Here are a few things I learned from about Richie Mitch’s toll road privatization at the recent IDC meeting where we had some speakers reprensenting the Indiana Senate Democratic Caucus. They talked about Daniels’ privatization alot, and there are some doozies.
- The amount of money the state would take in from the 75 year lease is less than the amount of money Indiana would get from tolls over that 75 year period. The money would be spent in 10 years under the Daniels plan, if I heard right through my convulsions of disgust. This is not a lease, this is a loan from a private investor and the collateral is the toll road and NE Indiana commuters’ wallets.
- I think I got this part right from what I heard. The “prevailing wage”, which is used to pay construction and otther workers the “prevailing union wage” would not apply to this project. it’s only enforced for projects with federal dollars, even though traditionally non-federally funded projects used it as well under a sort of gentleman’s agreement.
- In the lease agreement would be a ‘non-compete clause’ that would make any road improvement within 10 miles in either direction of the toll road subject to approval of the toll road’s leaseholder. That means if the state wanted to widen a road that runs within 10 miles of the toll road, they’d have to get a foreign company’s approval - even though they only lease the toll road!
- Apparently, the Governor is holding other road projects hostage over this, threatening Senators and Reps that if they do not support his roads initiative that they won’t see any work on the roads in their district for the rest of their term. (This came right from the Deputy Chief of Staff for the Indiana Senate Democrats and not from former Indiana Congressman Baron Hill’s comments). Very classy, Daniels. You learned well from W I see - if you can’t get what you want via normal procedure, twist arms and threaten opponents.
The biggest question to me is one of “where’s the beef?” - if the lease is truly for less money than we would take in without privatizing it, what is the benefit past the short term gain of getting 75 years worth of money up front so we can spend it quicker? Is that the fiscal responsibility we are supposed to belieeve is the hallmark of the GOP?
Also, couldn’t we save a ton of road money by not going new terrain for I-69 and using the route through Terre Haute instead? if we need so much road money, wouldn’t that be one of the first places to look? Just a thought.
And speaking of the Governor’s threats and Baron Hill’s comments, nice temper tantrum gov. Nothing like using personal insults against a former Congressman when you don’t like something he said.
Thanks to Noah for accepting my app into the blogINDIANA Network’s political section. My political feed should soon be reading over on that site. Welcome any visitors that are coming from there as well. Enjoy your stay, there are tons of archives and not all of them political.
A Scanner Darkly looks to be an incredibly cool movie. Trailer here. It’s based on a Philip K. Dick story which I now need to go out and get. via
Hey Indy readers, just wanted to give you a heads up that tonight I’ll be at the new Drinking Liberally location that we’ll be using starting next week (02/09) to watch the Pacers game and then hopefully the State of the Union speech too. The owner’s a a big local Democrat so it should be on once the Pacers are done stinking it up.
Spencer’s Stadium Tavern
802 S. West Street, Indianapolis
Map: http://tinyurl.com/ann6t
I’ll probably be there 7ish or so. Drop a line in the comments if you’re coming and I’ll save you a seat. Otherwise, remember that this Thursday is Drinking Liberally (the last one at the Broadripple Union Jack). Would love to meet some of my local readers.
Well, Evan Bayh did the right thing for once in both voting against Alito and voting to continue the filibuster. So I’m happy about that. BUT….
(you had to know that was coming)
Two things. 1) He’s going to have to do a HELL of a lot more to make up for his record since Bush took office. It’s not so easy to whitewash the bankruptcy bill vote, the Bush Tax Cut #1 vote, the war vote, etc with some recent good votes. 2) speaking of recent good votes, what are the odds he would have voted the way he did on Alito and the filibuster if he wasn’t running for President in ‘08 and trying to fake his liberal credentials for the ‘08 primaries? I lay those odds at 10,000 - 1. At least.
And talking about that bankruptcy bill vote again reminds me - Senator Bayh, when I wrote you about that bill and how angry I was that you voted for it, you said you’d work to fix the problems it caused among those who get into bankruptcy for valid reasons such as medical problems, job loss, etc. Where is the work you’ve done for that? What bills or amendments have you written or co-sponsored to fix those problems?
*crickets chirping*
That’s what I thought.
But back to ScAlito, not good. Not good at all. The guy’s views on almost every issue frighten the hell out of me, especially his views on the validity of an all-powerful chief executive that can shred the constitution as long as he says it was for national security. And even worse, Kennedy is now the middle of the road justice on the court. Think about that. We’re now goign to be under years of a VERY conservative court. I hope all you moderate voters who voted for Bush because you “wanna have a beer with him” like what you get in the coming years. We tried to warn you…
Dreamhost has implemented one-click upgrades to go along with one-click installs. So hopefully I can do a Wordpress 2.0 upgrade much sooner than I had originally planned. The key will be making my template and plugins work. I might go to a generic scaled down template until I get the current one workign with 2.0. Yay Dreamhost!
It looks like some congressional staffers have been editing wikipedia entries about their bosses, competitors and allies in order to remove damaging material and slander opponents. The vast majority of edits seem to have been done to benefit Republicans (suprise suprise).
This complete list of articles that have been hit by this is pretty interesting.
Thanks to Shawn of Liberal Indiana who messaged me about this.
Just got the album Golden (link to iTunes) by Led Man and damn I am diggign this album something fierce. It’s like someone put Beck, Frank Black and Nick Cave in a blender and out came something uniquely awesometastic. First heard the track “Just Shy of the Moon” on one of the Bitjobs For The Masses Daily Podcasts (#15).
An excellent interview with Stephen Colbert a The Onion’s A.V. Club. , found via Cheryl
But that has been extended to the idea that authoritarian is better than authority. Because authoritarian means there’s only one authority, and that authority has got to be the President, has got to be the government, and has got to be his allies. What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press. They call the press “liberal,” they call the press “biased,” not necessarily because it is or because they have problems with the facts of the left—or even because of the bias for the left, because it’s hard not to be biased in some way, everyone is always going to enter their editorial opinion—but because a press that has validity is a press that has authority. And as soon as there’s any authority to what the press says, you question the authority of the government—it’s like the existence of another authority. So that’s another part of truthiness. Truthiness is “What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.” It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.
Exactly.
Dear Democratic National Commitee,
I’m writing this to you about your recent fundraising phone calls to me. The way to get me to donate money is not to call at 8:30 at night on a Sunday and have your caller harass me if I’m not interested or able to donate at this time. A week ago or so someone called me to get me to donate $400* (way to start out small, people!) and I told them I am waiting until after the primaries to donate anything nationally, and that this year I’ll be focusing largely on Indiana since we need to take the Statehouse back to stop things like the hate amendment and more.
I got another call last night. I told them again that I am not donating until after the primaries, and even then most of my efforts will be local. I was then harassed, told “don’t I want my congresswoman to go back to a majority?” (of course! duh!), “the poor are suffering”, “the middle class is shrinking” (both of which were blamed on NAFTA and CAFTA by the caller - A gross oversimplification of economic issues. I didn’t know that fundraising callers were in the business of making policy opinions.) and more guilt tripping.
The caller then told me it would be “too late” if I donate after the primaries - excuse me awuuuhh? How is it “too late” after the primaries? When I said that I am also in a tight financial crunch of my own right now and that most of my donations will be in work at the local level, I was again told I should donate to the DNC in a very condacending tone. Upon hanging up, your caller then said (in a very smarmy tone) “thanks for your past support.”
This is NOT how to get me to donate money to the national party. I’m sure it was one caller (she sounded like the same person who called me the first time) who was just being overzealous. But really, this makes me less likely to donate when you’re trying to strongarm your loyal small donors. I fear that attitudes like that might even push some people away from the party, even temporarily, in this important election year.
Please get your act together.
Sincerely,
Jason Borneman
*A rough guess of my donations to Democratic candidates and national party groups in the ‘04 election cycle is probably around $400 or a little more. Did the DNC gather together donor information from the DSCC, DCCC, individual congressional, senatorial and presidential candidates and then total up the donations in ‘04 to decide on a “how much we’ll ask for first” number for their fundraising calls? If so… not cool. Not cool at all. Small donors are great, but you can’t treat them like an ATM.