those of my favorite author, Indianapolis’ John Green. He apparently thinks that the LG offers some “check” on the governor, as opposed to being a dutiful devotee. In short, he’s trouble for Braun, and that’s entirely Braun’s fault.
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Maya Angelou gave the best advice with absolutely the best words when she said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” I have found that people are really good at showing who they are, even when that’s exactly what they are trying to avoid. Angelou reminds us of the obvious, to believe what we see, but importantly to not waste precious time reaching the often inevitable conclusion.
Last week, Adam Wren and Daniel Lippman reported for Politico that the House Ethics Committee is making a preliminary inquiry into the behavior of Rep. Victoria Spartz, of Indiana’s 5th District. The reasons stem from complaints made by current and former staffers of the second term congresswoman’s unstable and abusive behavior toward them.
While the reports were troubling, and I will share some highlights, I would be surprised if anyone who has been paying attention to Spartz over the years was surprised by the news.
Here’s an example of the behavior detailed by a current staffer, as reported by Politico: “The common thing is for her to call someone up or to their face, cuss them up, say the F-word about a million times, call them effing retards, effing children, effing whatever…That’s a weekly thing. It’s not rare. All my interactions with her have been filled with complete and total rage.”
That came from a current staffer, quoted in last week’s story. Since January, the resignations have piled up so fast, it would seem that former staffers are easier to find than those remaining on her damaged team.
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The background noise in my house is the television show, “Law & Order.” My wife and I both read more than we watch TV, so reruns that we aren’t paying much attention to mask the noise from the city streets but don’t distract us. We both have already seen every episode. So, when it’s on, we race to declare, “he’s the one who did it,” or “they needed a search warrant for that.” And after about the first fifteen minutes, it’s only noise.
Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York, that ended with his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records last week, was just as predictable as any other rerun. No prosecutor, of any political party, in any part of the country, would bring a case to trial that he or she didn’t believe could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Add the complicating factors of this defendant’s unlimited financial resources and media reach, and the original reluctance can be multiplied by a thousand.
This is primarily why conviction rates are so high. Cases aren’t brought when the prosecution lacks a provable case. Either the government has the goods on the accused, or it doesn’t. It’s too much work, and too publicly embarrassing, to invest all of the time and resources necessary to obtain a conviction when the evidence is weak. Remember, prosecutors are elected in 47 states, and they never run on a platform of losing.
Since Thursday’s conviction, Trump world has gone bonkers in its attempt to try and make the world believe that their man has been mistreated. Don’t confuse their mania with an attempt to show that he is innocent, that is almost never even part of any MAGA rant. In this case, Trump’s defense team didn’t even present a theory of his innocence. The defense was entirely about how Trump’s enemies were liars, and how the process was unfair.
Was it unfair? Hell yes, it was. For example, it is unfair for a defendant to be found in contempt ten times during a trial and never revisit the jail. But the strategy of whining and victimhood is now the go-to mantra of every scrape the former president faces. It’s never “innocence.”
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I ate my track picnic at my kitchen counter this year. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before, so I’m writing it down for future reference. The fried chicken was as delicious as any other year, though it felt weird eating it over a plate.
Every year, the Indianapolis 500 is our city’s most special event. It’s embedded in our culture, so grandly, so omnipresent, it’s hard to find a person or a place in the area untouched by it.
The event and its long list of traditions can feel delicate in some ways, reliant on something as unpredictable as the weather. In other ways, it feels as strong as Indiana limestone. When a few hundred thousand diverse people have a shared purpose, it’s amazing how well we can adapt.
A weather delay that forecasters began predicting in the middle of the week actually came true. I love not trusting the National Weather Service when it gives me bad news five days ahead of time. I treat those people like NBA referees: every call they make is the beginning of the argument, not the end of it. But they got it right this time. Golf claps for them this weekend, and I will go back to not trusting them by Saturday.
We ride our bikes to the track on race day, a tradition I recommend for anyone capable within about ten miles of Speedway. It’s a thirty-minute ride for us and we buy advanced parking from Bike Indy right outside the main entrance. It’s so convenient, we waited at home for the weather to pass. Much like my strange race picnic, I took my traditional post-race nap before the race this year. Odd, yes, but I’m too old to complain about any nap.
I started to stir around 2:00 p.m. and when I realized it wasn’t raining, I jumped a little. I yelled at my no-napping wife for a weather report, and she told me things were looking good, so I better get it together. The text messages from our bike group started chiming in while I was in the shower, and at 3:00 p.m., nine of us left the neighborhood for the track.
When we got close to our seats in Stand A, we wondered what the concession stands would run out of first. With a four-hour delay, that’s like hosting two races to the vendors. Beer was the consensus pick, but we were wrong. Food ran out first. I’d like to think that collectively we simply drink less these days, but that can’t possibly be true.
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While writing on Sunday night about the truly remarkable week surrounding a criminal trial in New York, I was captivated by the final story on 60 Minutes. It was titled, “The Album,” with Anderson Cooper reporting. The subject was an album of 116 photos discovered in 2007 that were collected by a Nazi leader at Auschwitz.
“Here There Are Blueberries,” is the new Broadway play that attempts to make sense of the pictures by those connected to the victims there. Importantly though, it also provides context of the horrific events as seen through the eyes of those committing the crimes. The pictures make the killers appear happy to be there. One particular photo showed a large group of young German girls happily eating blueberries at an apparent party, while outside the frame, death surrounded them. It’s the source of the title of the play.
How did these once normal, average people become the monsters we now know them to be?
Last week in New York, Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, appeared outside the courthouse where the criminal trial of Donald Trump is nearing its end. He was there to hold a press conference to support his leader and to label the trial “election interference” and declare the justice system “corrupt.”
The appearances at the trial of the most sycophantic members of the GOP, as Dylan Stableford writes for Yahoo! News, “began with a trickle, then became a steady stream.” Members of the U.S. Senate, former presidential candidates, and of course, a litany of House members have appeared there the past two weeks of the six week trial. Their uniform reason to appear is to suck up to the boss, and to fan the irrational flames of the boss’s support network.
The theatrics accomplish other things though, whether intentional or not. Most importantly is that it communicates that loyalty to this criminal is more important, more valuable, than the American judicial system itself. A large swath of the nation’s citizenry has arrived at a place where justice only exists in their eyes when it aligns with their loyalties, regardless of reality. It is that singleness of vision and commitment that allows the madness to grow.
To answer the question above, this is exactly how average people become monsters.
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If one wants to be a homer in Indianapolis, there’s no better time of year for it than May. This year, the Pacers have rejuvenated their playoff rivalry with the Knicks, Caitlin Clark has come to town, and the Greatest Spectacle in Racing is almost here.
And one more thing this May, the movie adaptation of John Green’s 2017 novel, “Turtles All the Way Down,” was released on Max. It’s one of my favorite books, the only one I ever read twice, written by Indy’s greatest author since Kurt Vonnegut. As a bonus, it’s set here in the city. Yea, yea, I know it was filmed in Cincinnati, but that’s another column for another time.
The story chronicles the mental health struggles of a teenager named Aza Holmes. She was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and suffered the loss of her father who died unexpectedly, both when she was a little girl. She and her mom, who teaches at Aza’s high school, are consumed by these two life challenges.
It’s just another story really. The primary themes are relatable because of how often they exist in normal people’s lives. Normal. Aza would kill to feel like what she believes is normal. But her OCD drives her into “thought spirals,” revolving around the micro-organisms and their function inside her body. We casually refer to people as “germophobic” often these days, and more so since COVID-19. Aza would call most of these people “normal” too. The intensity of her fears is far more profound and dangerous. And still, her condition and her life are not rare.
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French philosopher and statesman Joseph de Maistre is credited with saying it first: “Every country has the government it deserves.” In America, we more often credit the sentiment to Thomas Jefferson, who specifically said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”
Ouch. Regardless of the version or the originator, it hurts more than usual on this Primary Election Day in Indiana. It’s designated as a state holiday, for all of the civic reasons that theoretically make sense. This year however, Hoosiers need to celebrate the end of the preseason, the undercard, the opening act that no one wants to watch at the overpriced concert.
Do we really “deserve” this? Sadly, I must concede that we do. As much as I have made fun of the Republican primary campaigns this year being about nothing, there actually is some value hidden in the noise. It’s telling us some hard truths about ourselves.
One truth is that the campaigns I have viewed in central Indiana do not differentiate themselves in any meaningful way on the issue of governing. Writing down that “governing” is an “issue” being inadequately addressed in any campaign for public office is, well, a problem.
Amazingly, the marketplace of ideas, has produced almost no actual ideas. It’s easy to point at campaigns and complain that they aren’t delivering what we, the voters, want. But in markets, supply and demand respond to one another. To summarize, we aren’t demanding enough.
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When the news broke last year that heavy metal band, Judas Priest, was coming to town for an April concert I took charge and bought reserved seats up front. When I saw them first in 1984, metal bands didn’t even sell reserved seats, we had to fight for them. That was part of the fun.
I don’t listen to metal much anymore, but I loudly have for the last month in prep for Sunday night’s show. I’ve been head bangin’ in the gym, making other old people nervous, and sporadically yelling out anthems from my youth that just sound wrong coming from the mouth of someone my age.
Last week, the school year ended for me and my students. My classes are a lot of work, so there’s plenty to celebrate when we’re through. But I can feel myself missing them even before they’ve left campus for the summer. I’ll recover when “my” kids come back for the fall, and when Indiana University gives me a hundred more. I know I’ll love the newbies, before we’ve even met.
My favorite high school teacher was Kreg Battles. He taught chemistry, a subject that has occasionally helped me on Jeopardy, and no place else. But I wasn’t really taking chemistry. I was taking Mr. Battles’ class, and he just happened to teach chemistry. He was a metal head, like my crowd was, and that made him one of us.
In 2010, he and I finally got to go to a concert together. That concert? Judas Priest. I asked him that night how he taught that awful subject all those years. Didn’t it get old? He laughed and said, “the students are new every year.”
Now as a new teacher myself, I can attest that the newness is not some little thing. It’s filled with wonder, optimism and excitement. And it’s contagious.
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It’s more than math. I have had this conversation many times over the years with a variety of people, and I have been surprised by their surprise almost every time.
Whichever party is drawing the maps of legislative districts, of any kind, they draw them to benefit themselves of course. That part is math, very basic math. In Indiana, Republicans in the Statehouse have drawn the last two maps that determine the House, Senate and Congressional districts. And they have served themselves up a lovely matrix of sweetheart deals.
Last week, James Briggs of the Indianapolis Star wrote a column full of news in it about Senator David Niezgodski, a Democrat from South Bend, who has been accused of sexually harassing a former employee in 2017. The premise in Briggs’ column is that Democrats “maintained a breathtaking lack of curiosity” about the accusations since they first surfaced several years ago. While I primarily agree, I contend the situation is lacking in systemic ways too.
Personally, I’m not curious about the accusations. I believe them entirely. But what is the remedy? In a word, elections. There hasn’t been a long line of candidates pining for the chance to replace Niezgodski. Or any line at all. In his first reelection run in 2020, he was unopposed. I guess the party could have tried to find another candidate that year, but that’s not as easy as one might think.
Why would any Democrat want his job? Who wants a career of certain defeat on every ideological issue for the entirety of that career? Back to that “conversation” I’ve had so many times.
Gerrymandering in Indiana has created lopsided representation in the Statehouse. We talk about the math all the time, without talking deeply enough about the math’s impact. There are currently 40 Democrat members of the 150 available in the Indiana General Assembly. All of them should be applauded for serving at all.
It takes an unusual amount of patience and tolerance to endure life in what is supposed to be a deliberative body but is now overpopulated with a supermajority made up of unpersuadable people. It also takes an unusual amount of talent to successfully manage through it or overcome it to deliver positive results for one’s constituency. I wrote about two members who have that talent a few weeks ago, Sens. Andrea Hunley and Shelli Yoder. There are others. In the House, Blake Johnson and Carey Hamilton come to mind.
The job, as it currently exists, is profoundly unattractive. What it leads to is a reluctance to run, just like it leads to a reluctance to vote.
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On Thursday, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita solicited the public to sue the Indiana Department of Health. I know that sounds odd, and it should sound that way, because it is odd. The IDOH is Rokita’s client.
When an agency is sued, it’s customary for the attorney general to provide legal resources for its defense. Apparently not anymore. Not only should we expect Rokita to refuse to defend the IDOH if it gets sued over its handling of terminated pregnancy reports, but the AG is actively encouraging someone to file the suit. Again, against his own client.
Words can’t describe how unlawyerly that is. It’s a foundational violation of his oath.
He accused the agency and Indiana Public Access Counselor, Luke Britt, of “collusion” for keeping terminated pregnancy reports, or TPRs, from public view. It appears that Rokita has appointed himself the abortion czar of the state and wants to use these medical records in his search for violators of the state’s new ban. This isn’t the reason the data is collected, and the data is viewed by the agency and Britt as medical records protected by the provider-patient relationship.
Ironically, Rokita manipulated the Medical Licensing Board into sanctioning Dr. Caitlin Bernard for allegedly disclosing information about a 10-year-old rape victim who needed an abortion in 2022. He was mad she shared such a vivid example of how bans are bad. Then he worked overtime to find an angle, and importantly, a politically friendly venue, to settle his score with her. His legal claim: Dr. Bernard shared too much information. Now, Rokita wants to share more.
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Standing on the 17th tee on Saturday, England’s Lottie Woad was one shot behind American golfer, Bailey Shoemaker in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Shoemaker had finished her bogey-free 66 about an hour earlier and was staying loose on the range in case anyone caught her, and a playoff became necessary.
Woad coolly birdied 17 and 18 for the comeback victory. And when I say cool, I mean it. I found myself standing in front of my TV as she made the winner. The gallery around the final hole was enormous, exploding as the ball fell.
Something is happening in the world of sports. Finally. And thankfully, there is no turning back.
I watched more women’s college basketball than men’s this year. My transition started a few years ago when some high school friends of mine had an all-star daughter commit to play for Teri Moren at IU. She was good. The whole team was good. And the program has grown into something great.
Then came February 22nd of this year. I wanted to see IU play Iowa and Caitlin Clark in Bloomington. The cheapest tickets on the secondary market were going for $125 a piece for an unreserved seat on a Thursday night. Students waited outside for hours to get in, and I just got lucky. A friend got me a seat in the bleachers behind the basket. Watching the beatdown our Hoosiers put on them that night is one of the most memorable sporting events of my life. And I’ve been to a Super Bowl.
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In the 1987 film, “Wall Street,” Gordon Gecko famously said, “If you’re not inside, you are outside, okay.” I was impressionable as a young undergraduate when I saw it in the theater that year. Since then, I have firmly believed decisions were only made by the people present in the exclusive room where the next important thing was going to happen.
I still do. Whether the organization is in the world of government or business, entertainment, or athletics, it’s my view that the best leaders are insiders.
So, why do so many political campaigns spend so much energy attempting to create the image that their candidate is an “outsider?” The perceived value of it is a mystery.
First of all, let’s be clear. None of the top candidates for Indiana governor are outsiders. The mere suggestion by any of them is nothing but a ruse. Complicating the weirdness further, being from the outside of government, politics or both, has no value for this specific job, either.
The Office of the Governor in Indiana is structurally weak. Constitutionally, the simple majority to override a veto has made it such throughout history. In 2024 though, the entrenched super-majorities in the legislature have made it even weaker. Not since Mitch Daniels left office twelve years ago has the office been occupied by the unequivocal leader of the party.
None of those running this year will change that. There is no movement growing behind any of them. One of them will prevail in the primary and appear on the ballot this fall, but whoever is inaugurated in January will still be taking orders from the gerrymandered power base on the third floor of the Statehouse. The lack of any energy behind any big idea practically seals that deal.
There really is only one policy proposal that has risen above the harmonious nothingness of this primary battle, and that is Lt. Governor Suzanne Crouch’s pitch to eliminate the state’s income tax. But because the details on how to accomplish it are undeveloped, this innovative idea feels a lot like the campaign promise of a sixth-grade class president candidate promising to end homework. Ironically, this pie-in-the-sky offering comes from the candidate least likely to be called an outsider. Go figure.
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Whenever I find myself baffled by a trend or even a specific decision in the traditional media world, I look to Jay Rosen for his perspective. Rosen is a former editor at the Chicago Tribune and a professor of journalism at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
He’s risen in prominence recently as a result of his “it’s not the odds, it’s the stakes” advice he has given the media on how to cover the 2024 elections. What he means by this is the coverage should be grounded in what the November choices mean, not the daily drama of polls, gotcha moments and the scoreboard.
Consumers of media content should follow his advice too. Too often, consumers forget that we are partners in the market. Never has that been more important.
Late last week, NBC News hired recently ousted Republican National Committee Chairperson, Ronna McDaniel, as a political contributor. The move has caused an avalanche of reaction.
McDaniel has been an election denier since the “Big Lie” was spawned in 2020. She participated and led efforts, particularly in her home state of Michigan, to overturn the results. She still refuses to admit Joe Biden won an election that ultimately wasn’t all that close.
Democrats always cringe when a former, high-ranking Republican lands a gig at a prominent news desk. This one is different though. In honor of Professor Rosen and the spirit of telling it like it is, the most obvious problem with NBC’s decision is this simple: McDaniel is a liar.
The “newsroom” at the network isn’t pleased about this at all. NBC’s own Chuck Todd blasted the hire on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning. He was joined by the Boston Globe’s Kimberly Atkins Stohr, who said McDaniel’s “credibility was shot” over the years, and that “she habitually lied.”
OK. Democrats and journalists are mad. Surely Republicans are happy, right?
Not immediately, they weren’t.
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Sigh. It’s been a little while since the last time the former president went on a rant like the one on Saturday in Dayton, Ohio. It was awful enough to make headlines and to send his sycophants into damage control over what their idol actually meant.
Context is the argument this time, something which Donald Trump has spent his life disconnected from. To help reconnect his actions to a coherent perspective, I would like to make a comparison to help the MAGA cult see their way through it.
Larry Flynt was a pioneer, I guess, in the world of pornography during the 1970’s and 1980’s, as the publisher of Hustler Magazine. What was Flynt’s differentiator? That he was willing to go further, more provocatively, more dangerously than Playboy and Penthouse were willing to go at the time. Then in November of 1972, he got his big break when he acquired sunbathing photos of former first lady, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and he was willing to publish them.
His smut magazine sales went from a few thousand to over 2 million. I imagine it was a bloodbath at the Playboy Mansion that quarter. Hugh Hefner couldn’t have liked finishing second.
“Bloodbath” is a provocative word, one that should be reserved for only the most extreme circumstances. Dictionary.com defines it first as, “a ruthless slaughter of a great number of people; massacre,” and second as, “a period of disastrous loss or reversal.” I like visually powerful words too, but I know what they mean.
In Saturday’s rant, while showing Ohio Republicans that neither he, nor they, know how tariffs work, Trump proposed a 100% tariff on Chinese auto imports. The crowd cheered. I never thought I would see a gathering of Republicans delight in approval of a historic, enormous tax increase on themselves. Now I have.
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It can be tough to be a minority of any kind. We talk about that toughness in cultural terms regularly in America. Whether it is a minority religion, gender or race, being outnumbered is rarely meaningless or easy.
Senate Democrats in Indiana would love to be in that standard minority. Their minority isn’t standard though, it’s “super.” Being in a simple minority would feel like a luxury, like upgrading to first class on a flight, or into a high-roller suite in the penthouse of a resort on the Vegas strip. Life in the super-minority is viewed as a thankless, and often times, even a valueless endeavor. The caucus is often described as one that doesn’t matter at all.
Those descriptions are incorrect. And there are receipts to prove it.
Sen. Andrea Hunley is my senator. I vividly remember her first campaign for the seat in 2022. Why? Because when I was listening to her speak to a small group of people that spring, I was overcome with the thought, “she’s too good for that place and being there is going to drive her nuts.” I stand by the first point but was dead wrong about the second.
On March 5th, I accidentally caught Hunley in action. While speaking on the Senate floor on House Bill 1093, a bill to relax child labor laws, she delivered a speech worthy of a title. I would title it with the question she asked from the start. She said, “Who stands to benefit? I know for certain it’s not our kids…When I first ran for office, I ran because of children. I ran because of my work with them.” She was a teacher and principal for twenty years, most recently at the Center for Inquiry in my neighborhood.
The majority ignored her questions and concerns and passed the bill on a party line vote. This was the kind of thing I was predicting for her two years ago. She was destined to be on the right side of policies only to be outvoted by a majority that runs like a zombie experiencing a shortage of brains to eat. But Hunley marches on, undeterred by her lopsided surroundings.
Senator Shelli Yoder was elected two years earlier in 2020. She represents Bloomington and is an award-winning educator at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, where I also teach. She primarily teaches freshmen, and I now teach sophomores, some who have been taught by her, so I can personally vouch for her excellence in the classroom.
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When paying close attention to the things politicians actually say, there are moments when their true character unmistakably shines through. The memorable comments and quips are often material for statues and memorials. Successful politicians fight the urge to be blunt because of the historical danger bluntness brings. Thankfully, eventually most lose that challenging inner battle.
Last Thursday, Sen. Mike Braun lost that battle. In an interview with Fox News anchor, Maria Bartiromo, she asked the Indiana gubernatorial candidate for his thoughts on how Sen. Mitch McConnell should handle his leadership transition. Braun said he thought McConnell needed to endorse the Trump campaign with this motivational advice: “Don’t fight it, you gotta go along with it.”
Sort of gives a person goose bumps, doesn’t it?
I’m reminded of other great oratorical moments from our leaders. Words that moved people, inspired us, or provided great clarity in times of uncertainty or strife.
“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself,” from President Franklin Roosevelt comes to mind. Those were big words at a big moment.
“It’s not what your country can do for you, it’s what you can do for your country,” struck a nerve when President John F. Kennedy said it.
When I walk by the statue of President Benjamin Harrison in downtown Indianapolis, I am always drawn to his quote etched into the base: “Great lives do not go out; they go on.” That may have inspired the Celine Dion song, “My Heart Will Go On.”
More goose bumps.
Being a follower never inspires. Don’t get me wrong, followers are vital to humanity. Where would we be without them? Let’s face it, all of us spend most of our time following. But all of us aren’t running for governor. All of us aren’t in the U.S. Senate. Those are jobs reserved for leaders.
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I am in the business of words. Few people choose a career path that leads to regular debates about whether the use of words like “moreover” or “furthermore” read like the connection of one scolding to another. Even fewer of us enjoy those debates as much as I do.
Senate Bill 202, legislation now on the floor of the Indiana House of Representatives, is an attempt to make public universities more welcoming to those with conservative views. That’s a difficult task for obvious reasons. First, the strained solution that Senator Spencer Deery, a Republican from Tippecanoe County, has developed in this bill presumes there is a problem. I disagree on that foundational point. Second, he believes the legislature can solve this perceived problem. And that is pure comedy.
The bill relies on Deery’s desire for “intellectual diversity” at Indiana’s public universities. Not familiar with that term? I wasn’t either. When I first read it, I thought it meant “the differences between smart people and stupid people.” After a weekend exercise in amateur lexicology, I have failed in disproving my original interpretation.
In my exercise, I first dissected the term and evaluated what the words mean separately to determine what they must mean together. According to Dictionary.com, “intellectual” means, in part: “the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge.” “Diversity” means, “difference; unlikeness; variety.” Put them together and the term must then mean, “the differences in the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge,” right?
My original interpretation survives.
We should put that exercise aside though. That’s not what the Indiana General Assembly means when they use the term in 2024. What they mean is “ideological diversity,” but for some strange reason, they won’t say what they mean. Why not?
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I was inspired to read David Brooks’ latest book, “How to Know a Person, The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen,” when it came out last fall. I was drawn to it because of a comment a former student made to me around the same time.
She said, “I was surprised to find out that your speech class gave me confidence in conversations that used to make me uncomfortable.” Teachers love hearing things like that—a student got some value out of a class that wasn’t even assigned! Admittedly, I teach conversationally, a luxury of smaller class sizes. I warn all of my students on the first day: “I’m going to get to know you better than your other professors do, and you’re going to get to know me too.”
In “How to Know a Person,” the book’s lofty goals can be achieved through a commitment to having better conversations. Not easier, or more entertaining conversations, but better. And yes, I often found myself nodding as I read it.
John Dickerson wrote for CBS News, “The book's thesis is that while human relations are hard, the skills can be taught, and if people can improve their one-on-one interactions – in listening, in conversation, and in what Brooks calls the ‘close at hand’ – it might have a compounding effect on society.”
I often read Brooks’ columns, not because I agree with him, though I sometimes do. It’s because I have always liked the way he writes, and this book is no exception.
Chapter 7, “The Right Questions,” describes a series of methods to improve our connections with each other. He writes that about 30% of us are natural questioners, leaving 70% who are not. And while the latter group can be charming people, “they spend their conversational time presenting themselves.” He adds, “Sometimes I will be walking out of a party and realize that whole time no one asked me a single question.” To me, that’s a bad party. As I have studied communication and worked to teach it better, I’ve concluded this disconnection problem is solvable.
Which brings me to some sort-of-conversations provoked by my column last week. I never know which installments will get around or strike a chord, but this one did, inspiring some feedback.
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The “Jesus, He Gets Us” folks made a splash during the Super Bowl on Sunday with their commercial about how “Jesus didn’t teach hate, he washed feet.” I don’t get what their intended return is for that kind of investment, but as far as commercials go, I liked that one as much as any of them this year. The “love your neighbor” messages never get old. To me, anyway.
In the last week, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for president has said many troubling things. But what makes them most problematic is that there is no one left in the GOP to object anymore. For Donald Trump to keep his angry and loyal following whipped up into their frenzied mania, he must keep escalating his rhetoric, or they will lose interest. It’s a predictable process.
First, he threatened to mobilize military forces to round up millions of undocumented migrants for deportation. According to Axios, not since Eisenhower has such a thing been pursued, and thankfully, that was a far different time.
Next, he mocked his Republican opponent, Nikki Haley, for her husband being absent from the campaign trail. Never mind that Trump and his wife, Melania, have only been seen together at her mother’s funeral during the last several months. Maj. Michael Haley is on a yearlong deployment with the South Carolina National Guard in Africa. There was a time when that kind of un-American mockery would turn off Republican voters.
Finally, nothing would have sickened Reagan Republicans more than taunting members of NATO. With what? With the threat of inviting Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any non-dues-paying members of what Trump apparently believes is a Mar-A-Lago-style country club.
In today’s Republican party, an angry voter base is everything. But most people tire of being mad and need refueled on a regular basis. Feeding the desire for grievance is of paramount importance.
Buddhism’s Second Noble Truth states that the cause of suffering is craving. MAGA world’s insatiable desire for the next angriest idea is that craving.
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“What a long, strange trip it’s been,” said that historic and influential musician, Jerry Garcia. It’s astonishing to me that I never fell victim to the evil spell the Grateful Dead cast on so many people over the last fifty years. I have a number of Dead Head friends myself. Lawyers, bankers, you know, the usual folks.
Maybe, just maybe when Neil Young was making hits with songs like “Ohio,” when he sang, “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming…” all of the young voters within earshot would temporarily become deaf. But that’s not how I remember Young’s moment on top when my older siblings were still at home.
This 2020’s version of the uncool among us trying to demonize an idol of the cool kids’ club was inevitable. Seriously, though, it’s hard to demonize Taylor Swift. Historians will probably come up with other examples, but I can’t ever recall objectors to the outsize influence of a popular music star over our youth losing the battle so embarrassingly. The “conservative” bunch are mad at someone more pure, more well-behaved, and simply more good than any of them. And by anyone’s measure, including their own.
I realize how dumb that sounds, and trust me, I feel dumber just writing it out. But the above descriptive is where a good chunk of America is when asked that profoundly transformative question: “What do you think about Taylor and Travis?”
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“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” is an adage that is widely attributed to Winston Churchill as the one who said it first. Crediting him with quotes like this is easy to do and difficult to disprove. It sounds like something he would say, right?
We know Rahm Emmanuel said it on November 19, 2008, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, as then President-elect Barak Obama’s chief of staff. I have the video! His point was a crisis can often create “an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
America’s southern border is in crisis. The intensity of it is as hot as it has ever been, though by my measure, there has never been a time in my life when it wasn’t a crisis. Also, by my measure, few Americans have even an elementary understanding of it, a sort of willful ignorance that allows recent politics to make sense.
On Thursday, all but one Republican governor in America issued a joint statement in support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott in his battle with the federal government for authority he doesn’t have. Governor Eric Holcomb joined the group, stating, "Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.”
Of course! Why shouldn’t Texas be able to defend itself when the federal government won’t? There’s language in the U.S. Constitution that specifically allows that, after all.
The answer: That’s not what the dispute is about.
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Representative government in Indiana will look drastically different next year. Or will it?
Four of the state’s nine U.S. House members from Indiana will not seek reelection this year. Districts currently represented by Reps. Larry Buschon, Jim Banks, Greg Pence, and Victoria Spartz will all get new House members next year. The question is: How will that matter?
None of these departing members spent any time, to quote “Hamilton,” in “The Room Where It Happens.” None chaired a committee or were on track to do so. I consume an abundance of national media on Washington politics, and only in the rarest of circumstances would any of these soon-to-be retirees appear there.
Now, media appearance frequency is no way to measure value, but extended periods of radio silence should cause people back home to wonder: Is my representative representing me?
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For nearly half my life, I have had my eye on the Indiana General Assembly. Looking back on all the things I could have watched during the bulk of the last three decades, I’m deeply saddened by the choice I made. I could have chosen sunsets, priceless art, or what social media now knows is a favorite in my house, Golden Retriever and Dachshund videos.
But not Hound Dogs. Nope. The best thing about a hound dog is the song. And that one isn’t flattering either. Even when The King himself sang it.
Rep. Bruce Borders, R-Jasonville, is famously known in Indiana politics as an Elvis impersonator, a tragically embarrassing vocation. Now, I love Presley as much as anyone, but imitating him should be limited to the privacy of one’s shower. Those doing it in public are likely to do other dumb things. Like file House Bill 1334.
To quote this masterpiece, HB 1334 actually says: “An employer may require an immunization only if the employer respects the employee's right to refuse an immunization.” No, that’s not edited. No, I took no dramatic or creative freedoms with the actual words on the paper.
In case any employer or contractor out there is curious whether this innovative policy idea applies to them, the answer is yes. Unless, drum roll, you are the federal government. It turns out the Indiana legislature is not the boss of them.
Something that could make this mess of a bill seem sane would be comparing it to Senate Bill 187, filed by Senator Gary Byrne, R-Byrneville. That is also not a typo.
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Another government funding deadline looms in Washington on January 19, precisely two weeks before Groundhog Day. While this Congress has been the least productive in modern history, it has produced multiple versions of the shutdown dance, and other predictable jigs, worthy of being added to Groundhog Day 2.
How has this movie sequel not been made yet? A movie famously about repeating history hasn’t been repeated. Come on Hollywood, how’d you miss this one?
“Shut the border down or we will shut the government down,” was the language several Republicans were using last week on social media platforms, according to Forbes. I came across one of these posts myself, hoping it was an outlier. The problem in the House right now is that the “outliers” have been running it.
Speaker Mike Johnson reached a tentative funding deal with Democrats over the weekend that will not satisfy these outliers, just like the last speaker’s deal didn’t. As reported by PBS News Hour, the spending package doesn’t deeply cut anything and leaves negotiations on funding for Ukraine, Israel and broad border policy changes still to be addressed separately.
If it seems like a status quo deal, it’s because it primarily is one. “It reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring,” President Biden said in response. Democrat leaders in both the Senate and House also gave the deal their approvals.
Outliers, particularly in the House, won’t like this one bit. The only question at the moment is whether they will go along with their new speaker or if they will run Johnson out just like they did Kevin McCarthy last year. Other than the person holding the gavel, I don’t see what has changed.
Except, of course, the most recent absurd negotiation stance about the border. It’s as if the outliers don’t understand that shutting down the government, at some point and by definition, also means handicapping border enforcement. Details are not the specialty of the outliers.
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During my professional career, I’ve said it countless times and in countless ways: perception is reality. Oh, I wish I could take those moments back! Not just because of my awful tendency to weave profanity into my version of the cliché, but because the cliché itself has engulfed far too many of us.
In 2024, the battle between what is real and what is not will be epic.
Yes, yes, it’s a big election year, the latest in a streak of the-most-important-elections-of-our-lifetimes. And nothing strains the perception and reality continuum more than election season. This year, that is practically the entire game.
Let’s talk about the pesky Fourteenth Amendment and other inconvenient laws that will impact the presidential race. The never-ending legal saga of former President Donald Trump is ground zero of the perception versus reality war. His most recent problem of being removed from the ballot in Colorado and Maine has inspired debate and conversation that is straight out of the Twilight Zone.
Too many politicians from both parties are pandering to voters by taking the position that Trump’s quest to return to the White House should be decided solely by the election. Of course, we all agree with the authority of elections, even though Trump and his supporters didn’t agree with it in 2020. Many of them still don’t. But before voters get to decide in any year, candidates must be qualified to hold the office.
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I am one of those people who is difficult to shop for. Modern Christmas, you know, the capitalist part of the holiday, is something that died in me after my children aged out of the Santa Claus years. Don’t get me wrong, those were good times. And those boys got some really cool things that I often enjoyed as much or more than they did.
They weren’t the only ones who aged out though. I’m old enough to have acquired all of the things that I really want, or accepted that possessing some aspirational memento was just not meant to be. So, now a great gift for me might be the offer to take things away. The crap in my garage, for example, take it all!
However, aside from a liberating cleanse of a lifetime’s worth of accumulated junk, there are some invaluable things I want for all of us. I think they’ll help make us better.
I finished Adam Grant’s new book, “Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things,” last week. Dr. Grant is an organizational psychologist, and a tenured professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is that rare someone I discovered on Twitter who makes me think, and more importantly, helps me learn.
This Christmas, I want more of that. Learning, not X.
Take it easy out there. Yes, I am aware that I am already a teacher myself. Also yes, I have learned more since becoming a teacher than I have in any other stretch in my life. Dr. Grant writes about this: that teaching, coaching and mentoring others is often the best way to learn more, or to learn more deeply, or to just learn better.
So, my next Christmas wish: more teaching. I can’t wait to get back to teaching in a couple of weeks. What might I learn?
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t’s hard to even recognize good news anymore. No matter what the good news might be, it won’t be long before someone from ‘the other side’ energetically claims it’s cherry picked, not completely accurate, or my favorite, that the news is actually bad.
Good news of the week: the U.S. economy is outperforming almost every country on Earth.
I should pause there, so those on ‘the other side’ of that accurate, documentable, statement of fact can get its alternative description of the situation together. OK, now that the crowd who wants us to believe everything is actually terrible is ready, we can proceed.
On January 19, 2021, the day before Joe Biden was inaugurated, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed at $30,930.52. On Friday, the Dow closed at an all-time high of $37,305.16. Now, the market doing well, and the economy doing well is not the exact same thing. But I remember a president who pounded that erroneous equivalency into our heads. It was the last president. While it might be cute to agree with him this one time just because it’s convenient for my side, I won’t.
The Dow is just one measure of how the economy is working. There’s more to it than that, of course.
Steve Rattner, an investment banker and financial journalist, discussed the impact of the Federal Reserve Board’s quarterly meeting on MSNBC last Wednesday. He said this holiday season, “Inflation on goods, from used cars to computers and televisions is actually turned into deflation. Prices on those goods are actually lower than they were a year ago.”
Again, it is not the rate of increase that has shrunk. It is that prices themselves are lower. For consumers, during their spendiest time of the year, that seems like good news. But again, not if your side wants consumers to be mad, and stay mad, until further notice.
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Last week, former House speaker Kevin McCarthy attended the New York Times’s DealBook event where he was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin. During their discussion, McCarthy reminisced about a striking observation he made during the 2019 State of the Union. “…I look over at the Democrats and they stand up. They look like America. We stand up. We look like the most restrictive country club in America.”
The observation isn’t as new or striking to America as it apparently is to the country club, at least to this prominent, soon-to-be former member. McCarthy also announced on Wednesday that he is leaving office by the end of the year. And truth telling on the way out the door like this has become commonplace for Republicans during its Trump era. I’m sure we will hear more of his truths in the coming weeks and months.
What would be stark to me would be a more honest conversation of the lack of demographic representation from those McCarthy is leaving behind. But waiting for the truth from the country club shouldn’t inspire Americans to hold its breath in anticipation.
“The Club” is more apt to declare war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training, and anything else it can weirdly label with their weirdly created negative adjective of “woke,” than it is to adjust. Just ask Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana’s third district. Rarely does a day go by without him defending the whiteness, the maleness, of a government made up of far too much of both.
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I was watching the IU men’s team play its first Big Ten game against Maryland with a friend on Friday night when I saw it. During the game’s first time out, Mike Braun’s newest commercial in his campaign for Governor of Indiana ran.
When it was done, we turned and looked at each other for a silent moment before my pal broke the silence, asking, “What the hell is he running for?” My question exactly.
Back in October, I evaluated a couple of ads by two other gubernatorial candidates, Brad Chambers and Eric Doden. The theme of that critique was that their first ads were void of the reason, or the “why,” Indiana would be better with either of them in its highest office. Yea, they were the introduction ads, strategically designed to play on Hoosier sensibilities while they politely shake voters’ hands in a digitally manufactured way.
Their task at hand was clear to them both. My disagreement with the strategy was that neither of them made clear what issue, what challenge, what commitment would define their campaigns. Is it taxes? Is it healthcare? Is it education? In those ads, the strategy apparently was, “you can trust me because I am one of you.” Neither of them has run for office before, so, the strategy has merit, even though the lack of any stated policy position made both ads deficient to me.
Braun’s new ad, on the other hand, is offensive.
The ad is titled, “Safer,” but it’s not about how he can make Indiana safer at all.
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The Portland Public Schools (PPS) and the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) reached a tentative agreement to their labor dispute on Sunday. The impasse had led to a three-week strike, cancelling eleven instructional days in Oregon’s largest school district. Students returned to the classroom Monday.
The highlights of the dispute weren’t novel. Teacher pay was a big item, and this deal landed in the middle ground there. Class size, student mental health support, class planning, and health and safety protections were also at issue, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. But as is often the case in disputes like this, the collective total means more than the individual parts.
“This contract is a watershed moment for Portland students, families, and educators,” said PAT President Angela Bonilla. “Educators walked picket lines alongside families, students, and allies — and because of that, our schools are getting the added investment they need.”
That sounds familiar.
Last week, members of the United Auto Workers ratified their new deal with The Big Three. The deal brought wage increases of at least 25% over four and a half years for members, but it was bigger than that. Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and Subaru have all announced wage increases since the tentative deal was announced.
“These were just extraordinary wins, especially for those of us who’ve been studying strikes for decades,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor and labor expert at Washington University in St. Louis, to the Washington Post. “Research has consistently found over the past few decades that most strikes are defensive, rear-guard efforts to protect the status quo … to fend off steep cuts to wages and benefits. It didn’t mean actually gaining new ground.”
Both leading presidential candidates publicly supported, in starkly different ways, the union efforts. President Joe Biden joined the picket line, an unprecedented move in American history. It is on brand for the pro-union president, but the gesture is only possible because of the public support for workers in the matter.
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It’s that time of year again. The emotions, expectations and traditional series of events converge for six weeks to make up what we refer to as “the holidays.” Viewing the goings on around us this opening week of the season might lead one to believe that we all sort of, kind of approach Round One the same way. But obviously, we don’t.
Thanksgiving is the greatest American holiday. As it exists today, there is little in the way of religion driving the tradition, a feature of which I am particularly fond. That wasn’t always the case, and I will thank Thomas Jefferson for the church-free atmosphere of this week’s celebration. Apparently, he refused to endorse the tradition, due to his unwavering view of how church and state should remain separate. Thanks, TJ.
Today, the fourth Thursday of November has no space left for church or state. What, with football and food binges dominating the day, who has room for any spiritual cleansing? Actually, all of us.
Take Blake Corum for example. I don’t often write or speak glowingly about a star football player for the University of Michigan. Often? Ever is more like it. But Corum’s Sunday-before-Thanksgiving tradition caught my eye. The senior running back spends that day giving away turkeys to families in need using some of the money he makes from the use of his name, identity, and likeness, or NIL. In 2021, he donated and delivered 200 turkeys. Last year, he upped it to 300. And on Sunday, he doubled it to 600, this year in the Ypsilanti area, east of Ann Arbor.
“This is my purpose,” Corum said Sunday. The day before, he carried the ball 28 times in Michigan’s win over Maryland. This coming Saturday, he’ll play in the biggest game of his life against Ohio State, a game devotees of the Big Ten Conference likely consider the national championship. I know I do.
It’s a charitable gesture. It’s not all that unusual. Yea, he’s got a lot going on at the moment and it would be easier to focus on that moment, instead of focusing on others. But I believe him when he says giving is his purpose.
The news of the weekend was the passing of one of the planet’s most notorious givers. Former First Lady, Rosalyn Carter, was admitted to hospice care on Saturday, and died on Sunday. She was 96. She and former President Jimmy Carter were married for 77 years, and as any married person can attest, that alone defines a life full of giving.
But she and her husband are the standard, the modern example by which all other givers should be compared. They both gave until their dying days, with the type of enthusiasm and grace that made it clear that it was their purpose too.
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With a few vital exceptions across America, the 2023 election was scheduled to deal with local government. Tip O’Neill famously coined the phrase, “all politics is local.” Oh, if the former Speaker of the House, who held the gavel for virtually all of the 1980’s, could see the America we are living in today.
O’Neill’s iconic statement still rings true more often than not. Maybe. Sometimes. However, there is no question that our neighboring states have turned Indiana into a political island. And when I think of another island to which Indiana might compare, I conclude we are less like Maui or Mackinac, and more like Gilligan’s. Island politics are absolutely local.
Ohio really made a statement last week on two issues that are the polar opposite of where Indiana is, because, you know, Hoosiers’ and Ohioans’ sharply diverge on lots of basics. Actually, I contend that if people of each state traded their sports teams’ gear with those of the other, no one outside of the region would even notice.
The voters to our east voted to enshrine the right to abortion care in the Ohio Constitution, and to statutorily legalize recreational use of marijuana. Both of the separate votes to approve each measure won by nearly fourteen points. Two landslides. No surprise.
Why not? The entire region sees these policies through a similar lens. That’s why Illinois and Michigan already allow both things. Wisconsin’s new supreme court is headed that way on abortion. These are the states I name when someone asks me to define the Midwest.
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This one surprised even me. It was a November 1st story by Whitney Downard in the Indiana Capital Chronicle that caught my eye a day after it ran. The story came following an announcement by Indiana State Treasurer Daniel Elliott that the state would purchase $35 million of additional Israeli Bonds, a 55% increase of the $65 million Indiana already held.
Not announcing the purchase would have been suspicious. A quiet announcement with no additional commentary would be equally so. Either of these options might lead Hoosiers to believe the purchase was being made purely for politics instead of wise financial strategy. It could have led members of the Indiana Public Retirement System, of which I am a member, to question the prudence of the purchase.
What surprised me was that Elliott put out a press release admitting, even celebrating, the move as if it doesn’t fly in the face of the principles to which he passionately subscribed earlier this very year. Now, I know a year is a long time. So, let’s review.
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Las Vegas specializes in making money off of people who just can’t walk away. But on Saturday in Sin City, that’s exactly what former Vice President Mike Pence did. An ironic place for the most pious politician I’ve covered to announce what will likely be the end of his political career.
It was a long shot bid from the start, so, its early end was no surprise. “It’s become clear to me: This is not my time,” was the apt comment he delivered at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference. I cannot recall agreeing with him more strenuously, but for more reasons than I expect he intended.
Pence’s time ended shortly after the 2016 election, as did the era of his entire brand of conservativism. The GOP shift toward the populist, inarticulate, grievance-based platform of today cannot credibly tout the Holy Bible as its guide. It never really could, but the party’s hate-based rhetoric of today has made the hard-to-take-seriously piousness of the party’s past an unfunny joke. Pence never wavered from his version of Christianity, though.
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“A Fever in the Heartland” vividly explains many things about our past. It makes our present feel like a predictable continuum of the same awfulness. The book’s subtitle, “The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and The Woman Who Stopped Them,” gives context to the story for those who haven’t read it yet.
Acclaimed author, Timothy Egan, writes the true story of the rise and fall of both the hate group and its Indiana-based leader, D.C. Stephenson. Through Egan’s meticulous research and expert storytelling, the reader will see 1920s Hoosier life and the “fever” that engulfed it with clarity.
Today’s U.S. House is also sick. The unprecedented challenge of electing a new Speaker to preside over an unruly Republican caucus, is the result of that sickness, not the cause. The cause is that the bulk of the caucus is there for the wrong reasons. They aren’t there to govern, to solve problems or to serve their districts.
Being there is all they really want. Being there gives each of them an individual platform. Being there creates personal opportunities for fortune and fame.
The historic and disgraceful performance by this bunch since earning the majority at the beginning of the year, isn’t costing them a thing in their chosen currency. Quite the opposite. It’s creating space for them to promote their grievance of the day, with their target audiences lapping it up, seemingly ignorant of the consequences of the ongoing disorder in our government.
The Klan’s rise in Indiana following World War I wasn’t merely a cultural spell the state fell under. By the end of 1924, an estimated 85% of government in the state was controlled by the “Kluxers,” including incoming Governor Edward Jackson. It was a rapid ascension to power and politicians feared crossing them. So, few did in public.
This week in the Capitol, right-wing firebrand, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) was the latest Speaker nominee. He was Donald Trump’s pick. 25 members of his party voted against him on the floor the final time. After that last public vote, the caucus took a private vote, where 112 voted no. That’s fear. The same kind of fear politicians felt a century ago.
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It occurred on February 19, 1942, following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan two months earlier. President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, “with the stated intention of preventing espionage on American shores.” What the order actually did was one of the greatest atrocities committed by the United States in its history: the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. Canada followed our lead first, then Mexico and several South American countries did too.
According to The History Channel, in the U.S., “Anyone who was at least 1/16th Japanese was evacuated, including 17,000 children under age 10, as well as several thousand elderly and disabled residents.”
I understand the ignorant temptation as it existed then, as many did in real time. That same ignorance is being openly refreshed and rebooted today following the terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel, and the full-scale war that has followed in response.
Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, did not equivocate in his racist perspective on Sunday, saying, the United States should not take in any Palestinian refugees if they flee the Gaza Strip because they “are all antisemitic,” according to the Associated Press. He also appeared on “Face the Nation,” expanding his hostile comments, by adding, “They teach kids to hate Jews, the textbooks do not have Israel even on the map. They prepare very young kids to commit terrorist attacks. So, I think it's a toxic culture.” In this ignorant rant, he makes the error of using “they” as the unspecific villain, failing to differentiate people in any discernible way.
Those hateful comments seem different than those made in a letter Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN03) sent to the U.S. secretaries of state and homeland security on October 8th. In it, Banks requests that Israel’s admission to the U.S. Visa Waiver Program be expedited for the purpose of “removing an extra hurdle for Israeli citizens looking to travel to America during this uncertain time.” Admitting Israel to the program had been announced on September 27th, but would not take effect until November 30th.
Of course, I support the request Banks made in his letter. However, on the same day he sent the letter, he posted this question on X: “How many Hezbollah and Hamas sympathizers have illegally crossed our border in the last three years?”
The contrast is important because it represents the early stages of governmental leaders choosing cultures, or people, many of whom are victims themselves, of suddenly deserving different levels of humanity from America. Not only is that rhetoric dangerous, but it’s also un-American.
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As news of the horrific attacks in Israel by Hamas began reaching us on Saturday morning, I wondered how long it would take for the political machines in America to begin making it all about us. The clarity to my wonder came quickly. It was almost immediate.
At 11:03 a.m. on Saturday is when I saw the beginning of how the debate will likely be shaped. This is when 2024 presidential candidate, Nikki Haley, posted this comment: “This is not just an attack on Israel—this was an attack on America.” She went on to give her advice to embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with this: “Finish them.”
But wait, former Vice President Mike Pence is still a 2024 presidential candidate too. How could a Hoosier forget? He was actually quicker out of the gate than Haley. At 9:56 a.m. on Saturday, he posted: “This is what happens when (President Joe Biden) projects weakness on the world stage…” Pence was quicker, but his campaign is less relevant than Haley’s, but not by much.
Oh yes, the American president, whoever they are and whenever they are in office, is ultimately responsible for whatever happens in this seemingly never-ending conflict. Is there a president whose term featured meaningful peace in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the last 50 years? Saturday’s attacks come one day after the 50-year anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
The violence has ebbed and flowed there since that bloody conflict, but I don’t recall there being a resolution, an agreed upon end to the conflict, or even an acknowledgment from either side of the other’s right to exist. The winner in this multi-generational conflict has been the conflict itself. The events of the weekend are more catastrophic than any before it. The intelligence failures are immense. But the hostilities between the parties have never waned.
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I saw the new movie, “Dumb Money,” on Friday night. The movie tells the stories of several people, whose only connection to one another was their varied roles in the meteoric ride GameStop took on the stock exchange in 2021. Combined, these stories convey how complicated the concepts of value and values can be.
The term “dumb money” is assigned to individual, noninstitutional investors. Insiders don’t give these folks much respect, and that lack of respect is what led to some insiders’ big losses on GameStop’s stock.
What’s dumber money? Spending one’s personal wealth on a personal campaign for political office, particularly when there doesn’t appear to be a good reason. Or worse yet, any reason at all. This is how I see the two well-financed “outsiders” running for the Republican nomination for Indiana governor in 2024, Eric Doden and Brad Chambers.
Don’t get me wrong, these two men have just as good a shot as anyone at landing the nomination. Long odds of winning are not what makes either campaign dumb. What does is that both candidates appear to be void of a reason to run, other than their shared desire to be governor.
What most Hoosiers have seen from these two campaigns is their opening ads. And after being dowsed with repeated exposures to both of them, I began to see troubling similarities.
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It was initially a quiet move made by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last week. As reported by Axios on September 17th, the senate leader had apparently directed the Senate Sergeant at Arms to no longer enforce the chamber’s long standing dress code. The code was not changed, modified or modernized. It was, in effect, eliminated.
By September 21st, Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) was presiding over the body dressed in a short sleeve, collared blue shirt and shorts. In this regard, the shirt was a slight upgrade to the expected hoodie that is his usual attire. But still, many are outraged.
All but three members of the Senate Republican Caucus signed a letter of protest to Schumer even before Fetterman’s norm shattering, jacket-and-tie-lessness had occurred. CBS News reports that the dress code is not among the 44 Senate Rules. It’s actually an “informal rule,” a custom or protocol. In other words, it’s not important enough to rise that high.
Or is it? As a communication professor at an elite business school, I would argue it’s so important, it’s beyond being codified.
Here in my ivory tower of higher education in 2023, dress codes can be a complicated issue. To my students, primarily the young men in my classes, I am the fashion police. I teach many of them the correct way to tie a tie, the importance of a business suit fit, and how sneakers are not appropriate “business attire.” I actually had a student come to my classroom earlier this semester for the sole purpose of getting my advice on which tie he should wear to an important meeting, and to help him tie it correctly, all in front of a room full of students!
This is who I have become as a mentor to these young people. And I do it while dressed more like John Fetterman, than Gordon Gecko. What? What kind of leader doesn’t practice what he preaches?
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Oh, to have the fantastical enthusiasm of a group of people in eastern Oregon!
Yes, I meant “fantastical,” not fantastic. A group of Oregonians have decided that the best remedy to solve their disagreements with their home state is to have their Oregon turf be ceded to Idaho.
That’s right. Citizens for Greater Idaho is a group that is serious about this. They don’t identify with the coastal “libs” who control state government in Oregon, and they want to leave. But these folks want to take their land with them.
I’d tell them that the grass isn’t always greener, but in this case, it’s the same grass. Besides, they don’t want it to be greener. They want it to be redder. The secessionists in the east are unimpressed with elitist Williamette Valley wine from the western part of the state. They identify with the Idaho potato to their east. They are salt of the Earth, you know, salt that goes better with baked, mashed and fries.
This is no joke though. And learning about it this week got me thinking. I have complaints about my home state of Indiana too, as my regular readers are painfully aware. Maybe these folks from the northwest are onto something: If they can trade land, can we? And if so, what else can we trade with other states?
As one might imagine, I’ve got a list.
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It is unusual to have certainty of how the executive of a government, whether a mayor, governor, or president, will respond to an unexpected crisis. The responses to those crises often become what defines the leadership of that executive. They define a leader’s character.
Whether it is an unexpected foreign war, a horrific terrorist attack, or a deadly pandemic, how the person in charge leads through it is more telling than any campaign could ever be. President Joe Biden didn’t campaign on the war in Ukraine. President George W. Bush didn’t campaign on the terrorist attacks of 9/11. And President Donald Trump didn’t campaign on COVID-19. At least not the first time.
All of the responses to these crises were revealing to voters.
Last week, Senator Mike Braun announced that he has co-authored the “Freedom to Breathe Act.” The federal legislation will ban the federal government’s ability to implement mask mandates for domestic air travel, public transit systems and schools.
Casey Smith reported for the Indiana Capital Chronicle last week Braun’s troubling commentary on the bill he authored with three other Senate Republican colleagues. He first said in his Wednesday statement, “We’re not going to go back to the top-down government overreach we saw during COVID.”
This gubernatorial candidate has some kind of issue with “top-down” leadership? Even when he adds “overreach” to his canned statement, he is signaling how he would have led in 2020, or more aptly, how he would have chosen not to lead. Senator, in a crisis, “top-down” leadership is the name of the game. It’s the job for which you are running. And it is unlike filing dead-on-arrival legislation with three other members of congress looking only to “own the libs.”
It's lonely at the top. Especially in a crisis. Braun’s statement is slippery on one hand, and troubling on the other.
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With football season upon us, I must confess one of my favorite things about it. I love yelling at the refs. It’s a silly thing to do, since after decades of doing it, I can count the times a football referee has distinctly heard my complaints on one hand. It’s hard to be heard from the upper deck at Lucas Oil Stadium, or my preferred spot, the recliner in my living room.
Let me introduce you to the American voter.
I was scrolling social media over the weekend and came across a post by pollster Nate Silver. He had attached a graph from Federal Reserve Economic Data, or FRED, that details consumer spending. The graph is familiar looking to wonks. It shows a steady increase until an abrupt and extreme decrease in March of 2020. By February of 2021, the graph had picked up where it left off and has continued to rise since.
So? Silver’s observation is consistent with what many of us have been saying for some time now. Americans are behaving as if times are great, while also saying the economy is bad.
In April of this year, Pew Research Center published “Americans take a dim view of the nation’s future, look more positively at the past.” The center routinely measures the nation’s optimism, and currently, it’s running low. As has been consistent with other polling data, the pessimism has apparently set in. Just before the pandemic, 57% of Americans had a positive outlook on the state of the economy. Today, that number has plummeted to 19%, even though all economic indicators show conditions to be similar to pre-pandemic measures.
What conclusions can be drawn from data that shows a populace that is experiencing a similar economy, but nearly 40% more of us now view it negatively?
My conclusion is that we have simply become angrier. Just in general, across the board, our pessimism seems to have engulfed our collective psyche. If that is correct, how will messaging to such an angry crowd change?
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Over the weekend, a racially motivated mass shooting occurred, this time in Jacksonville, Florida. Three black people were murdered before the white gunman turned one of his guns on himself. The 21-year-old legally purchased both the handgun and AR-15 style rifle he used.
It’s these regularly horrific events that bring out statements from local leaders, advocacy groups of all kinds, governors and presidents. Those statements are then followed by media scrutiny until the next horrific shooting occurs. It’s a feature of America’s policies on guns, not a bug. It is predictable and no matter what words are used in the heartfelt statements given in response, it will continue.
What is missing from the cycle is important: we don’t ever talk about what it all costs. No, in most circles, it doesn’t get a mention. An accounting of the cost of guns is rarely undertaken, and when it is, the numbers are so shocking and enormous, the study usually falls victim to the post-truth era in which we live.
In March of 2022, Indiana passed its law eliminating the need for a gun permit. The year before, the Indiana General Assembly had made the permit free of charge. The policy reasoning behind these moves in consecutive years is grounded in the mantra of “why should people have to pay for something that is a constitutional right?”
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It was one of countless interviews given by a gaggle of presidential candidates that could have gone largely unnoticed. How does describing a specific sect of GOP voters as “listless vessels” compare to one of the greatest hits of the 2016 campaign, “a basket of deplorables?”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, speaking to the Florida Standard last week, specifically said this: “If all we are is listless vessels that’s just supposed to follow, you know, whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement.”
Now, I’m no fan of his politics, but in that moment, he was absolutely correct. The Trump campaign and others have jumped on the comment as synonymous with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 insult. The faux outrage about the term, once again, conveniently overshadows the important part: cults of personality don’t make for successful governing philosophies.
There were two polls released last week that back up the sad truth of the controversial comment, though data rarely moves any listless vessel.
First, AP/NORC released a poll that showed many things, but none more important than one particularly hard truth. 53% of Americans are saying they “definitely won’t” vote for Donald Trump next year, and another 11% say they “probably won’t” vote for him either.
Uh, that’s 64% of Americans who aren’t listless. They aren’t aimlessly floating along waiting for the next absurdity. Their vessel has docked, they have disembarked, and have moved on. It’s that other 36% that almost all of the GOP is courting with their campaigns.
Second, in a CBS/YouGov poll, disturbing data showed how listless the bulk of that deep minority has become.
Among Trump voters, the question was asked who is it that you “feel what they tell you is true?” The answers here are stunning.
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What a difference a year makes in the American debate on abortion. In the summer of 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs ruling, ending the nearly half a century old precedent established by Roe v. Wade that protected a woman’s right to choose.
That ruling empowered states to establish their own laws on the matter. Many did. None were faster than Indiana. Dobbs was issued on June 24, 2022, forty-two days later on August 5, Indiana passed a near total abortion ban.
Every other state in the region is now moving in the opposite direction.
Michigan started it. Immediately after the Dobbs ruling, two things happened to Indiana’s north. First, a court blocked that state’s 1931 abortion law which became effective briefly last summer. Next, more than 750,000 voters signed a petition to have abortion rights enshrined in the state’s constitution. It appeared on the ballot last November and was approved on a 57-43 vote. The issue contributed to a Democratic sweep of state politics there. In April, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a law repealing the 1931 law entirely.
In Wisconsin, Dobbs reactivated a law that made abortion illegal that was passed in 1849. No that is not a typo. The law there was only used for prosecution seventeen times between its passage and the Roe ruling in 1973, resulting in only five convictions. But the Dobbs ruling made that law effective again, so, as expected, lawsuits there were understandably initiated to challenge it. As a result, the state supreme court and its political makeup became the arena for the fight.
A vacancy was created by a retirement on the Wisconsin court requiring a statewide election there in April. The court had been controlled by conservatives 4-3, but the retirement made the ideological split even, and the election quickly became a proxy vote on abortion and the lawsuit over the 1849 law. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz, the liberal candidate, won by eleven points, flipping the court. The margin of victory is the real shocker here. Wisconsin is known for their evenly split electorate, but apparently not so much when the issue is abortion.
Even Kentucky has been a surprise. The Bluegrass State also passed a law in 2019, modeled after the Mississippi law that was the subject of the Dobbs ruling, and became effective last year. But the Republican legislature attempted to make their statutory total-ban even more safe by adding language to their state constitution to clarify that it did not protect abortion rights. That constitutional amendment was surprisingly defeated in November, 52-47 percent.
Which brings me to Ohio.
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There is something that has been bothering me more as I have gotten older. No, it’s not typical old man stuff like electric scooters on the sidewalks, or those mobile bass machines disguised as cars that vibrate everything within fifty yards of them. And I no longer keep a lawn that gives me a chance to yell at the neighborhood kids to get the hell off of it.
This one is important, and come to find out, it matters to plenty of people.
About five years ago, during an innocent what-are-we-having-for-dinner conversation with my wife, I became aware of the most disturbing thing. She believes chili, the food, the American staple, has a season. What!? Does that mean there is an off-season? Come to find out, in my house, after being married for several years, the apparent ridiculous answer to that ridiculous question is “yes.”
Since becoming aware of her oppressive perspective, I have noticed a tension, an unexplainable sadness in the household every year. It begins in mid-spring and lasts until September. Until she confessed to covertly enforcing a season I didn’t know existed, I couldn’t identify the problem.
It is a disagreement that is immune to my renowned Aristotelian talent of persuasiveness.
So, I decided to take my plight to the streets. Surely, I could find people to back me up here. I asked the question, “Is there a chili season?” on a couple of the social platforms, and the answers surprised me.
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If the average American were to learn about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training through its discussion in the political arena alone, suspicion of it should be expected, and hostility toward it would be understandable. Duh. That applies to just about everything these days.
On July 21st, Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Jacksonville, Florida to object to that state’s newly approved standards for how black history is taught. The new instruction will teach "how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."
The objection to the “benefit” of slavery in the standard led to Gov. Ron DeSantis initially claiming it was the Florida Department of Education who wrote it, not him. But that only lasted for a moment before he realized there was an opportunity for a fight here. DeSantis quickly pivoted to defend the controversial language and attack anyone who didn’t like it.
That predictable, and disgusting position got more complicated when the highest profile, black, Republican elected officials sided with Harris. Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, the state’s only black member of congress, objected first, followed by other black members of the House, Rep. John James of Michigan and Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas. Even presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, joined the objectors.
Again, duh. The language in the Florida standards is racist. Plain and simple. It is so clearly racist it is silly to even debate it. Delete it. Apologize for it. Learn from it. Move on.
The Florida DOE could use some training in DEI.
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“Barbie” had one hell of a weekend! I’ve never seen so many groups of women out and about, proudly wearing similar pink dresses. What normally would have been wardrobe warfare, was the happiest weekend in America. It was as if Easter, Prom, and an abundance of weddings with way too many bridemaids were all occurring simultaneously.
The event the movie’s opening created was fun, just like the doll, its accessories, its comics, and other small scale cinema events have been for generations. And it’s make-believe. America truly loves its make-believe.
Even larger groups of Americans are living in a land of make-believe that isn’t fun at all. They are pretending it is, but the story will end badly.
Donald Trump is running away with the Republican nomination for president in 2024. That’s real. His supporters’ fantasy is that somehow their preferred candidate’s legal woes will somehow resolve so that he can actually be elected and hold office for a second time.
That is a fantasy less believable than the land of Barbie.
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On November 30, 1996, Ole Miss lost to Mississippi State, 17-0, in one of the oldest football rivalry games in America. It was a home game for Ole Miss, in Oxford, in a game known as the Egg Bowl. The chancellor of Ole Miss at the time, Robert Khayat, went to visit the team’s coaching staff the Sunday morning after that loss to offer some encouragement.
Khayat writes in his book, “Education of a Lifetime,” about noticing that the coaching staff was “morose” about the situation that morning, with the head coach offering to the chancellor that the team “can’t recruit against the confederate flag.” The coach was taking issue with the student body’s tradition of waving the confederate flag in the stands at games, and that the racist stigma attached to it was making it difficult to attract top talent to the school and team. Yep, I imagine it would, coach.
Who was that coach? Tommy Tuberville. Yes, the same man who is now U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville, a now retired football coach and novice politician from Alabama.
Why would an Indiana editorial writer take the time and space to share that story? Hang with me for a moment.
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What do people want, really want, from social media platforms? I know what many people say they want, but as is often the case with the content on any given platform, people are often unreliable.
Meta’s launch of “Threads” late last week has served as the latest disruption to the world of social media that, if nothing else, is forcing a conversation that can seem complicated but often isn’t.
I am and always have been a true believer in markets. Wherever there can be a market, I hope there is one. When a platform designed to compete with Twitter is launched, it makes me feel like a market exists in the world of social media. If it feels like a market, then it must be one, right?
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The U.S. Supreme Court really outdid themselves at the end of their session this year. For the top cadre of the American judicial branch, one experiencing its lowest level of public confidence in the history of measuring it, one would think they would try harder. And now that the ink is dry on some of the court’s lowlights from last week, the white folks celebrating them should be sober enough to give these awful rulings a little thought.
It is always fascinating to see the reactions to SCOTUS rulings. They often say more about the celebrators than they do about the decisions, and this week is a prime example. In the expected decisions ending affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Americans rejoicing were largely white, largely male, and largely Republican. It will take some time, but time will show how that bunch is largely wrong.
Segments of our culture continue to display infinite smallness, and those supporting the decisions in Students for Fair Admissions (“SFFA”) v Harvard/UNC-Chapel Hill, do so by claiming these are victories for fairness. “Merit-based” standards for college admission is the only way for the process to truly be fair, right? The problem with this shallow perspective primarily is its smallness.
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The great Chicago philosopher of the 1980’s, Ferris Bueller, said: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
While reading the new book, “From Property to Partner: Women’s Progress and Political Resistance,” I found myself thinking about Bueller’s famous quote. No, the book is not about skipping school, but the value it provides to the largest part of the current political moment America is experiencing is context. The challenges women face in 2023 America should not be viewed in isolation, but as a part of an important journey, we would all be better off understanding.
Sheila Suess Kennedy and Morton Marcus are prolific Hoosier writers. I generally read whatever they write. Their differing skill sets and perspectives is what makes this collaboration particularly interesting to me.
Kennedy is an attorney, Emerita Professor of Law and Public Policy at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Indianapolis, and a former Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU. Her daily blog at www.sheilakennedy.net on policy, culture and politics is one of the city’s most read.
Marcus is an economist and former director of the Indiana Business Research Center at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. He currently co-hosts a popular podcast, “Who Gets What?”, and writes a long-running column on economic issues concerning Indiana and the nation.
I’m a feminist. Sometimes that is uncomfortable or awkward for men to proclaim or even admit. But I have long held the belief that the collective prosperity of any community or culture depends on the liberation and equity of each demographic component in it. This book does an excellent job of explaining the differences between “liberation” and “equity” regarding women, but also providing the context America needs to understand what that means for everyone.
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If ever there was a day designated for giving and receiving good advice, it would seem Father’s Day is the day. I’m not sentimental about much anymore, and even though I refer to myself as “dad” more often than I use my actual name, the holiday is among the things I also don’t elevate over any other Sunday.
Indianapolis’s own Kurt Vonnegut, an advice-giver of historic importance famously gave advice in a commencement speech at Lehigh University in 2004. He said when things are going well, we should make the commitment to notice it. The famous author’s uncle used to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
I’ve had some fantastic Father’s Days for my nearly three decades as an official honoree, celebrating all of them in Indy. I took my writing hero’s advice to heart yesterday and made a point to notice it.
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I often wonder where idioms like “a bridge too far” originate. This phrase comes from the title of the 1974 book of the same name, by Cornelius Ryan. The book tells the story of Operation Market Garden, the Allies’ plan of attack to conquer several bridges in the Netherlands in September of 1944. The goal was to establish a route over the Rhine River for an invasion into Germany.
The Allies never captured that last bridge at Arnhem, and the mission ultimately failed.
For Americans who possess apparently unrelenting fealty to former President Donald Trump, the bridges in front of them are also numerous. Trump’s influence, his top position in Republican party politics, relies on a constituency that will seemingly follow him anywhere.
Trump famously said in January of 2016, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"
In June of 2023, the zombies who support him would apparently applaud such a thing. What would the cadre of elected officials, who desperately want this crowd of voters to see them synonymously with the indicted former president, do? They might claim the NYPD is simply an arm of the evil Democrat Party, or even the sinister Biden campaign, and that arresting their dear leader for murder is merely a political stunt.
It sounds ridiculous, but it isn’t. The federal indictment that was released last week, and the arraignment scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, challenges the seriousness of murder. What!? How could an editorial writer write something so offensive? Trump just “mishandled” some paper! All politicians do it!
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I often forget that Pride celebrations began and continue to be protests. How could I forget? There are two main reasons. First, the rights being fought for aren’t specifically mine, and second, the celebrations are so wonderful, so happy, so fun, it is a protest like no other.
But it is still a protest. I am filled with gratitude for it every year and am lucky to have found a great volunteer opportunity so I can participate this year, but we are gathering, celebrating and protesting for equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community. Equal rights for my neighbors, my friends, my colleagues…you know, Americans.
The tables have dramatically turned in 2023 though! The right is madder than hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore! Yawn.
Lately, boycotts against Bud Light and Target have made some noise. But when the right started boycotting a place for being too “woke” that I had been protesting for being the opposite, I had to start doing some research.
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Let’s get straight to the point. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita is a disgraceful public servant. The seven-member Indiana Medical Licensing Board is disgraceful too. There. Now that we have established those two sad truths, let me share with you the receipts.
Rokita used the administrative board last week as a tool to retroactively cover for his thoughtless, inaccurate and slanderous rant given on Fox News on July 13, 2022. I have no problem with Americans who simply oppose abortion. However, I have become exhausted with those who use their governmental authority for retribution against people who don’t.
The saga came to an apparent conclusion at the board’s marathon hearing on May 25th. I watched and listened to most of the 14-hour proceeding primarily because I was waiting for the big reveal, the aha! moment coming from the clearly outmatched lawyers representing the AG.
It never came.
The clear act, the violation of law that Dr. Caitlin Bernard committed was never established. This second-rate board repeatedly showed its ignorance of law and did not seem driven to establish the violation. By the time the proceeding had reached decision time, it was clear the board just wanted to give the AG’s team something to justify the inordinate amount of time, effort and expense they had wasted trying to punish the doctor. So, they did.
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Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Secretary of the Treasury said, “A national debt, if it is not excessive, to us will be a national blessing.” The whole “if it is not excessive” part has always been important, but never more important than it is today.
The musical, “Hamilton,” doesn’t really do much on this other than a brief line from the song, “My Shot.” Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote and portrayed young Alexander rapping: “But Jesus, between all the bleedin’ and fightin’ I’ve been readin’ and writin’…we need to handle our financial situation…”
Assuming debt and handling it has always been part of our fabric. We began accumulating it before our constitution was ratified. Debts incurred during the Revolutionary War period totaled a little over $75 million. President Andrew Jackson paid off the original national debt in 1835 because he didn’t trust the paper money we issued. It was the only time it happened. Then we went to war with Mexico in 1846, and the current debt began.
The Department of the Treasury is a great resource of the debt’s history. That is if one is inclined to understand what our obligations actually are. Reading through it feels like a highlight reel of what makes America what it is today.
Our nation was founded on many things. Some of them are great sources of pride: independence, representative government, religious freedom, etc. Others are not, primarily, slavery and misogyny. Deficit spending, operating on debt, and all of the things that come with it has pros and cons, but carrying debt at all was a choice we made at the beginning.
Honoring our debts is as much about who we are as allowing the debt to exist is in the first place.
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“Where do I begin?” This is the quote of the week, an award I often dole out for a wide variety of reasons. Those reasons can be the source of great pride or shame. Profound meaning or comedic genius are both favorite categories of the esteemed accolade.
It is rarely awarded to someone for achieving an “own” of someone on whatever social platform. This award rises above trash talk. There is no trophy, plaque or monetary value, at least not yet. Though it is being discussed.
Todd Young, Indiana’s senior U.S. senator, gave this week’s quote in an answer to this question from CNN’s Manu Raju: “What’s the reason for you not supporting (Donald Trump’s campaign)?” Whitney Downard reported about the exchange on May 11 for the Indiana Capital Chronicle.
After giving the quote of the week, Young did find his place to begin, primarily Trump’s lack of support for Ukraine’s defense against the unprovoked Russian invasion. But in general, Young pointed out Trump’s losing record and how it was time for Republicans to support winners.
OK, that last part felt a little like Young “owning” Trump. But the original quote is still this week’s winner.
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When the unions representing movie and television writers announced they would go on strike last week, my instinct was to join their side of the fight. Hey, I write, right?
I didn’t even know what the dispute entailed, but I wanted to join my writing sisters and brothers to fight The Man. You know the one. He’s the cigar-smoking mogul, squeezing valuable art out of starving artists, so he can afford the ascots he wears and limos he rides to and from his Beverly Hills mansion every day.
I’m sad to report that some small-time writer from Indiana can’t just join the Writers Guild of America. Even though the guild has 11,000 members, joining it usually requires an invitation. It may sound like a big club, but it is exclusive. Most Americans don’t know the names of WGA members, even its most accomplished ones. But we should.
TV and film writers have always occupied a strange place in the universe. What we see on the screen are their ideas, imaginations and jokes, but they aren’t the stars. They aren’t the investors either, so their lack of fame is matched only by their lack of income. That isn’t new.
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We gather here today to commend you graduates, to praise you, to congratulate you. That’s what commencement ceremonies are designed to accomplish. Right? It’s not just an event where people wear funny caps and creepy gowns in front of family members who are pre-scolded for their inevitable outbursts of celebratory noise when their graduate’s name is called.
I have bad news though; I need to give you one final test before you come to the stage to receive your diplomas.
The six basic questions of who, what, when, where, why and how have been put to you exhaustively in your journeys of learning. Humor me on this special day and allow me to ask them of you one final time.
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In his 2012 comedy special, “In This Economy?”, Gary Gulman discusses the thrill of finding a twenty-dollar bill in an old coat when he was dead broke. He remembers the find being such a big deal, it caused him to change his weekend plans. He even added the guacamole to his bowl at Chipotle the next day.
The funny part was wondering out loud what it would take for Bill Gates to have a similar thrill. At the time, Gates was only worth a paltry $69 billion.
Thanks to the April revenue forecast, Indiana just found an extra $1.5 billion. That could buy an avalanche of guac, without a fiscal care in the world.
Of course, that would be silly. Especially for a state government that seems to find itself with extra money so often, so routinely, that the thrill is entirely gone. When the state’s books were closed at the end of the fiscal year last summer, our total surplus was $6.1 billion. The number was celebrated, that’s right, celebrated, as evidence of great Republican leadership.
Great economy? Thank the GOP. Fiscal restraint? Thank the GOP. A complete void of any creative and meaningful idea to use our fortuitous fortune? Without question, thank the GOP.
As the 2023 legislative session ends in the coming days, I want to try and inspire the Indiana General Assembly to think big. As a teacher, this exercise is becoming a general operating procedure at the end of every semester. My young college students often think big but spend too much energy trying to restrain their dreams. Part of my job, according to me, is to get them to stop doing that.
So, legislature, I will now turn my eyes on you.
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There is a primary election for mayor of Indianapolis in two weeks. To all of the candidates on the Democrat side, know this: I won’t vote for you now or ever again if you are willing to re-sign with the NRA for future conventions. Poll that question if you’d like. I’m confident Democrat voters are with me on this.
If the good-guy-with-a-gun group ever returns to their senses, we can talk. But until then, NRA, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
This is what Indiana Democrats should be saying loudly and clearly.
We have a gun violence problem in America that is easy to identify. It can’t exist without guns. The NRA of today exists for the singular purpose of defending, promoting and profiting from all things related to guns. The NRA of today is not interested in even admitting America has a problem. Until they are, I don’t want them back in Indianapolis.
So, let’s hear it mayoral candidates. Where are you on this?
The Republican supermajorities in the Indiana General Assembly have limited the capitol city’s ability to implement commonsense gun policies. But they haven’t taken control of our convention business. At least not yet.
Which leads me to the Statehouse. Wayne LaPierre, the CEO and Executive Vice President of the NRA appeared on the floor of the Indiana Senate last week so the organization could be celebrated on the eve of their convention. Senate Resolution 33 has plenty of resumé builders for the gun group and its history, mostly about things the organization used to be.
I get a kick out of the part about how “youth programs remain a cornerstone of the NRA …” I think most of us would like those “youth programs” to focus on keeping our school children alive, while in school, but they don’t. These programs are like most other industry youth programs — designed to grow the industry.
The NRA of today is synonymous with the gun violence problem. It is the face of it. It maintains that ceremonial position even after near-catastrophic LaPierre-led mismanagement and corruption engulfed its operation beginning in 2019. Republican lawmakers fear it, even though gun safety groups like Mom Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety now have larger memberships.
No matter how humiliating it must be for Republicans to kneel before the throne of someone like LaPierre, it does have some painfully calculated, though cowardly, mathematical rationality. The GOP’s extreme primary voters are irrational on guns.
But what about the Democrats?
Senate Democrats sat quietly and politely while LaPierre, was physically in their chamber being celebrated last week. My advice to the Senate Democrats would have been to put the Senate Republicans on notice that their objections to LaPierre’s presence on the floor would make news. I would have promised bullhorns, protestors, and points of personal privilege that would have been cringeworthy for the body. I would have been willing to be expelled for it.
Sound familiar?
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Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over former President Donald Trump’s first criminal trial in New York, made a $15 campaign contribution to President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on July 26, 2020. The inconsequential donation has opened the judge up to attacks of bias by those in the legal community. At least one former Manhattan prosecutor commented how it was a “bad look” when the news broke last Thursday.
That’s right. A $15 donation is a bad look, even by some on the left.
Just to keep the contribution in context, IssueOne.org reported in December of 2020 that $4.9 billion was spent on the 2020 Presidential Campaign by all campaigns and outside groups, averaging to about $22 per voter.
On Wednesday, Pro Publica reported extensively on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a pattern of unlawful failures to disclose luxury travel accommodations and financial benefits given to him by Republican megadonor, Harlan Crow. These undisclosed gifts were a little pricier than Merchan’s measly gesture. One trip alone is estimated to have been worth $500,000.
That’s right. There is a luxury trip to somewhere on Earth that is worth half a million dollars. I would have guessed for that kind of money, SpaceX could have sent Justice Thomas to Jupiter.
As Gene Autry sang: “The stars at night, are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas!” The Lone Star State’s disdain for the rule law was bigger and brighter than anywhere last week.
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“We’re not going to fix it,” was how Rep. Tim Burchett answered when asked about a potential role for congress in addressing the relentless school shootings plaguing America. The Republican, three-term U.S. House member from Tennessee gave the comment only a few hours after last Monday’s deadly shooting in Nashville.
Two attributes of the pro-gun crowd are troubling me. The first one is evidenced by Burchett’s additional comments last week when he said, “I think you got to change people’s hearts.” This defeatist tone from the gun freedom crowd is familiar. Shootings like last week are now regularly described as an act of “evil.”
As empty as “thoughts and prayers,” evil is now the insurmountable phantom used by those not interested in “fixing” any of it. It’s the GOP justification to not bother trying.
The second attribute is broader, but also easily identifiable. It’s called “hyper-individualism.” Though this permeates much of our politics and culture right now, it is most visible in the gun fights. Pro-gun Americans try to avoid saying things like “the death toll by guns is the price of freedom.” But it is this deeply expensive freedom, specifically, that supports gun manufacturer’s production of the tools being used to kill our kids.
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I have a sister named Peggy. But because “Peggy” is not a saint’s name, my grandmother objected to my parents naming her that. So, the name they gave her was “Margaret,” and only to satisfy grandma and an outdated, dumb, Catholic rule. Peggy legally changed her name when she was old enough to do it herself, and to eliminate that dumbness once and for all. Whew!
The only place she was ever called Margaret, after she was baptized, was at school. But only until they were told: her name is, was and always will be Peggy.
I would have loved to see my dad deal with a school that refused to call her Peggy. My grandma was a famously difficult woman, and while dad might have taken that naming crap from her the day my sister was born, any school that tried that would have regretted it.
House Bill 1608 is an offensive and ignorant bill rolling through the Indiana General Assembly this year. The bill is titled, “Human sexuality instruction.” It should be titled, “Prohibited human sexuality instruction,” since the primary function of the bill is to specifically prevent the teaching of something. The bill is not solving a problem in Indiana. It is borrowing a made-up problem from somewhere else and legislating a made-up epiphany to solve it.
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I’ve always been fascinated with St. Patrick’s Day, and there is no question that my interest comes from the fascination others have for it.
Being of Irish descent used to make me feel like the holiday belonged to me more than others. In Ireland, it has been a religious holiday for more than a thousand years. In America, it’s a party. Now, I may be Irish American, but I’m not religious. And if given the choice of Christianity or a party that features beer, whiskey, dressing funny and bag pipes, at this point in my life, I choose church.
When reading the History Channel’s brief chronology of the March 17th holiday, it jumps out at you: Irish immigrants weren’t always who most Americans wanted to pretend to be on that day or any other. The group’s presence is so prominent in our culture now, every day could be St. Patrick’s Day, I mean, without the parades of course.
Parades seem to be a vital part of moving groups of Americans into the mainstream. Indy Pride is the best parade of the year in Indianapolis. I imagine that is the case in many cities. It is the second Saturday in June each year. In 2023, that is June 10, so write it down. The following weekend is the city’s Juneteenth Festival. For anyone who doesn’t think these events are important, St. Patrick’s Day events are good examples of why they absolutely are.
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The competition for trust and credibility in the press are far from new. This struggle dates back to at least the late 1800’s when the “yellow journalism” battle between moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst dominated the New York media market. Both were fighting for circulation and ultimately, you know, profit.
There was a time, during my lifetime, that the evidence of conspiratorial lying by a media outlet would destroy that outlet. Readers and viewers, advertisers and investors, would flee the outlet once its credibility was obliterated. Once the media outlet no longer possesses the trust of the public, there would no longer be any value in it.
Pulitzer and Hearst both believed in this.
The First Amendment to the Constitution creates five American rights, or freedoms, that often go unquestioned in our culture. Not always, but often. Most of us grew up believing that freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and to petition the government are the primary freedoms Americans have. But the founders didn’t designate these freedoms because they were cute or profitable, they were designated because of their value to the nation.
The question of “value” is the primary one in the lawsuit of Dominion Voting Systems versus Fox News.
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At Indiana University, I teach government to students in one school, and speech to students in another. The subjects are quite different, as are the students. But the story of East Palestine, Ohio, gives me a real life lesson to teach both classes and will for years to come.
On Feb. 3, a train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed near the village in northeastern Ohio. Five cars containing vinyl chloride were among 20 derailed cars that contained hazardous substances.
East Palestine is a “village,” which features a council-manager type government in Ohio. It is near the Pennsylvania border and is 40 miles closer to Pittsburgh than Cleveland. It has a little less than 5,000 residents, is 98.5% white, has a median family income of about $40,000 per year, and its population last showed growth in the census of 1970. Thank you, Wikipedia.
On Feb. 6, three days after the derailment, Norfolk Southern performed a controlled detonation of the cars containing vinyl chloride, a chemical that is used in the manufacturing of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC pipes, and other plastics. Train company officials claim the detonation was executed “perfectly,” though footage of the dark cloud rising from it scream anything but perfect.
CNN has an excellent timeline of the events. When I worked for state government years ago, I was a regulator and communicator. Timelines like these make me want to come out of retirement.
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If you are a parent, I’m sure you have had the experience of seeing your child laying on the ground crying hysterically over what appears to be nothing. “Show me where it hurts,” is often the command that most effectively breaks through the noise. Amazingly, more often than not, nothing hurts at all.
In this week’s metaphor, that child is the Indiana General Assembly. I will try to explain it through three legislative initiatives, none of which will ease this metaphoric child’s fragile soul.
The alleged problem they are trying to solve this session is a medical diagnosis called gender dysphoria. Those who have it, and are hurting because of it, are a statistically tiny percentage of young people. How tiny? Approximately 300,000 13–17-year-olds in all of America identify as transgender, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
But grievance-based GOP legislators and their supporters have volunteered to play the victim here. To ease its pain, they are trying to ban treating youths diagnosed with gender dysphoria entirely. Yes, all forms of youth treatment will soon be illegal. That is what Senate Bill 480 does.
Just in relation to suicide, The Trevor Project found that one in five transgender or nonbinary youth attempt suicide each year, twice the rate of cisgender youth. More than half of transgender youth consider it. These numbers don’t magically improve by banning treatment for gender dysphoria. Quite the opposite.
By contrast, having just one supportive adult, including a teacher, made LGBTQ children 40% less likely to report a suicide attempt in the last year, as reported by Whitney Downard of the Indiana Capital Chronicle. Remember the supportive teacher component. It will come up again.
Doctors also say the legislature is wrong on this one, claiming that the proposed ban goes “against evidence-based care.” But this legislature quit trusting doctors regarding health care long ago.
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“You can’t handle the truth!” That’s the famous line spoken from the witness stand by Jack Nicholson in his portrayal of Colonel Nathan Jessup in the 1992 hit movie, “A Few Good Men.” That was thirty years ago, in a make-believe story of a governmental cover up, and long before the line became so true for a big chunk of Americans.
In fact, Fox News, the most watched cable “news” network in the country, believes that telling the truth to its viewers is just too big a risk to their bottom line to consider actually doing it. That became clear last week through discovery in the Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox.
Internal communications show that the channel’s biggest personalities and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, knew the now infamous “big lie” about election fraud in 2020 was not true. But within a week of the election the channel also knew its viewers didn’t want to hear the truth about it and have since spent more than two years energetically perpetuating that lie.
Mike Pence knows that the voters he needs are the same people Fox News fears. What really is the difference between voters, constituents and customers anyway? In Pence’s case, that question isn’t even sarcastic.
When the former Indiana governor became the vice president in 2017, he was far from wealthy. In June of 2021, he purchased a $1.93 million home in Carmel. He also signed a book deal reportedly worth between $3 million and $4 million. Being the VP has blessed Pence with a profitable platform, albeit, one with a rather troubling need.
Pence’s book buying customers apparently need to be lied to. And in grand fashion. And in the midst of facts and truths that engulf them. At least that’s what Pence appears to think.
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For those among you who haven’t seen the 1969 classic film, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” let me spoil the ending for you. Paul Newman and Robert Redford, in the title roles, had been chased into a shack by authorities in Bolivia after a lengthy manhunt. They were surrounded, exhausted and had nowhere else to run. Little did they know, the Bolivian Army had also gathered outside the shack where they were holed up.
The outlaws decided to come out shooting. They were sitting ducks. The end.
They had no idea how many guns awaited them in Bolivia back in 1908. In 2023 America, none of us do either.
House Bill 1177 is a bill filed in the Indiana General Assembly by the state’s leading cheerleader for guns, Rep. Jim Lucas. The bill is titled, “Handgun training for teachers,” and that efficiently describes it. It is designed to create funding and training curriculum for teachers and certain school staff who voluntarily want to carry a handgun in the school where they work.
School districts in the state already can allow teachers and staff to carry without training. Chris Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association, stated in testimony that “only a couple” of districts have implemented the policy. No safety training is currently required. Possessing the gun, and any relevant training that logically would accompany it, is voluntary. Under the legislation, all of the training offered will also be voluntary. The bill primarily establishes the authority to fund the curriculum.
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The Hoosier state was buzzing on a Saturday afternoon in February over a basketball game. The storied rivalry of Indiana and Purdue was the sports event of the weekend—in America. The top ranked Boilers were actually one-point underdogs in Bloomington on Saturday to an IU team that played a great first half and then held on for dear life in the second for a 79-74 win.
The game mattered. Like it always used to matter. And not just to the students and alums of the two schools, or even to those of us clinging to memories of one-class high school basketball. This game mattered to the entire basketball world.
As our state’s place at the top of college basketball is being reestablished, our status in Congress has become solidly nonexistent. And it will remain that way for the foreseeable future.
Who are the power brokers from Indiana in what James Madison referred to as “the first branch of government?” Insert crickets chirping here. The answer is: there aren’t any.
In a state that featured Sens. Richard Lugar and Birch Bayh, and Rep. Lee Hamilton during my lifetime, we aren’t leading anything in the legislative branch these days. Even Rep. Dan Burton was the chairman of a committee in the U.S. House.
Indiana has been apportioned nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 118th U.S. Congress. We have had as many as thirteen from 1875 to 1933, then twelve from 1933 to 1983. Our declining share of national population has cost us dearly in the “people’s House” since.
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I remember a meeting with my first financial adviser several years ago who told me that the money I had in the Indiana Public Retirement System, or INPRS, needed to be moved out of there. His perspective then was that INPRS did not give me enough control over my own money and that the government’s politics would interfere with my interests eventually, one way or another. In fact, they likely already were.
INPRS now has approximately 500,000 members, whose money the system manages. I continue to be one of them. But the politics of today has put a target on the system and my retirement, for the sole purpose of scoring political points.
Leslie Bonilla Muñiz reported for the Indiana Capital Chronicle on Jan. 26 on two legislative initiatives, Senate Bills 268 and 292 that put this on full display.
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There’s something happening in America following the upheaval of Roe that is surprising to some, and to others is completely predictable. Count me among the latter.
Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court chose poorly in its decision, Dobbs v. Mississippi, effectively overturning nearly half a century of precedent protecting a woman’s right to choose an abortion. In events across the country on Sunday, Americans celebrated the 50th anniversary of that precedent, the decision in Roe v. Wade.
Did this court and those supporting their historic infringement actually believe Americans would simply accept it and go quietly into the night? For anyone who did, it is now clear that was a horrible miscalculation.
A variety of anniversary celebrations occurred across the country over the weekend, none more impressive than the one right here in Indiana. In Indianapolis, the Hi-Fi — a music venue in Fountain Square — was the site of a new kind of rally. New to this issue. New to Indiana.
What’s new about it? I have been to plenty of marches and rallies over the last several years, and they often feature an attempt to inspire action, to motivate engagement, to begin a sustainable movement. On Sunday at the Hi-Fi, a group named Our Choice Coalition (OCC), didn’t gather to inspire those things, it gathered to announce them.
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Legislation creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a national holiday was passed forty years ago and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. It was 1983.
The late Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” dominated the music, video and dance world. The Washington Redskins, which thankfully doesn’t exist anymore, won the Super Bowl. I got my driver’s license that year, and a boom box to go with it for nights when I had my parents’ car. What a year!
Forty years later, I hate driving.
Another thing that has changed significantly in the last forty years, is Dr. King’s popularity. The thought of it hadn’t crossed my mind until I came across a tweet about Gallup polling on the topic. Last January, CNN did an extensive piece on how divided America was on its view of the civil rights leader, and initially, it was hard for me to believe.
The Gallup data has slowly but drastically changed during my fifty-five years. CNN reported that after his death in 1968: “Nearly a third (31%) say he brought (it) upon himself. Less than a majority (43%) said they were sad (38%) or angry (5%). In 2011, 94% of Americans had a favorable view of him in Gallup polling. This included an 89% favorable rating among those ages 65 and older…”
I grew up under the assumption that MLK was beloved by every American. His importance and leadership were never questioned in my house. But data shows that our nation’s more collective and uniform love of him took time to grow.
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Early in the Broadway smash, “Hamilton,” the title character meets his nemesis, Aaron Burr. The polished and savvy politician advises young Alexander to “talk less, smile more, don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for.” Republicans in the U.S. House seem to be trying to follow the Burr plan, with the obvious exception of the “talk less” part.
Last week, the American public witnessed a governmental process it hasn’t seen in 100 years: multiple elections for the Speaker of the House. During that century, the selection had routinely become an inside job. The majority party would work it out in private first and then come to the chamber and hold the ceremonial vote for the citizenry to witness. It had become such a snoozer, that most of America paid no attention at all.
Not this year. Not with this Congress. Not with this party.
The fight within the House Republican Caucus all comes down to a matter of trust. Some of the staunchest opponents of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ascension consistently claimed their lack of trust in him was the issue. What took a backseat in this process, however, was the public trust. Reeling from things like the two-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, ongoing election denialism and conspiracy theorizing, this caucus already was weak in this category. The events of the last week all but obliterated what little trust remained.
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Every new year brings with it new hope, new goals and new fears. Resolutions and predictions fly like birds and then fall like snow, and by the time February arrives, the new year isn’t new anymore. As a result, all of that nonsense from the month prior is treated like a trip to Vegas: what happens there, stays there.
2023 will be different though, won’t it? Can’t you feel it?
OK, maybe not. But let’s try for a moment so that a year from now we can look back on this week and see how good our collective foresight turned out to be. Some of my bets are admittedly long shots but “could happen.” Some are smaller fantasies, though they “should happen.” And finally, some are stone-cold, lead-pipe locks that absolutely “will happen.”
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To me, holidays are merely exercises in tradition, or traditions. Sometime in my 40s, I began to question all of them, reliving the “why” phase of my childhood for some unknown, yet admittedly irritating reason. Why do we eat turkey on Christmas? Why is everything closed?
And it isn’t just the holidays. When did we start naming unpleasant weather events, and why is it just the unpleasant ones? Shouldn’t an unusually beautiful day be named Mona Lisa or Brad Pitt?
If we must name bad weather, can we at least name it after we have gotten to know it a little? “Elliot” sounds more like a companion to share a pleasant cup of coffee with, not a horrifying monster. The most recent freeze should’ve been named “Polar Freeze-illa,” or even more simply, “Holy S*it, It’s Cold.”
Likewise, Ian sounds more like a date for a shared spot of tea. Hurricane Ian turned out to be no tea-date for anyone, though. Any new parents in Southwest Florida naming a child Ian for the foreseeable future might have some explaining to do later.
With continued disregard for tradition, we had our first holiday celebration this year over sushi at a crowded restaurant with my younger son and his girlfriend on the 23rd. One of the restaurant managers appeared to be having a crowd-induced nervous breakdown. Her anxiety made me anxious. We were seated on the corner of the packed restaurant, so I felt her breeze blow by several times even before we met our server. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had a look on her face that communicated, “if there is one more problem in here, I’m going to clear the room.”
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If I could go back a few decades and change what was a part of the public education offered to me, I exclusively regret what my schools did not teach me. I can’t recall a single thing they taught that I wish I hadn’t learned. Try it yourself. Really try to think about an actual lesson you learned that you wish had not been taught.
Dodge ball? I can’t complain about that, I was a champ at it. Choir? Loved it. That second entire year of Physics? Admittedly, I wish I could trade that for a year of Spanish, but it does help me with “Jeopardy” from time to time.
How fantastic it must be for a state legislature, in any state, to believe that one of its problems is that its schools are teaching too much. Delusions usually are fantastic, coming from the word’s root, “fantasy.” I learned things like that in school.
So, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed its “Don’t Say Gay” law earlier this year, I thought to myself, only the delusional can possibly believe that learning less will actually make us smarter. But that’s the ridiculous, fantastical premise of the new law. I’m sure the law has been a smashing success, right? After all, it is months old and there is data to show how much smarter Floridian children have become now that they can’t say “gay” in those schools, right?
Again, more fantasy.
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A few weeks back, I saw Jon Wertheim interview David Sedaris on 60 Minutes. I have plenty of friends who are big fans of the humorist, but honestly, before I saw the interview, I never gave him much thought. But after the interview aired on October 30, Sedaris just struck me as someone I would really like to talk with.
That is an unusual reaction to an interview for me. I consume an abundance of media, and a good long interview with just about anyone is usually enough of them for me. Not this time. Luckily, he’s written enough that I can likely have half of that talk just by reading his work. So, I started with his latest book, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” and I now know I have started a long project.
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The battle initiated by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita against Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indiana reproductive healthcare provider, disgracefully marches onward. Our embattled AG is wrong about this endeavor, in every possible way, but it is important not to lose track of who he is hurting, and why.
A 10-year-old girl was raped, became pregnant as a result of the rape, and understandably sought an abortion in Ohio earlier this year. Due to the restrictive abortion law already in place there, the girl sought and received medical care in Indiana from Dr. Bernard.
She is, or was, a 10-year-old girl.
The mother of the girl reported the allegation to child services in Franklin County, Ohio, before medical care was sought in Indiana. The story became known through an article by Shari Rudavsky and Rachel Fradette in the Indianapolis Star on July 1. It caught the attention of President Joe Biden during a press conference in early July announcing his administration’s initial response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion in Dobbs v. Mississippi. Biden said, “10-years-old! 10-years-old…already traumatized and forced to travel to another state.”
Yes, Mr. President, that was and continues to be sadly correct.
The following Monday, on July 11, the Attorney General in Ohio, Dave Yost, started the inglorious descent of the episode by going on Fox News and claiming that there was “not a whisper of evidence” to back up the story about the rape. Ohio congressman, Rep. Jim Jordan tweeted a story from the Washington Examiner that challenged the validity of the story, adding the comment that the account was “a lie.” The tweet was deleted soon after, and for good reason.
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In the opening scene to the classic film, “Animal House,” two young freshmen walk by the statue of Emil Faber, the founder of the fictitious Faber College. The quote on the statue’s plaque was simple: “Knowledge is good.”
Generally, we can all agree with that profound statement, can’t we? If so, it is “good” to know that Indiana ranks 48th in the nation on public health funding.
Gov. Eric Holcomb’s Public Health Commission released its extensive final report in August of this year, confirming plenty of details that were generally already known. But as is often the case with fact-gathering entities like this one, the public often looks at the sweeping document in hopes of establishing the smallest of conclusions. Yes, only two states rank lower than Indiana in funding public health.
Some conservatives could claim that having our government spend less than others is something to tout. Yes, I can hear them now. Even I am reluctant to assume that it is fundamentally bad to spend less on any governmentally-based
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program or initiative. Measuring ourselves this way is often meaningless. Sadly, that is not the case this time.
While our funding rankings certainly seem bad by themselves, the result is even worse.
Indiana is an unhealthy state. Like Emil Faber’s singular statement, it is a simple conclusion with profound meaning and consequences.
We all know people who always see a glass as half empty. It is tough to be around them and their unrelenting pessimism. Then there is the other bunch, those bright, sunshiny, “half-full” types, who always see the best in everything. They can be equally exhausting with their irritating enthusiasm.
I spend time in both places, depending on the day. But if I had to choose one team to join forever, well, that’s easy.
One of my favorite things about my favorite American holiday is simply its reason–a national day of thanks. Thanks for what and why? And thanks to whom? Not to mention how. Is pigging out and watching football synonymous with expressing gratitude? Those half-empty types might wish it were, but of course, it’s not.
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For more than a year, I have been patiently waiting for the arrival of the inevitable dilemma that Third District U.S. Rep. Jim Banks was facing. These are important days for the future of individual political careers in Washington, though it is much harder to see how the outcomes of any of these battles in the palace will be all that intriguing for Americans.
Republicans will narrowly take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the coming days, which means it is time to elect a new speaker. For Indiana, it is important to watch how the rest of the new speaker’s leadership team is assembled, primarily because of Banks.
The projected majority in the new term for the House should be good news for the GOP. Until the reality of its thinness and isolation becomes clear, that is. With the Democrats securing control of the U.S. Senate, the House Republicans can’t even get uncomfortable bills to President Joe Biden’s desk for him to veto. That severely limits the new majority’s ability to do much of anything that is meaningful given the group’s lack of interest in bipartisanship.
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As I write, votes are still being counted in many places across America. That vital process, which has defined who we are since the dawn of the republic, had a big night Tuesday. So did voters. In most places, that is. Just not in Indiana.
It would be easy to interpret that opening as just the ranting of a left-of-center voter who wanted different partisan outcomes. Yes, there were plenty of candidates I was rooting for, and some I voted for, who lost on Tuesday. I’m used to that here, living in the deep-blue population center of the state in Indianapolis, while being surrounded by a sea of red counties. Nationally, things more often ebb and flow from cycle to cycle based on the circumstances at hand, including this year.
What happened this week in Indiana is different though. It is also relatively unique. Diego Morales was elected as the Indiana Secretary of State.
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“It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man,” is my favorite quote from my all-time favorite western. “Unforgiven” is the Oscar-winning 1992 Clint Eastwood movie about William Munny, a has-been killer who learns of a $1000 bounty in Big Whiskey, Wyoming, that brings him out of retirement.
Killing is a hard thing to do, and a hard thing to live with afterward.
Our modern and public discussions about gun violence often skip this part of the trauma. Americans intuitively view resolutions of conflict, including violent conflict, through a search for winners and losers. The truth is violent conflict rarely produces a winner. Including those who pull the trigger and come out of it alive.
“Behind the Bullet” is a 2019 documentary directed by Heidi Yewman, that explores the impact America’s death-by-gun problem has on the shooter. Yewman was at Indiana University last week to discuss the making of the film and the related experiences connected to its creation. One of my classes is studying the gun safety movement right now, so the timing of her visit was fortuitous.
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Over the years, I have had the good luck of being able to visit our nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., many times.
I once regularly had pressing work-related reasons to go. Those reasons might be so-called big-deal visits to “The Hill” or crucial meetings with some powerful federal agency. Maybe it was some random conference where I would sit in the back and drink coffee and eat pastries all day, or heaven forbid, I would be one of the important speakers.
D.C. does conferences like Las Vegas does craps — which leads me to the sage advice I give for meetings in either place: keep the stakes low. If you must go to the capital, get your work done and out of the way as quickly as possible so you can get to what the city does best.
While most see Washington as a town defined by politics and power, to me it more accurately stands for history and food, and not necessarily in that order.
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I wonder every election if voters fully understand what candidates are really saying to them during campaigns. Some years, I’m sure voters get it. Lately, it seems to be getting tougher.
A couple of issues this year are making things particularly difficult: inflation and abortion.
When talking about the economy, time is money, so, let me get right to the point: The American Recovery Plan is not the reason there is global inflation.
I know of zero credible economists who will say it is. Some will say it exacerbated inflation. I wonder if those same experts would agree that the $1 billion refund Indiana Republicans just approved in August did the same thing. I know some who do.
The pandemic is the cause of the inflation that is being felt across the planet, and yes, that includes the United States. So, then why is Indiana’s senior senator, Todd Young, trying to campaign so hard against the Biden-led recovery plan while ignoring his own party’s similar play in the Statehouse?
Young doesn’t believe voters will notice, is my guess. And if I had to guess again, Young is probably right.
This election year, there is a long list of examples across the country of candidates’ strategies presuming voters won’t notice obvious contradictions and reversals. Blake Masters was a hardline supporter of the elimination of abortion rights with no exceptions when seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. Since winning the primary, and after the notorious abortion ruling this summer, he has scrubbed his campaign website of all of that.
Dr. Mehmet Oz went the other direction in his campaign for the Senate in Pennsylvania. In 2019, Oz publicly stated his support for Roe v. Wade. In 2022, as a candidate, he has slowly evolved from moderately anti-abortion to extreme on this issue as reported in August, by New Yorker Magazine. That’s quite a shift by a medical doctor. The desire for power in the U.S. Senate is apparently too great for his medical philosophy to withstand.
What Young, Masters and Oz share in common is that these are examples of things that make them unreliable. Again, it seems they don’t think voters will notice or care or both.
Are they wrong?
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The Judicial Branch of government is certainly on a roll. It started with “The Leak” in May of what turned out to be the official landmark ruling in July of Dobbs v. Mississippi.
You know the one. It is the one that turned back the clock on women’s healthcare rights by nearly half a century. The justices voting in favor of Dobbs, had all tap-danced through their Senate confirmations to the court with statements of their commitment to “settled law” in this arena. Those lies were still hanging in the air as they defiantly reversed themselves — as expected.
That expectation matters more than some might immediately think. For the bulk of American history, the credibility of the U.S. Supreme Court has been high enough for the nation’s citizenry to go along with whatever it decides. This lopsided court is testing us, and it isn’t only about abortion.
The court began hearing cases this session on Oct. 3, and they are hearing some doozies. And don’t forget, SCOTUS gets to choose what it hears.
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Indiana GOP chairman Kyle Hupfer has a real problem on his hands. Wait a minute, that’s not accurate. Hupfer’s hands are full of them.
Really? How much trouble could the Republican chairman have in a state like Indiana? His party controls all of state government. Being in charge doesn’t sound like any trouble at all.
Except it doesn’t appear the state’s top two elected Republicans are in charge of the party anymore.
The obvious problems started a few weeks back when the GOP candidate for Secretary of State, Diego Morales, showed that he could not accurately and openly discuss his military service. Couple this problem with the rest of his already unflattering work history, and Morales is responsible for a red state full of faces red with embarrassment. And that was before Friday’s news dropped.
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When I first heard about Andy Borowitz’s new book, “Profiles in Ignorance,” I knew it was moving to the top of my must-read stack. Then I found out he was reading the Audible version himself, and so I am now that guy walking down the street who spontaneously bursts into laughter at seemingly nothing.
As anyone who is a Borowitz fan, yes, the book is hilarious. Unless you consider yourself a “Reagan Republican,” or if you are merely willing to admit that you know Dan Quayle, that is.
The book is a discussion of the three stages of ignorance: ridicule, acceptance, and celebration. But more importantly, Borowitz appears to be attempting to answer the question of why so many ignorant people are attracted to elected office in America. I’m not quite halfway done with it, so I hope to report back if he actually finds an answer.
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In the Secretary of State race, the commitment to service matters. I find myself teaching this simple lesson with more enthusiasm lately: elected positions in American government exist as opportunities to serve. “Yea, yea, old man, we know that” is often the expression I see on the faces of my students when I start. Occasionally, one of them might actually say it out loud.
Students are usually reluctant to school the teacher that way. Good thing. Mainly because this is not that simple anymore.
When I was a young state employee and was learning my way around the Indiana Government Center, I recall wondering why anyone would want to be the Indiana Secretary of State. To me, especially way back in the mid-1990’s, and before my thirtieth birthday, I couldn’t think of anything more boring than the “chartering of new businesses,” or the “commissioning of notaries public.” Forget about the oversight of state elections too. That would be like wanting to be a referee in the NFL. No one ever celebrates the lowly football referee, and I feel strongly about this, no one ever should.
In 2022, hiring a new secretary of state is upon Indiana voters, and the historically business-as-usual decision is anything but that. Oversight of elections is just about as serious and under threat as it has been since the post-Civil War era. The once perfunctory role has become a battleground for the commitment to honestly count the votes and abide by the honest results.
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For many Americans, including me, the attraction to the exhausting news surrounding Great Britain’s royal family is dumbfounding. The mere existence of a “royal” family is so antithetical to my view of our culture, I usually open my participation in any conversation about the Windsor’s with an eye roll, not a bow.
Elizabeth II’s passing last week led to Charles III’s ascension to the throne, a change that has not occurred since February 6, 1952.
The throne is inherited. So is Indiana’s budget surplus.
That’s just a silly comparison, right? Not to me it isn’t. In August, at the prodding of Gov. Eric Holcomb, the Indiana General Assembly approved a program to send $1 billion of what is approximately a $6 billion surplus back to Hoosiers. It is a move that most economists believe would only exacerbate the thing it was trying to mitigate — inflation. I appreciate the effort, though my preference would be to either refund it all or do something unquestionably good with it.
There is no good reason to simply continue keeping it. Unless one is interested in the inheritance.
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Stephen King’s 1982 novella, “The Body,” was adapted into the award-winning, 1986 film, “Stand by Me.” There are significant differences between the two versions of the story, but both are primarily about friendship. It is a tale about Gordie LaChance, his friend, Chris Chambers, and two other 12-year-old friends, who go on a journey to find the dead body of a missing boy near Castle Rock, Oregon. It was Labor Day Weekend in 1959.
Think of the countless times in your life when a friend helped you choose to do the right thing when your instinct was to do something else. Those friends might have been a sibling, a coach, or a teacher, or maybe just another 12-year-old who was growing up with you. Maybe you’ve experienced them all. If you’re living well, there will be more.
Indiana’s Attorney General, Todd Rokita, could use a good friend these days. He seems to be on a streak of bad decisions that a trusted and caring adviser could have been able to prevent him from making. I have asked around a little, and I don’t know that he has such a person in his life right now. If he does, that person needs to step it up a little.
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Lawlessness is being romanticized in real-life America these days. The subtleties of this progression are causing a bewilderment in people who once took pride in their simple understanding of right and wrong. A cleansing reset of that understanding is in desperate need. Maybe it will help if we try an exercise in objective contextualizing.
In the not-too-distant past, a subpoena had unwavering meaning and authority. If one was issued by any American entity with authority to issue one, the citizen who received it, appeared in front of that entity. “Subpoena” is an old word with old meaning, from Middle English back to Latin, translating to “under penalty.” The Trump years have turned what once was an inarguable writ to appear into the beginning of an exhaustive and litigious episode of resistance.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is the most recent character in lawlessness. And of course, why not, Lindsey Graham? He is only the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee of what once was considered the most deliberative body in the world. Now, he is refusing to comply with a subpoena issued in Georgia, with which he is obviously required to comply. And why? Did Graham break a law, or is he just unwilling to honestly answer questions about someone else who likely did? Either way, this lawlessness is being tolerated by the public for some sad reason.
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It’s too hard for too many to love the first day of school.
I am old enough to have forgotten whether I loved the first day of school when I was a young student or not. I might have been too cool for that then, but clearly, I have changed.
There is no question that I love it now. I was with some friends on Sunday night this week and one of them asked, “do you have to teach tomorrow?” I corrected her quickly and said, “I get to teach tomorrow.”
Over the years, especially lately, I have been reading about the way we pay, or more accurately, underpay our K-12 teachers a competitive wage in Indiana. Yes, that is undeniably true. Lucky for me, I teach at a university. That was sarcastic. I’m not getting rich either.
I am lucky though. I am in a financial position that allows me to choose to do what I love. My kids are grown and out of the house, and while they still don’t reach for the check at dinner, neither of them asks me for money anymore either. My plan is to start softening them up for that beautiful day when I start asking them.
Mister Rogers once said, “the most important people in a child’s life are that child’s parents and teachers. That means parents and teachers are the most important people in the world.” I agreed with that before I became a teacher. Just like I knew I wanted to be a father, my drive to teach just seemed instinctual too. It wasn’t like I wanted to become a movie star or sing at Carnegie Hall. It wasn’t some pipe dream. Turns out, becoming a teacher these days is not the lofty goal it should be.
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It’s time to have a heart-to-heart talk about truth, lies, facts, and fiction. A whole new season of make-it-up-as-Trump-goes began last week. So, I felt obligated to share some research about how bad many of our countrymen, and yes, they are mostly men, have gotten in recognizing nonsense when it lands on them.
First, a short list of facts:
On Monday, August 8, the FBI executed a search warrant at the home of former President Donald Trump. The warrant was issued by a federal magistrate in Florida, who had the legal authority to do so, after a determination was made that probable cause existed that a crime was being committed on the property. The FBI seized and removed several sets of documents. Many of these documents were defined as confidential, classified, and, or top secret. Regardless of these labels, many of the documents were not authorized to be there and were being sought by the National Archives and Records Administration, which had been trying to gather them for months.
Whew. Again, those are facts. These are not all of the facts, but for simplicity’s sake, the paragraph above is entirely factual. These facts, as is the case with all facts, should not be confused with truths. Truth is more akin to what one believes.
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On Friday night, while the Indiana General Assembly was turning back the clock on human rights, I was at the Egyptian Room of the Old National Center to see a comedy show. With all of the tragically unfunny things going on for the last few weeks under the dome a few blocks away, the timing of the Marc Maron tickets I bought months earlier were a welcome reprieve.
Right around the time the show was ending, the legislature was passing Indiana’s new abortion ban. Shortly after I got home, Gov. Eric Holcomb was signing it into law. Early the next day, Eli Lilly and Company issued a statement informing the state of its negative view of it.
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“I am here today to represent Jesus,” was the most baffling utterance I heard last Thursday night. It was Senator Mike Gaskill’s opening comment made on the floor of the Indiana Senate during the debate on an amendment to a proposed new abortion law. Gaskill is a Republican, representing Senate District 26, which covers portions of Delaware, Madison and Henry counties in central Indiana.
To hear him tell it, Jesus is a constituent. Yes, that Jesus. And apparently, according to Gaskill, his lord, savior, and constituent does not believe there should be an exception to the proposed new abortion prohibition for survivors of rape and incest. Gaskill voted that way shortly after his comments, again, on behalf of an intolerant son of the Father.
I’m no biblical scholar, but that surprises me more than the news that Jesus lives nearby.
The Statehouse has become the capital of chaos these days. It worries me. But it worries me more when I imagine how few Hoosiers recognize how deeply rooted the chaos has become.
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I couldn’t get the song out of my head on Monday at the Statehouse. I stood in line for an hour to get into the building to attend a rally in support of women’s reproductive rights. My old lobbyist badge that used to allow me to skip those lines expired long ago, so there I waited with all the other angry people.
I watched throngs of them, of every kind, stand in line to get into the building. Many of them never got in. But I did, even though I was almost a half an hour late for the rally I was there to attend. And after I listened to the last few of the speeches, I walked out of the east doorway of the building. There were a couple of thousand people out there, spilling out onto Capitol Avenue and Market Street, leading the police to close the block to traffic.
As the song goes, “oh lord.”
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It’s not a surprise to those of us who have been watching it grow, stagnate, and then grow some more. But when the State of Indiana closed out its books for the fiscal year last week, the news about it still should have made more of an impression on Hoosiers than it did.
Indiana ended the year with $6.1 billion in reserves.
That news should jolt taxpayers. But it doesn’t. I don’t know why it doesn’t. But I will keep trying to make sense of it until the day Hoosiers clearly understand the terrible news.
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I was speeding through Georgia this past Sunday and I couldn’t help looking for political billboards. Then I saw it. A “Now Hiring” billboard for state troopers, with instructions to apply at gatrooper.com. As an occasional government watchdog, I was fascinated by this whole new strategy for filling one of any state government’s toughest jobs.
Of course, after concluding that Georgia is experiencing a state trooper shortage, I drove faster. Why not, right?
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Last Thursday, as reported by Casey Smith of the Indiana Capital Chronicle, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said he’ll sign any abortion-restricting measures that make it to his desk during the upcoming special legislative session. “I don’t have any red lines right now,” the governor said.
That is a remarkable place for him to be in this first post-Roe summer. It’s remarkable in that he has abdicated his leadership on the issue before the real part of the initial debate has even started. On the largest public policy decision during his two terms, he is actively taking a pass.
A red line, as defined by Cambridge Dictionary is “a limit beyond which someone’s behavior is no longer acceptable.” It makes me wonder, for only unnecessary reasons apparently, what the governor’s red lines might be. I am even more curious about when he will reveal and fight for them. Especially if now is not the time.
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I was lucky to be able to see Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, testify recently before the January 6 Committee. It was a fascinating story Bowers told about the pressure he got from then-President Donald Trump to participate in a coup to flip the electoral votes of Arizona from President-elect Joe Biden to Trump. He successfully resisted that pressure, using his commitment to his oath of office and his faith as the sources of his needed strength.
“It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired …” Bowers testified. And while that specific language made me cringe a little, as I learned more about him and his faith in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I thought I understood him better.
That understanding was short-lived.
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Thursday, June 23, 2022, is one of those days on Capitol Hill that will appear on history tests years from now. It was gun day on the hill, and two of the three branches of government seemed to be passing each other on Constitution Avenue going in different directions.
In the morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case challenging a 109-year-old New York state law that required a person to show “proper cause” to receive a permit to carry a gun outside of the home. The six conservative members of the court voted to strike down the law, while all three of the liberal justices dissented. The majority opinion was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, stating that the concern for public safety isn’t enough to justify new gun controls, according to NBC News. I guess 109-years-old is the new, “new.”
Links and Resources Mentioned
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-says-second-amendment-guarantees-right-carry-guns-public-rcna17721
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The third of seven expected hearings of the January 6 Committee was held on Thursday. Just like the two before it, there were plenty of “wow” moments. It is also clear there are plenty more wows to come.
Here in Indiana, we know former Vice President, former Indiana governor, former congressman, and former radio personality, Mike Pence better than most. I have written more about him than anybody ever should have, though I continue to be deeply thankful someone wrote more, specifically Tom LoBianco, in his book about Pence, “Piety and Power.” It appears he has a few more chapters to add.
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Americans addicted to belief in “the big lie,” and the unconditional defense of those responsible for all of its components, are in a zombie fog.
The January 6 Committee began telling the story of its work Thursday night. By the time it took its first break, an hour into the opening hearing, I was nauseous. This was not a protest or a riot. There is no serious “counter-narrative” available for the offering. It is clear from the volume of new information presented in the first two hours of the committee hearings, a story in which Americans have already received mounds of data, that this is big enough to justify the all networks, prime-time display. It is now clear that it is far bigger.
It is irrefutable documentation of history.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN 3rd District) gave an utterly shameful and embarrassing interview to Kaitlin Lange of the Indianapolis Star that was published a couple of hours before the start of Thursday night’s hearing. “There’s never been a committee like this…completely partisan, one-sided without the voice of the minority to ask questions that reflect our point of view, our side of the aisle,” he said. That statement relies on his assumption that Americans, Hoosiers, won’t remember how the January 6 Committee, in its present form, came to exist.
He’s feeding brains to zombies.
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In the last two weeks, I have heard two things regarding the state of our union that disturb me more than anything.
The first was a statement made on the morning news early last week, after the massacre in Buffalo, but before the one in Uvalde. A reporter, not a commentator, but a reporter, matter-of-factly reported on the gun policy debate that, “the Senate is an outlier on this issue.” Think about how ridiculous that statement is, and then factor in the casual nature in which it was said on national television.
This week, after the Uvalde massacre, but before the one in Tulsa, I had heard the American government described as being “minoritarian” in nature. In other words, the minority is ruling right now–at least in the context of gun policy.
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One anti-problem-solving sentiment used by Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio this week is an old one. It goes like this: “There is no law that we could pass that would have prevented that shooting.” Now, no intelligent person thinks there is some magical, singular solution that inconveniences no one. But that sentiment is the saddest possible excuse for inaction.
I pray for all the people who use it.
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It appears Indiana’s leaders don’t want to get caught trying on this one. It is another intolerable fiscal choice, given the one elephant in Indiana’s fiscal room: an oversized and outrageous budget surplus. That surplus, which has hovered around $2 billion for more than a decade, has continued to grow recently, and has the potential to reach $6 billion before the fiscal year ends next summer. It has become the most important part of the budget to Indiana Republicans. Whether a gas tax holiday is a political gimmick or not, in Indiana we can afford that gimmick several times over.
But the leaders here are afraid they might get caught trying to help. If they do, what will people expect next?
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I regularly tell my students these days, just like I used to regularly tell my clients, if you have an idea for a policy change in America, be prepared to successfully make your case purely on economic terms. In other words, trying to convince policymakers the change that is being proposed is simply the right thing to do usually won’t get the effort very far. Proponents for change need to show them the money.
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The news was breaking about the leaked, draft opinion that was circulating at the U.S. Supreme Court. Early reports on the screen claimed this leaked draft would “overturn” the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. We didn’t know much about this draft opinion until later, but based on the initial news, it wasn’t immediately all that surprising to me. It was what I expected out of this court. However, after the details became more clear, the draft opinion is not merely a modification of the landmark case, or even a new definition of when “life” officially becomes “life.” No, this is a reversal, a gutting, an annihilation of a federally protected right that has been in place for nearly half a century. And apparently, it has the support of the five-justice majority needed to issue it.
This is not what I expected.
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I have felt for the longest time that America has begun to feel like a never-ending reenactment of Monty Python’s classic sketch, “The Argument Clinic.” The premise of the 1970 sketch is that there might actually be people who are simply looking for an argument and are willing to pay a pro to deliver one. Michael Palin and John Cleese expertly show how frustrating a so-called argument can be when contradiction is its only feature. First of all, the sketch is hilarious, but importantly today, it foreshadowed social media and contemporary politics fifty years ahead of its time. Connect with Michael Leppert
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Imagine being the person in charge of recruiting a business to locate in the state. The shortlist of what Indiana wants from them includes modern, high-paying jobs for people who need them, the local investment a new headquarters or manufacturing facility requires, and of course, the tax revenue the business will create. So, what do virtually all new business recruits want from Indiana in return?
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On Thursday, the Republican National Committee voted unanimously to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates. As reported by Reuters, RNC’s chairperson, Ronna McDaniel said in a statement, “We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people.”
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So Cold the River is a real Hoosier horror. The book was another Koryta classic I discovered. It was only a New York Times Best Seller more than a decade ago, who knew? But the story is not just loosely connected to some random historic hotel that serves as some random thriller’s setting. In many ways the book is about the French Lick Valley and its history, told through the vehicle of a creepy and believable ghost story. If you have spent much time there, as I have, you will likely agree that the two historic hotels and all that surrounds them is an area crying out for a ghoulish tale like this one to be told. Koryta was the exact right person to tell it.
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All jokes are offensive to someone, especially in the spit zone. The one thing that inevitably comes with great comedy is hurt feelings. It is sad but true. And it’s only getting sadder. Of course, this leads to Chris Rock.
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The story that is told in the Oscar-nominated movie, “Belfast,” is filled with wonder. It was for me anyway. Primarily because writer/director Kenneth Branagh masterfully connected me with nine-year-old “Buddy,” a little boy who reminds me of me.
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There are two primary things that Russian President Vladimir Putin underestimated when he gave the order to invade Ukraine three weeks ago. The first one was the surprising strength and commitment to fight of the Ukraine army and its people. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has led a resistance that is truly inspirational.
This second thing almost certainly surprised Putin too.
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With the passage of House Bill 1296 by the Indiana General Assembly this week, which creates a “permitless” or “constitutional” carry framework for handguns in the state, Hoosiers have basically declared all guys “good.” It’s sort of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for anyone in the state who would otherwise be allowed to carry a gun if licensing still existed. What I mean by that is that this bill slightly refines what state law will be in determining who can legally carry a gun, but eliminates the state’s determination that any of those details are actually true. Why shouldn’t we just assume that every eighteen-year-old is entirely compliant with the 34-page bill that defines his or her compliance?
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It has taken a week or two, but Americans have finally found a grievance we can all share together. Only the smallest, most disturbed group among us is having trouble rooting for the people of Ukraine in what appears to be a hopeless defense of their home.
Ask anyone around why Russia invaded their peaceful and sovereign neighbor–it is unlikely you will get a justifiable answer. Not around here. Not around any democratic nation on the planet.
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The last tweet I read before I turned it off to write this was simply a message released from former President Donald Trump. It read: “If I were in office, this deadly Ukraine situation would never have happened!”
As ridiculous as that statement is, it is not an unusual slice of the Twitter feed provided by Rep. Jim Banks, who technically represents Indiana’s 3rd District in the U.S. House.
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Getting straight to the point, Donald Trump will never be president again. None of his family will ever become president. And finally, no one from his cabinet or inner circle will ever become president either.
There. Now that we have that out of the way, I will provide the latest reasons why.
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I vividly remember the early summer of 2020, when the enormity of the pandemic really started to sink in. The plentiful restaurants in my neighborhood were trying to hold on by transforming into carryout-only kitchens. Staffing at all of these places plummeted, like many other businesses did at the time. I remember coming to the realization that when this mess was over, we were likely going to have far fewer restaurants, far higher prices at those restaurants, or possibly both.
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I have never listened to Joe Rogan’s podcast and probably never will. I didn’t understand why it was popular in the first place, because I had seen his comedy, and didn’t think it was funny. There are plenty of people who are upset or uncomfortable with the book, “Maus,” in a school district in Tennessee. So, what is the difference between these stories and an objection to a book being carried by my public library, or being taught in my local public school?
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I’m counting on the U.S. Senate Republicans to do something important. Just be yourselves.
President Joe Biden is preparing to make his first nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Steven Breyer announced his plan to retire from the court on Wednesday which created the vacancy on the nine-person panel.
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I’ve written it before, so to my loyal following, I apologize for how familiar this mantra of mine may sound. However, given the recent passage in the Indiana House of what certainly would be a popular $1 billion tax cut, I felt the time was appropriate to dust this discussion off and move it back to the top of Hoosiers’ collective inbox. Connect with Michael Leppert
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The 2016 presidential campaign called, and it wants its bad ideas back. Regretfully, Indiana’s 2022 U.S. Senate race appears to be headed toward focusing on the worst ideas of one of the worst campaign seasons ever. That is if the incumbent Marine has his way.
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Imagine for a moment that January 6, 2021 had ended differently. The possibilities are infinite.
On Thursday, America looked back in remembrance of one of its darkest days. The business of that day was to certify the presidential election in favor of the clear victor. After the horrifying events of that afternoon, the U.S. Congress reconvened later that evening and completed its business.
What if they hadn’t?
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It was December 31, 1999, and the 32-year-old version of me found himself working the night shift. How did I let this happen to me on New Year’s Eve? I had largely been a 9 to 5 guy since going to work for the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission almost five years earlier. But my young family made “partying” like it was 1999 the way Prince recommended a fleeting dream.
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“I may be old, and I may be young, but I am not done changing,” sings John Mayer in 2017’s, “Changing.” Let’s pretend for a few minutes that this song is being sung by America.
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I had heard of bell hooks. I recognized her face in the photos I have seen the last few days but would not have been able to explain how or why. And that was all. The feminist author, poet and professor died of end-stage renal failure on December 15 in her home in Kentucky. She was only 69.
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Former Senator Bob Dole’s passing has been a real learning experience. Sure, I knew the basic facts about one of the political icons of his time, but I had no idea that he had a famous sense of humor. Hearing so many funny one-liners from the Kansas Republican and former presidential nominee has changed my view of him, but it has also given me one more thing to miss about the way our politics used to be. Connect with Michael Leppert
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What a year 2021 has turned out to be! I vividly remember feeling that last year was the worst year we have collectively experienced, but in many ways, this year just feels like Season 2 of the same horrifying series.
Objectively, most things are better than they were twelve months ago. But some of the weeds that had so blatantly reared their heads last year have now clearly taken root, and it is time to rethink a sane approach to their eradication. Clipping off the top of a dandelion doesn’t accomplish much. Removing it requires us to dig a little deeper.
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In recent weeks, I have had a marked increase in opportunities for discussions with readers of my weekly column. As one might imagine in American culture, these “opportunities” are usually initiated through some form of objection to the opinion about which I wrote. Lucky me! Columnists could easily transition to the complaint department. If any of the newspapers carrying this drivel needs any help with that, I’m there for you.
I think it’s time we all take a couple of minutes to renew our agreement on what the differences are between articles, editorials, and columns.
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On Thanksgiving evening, following a memorable battle with her brother, Pauly, Adrian finally went out on her first date with Rocky Balboa. She wasn’t exactly happy about it either, telling Rocky, “but it was Thanksgiving.” He simply replied, “yea, to you. To me it’s Thursday.” And with that, I have exhausted my list of favorite cinematic scenes depicting a version of my favorite Thursday of any given year.
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I never expected to write a column about the things Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has in common with an eighteen-year-old killer. No matter what the jury decides next week in the trial of young Kyle Rittenhouse, he unquestionably and unnecessarily killed two people. Admittedly though, as far as strange occurrences of late go, seeing the commonalities here actually don’t rank all that high.
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Welcome to Think about It with Michael Leppert.
The purpose of this podcast is to convince you to think about it. If I fail at that, I am sure I will be able to at least help you understand how I think about it.
All in just FIVE MINUTES. That’s right, every episode is just FIVE MINUTES.
So…what exactly is “it?”
“It” will be something that is happening today in our cultural, community, or political space. And “It” will also be how we communicate with, relate to, or exist around each other.
Not everyone agrees with me on this, but I am convinced all of the “its” I talk about here are things that we can collectively make better, heal from, or enjoy more if we all decide to think about it.
Look for new episodes and new opportunities to think about it every Tuesday.
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