Tag Archives: Indiana

What Is Rokita So Worried About?

Even before Donald Trump made it impossible for rational people to remain in the GOP, Indiana had more than its share of deeply problematic Republican officeholders. The office of Attorney General, especially, has often been occupied by ideologues and cranks. (I particularly remember the stories that lawyers shared about  “General” Sendak. And more recently, there was Curtis Hill, who hasn’t let his 3-month disbarment for inappropriate “groping” deter him from running for Governor.)

That said, it’s hard to identify an Attorney General more pathetic than the current occupant of that office. Todd Rokita is the “real deal”–if you define “deal” as unethical, monumentally ambitious, self-important and totally un-self-aware.

I’ve posted several times about Rokita, beginning when he was a Congressman accused of abusing his staff and more recently as he has relentlessly attacked the doctor who aborted a ten-year-old rape victim. Rokita accused her of failure to file paperwork, despite the fact that it took only a  cursory check to confirm they’d all been properly submitted.

Rokita  regularly falls over himself pandering to the  Hoosier MAGA crazies who oppose abortion, hate gays and want to outlaw “woke-ness” (which they can’t define.)

Being AG is a full-time job, but when Rokita first took office, he tried to keep (and hide) a lucrative side hustle (details at the link). Now, the Indianapolis Star has discovered that he requires lawyers working for his office to sign wide-ranging non-disclosure agreements.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s employees are signing nondisclosure agreements that could cost them $25,000 if they share personal information about the AG — an unusual policy for state office and one that sets him apart from almost all other attorneys general in the country.

The contract, which IndyStar obtained through a public records request, gives Rokita and his staff the power to decide what information counts as confidential. It covers “personal or private information” about the attorney general, his employees and their families.

State offices here and dozens of other states’ attorney general offices told IndyStar they don’t have their employees sign contracts like this. Rokita’s office stands by it, however, and says its employees “understand this requirement” before they agree to work there.

Rokita doesn’t want his own information to be public, but his privacy concerns don’t extend to anyone else. In a letter he signed onto last month, Rokita opposed a federal proposal to block state officials from accessing information on residents’ reproductive health care services obtained outside the state.

Experts who reviewed Rokita’s NDA said it raised concerns about constraints on free speech and about the public’s right to know about the conduct of public business.

“The (NDA’s) definition of ‘confidential information’ seems designed to shield public officials from scrutiny,” contract law expert Michael Mattioli told IndyStar. “And that’s an essential part of living in a well-functioning democracy.”

Rokita declined to be interviewed. Instead, an office spokesperson sent a statement: “For any professional or executive, signing an NDA is a conventional office practice that has worked well to protect clients and employees alike.”

I haven’t practiced law lately, but in my lawyering days, signing a non-disclosure agreement was unheard of–and when I asked friends who still practice, most confirmed that  it remains very unconventional.

According to the Star,

The contract essentially gives Rokita and the AG’s office control over what an employee can say, both during and after employment. The stated rationale is that the employee will be “privy” to information that could be protected by laws and state professional conduct rules.

Typically, when information is protected by professional conduct rules, professionals can be trusted to observe those rules. An NDA isn’t needed. As the Star correctly notes, state and federal laws already protect confidential information received by public employees.

But it doesn’t stop there. It says Rokita and his office ultimately have the power to decide what information fits the definition of “confidential.”

That includes “all material, non-public, information, written, oral, or electronic … that is disclosed or made available to the receiving party, directly or indirectly, through any means of communication or observation …” The category also shields “personal or private information” about Rokita and his staff.

No other Indiana State office requires NDAs, although several deal in as much “sensitive” information as Rokita’s. AGs in most other states haven’t found the practice necessary.

Rokita’s overweening ambition probably plays a role– his appearances on Fox News and a trip he took to the U.S.-Mexico border last year have been widely panned as “headline shopping.” Given Rokita’s appetite for higher office, the sort of disclosures that might emerge–his “side hustle” comes to mind–would be distinctly unhelpful.

One ethics professor found the contract a “reprehensible attempt to intimidate.”

Makes one wonder what Rokita’s so intent on hiding….

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A Fighting Chance

A damaging consequence of Republican gerrymandering and the creation of “safe” districts has been the behavior of Democrats, who effectively concede many such districts by failing to put up a candidate. 

You would think that statewide elections would be different, since they can’t be gerrymandered, but in Red states like Indiana, the Blue statewide candidates have all-too-often appeared to be tokens. I assume that’s because more competitive politicians opt out because they consider the state party too weak and/or the state too Red. Whatever the reason, that lack of competitiveness has facilitated the political rise of some truly substandard Republicans. 

This year, the likely candidates for Governor (Mike Braun) and Senator (Jim Banks) are particularly odious. But also this year–for whatever reason–the Democrats are running two absolute stars for those same positions.

I have previously posted my reasons for admiring and supporting Jennifer McCormick for Governor. More recently, Mark Carmichael has announced a run for Senate.

 Carmichael– a self-described “old political warhorse” was elected to Indiana’s General Assembly in 1986, after defeating a sitting Speaker of the House.  He says he entered the race because, among other things, he has four granddaughters, and because Indiana deserves better than to be represented by someone as “mean-spirited, blindly partisan and out of touch with the majority of Hoosiers as Jim Banks.”

His attacks on innocent LGBTQ children for purely political gain are disgusting and his vote against certifying the Biden election and dishonest rhetoric on FOX News after that election help lead to the riot at the U. S. Capitol on January 6. He should be ashamed.

Carmichael also issued a list of his ten most important positions and goals–all of which I can enthusiastically endorse.

  • Believes women’s rights are human rights and will work to codify Roe v Wade at a minimum.
  • Will work for a ban on military style assault weapons—the weapon of choice for the mass murderers of our children and other innocent victims, and will fight for a national red flag law.
  • Is concerned about the white nationalism and antisemitism growing in our country thanks to extremists’ ugly rhetoric, and by someone who believes racism is still a cancer on the United States.
  • Wants to leave our planet better than we found it for our children and grandchildren and will take immediate action on global warming.
  •  Will stand up for the LGBTQ youth who are being used as political pawns by mean-spirited, calculating Republicans who needed a new social wedge issue after Roe v Wade was overturned by the Republican Supreme Court majority.  These vulnerable children deserve our help, not scorn, and their healthcare decisions should be left up to their families and compassionate, qualified doctors, not political opportunists.
  •  Is committed to confirming fair and impartial federal judges, not like the partisan appointees that have been foisted on us by Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society.  We deserve judges who don’t lie to get confirmed or accept generous gifts and travel from wealthy patrons.
  •  Is committed to no more gratuitous tax cuts for the rich and corporations who use the windfall to buy back and drive up the price of their own stock.
  • Believes teachers and librarians deserve our help and respect and not the threat of losing their jobs or getting shot. They shouldn’t have to fear being accused of a felony if someone whines about a book or movie that speaks honestly about life as it really is.
  • Will push for marijuana to be reclassified at the federal level from a Schedule 1 drug to a Schedule 3 or less.
  • Will work to lower drug costs and bring adequate medical care to all parts of Indiana, and will push for Medicare for all citizens.

In 2024, Indiana citizens will vote to replace an undistinguished and retrograde MAGA Senator (Braun, who is leaving the Senate to run for Governor). We will either replace him with the even more MAGA Jim Banks, or with someone who has actually read the Bill of Rights and has chosen to live in the 21st Century.

McCormick and Carmichael are immeasurably more attractive candidates than the dour and reactionary Rightwing ideologues they will face. More importantly, according to survey research, their positions–on abortion, on guns, on education, on civic equality–are far more representative of those held by a majority of Hoosiers.

I have friends and family members who believe that all it takes to win statewide office in Indiana is an  R beside the candidate’s name–that candidates’ intellect, character and positions on issues are irrelevant to the tribal rural voters who dominate state politics.

If we are ever to have a test of that thesis, the upcoming Senate and Gubernatorial races will provide it.

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Good News About News

For the past several years, I have shared my growing concerns about America’s information landscape. One of those concerns revolves around the fragmentation–and increasing partisanship–of national coverage, a process that has contributed to our polarization and corresponding retreat into those often-impenetrable “bubbles.”

The “Fox-ification” of national media sources has been widely covered. But there’s been another less recognized and very unfortunate effect of today’s still-robust (albeit often less credible) national news coverage: thanks to the collapse of local news, Americans have been living in a nationalized  information environment.

I’m not going to repeat the gloomy statistics about local news “deserts.” We’ve all seen them–and worse, experienced them. Thousands of local newspapers have simply disappeared, and others–owned by large, profit-hungry corporations like Gannett–richly deserve the appellation of “ghost newspapers.”

The lack of local coverage has had very negative consequences. It rather obviously facilitates political and governmental corruption–after all, if no one is looking…But the negative consequences go far beyond the shenanigans of local and state poo-bahs. The lack of a common source of information erodes the bonds of community, the sense that those of us who occupy a particular geographic subdivision have both common concerns and sources of pride–that we are “in it” together.

Which is why I have been so gratified to see several new entrants into our local news desert, and why I was absolutely thrilled when I heard, at a recent gathering, that yet another is on the horizon.

As the Statehouse File  (a Franklin College product) reported:

Local news coverage is beginning to thrive in Indiana with several online news organizations taking root and a new newsroom to be opened by the end of the year.

VOX Indy and Chalkbeat Indiana hosted a panel Tuesday in Indianapolis that highlighted these changes in Indiana’s news market while discussing the future of local news.

The panel discussed nonprofit outlets emerging in Indiana and what this emergence portends for media consumers. As panelist Karen Fusion put it,

“I believe, and national research shows, that journalists and local news help connect people to their communities and help support our democracy,” said Fuson. “With such a significant decline in journalists, I believe information that we all need to live our day to day lives is not being provided to us. And so that, in my mind, is a crisis impacting our democracy.”

I am particularly enthusiastic about the planned Local News Initiative and the promise–noted by all the panelists–of collaboration among these recent and planned media outlets. The Local News Initiative (which will probably launch under a different name)  plans to go live later this year. It’s a new nonprofit–it was formed by a coalition of locally based organizations working with the American Journalism Project, and its mission is to provide residents with accessible local news that reflects the community’s needs. Indiana organizations and philanthropies raised $10 million to create it.

The need for the Initiative was shown in a comprehensive study done by the American Journalism Project. The study found that ‘more than 1,000 Hoosiers across 79 counties said they needed more unbiased, fact based information about their communities’ according to the Indiana Local News Initiative site.

The goal of the American Journalism Project is to fill gaps in local news by launching nonprofit organizations, facilitating investments in partner news organizations and fostering collaboration between local news outlets.

Fuson said the Indiana Local News Initiative is committed to making communities feel heard. This means implementing the feedback Hoosiers give by creating a news room that represents the population, having reporters out in the community on a regular basis and including residents wherever possible.

The commitment of the philanthropic community evidences a (somewhat belated) recognition of the absolutely vital role that local news plays in the building of healthy communities. The emphasis on collaboration between outlets (including the IndyStar, WISH-TV, WFYI, the Recorder, Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism, Chalkbeat Indiana, Hoosier State Press Association, The Indiana Citizen and several others) is especially important, because building genuine community requires people who are occupying the same reality–and that requires swimming in the same information pool.

My inner Pollyanna (yes, I do have one!) came away from that presentation looking at the bright side of the wrenching changes that have doomed so many local “legacy” news organizations. These new media providers don’t need to buy paper or enormously expensive printing presses, don’t have distribution costs, and apparently won’t require advertising dollars to support their newsrooms. They can focus their resources on reporting.

Maybe flowers will bloom in the desert after all….

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Kudos

The news isn’t all depressing, and it’s important to note the positive as well as the negative.

For example, every once in a while we get a reminder that there are a lot of admirable, authentic Christians out there, and they’re very different from the political posturers who use religion in service of something very different. In the run-up to Texas’ passage of a (clearly unconstitutional) bill requiring public school classrooms to post the Ten Commandments, one of those genuine Christians took issue with the performatively pious legislator sponsoring the measure.

He began by pointing to multiple ways in which the Texas legislature failed to live up to the dictates of those same Commandments, and concluded:

I know you’re a devout Christian, and so am I. This bill to me is not only unconstitutional, it’s not only un-American; I think it is also deeply un-Christian.

And I say that because I believe this bill is idolatrous. I believe it is exclusionary and I believe it is arrogant. And those three things in my reading of the Gospel are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus. You probably know Matthew 6:5 when Jesus says, “Don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners. When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret.”

A religion that has to force people to put up a poster to prove its legitimacy is a dead religion. And it’s not one that I want to be a part of. It’s not one that I think I am a part of.

You know that in Scripture, it says faith without works is what? Is dead. My concern is instead of bringing a bill that will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, we instead mandate that people put up a poster and we both follow a teacher, a rabbi who said, “Don’t let the law get in the way of loving your neighbor.”

Loving your neighbor is the most important law. It is the summation of all the law and all the prophets. I would submit to you that our neighbor also includes the Hindu student who sits in a classroom, the Buddhist student who sits in a classroom, and an atheist student who sits in a classroom. And my question to you is, does this bill truly love those students?

It was Texas, so the bill passed anyway.

Speaking of public school classrooms, the recent announcement by Jennifer McCormick that she is running for governor of Indiana was another bit of very good news.

McCormick first won statewide office as a Republican, serving as Superintendent of Public Instruction. As Republican legislators became more and more divorced from sanity and unrepresentative of their constituents, especially with respect to public education, McCormick left the GOP. 

In her announcement, McCormick “tells it like it is.”

“I’m running for governor because our political leaders have lost sight of the challenges they were elected to solve. They are defunding and politicizing our schools, burdening us with the nation’s highest gas tax, taking our rights away, and standing by as we pay the highest health care costs in the nation.  It’s time for a leader who will put Hoosiers first. Together, we can restore common sense and put an end to the divisiveness that’s pulling our state backward,”

 “I know we can move our state forward by fighting for our public schools, making health care accessible and affordable, and bringing good paying jobs to main streets across Indiana. I loved serving our state and look forward to the opportunity to continue meeting with Hoosiers who believe it’s time for change.”

The Indiana Capital Chronicle also quoted McCormick

“I’m running because it’s time Hoosiers are put first, protecting our rights and our freedoms. It’s time Hoosiers have a voice, and a leader who believes in empowering them to make their own decisions,” she said, also emphasizing Indiana’s need for “a champion for a high quality education system.”

That means increased access to childcare, universal pre-K, better K-12 funding and “beyond high school training and education.” She also vowed to expand “accessible and affordable health care,” and to focus on “safe streets” and “safe neighborhoods.”

As Superintendent, McCormick pushed back against the GOP super-majority as it persisted in attacking public education. She had the spine  to leave what the Republican party had become. She would be an awesome governor–and she deserves the votes of every teacher, every woman who wants to control her own body, everyone who has an LGBTQ+  friend or family member…the list goes on.

If enough genuine Christians and actual conservatives refuse to support what the GOP has become, America might begin the long trip back to sanity and responsible governance.

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It’s Not Just Tennessee

In the wake of heightened attention to Tennessee, triggered by that state legislature’s expulsion of two young Black Democratic members, Politico ran an article examining the increasingly wide rural/urban divide in that state.

Nashville, Tennessee has been booming. It surpassed Austin, Texas, to take the top spot as the Wall Street Journal’s “hottest job market” of 2022. According to research from the Greater Nashville Technology Council, Middle Tennessee’s tech job growth grew by over 50 percent between 2015 and 2020. The “Silicon Valley of the South,” as Nashville has been called, accounts for some 40 percent of the GDP of the entire state. It’s a draw for talent and industry, a boon to the state’s coffers and a cultural gem of the American South.

So why does Tennessee seem so hostile to its own capital city — and greatest economic engine?

That same question could be asked about Indiana’s legislature, which has long been hostile to Indianapolis, despite the fact that the Circle City is very clearly the economic engine of the Hoosier state. For that matter, as the Politico article pointed out, this urban/rural divide is happening all over the country, at every level of government, “in which the preferences of voters often filter through representative bodies whose lopsided majorities don’t really represent the electorate of the state around them.”

Time for yours truly, the broken record: The legislative dominance of rural priorities is due to gerrymandering.

I have written before about the cultural differences that have exacerbated hostilities between rural and urban areas. Rural residents tend to hold more traditional values, to be more conservative and much more Republican, while in today’s America, every urban area over 500,000 is Blue on those ubiquitous political maps. The political divide  exacerbates the cultural divide, and both lead to an increase in hostility between rural and urban residents.

Economic factors also play a role. A large number of rural areas have experienced economic decline in recent years, with fewer job opportunities and shrinking populations.

The differing interests of rural and urban areas ought to lead to legislative compromises. That doesn’t happen, because– thanks to gerrymandering–rural voters exercise disproportionate electoral power. The result is a legislative super-majority that skews even further Right than its rural constituency–and disdains democratic norms and federalist divisions of authority.

As a CNN article reports,

From Florida and Mississippi to Georgia, Texas and Missouri, an array of red states are taking aggressive new steps to seize authority over local prosecutors, city policing policies, or both. These range from Georgia legislation that would establish a new statewide commission to discipline or remove local prosecutors, to a Texas bill allowing the state to take control of prosecuting election fraud cases, to moves by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey to dismiss from office elected county prosecutors who are Democrats, and a Mississippi bill that would allow a state takeover of policing in the capital city of Jackson.

These efforts by Red states to seize authority over law enforcement in their Blue cities is being fed by two recent, powerful trends.

One is the increased tendency of red states to override the decisions of those blue metros on a wide array of issues – on everything from minimum wage and family leave laws to environmental regulations, mask requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, and even recycling policies for plastic bags. The other is the intensifying political struggle over crime that has produced an intense pushback against the demands for criminal justice reform that emerged in the nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

That pushback against crime has a prominent racial component. Overwhelmingly White rural areas–and the Republicans they elect–want to empower police and reduce oversight that they believe impedes effective policing; prosecutors and other politicians in urban areas want to address racial bias in their criminal justice systems, and ensure that their systems are operating on a level playing field.

That particular divide motivated Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s announcement immediately after the jury verdict that he intended to pardon Daniel Perry, who was convicted of intentionally murdering a Black Lives Matter protester. (The jury that convicted Perry hadn’t seen a document that the judge subsequently unsealed, sharing Perry’s references to Black protesters as “monkeys,” and musing about “hunting Muslims in Europe.”)

None of this intended to suggest that rural Americans are all racists, or that all urban dwellers are racially progressive. In fact, the Politico article points out that Republicans representing rural areas tend to be well to the right of their rural constituents on many issues, including guns.

The problem is the systemic distortion that operates to empower the most resentful cohorts of rural voters, who then elect extremists willing to kill their state’s urban “golden goose.”

Resentment isn’t logical.

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