I’m a Democrat. (Duh!) I want to get Mitch Daniels out of the Governor’s Mansion very badly (privatizing everything left and right, killing local government budgets for the sake of state budgets are the big reasons). But how the FUCK am I supposed to vote for a Democrat when all that Dem does is pander to the fucking Republicans?
She has proposed returning the state’s current surplus to taxpayers by suspending the state sales tax on gasoline.
“I’m glad that he finally responded to my repeated calls for tax relief for Hoosiers,” Long Thompson said. “But I think Hoosier families in many communities are economically stretched now, and the governor has the authority to suspend collecting the Indiana state sales tax on gasoline, and that would give immediate relief.”
Long Thompson said that when she was in Washington, she never voted for legislation that included a new tax or a tax increase. Daniels, she said, has sought multiple tax increases in his four years as governor.
You’re STILL on this gas tax holiday bullshit? No economist of any skill thinks this is a good idea. Most of that will end up going to the oil companies themselves at worst, or at best you’ll save maybe enough to pay for half a tank of gas. WOOHOOO!!! In the meantime, money that could be spend fixing roads and enhancing our transportation infrastructure is going to be pissed away – at a time where even the FEDERAL road budget is falling short. All so you, JLT, can say “I’m cutting taxes! Weeeeeee!!!”
The Pander Bear is so excited to see you, Jill!
You can’t out tax-cut Republicans. And how about this – how about talking about WHY we have this surplus. It’s not because of sound fiscal management. It’s because Mitch Daniels has FUCKED cities, towns and counties into taking up more of the burden. So all those local services people love (and love to bitch about paying for but don’t want them to go away) are being slashed left and right. Schools are being starved. All so Mitch Fucking Daniels can say we have a “surplus”. AND YOU”RE TRYING TO OUT FISCALLY MISMANAGE THIS JACKASS?
Way to go JLT, you’re actually making me want to NOT VOTE at all for the Governor’s race. I can’t vote for either of you dipshits. You can’t sell change when you’re trying to be more Mitch Daniels than Mitch Daniels. And the moment I hear you pander to the idiots who hate DST I’m going to have a fucking stroke…
18 Comments
Aww come on, she’s got a better chance if she turns this thing into a DST/No DST/Central v. Eastern Time zone slug fest.
yeah, got forbid she actually oppose DST, one of mitch’s most unpopular moves.
But DST is good. It’s one of the very few things Daniels has done that I like. The arguments of wheter it actually saves energy or not are beside the point. Having Indiana as a hole in time causes much headache and annoyance for anyone doing business outside of the state. There was no reason NOT to go to DST other than stubborn “well this is the way we’ve always done it.” Yes, this is a case of everyone else is doing it so we should too.
And I really don’t want someone who can only run on a platform of pandering to popular (but wrong) opinions.
If she really is against DST, I want her to outline actual reasons WHY, not just “people in Indiana don’t liiiiike it” (i.e. they’re too lazy to change their clocks twice a year). I want actual policy reasons why we should be the only state in our region not to adopt it (let alone one of what, two, not to?)
Oh! As for Central vs. Eastern, that’s not really under control of the governor so it’s misleading to make it an issue against the governor. Oh sure, we can petition the government but that doesn’t guarantee a thing.
Anyway, I like Eastern too. I love having summer days with lots of light to stay out and do things.
Let’s stipulate ad arguendo that opposing DST is a good movie politically for JLT, and would increase her chances of winning the election.
Even if that’s true, I’m with Jason. This doesn’t change the fact that DST is good policy. I support politicians because I want them to enact good policy. If a politician adopts bad policy, whether because they believe in it on the merits or out of political concerns, what’s the reason for supporting them?
Obviously we don’t exist in a single-issue world. If JLT was demonstrably better than Daniels overall, I could bite the bullet on DST, as much as I’m against going back into the Indiana “hole in time”. But when you add in her other bad policies, like suspending the gas tax, like positioning herself as if she were an anti-tax Republican (not a policy per se, but indicative of the way she would govern), the case for her begins to look weaker. When she goes so far that she offers up a tax plan that’s worse on the merits than Mitch Daniels’ (God, that pains this liberal to say, but it’s true), that puts me in an awfully awkward position.
how exactly is DST good policy? the only real argument for going to DST was “everyone else is doing it”, which is the kind of argument a five-year-old would make. if everyone else jumps off a cliff, should you do it too?
we were promised that DST would bring us extra business. that hasn’t happened. i have seen no demonstrable benefit to DST whatsoever. if you want more daylight in the summer, then stop being so lazy and get up earlier. personally, i enjoy nighttime and like doing things in the dark sometime.
I was really hoping she would adopt some of the policy proposals set forth in her primary opponent’s campaign platform. Schellinger had a ton of great ideas to improve the state on his site when he was running against her in the primary. By contrast, her plans, as laid out by her website at the same time before the primary, were anemic and vague. Looking at her site, now, it is still a bunch of vague promises with little to no explanation of how she thinks she will achieve them, especially on her education issues page. Schellinger’s plan had specifics for each point of his plan explaining how he would achieve them and exactly how much he expected each proposal to cost the state. I am still really disappointed by the outcome of that primary. I’m especially disappointed with all the women who voted for her just because of her gender, not because she was more qualified to beat Daniels or had a better platform. Equal rights for men and women should mean the right to be judged equally on merit, and not on the basis of your gender. Schellinger was clearly more qualified and had a much better plan for our state than lowering taxes and squandering our state’s budget surplus instead of investing it in the future of the state. We should start a write-in campaign for Schellinger.
how exactly is DST good policy? the only real argument for going to DST was “everyone else is doing it”, which is the kind of argument a five-year-old would make. if everyone else jumps off a cliff, should you do it too?
So, should Indiana stop doing other things we only do because everyone else does? Lets start driving on the left side of the road. Or perhaps we should unilaterally switch to the metric system, and repost all our signs in kilometers?
Standardization. For certain collective actions it’s generally considered a good thing. Being iconoclastic for the sake of iconoclasm is as bad as blind conformity.
DST was of course oversold. No serious person really believed that a bunch of businesses were just waiting to move here once we fixed out time problem. But anyone who works for a company that does business out of state will tell you that the net result of DST is a lot less lost productivity straightening people out as to when meetings are and when someone is in the office twice a year.
What you’re doing here is reversing the burden of proof. In a situation where there’s a generally accepted standard way of doing something, the burden of proof is on the person advocating deviation from the standard. The only thing to come from not following DST is to marginally increase the confusion of interstate commerce. Why people feel the need to get so heated in defending economic confusion is a mystery to me.
As to hours of daylight, this is an area where I say de gustibus non est disputandum. There are people who prefer DST because they prefer more daylight in the evening, so getting up early does them nothing. You prefer more darkness in the evening. Everyone will not be happy. Why, if only there was some generally accepted standard we could use to resolve this impasse?
no, the burden of proof was and remains on the people who argue that indiana’s status quo, which we’d been observing for decades, was inferior to the new system. and i don’t buy the assertion that it’s easier to tell what time it is in indiana now: if anything, it’s more confusing, as indiana’s time zone map now looks like it was hit with buckshot. perhaps if the entire state were on one time zone, i’d buy the standardization argument, but it’s not.
oh, and as for this:
Why people feel the need to get so heated
i’m only here arguing because jason called me an idiot for opposing DST. perhaps if DST supporters didn’t act like childish assholes, the debate would be more civil.
“remains on the people who argue that indiana’s status quo, which we’d been observing for decades, was inferior to the new system”
Yes, because only Indiana and Arizona know the truth that DST is terrible!!! All those other states that switched to it decades ago are STOOOOPID! :\
There’s more to this than JUST the state of Indiana. Sure, when it was Cow Standard Time here in Indiana it was easy to tell the time. But for anyone outside of Indiana? For businesses that work across state lines? It WAS confusing. It WAS hurting productivity. I saw it myself within my company and I sure as hell know I wasn’t alone.
Yes, DST as an economic benefit was oversold. No arguments here. But the fact is every state in this country besides Arizona (and apparently still many Hoosiers) somehow manages to *struggle through* using DST. Oh my however do they do it? In the end DST isn’t about economic impact or anything like that. It’s about getting Indiana on the standard of time that nearly the entirety of our nation is on (and every state surrounding us as well as every major economic center in the country).
As for which counties are on which time zone, that problem existed BEFORE the DST switch as well. You could argue it was worse because some parts of the state were in CDT, some were in EDT and the rest was in EST. Now at least everyone is on DST and knows that if a county is in a different time zone they will always be one hour different. Year round.
I really don’t get why DST is so confusing and bad to people. What is it about knowing that you’re always one hour different than Chicago, you’re ALWAYS on teh same time as the east coast, your TV shows will always start at the same time and your Aunt Millie from Michigan won’t be all confused about when to come to the family reunion every year that is so difficult?
Well considering that every argument I’ve heard against DST can be summed up in one of the following categories:
*This is the way we’ve ALWAYS done it and that’s good enough
*Mitch Daniels is doing it so it must be bad
*The farmers don’t want to confuse the cows
*What about the CHILLLLLLDREN having to wait for the bus in the dark?!
*Oh noes! Drive in movie theaters are doing to have trouble
my interaction with the anti-DST crowd has painted it in a pretty idiotic light. If you can give me an actual policy reason with benefits that don’t fall into one of the above categories, I’ll be more than happy to weigh that against less out of state business confusion and falling in line with the standard set both in our entire region and in the vast, vast majority of the entire nation (and continent). But the above reasons really are idiotic. Sorry.
no, the burden of proof was and remains on the people who argue that indiana’s status quo…
In most cases, I’d agree with you. But this really strikes me as a case of iconoclasm for its own sake. Imagine if Indiana really did mandate driving on the left side of the road, and had for years. Would I really need to make a case as to why we should join the rest of the country? If we had all our road signs marked in furlongs instead of miles? Difference can be a great thing when there’s a concrete reason for it, but I’m at a loss as to what the reason is here. Switching to DST eliminates an (admittedly small) source of confusion with the rest of the country for no actual loss. This issue is completely procedural to me. Congress could pass a bill mandating no one follow DST tomorrow, and I’d be fine with it. What matters isn’t the specific method we use to measure time, it’s the consistency of the thing. The majority have spoken, and they’ve chosen DST. What’s the gain for Indiana in trying to swim upriver?
i don’t buy the assertion that it’s easier to tell what time it is in indiana now: if anything, it’s more confusing
Indiana’s time zone map was just as strange before DST was passed. Before we had the multiple time zone problem and the lack of DST problem, now we only have one of them. I fail to see how this is more confusing.
When my employer (in Indy) speaks to the office in New York, we now know we’re always on the same time. Before we didn’t. If a company in Lake County speaks to one in New York, they know they’re always an hour apart. Before the change, even Indy and Lake County’s difference varied. Knowing that Place X will always and forever be the exact same number of hours off from you seems clearly easier than having this interval vary in my eyes.
But don’t take my word for it, take the word of out-of-state companies I’ve worked with. All were quite happy when the time issue they’d been having with us was resolved. I see no reason to believe they were lying to me about what they found more or less confusing.
i’m only here arguing because jason called me an idiot for opposing DST.perhaps if DST supporters didn’t act like childish assholes, the debate would be more civil.
Maybe I shouldn’t get involved here then, but I can’t help notice you just did the same thing you got so mad at him for. Since I support DST, you’ve called me a “childish asshole”. I suppose I could get all worked up about it, but I’ve always found “but he did it first” to be a weak argument. Instead, how about we all agree to ratchet down the rhetoric? Sheesh. It’s time zones, not life or death.
1. i note that you’ve no attempt to defend DST on its own merits. why is that? because there is no point in doing it other than because everyone else does it. isn’t it better to update the standard for modern times rather than cling to an old obsolete standard just because it’s the standard?
2. even if DST made sense for other states, that doesn’t mean it makes sense for indiana. the reason we weren’t on DST for so many years was because we’re geographically on the cusp between eastern and central, so that neither time zone really works for us. on eastern, the sun’s up too late in summer; on central, it gets dark too early in winter. going off DST was the best compromise for us geographically.
3. i never, ever hear anyone complain about the fact that arizona and hawaii aren’t on DST.
4. statistics show that waiting for the schoolbus in the dark is more dangerous. concern for the safety of children is not idiotic. sorry.
5. if you worked for a drive-in theater (or any other business that depends on darkness), you would feel differently.
The majority have spoken, and they’ve chosen DST.
they have? so there was a national vote on DST, and DST won? how did i miss this?
I can’t help notice you just did the same thing you got so mad at him for
no, asserting that someone is “acting like” X is different than asserting that someone “is” X. but thanks for noting the irony, which was intentional and done for effect.
1. But we’re not talking about defending DST on the national level. We’re talking about should Indiana implement it. My defense centers around the fact that there was more confusion both within (multiple time zones, no DST) and outside (no DST, varying time differences with most of Indiana) the state. I’d LOVE to see a national debate and decision. But as it is all of our neighbors and all of the major economic centers of the country use it. It just makes sense for us to use it as well.
2. And michigan isn’t on the cusp of them? a large swath of Kentucky isn’t (hell, KY is split right down the middle on time zones). Somehow they seem to be coping with it just fine. Are Hoosiers then dumber than people from Michigan and Kentucky and unable to handle it? I have never understood this argument. It’s not as if Indiana is the ONLY state on the border of a time zone. The others all seem to get along just fine.
3. Arizona is a unique case as it’s reason for not being on DST (as I have come to understand it) is that it’s so damn hot there they don’t WANT more ‘time’ after work in the heat. We don’t exactly have that problem here. Hawaii I have no clue. Maybe they live in pretty much paradise so who gives a fuck what time it is?
4. Can you show me statistical evidence that states similarly positioned on the cusp of a time zone and using DST have a higher rate of missing/injured/dead children while waiting on the bus? Do we need to start up a campaign to protect the Children of Michigan? Do Michigan parents disregard their children’s safety by having DST?
5. but what about businesses that depend on daylight? cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating, golf courses, parks, businesses along walking trails, etc? That argument cuts both ways.
And finally, sorry for the idiot thing. Guess a standard in blogging is you can safely assume someone will overreact to anything negative you say unless you clarify every detail of it. SO, clarification:
You are not an idiot. You are arguing against DST as a policy nationwide (for the most part). I can fully agree to that argument. It probably should be had. But people who don’t want it out of a strange sense of provincialism and “that’s how we’ve always done it” without any deeper argument – people who would choose who they vote for SOLELY on this issue, are, in my books, somewhat idiotic. You do not strike me as one of those types.
At the risk of being redundant:
1) I won’t defend it on the merits because I don’t seen any particular merit to having DST or not having DST other than standardization. I am 100% ambivalent between every state having it and no state having it. And since it’s much much easier to get Indiana to switch than to get 47 other states to switch…
2) I’m generally confused here. The sun goes up and down during the winter now at the exact same time it did before DST, so that part isn’t relevant. The sun is up later in the summer, true, but whether it’s up “too late” is aesthetic. Some agree, some don’t. Maybe even a majority agree with you, I honestly have no clue. But I happen to think the concrete benefits of standardization outweigh X% of the population’s (yes, even if X is large) aesthetic preferences.
3) I don’t live in Arizona or Hawaii, therefore I don’t have to deal with, nor do I care about, their idiosyncrasies. Nor do politicians in those states have any reason to care what I think. If I did (because I dealt with other companies there, for example), you’d probably hear me complain about their not being on DST.
4) I have no idea if what you say is true, but it sounds plausible, so I’ll assume it to be. Kids do far and away the bulk of their time waiting around in the dark for the bus in winter, when DST is not a factor. People who are truly concerned about this need to be pushing for later school start times, not non-standard time policies.
5) As Jason points out, lots of groups can play the “my parochial interests are better served by X” card. If we want to add up the interests, I’d bet more businesses gain from evening daylight than lose from it. But even if they didn’t, we should follow the standard, which nicely prevents squabbling over who’s getting special favors from our time policies.
The Majority – You know full well the US is not a direct democracy, nothing is decided with a true majority vote. Do you think our entire system of government is illegitimate? Our system led to a vast majority of states choosing DST, by whatever system they used to pick. If the voters in those states considered it important enough to fight on, they’d have voted for different politicians.
And even if you think the process by which we came to the national status quo is completely illegitimate, Indiana w/o DST would still find itself swimming upriver for no gain. We have the national policy we have. If you believe strongly it’s the wrong policy, by all means lobby against it. I don’t particularly care much either way on a national level. But on a local level, I see no reason for my state to cut off it’s nose to spite the national face.
You know, it occurs to me that we’ve gotten pretty far afield from the actual point of the post and why I commented in the first place. I feel safe in assuming you’re going to oppose DST no matter what I say (though I’m still not sure why. Do you own a drive-in theater?), and it’s probably unlikely I’ll be persuaded to your side, since the only reason why I support Indiana DST is because it’s the national standard, and that fact is unlikely to change. What bothered me is initially you seemed to only be supporting JLT’s DST position because it is “unpopular”. I see now that’s not really the reason.
I believe we need change however, who do you vote for in indiana? Jill Long Thompson not! Her husband Don Thompson owns property next to my brother. My brother bought the property off of a man that bought it off Don Thompson. Mr. Thompson stopped my brother from having an easement for electricity. My brother offered to even have the lines buried under ground But, Mr. Thompson refused Because he owns the easement. I have had encounters with him and he is very rude. The only contact that Jill Long Thompson had was a letter her attorney wrote to me saying she doesn’t have anything to do with this property and a few other legal jargon that pretty much told me not to have any contact with Jill Long Thompson. So, vote for a woman that can’t even write me a letter her self or talk to me herself I think not Mitch Daniels has my vote
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