June 2007 No. 27Table of Contents |
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IN Governor Mitch Daniels eliminated any doubts—he will run for re-election in 2008. While he probably will not face any opposition for the Republican nomination, potential Democratic challengers are already lining up for the May 6, 2008, primary:
With 2008 presidential elections already heating up, IN may or may not become a “swing state,” but the Governor’s race will certainly be contentious…and expensive. The Indianapolis Star predicts a $50 Million gubernatorial slugfest. There will be debates about Daniels’ push for Daylight Savings Time and refusal to roll back state gasoline taxes this summer. The biggest issue will likely be “privatization.” It’s already caught The New York Times’ attention.
Daniels leased the IN Toll Road to an Australian-Spanish consortium for $3.8 Billion, which the governor says will pay for dozens of highway projects. Corrections privatizing includes these 4-year contracts:
IN Family & Social Services Administration (FSSA) made a 10-year deal with an IBM-led team ($1.16 Billion for Food Stamp, TANF welfare, and Medicaid eligibility application). The US Dept of Agriculture limited its approval of the contract to only one year.
The Governor says these deals will save the state more than $280M over the next 4 years, and that’s not counting the $6/second interest on the Toll Road lease. The state’s payroll will also shrink by 3,400+ employees, many of whom have already been hired by contractors.
Critics of privatization suspect that state employees who get hired on as contract workers will suffer pay and benefit cuts. They also point to the New Castle prison upheaval that was partly blamed on inexperienced contract staff.
While the IBM team is out courting community agencies to assist low-income Hoosiers to enroll in various programs, already under-staffed and marginally-funded nonprofits are giving them resistance. The mid-July rollout of “eligibility modernization” will test out the new scheme and begin a year-long process of getting the kinks out, hopefully drawing on lessons learned from Florida’s and Texas’ attempts to do the same. There will certainly be a big debate whether the new system is “better, faster, cheaper—in that order.”
The 2007 IN General Assembly passed Senate Resolution 91 that marked the centennial of Indiana's 1907 eugenical sterilization law and expressed “regret…for Indiana's experience with eugenics.” IN rarely is first in the nation for world-changing legislation, but it did pass the “first eugenical sterilization law in the world,” reported IN Governor’s Council for People with Disabilities. It allowed involuntary sterilization “to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.” Some 30 other states and a dozen countries followed suit, including Nazi Germany.
IN’s 1907 eugenics law was ruled unconstitutional in 1921 but was reinstated in 1927 and repealed again in 1974. In the meantime, there were 2,500 involuntary sterilizations of Hoosiers—4% of the USA total.
The IN State Library is running a free exhibit, Fit to Breed?, through August. For more details, see www.statelib.lib.in.us/www/isl/whoweare/
exhibitions.html.
“Many surveys have documented the large number of people who do good work, volunteer their time or give money to their churches, charities and/or organizations that advocate for causes they care about. What this survey shows is that only small minorities do this aggressively, practicing what they preach. For the great majority, volunteering and charitable giving, or social responsibility, is a much more marginal activity.”
Thus claims Harris Interactive (HI), based on its mid-May poll of Americans. They asked three questions and created an Individual Social Responsibility (ISR) Index based on the responses and found only 8% “practice what they preach,” while 67% have “good intentions,” and 25% follow a philosophy of “to thine own self be true.”
Here are results on the three questions:
“Give your attitude about volunteering, donating, and getting involved in community activities.”
“Describe your behavior in giving time and money to organizations and causes.”
“Give the effect a company’s social responsibility has on your buying from or doing business with it.”
Here is HI’s composite ISR Index for mid-2007:
* Con = Conservative; Mod = Moderate; Lib = Liberal. **M = Male; F = Female
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