Resisting the Urge

Edwin Jackson was killed in a tragic motor vehicle accident on Sunday. The tragedy of this young man's life being cut short can not be overstated. Such promise; such potential; such a tragic waste. I mourn for Mr. Jackson's family and all who cared for him.

What I won't do is demagogue the issue. As it turns out, the man who struck Mr. Jackson was (a) intoxicated and (b) a twice-deported undocumented immigrant. 

Enter Representative Todd Rokita, who has never found an issue that he wouldn't politicize or demagogue:

Rep. Todd Rokita Retweeted Matt Smith

This news should make all Americans angry. A twice-deported illegal immigrant is suspected of killing 2 Hoosiers, including Colts LB Edwin Jackson. We must do more to get these dangerous illegal immigrant criminals off our streets, build a wall & put an end to illegal immigration

 How pathetic, Rep. Rokita. I know you're not better than this, but you can certainly try harder. I know you're going to lose the Senate primary to career lobbyist Luke Messer (and his $20,000/month publicly employed, part-time, attorney wife). I know you, Rep. Rokita, recognize that you cater to the lowest common denominator; you appeal to your constituents worst instincts and not their better angels. 

This is beyond the pale.

Perhaps Rep. Rokita can explain what it is about being an undocumented immigrant:

• that makes one necessarily a bad driver;
• that makes one more prone to drink and drive;
• that makes one more prone to drink to excess;
• that makes one less able to handle his alcohol;
• that makes their automobile accidents more dangerous/deadly

Rep. Rokita, instead of demagoguery, perhaps you could do something to actually help your constitutents? I note that Rep. Rokita was the primary sponsor of a whopping ONE bill that has been enacted. He's been in congress since 2011, folks. ONE BILL!

What is this bill? Well, funny thing is, we have the internet and I can give you this link, and the summary below, drafted by the Republican Policy Committee:

H.J.Res. 57 would disapprove and nullify the rule issued by the Department of Education on November 28, 2016, to implement the accountability, data reporting, and state plan provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

The bill's sponsors feel that while the Department had authority to issue regulations to implement the law, the regulation contained a number of provisions that significantly expanded the law’s requirements and violated the statute’s prohibitions against overreach by the Secretary. The bill's sponsors also believe that the Obama Administration’s purpose for these new requirements was to constrain states’ flexibility in developing appropriate accountability systems for their states.

In other words, the ONE SINGLE BILL that Todd Rokita has passed was nothing more than a partisan swipe at Obama. No attempt to make life better for his constituents; no attempt to actually address the issues he claims to care about.

What a hack. I applaud Gov. Holcomb, Sen. Mike Young,  Rep. Karlee Macer, Rep. Joe Donnelly, Sen. Todd Young, and everyone else who has resisted the urge to demagogue this issue. Edwin Jackson's death is a tragedy for that promising young man, his family, and everyone else who loved him. IT IS NOT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR HACK POLITICIANS TO SCORE POINTS.

I would never have voted for Rep. Rokita for dog catcher or anything else; perhaps those who would have been otherwise inclined to vote for him will use his actions in the past 36 hours to reflect on Rep. Rokita's character and whether they want him to represent all of us.

Amazon Finalist - Indianapolis

I am of course torn as to how I feel about Amazon moving to Indianapolis. Some thoughts, in no particular order:

1. I have, once again, heard the usual trope about how it remains questionable whether there will be enough "skilled applicants" to fill all of the jobs that Amazon would bring. Once again, my response is that if you can't find someone willing to sell the thing you need for the price you offer, you should offer more for that thing and not spend your time whining to the government about some supposed "skills gap." I also note that the Chamber of Commerce types who like to bemoan the "lack of qualified workers" conveniently refuse to note what "qualifications" they're looking for. Again, my law firm has an immediate opening for a litigator who is 12-0 in front of the United States Supreme Court, has a portable book of business worth $1m/year, and is willing to buy me a Ferrari. We will pay that litigator $15,000/year. Any takers? No? Must be a skills gap!

2. Taking at face value the notion that at least some of the people who work at the Amazon HQ would have to be imported, I think it is important to review the image of Indiana that our state government has blasted out to the world. Who can forget RFRA, or Mike Pence walking out of the Colts game, or Milo Smith's bill allowing people offended by National Anthem protests at NBA and NFL games (but not at the Indianapolis 500, baseball games, Indy 11 soccer games, or Indy Fuel hockey games) to get a refund? I mean, all three of those are examples of pandering to your base of intolerant voters. If I was not from Indiana and had professional options, it would take a lot more money to get me to move here than to, say, Denver. If I was an outsider, I would wonder what it was about me that the locals would determine was sub-human? Is my choice of romantic partner going to be acceptable? What about my religious choices? The books I read? Will those make me an outcast? A target? Essentially, this is a plea for tolerance here in the Hoosier state. Most citizens of this state are remarkably tolerant and warm-hearted people; it continually baffles me that the citizens of Indiana elect legislators who are so profoundly anti-Hoosier in this element of their behavior.

3. I question whether Indianapolis would respond positively to an Amazon HQ even if we got one. With that size of a corporate headquarters and that many jobs moving here, more housing would have to be built. Is anyone confident that these houses would result in increased density in Indianapolis as opposed to more sprawl in Hamilton, Boone, and Johnson counties? I'm not. I have witnessed the NIMBYism here in Speedway with respect to the Redevelopment Commission and the NIMBYism in Indianapolis writ large with respect to the old Coke bottling plant, and it has been disheartening.

4. I am also reminded that obtaining a "thing" (a "res" in legalese) is only worthwhile so long as you don't overpay for that thing. Remember when the Chicago Cubs really hit a home run (pardon the pun) by signing Alfonso Soriano? How did that one work out? My point is that sometimes we overpay for things and when we do so, the result is worse than if we had simply walked away from the deal.

Net Whopper Neutrality

We are really on a roll today.

I think that "net neutrality" is possibly the WORST name for a cause ever devised. No wonder nobody cares about it; nobody knows what the hell it's even talking about!

Anyway, I saw this great video today. Enjoy:

"Trickle-Down Economics Cannot Fail; It Can Only be Failed"

This seems to be the message from our friend George Will today, over at the Washington Post. He goes through a litany of depressing statistics about the savings rate in America. To wit:

As of 2013, 45 percent of working-age households had no retirement savings. Social Security (average annual payment, $15,500), which provides 33 percent of seniors’ annual income, and 90 percent for the bottom third of retirees, but only about 35 percent of a typical household’s pre-retirement income, last year became America’s first trillion-dollar-a-year program. Absent reforms, its trust fund will be exhausted by 2035 and benefits will have to be reduced 23 percent. A 2015 Federal Reserve studyrevealed that half of those surveyed said they could not gather $400 to cope with an emergency; one-third said they could not sell assets, tap retirement savings or turn to family and friends to pay three months of expenses. By 2017, median household savings ($14,500) for those near retirement age had declined 32 percent in a decade, and for the first time, older Americans had more credit card debt than younger Americans. Between 2003 and 2015, the indebtedness of those between ages 50 and 80 increased 60 percent. Today, those between 65 and 74 have five times more debt than that age cohort did two decades ago. 

Do you wonder how such behavior became to seem normal? 

Now, of course, Mr. Will could give us a candid answer here. He could write something along the lines of:

"Well, the lack of retirement savings of people in 2013 may be reflective of the fact that wages have not moved in approximately 40 years, so the people who are nearing retirement have effectively worked their entire careers without a raise. Add to that the decline/demise of the defined-benefit pension, such cuts as people like myself (Mr. George Will) have mercilessly pursued over these same 40 years, calling them such derogatory terms as 'unfunded liabilities' and 'union-mandated perks' that are 'destroying jobs.' We could talk about how unions, for all of their flaws, had an important role to play in countering corporate bargaining power in consolidated labor markets, even as I relentlessly advocated for right-to-work laws and other such measures as would destroy collective bargaining for labor (but not for capital). We could talk about the reasons the Social Security trust fund is going broke; you know, the part about the first $90,000/year is subject to taxes for it and nothing else; the fact that the 'trust fund' has been raided for years (YEARS) to fund government projects and tax cuts alike. Certainly, that the largest single contributing factor to bankruptcy filings in America is medical debt seems relevant to such behavior becoming normal."

Mr. Will could have given us any of that... even just a taste would have been refreshing. What do we get instead?

Americans consider deferral of gratification unnatural, which it is. Time was, however, thrift was considered a virtue. People sat at kitchen tables, calculating how to bring their outlays, for living and retiring, into alignment with their incomes. But eventually many people decided: This is no fun. Instead, let’s disconnect enjoyable spending decisions from tiresome facts about resources, thereby living the way the federal government does.

So, instead of addressing what has actually happened in the past 40-50 years (essentially Mr. Will's adulthood, or at least the majority of it), he invents a fictional halcyon time, when puritan virtuous Americans "sat at the kitchen table" and made responsible economic decisions. (As an aside, was this fictional time during the roaring 20s? That sure worked out well.)

Spare me Mr. Will. Economics is not a morality tale, and if even it was, I would be more comfortable playing my ideology to St. Peter than yours. And as a final note, is there any problem, big or small, that Mr. Will can't somehow blame on (a) the American people and/or (b) the federal government? That's some definition of "patriotism."

Accounting

In legalese, the term "accounting" means that somebody entrusted with funds must provide an explanation as to how those funds were used. In other words, the entrustee must "account" for all of the money. It's a pretty simple concept once you think it through.

In light of that, I will quote a blog post from Indy Tax Dollars, in full:

A little over a month ago it was announced that a move was afoot to establish a downtown Economic Improvement District which would tax property owners in the Mile Square (area bounded by East, West, North and South streets).  The funds would be used for problems not being adequately handled by current municipal budgets.

The subject is brought to mind again by an on-line IBJ story about VisitIndy (VI), and that organization’s fiscal boast.  For 2016, according to a report commissioned by VI, visitors to the city had an economic impact of $5.2 billion, and $719 million in additional state and local taxes.  (No division given as to state and local.)  This following substantial increases in previous years.

We know nothing about the report authors but we admit to a visceral suspicion about the accuracy of such glowing essays when they are being paid for by the subjects of said essays.  But let us assume the numbers are accurate.

Then, does not the question arise, "Where do all those dollars go?"  How do these figures connect with the need for downtown property owners to volunteer a heavier tax burden on themselves?  Why did the original story about the EID refer to the city as "cash-strapped?"

Why would it not be reasonable to be able to check on the amounts of dollars, and at the same time place a significant part of the burden on the most direct recipients of those revenues?

We believe this could be done by adopting something similar to our earlier suggestion of a Revenue Increment Tax - RIF. A huge proportion of that $5.2 billion comes into the city via members of the hospitality industry - food, beverage and lodging operations.

Surely the increase in revenues, at the time of a Super Bowl, an NBA All Star Game or a convention of thousands for instance, could be compared to revenues of a like period in other times for the application of an RIF plan.

Should we not make a more direct connection between revenues generated by sports franchises and the dollars handed back to them as incentives to remain here?

Very important points in a discussion that we, as a community, are notably NOT having.

Food for Thought

This:

Late last year, Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College and a NeverTrump conservative, proposed a little thought experiment for Republicans skeptical of Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s Russia ties.

“Let’s play Alternate Universe,” he wrote on Twitter. “It’s 2017, and President Hillary Clinton is facing charges that Chelsea met with Russians who offered oppo on Trump. Chelsea didn’t call the FBI; and Clinton nat sec adviser Jake Sullivan lied to the FBI about talking to the Russians.”

Nichols laid out the unfolding drama over a series of tweets. President Clinton fires the F.B.I. director after he declines her request to “let it go” on Sullivan. “Then, at least three other Clinton campaign officials end up indicted. All of them are tied in some way to a hostile foreign power.” Later, she threatens to “yank FOX’s license” because she didn’t like its critical coverage.

“I’m sure … totally sure …” Nichols added with no little irony, “that stalwarts of the G.O.P. would say: Look, this is a nothingburger, you can’t define ‘collusion,’ it’s just ‘the coffee boy,’ and on and on.”

As one of my old students used to say, "I'm not sayin' anything; I'm just sayin'."

Worth a Thousand Words

I am asked from time to time why I don't just give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt. My answer? He appoints people like Scott Pruitt, who made a career of suing the government over the EPA's efforts to regulate oil and gas companies, to head the EPA; he appoints people like Betsy DeVoss, who is an avowed enemy of the very concept of public education, to lead the Department of Education; he appoints people like Rick Perry (he who once forgot about the Dept. of Energy) to lead the Dept. of Energy.

Simply put, I have a hard time believing that this crew actually wants to do the things that the legislative branch has directed them to do (I will avoid the three branches of government/schoolhouse rock lecture here).

Here is a fine illustration:

Brenda Fitzgerald, the Georgia doctor who Trump appointed to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has resigned amid allegations of conflicts of interest.

The allegations came to light Tuesday evening when Politico reported that Fitzgerald had purchased shares in a tobacco company one month after taking her position at the agency — but also that she had a history of tobacco investments prior to taking her post at CDC.

The ridiculousness of this is obvious: Fitzgerald led a federal agency focused on driving down rates of smoking — the number one preventable cause of disease and death in the United States.

Is is possible to find a more apt analogy for the staffing of pretty much the entire Trump administration?

Richmond Hill Explosion - update

I recall watching the Richmond Hill debacle unfold as I was finishing up law school and wondering whether I, or someone I know, would wind up representing anyone associated with it. For those who don't recall, this was the house on the south side that blew up and essentially leveled all of the surrounding houses and damaged the rest of the neighborhood.

I also recall working in Ft. Wayne while the trial was going on . . . it got venue'd out of Marion County due to the press coverage. Anyway, the Indiana Lawyer updated today as follows:

Mark Leonard, the man convicted in the massive 2012 Indianapolis house explosion that killed two in the Richmond Hill subdivision, has died at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Correction confirmed Tuesday. He was 48.

Leonard and his brother, Bob, were convicted on a slew of charges after they caused a natural gas explosion at the home of Monserrate Shirley, Leonard’s girlfriend. The explosion killed Shirley’s neighbors, Jennifer and Dion Longworth, and damaged or destroyed dozens of homes in the neighborhood on Indianapolis’ far south side.

Bob and Mark Leonard each were sentenced to life without parole. Shirley was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

story continues below

Earlier this month, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Mark Leonard would not appear before them again after denying transfer to his challenge of one of his numerous felony convictions.

I take no satisfaction in untimely deaths of anyone, be they Mark Leonard or Jeffrey Dahmer. It is for that reason that I disagree with the death penalty. 

Mr. Leonard, methinks you were not given sufficient earthly penalty, but I am neither a judge nor the Almighty. I suspect you have bigger questions you have to answer now. Best of luck, and my God have mercy on you as I hope he has mercy on all of us. 

A(nother) Moment of Silence

Maybe some day we as a society will actually do something about this:

A 15-year-old student opened fire with a handgun inside his rural Kentucky high school Tuesday, killing two classmates, injuring 17 others and sending hundreds fleeing for safety.

While it is fortunate that the 17 wounded students have survived, let's not forget that at least some of them will have life-altering injuries and medical expenses that will probably bankrupt them and their families.

Hug your kids extra tight today. You never know whether you'll get to tomorrow. 

Tackling an Actual Problem

It is a nice reprieve from all of the voter ID laws that seem to never be "tough enough" for their proponents to see that the Indiana legislature is tackling a bona fide problem:

County election boards that beef up security around voting equipment and elections will be able to seek reimbursement for their expenses under a bill approved by a state Senate committee Monday.

Senate Bill 327 requires counties to make sure their voting systems follow new security procedures and allows county election boards to apply to the Indiana Secretary of State for full or partial compensation of any resources or staff implemented to meet the new standards. However, it does not say where the money is coming from.

I don't claim that this is a perfect measure, but I do know that a doctor I know opines regularly that "the enemy of 'good' is 'better'." It is good to see that the IN State legislature is trying to solve an actual problem, as opposed to the usual exercise in "solutions" looking for problems to justify themselves.

Let's applaud a step in the right direction.

Monday Quote

Because I am an equal opportunity hater, I provide today's quote from the inestimable Sheila Kennedy:

I have been very critical of the GOP (with good reason), but honesty compels me to recognize that a portion of the Democratic party is also composed of zealots who would rather be right than win elections–who prefer assuming postures of moral superiority to the hard work of coalition-building and persuasion. 

To my friends on the left, I must ask: would you rather win or be right? 

YIMBY

I think that most people have heard of the term "NIMBY." This stands for Not In My Back Yard and generally refers to those who want to remonstrate or otherwise impede development. Further, it reflects the idea that many people are perfectly fine with developing property so long as that property is not to close to their own homes.

There is a movement in other cities, in response to NIMBYism, called YIMBY, i.e. Yes In My Back Yard.

Count me in. I would like to see development in my backyard. I want to see Wilshaw built, particularly if it is not dominated by parking structures. I want to see increased bus routes between Speedway and every other part of the city. I want to see a train connecting the airport to downtown via Speedway. I want to see condos built around IMS for wealthy racing team owners to stay in, hopefully for more than just a few weeks in May. I would like to see more bars and restaurants open throughout Speedway, not just on Main St. I want to see the Speedway Supercenter (i.e. the Kroger development) grow like gangbusters. I would like the McGilvery's development to fill in, whether it is with liquor stores, bible stores, health clubs, or whatever.

Along those lines, I love the International Marketplace on W. 38th Street! In a city that is dominated by chain franchise restaurants and stores, it is so refreshing to see all of those independently owned and operated restaurants and other businesses. I try to patronize them as often as I reasonably can.

As I wrote a long time ago, the traffic that comes along with these developments is evidence that people actually want to be here. That is a good thing. If there is no traffic and considerably more parking than would ever reasonably be required, that is evidence that our home is not worth visiting to those who don't live here. That is a bad thing!

PLEASE in my backyard! Maybe instead of YIMBY we should call people like myself PIMBYs.

David Frum - QOTD for Friday, January 19, 2018

David Frum was a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. He was notoriously fired from the American Enterprise Institute after criticizing Republican tactics in opposition to Obamacare. He was, unsurprisingly, a "Never Trumper." He has, surprisingly, remained so.

Today, I read the following quote from his latest book, Trumpocracy:

If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy. 

That is a scary thought, folks. I hope he's wrong.

53/47

I remember a few years ago when a favorite talking point among my conservative friends was that 47% of Americans "don't even pay any taxes." As discussed yesterday a bit, that is not remotely true. All Americans that work pay payroll taxes. All Americans that drive pay fuel taxes. All Americans who buy things pay sales taxes. The "any taxes" that my conservative friends liked to reference was confined solely to federal income taxes.

Now, calling something the "federal income tax" is a bit misleading because, as we know, the payroll tax is levied on your income as well, it's just called something different.

Anyway, I just got my W-2 for 2017 and thought it would be enlightening to discuss the distribution of all taxes I paid on my income in 2017.

My W-2 taxes, which of course does not capture sales taxes, property taxes, etc. (including health insurance) amount to approximately 26% of my income.

Of the total W-2 taxes paid, the breakdown is as follows:

• 49% in Federal Income tax
• 25% in Social Security Tax 
• 13% in State of IN tax
• 7% local income tax
• 6% in Medicare tax

I consider myself fortunate to have an income large enough to create a federal income tax liability. I also expect to get a refund, as I generally choose to have more withheld so that I can get a refund, as opposed to having less withheld so that I get a bill. Nonetheless, take a look at that distribution and recognize that when people don't pay federal income taxes, they still pay a lot of other taxes; and this is only the taxes that are withheld. Again, this does not include taxes that are paid on the spot, such as sales taxes.

One final point: If you include what I spent on health insurance premiums in the past year, I paid an income tax rate of 34%. If you include both health insurance premiums and deductibles, I paid 42% on income taxes. Note, this amount does not include the amount that my law firm has paid for my health insurance; this is simply the amount that I pay in cash to insure my wife and children. By that math, you could rather easily increase the deductive taxation on me from 26% - 42% and give me public instead of private health insurance, and the only thing that would change for me would be that I no longer need to worry that my coverage will be rescinded.

About Those Millions of Unfilled Jobs

I heard it again during the Governor's "State of the State" address: Indiana has a million unfilled jobs and those poor employers just can't find the right employee with the necessary skills to fill the position.

What a crock.

I have long believed that if you can't find something at the price you're willing to pay, the logical response is to either adjust what you're willing to pay or adjust what you're looking for.

Indulge an example: 

My law firm presently has an opening for a senior-partner level attorney who has a book of business that all but guarantees $2,000,000 in billable collections per year; who has litigated no fewer than 100 cases from start to end;  who has argued at least a dozen times before the U.S. Supreme Court; and who has a winning record before the Supreme Court. My law firm will pay this person $4,000/year. We have an unfilled job opening, right?

I can't help but feel that this is what so many employers are doing. It is the equivalent of me saying that I would like to buy a Ferrari for $50 and when I can't find a willing seller, I then lament that "we just don't have enough luxury cars."

Well, I read this in Slate today and would like to share some excerpts.

Articles in which executives moan about their inability to find qualified workers for job openings are business pressperennials, typically focusing on “middle skill” industries like manufacturing and constructionthat don’t require a bachelor’s degree. In the years immediately following the Great Recession, there seemed to be an entire cottage industry devoted to blaming America’s stubbornly high unemployment rate on the notion that workers just lacked the specific talents employers needed, rather than, say, the hangover from a housing bust and financial crisis that had crippled the economy.

It is so tiring to listen to MBA types talk about how the "real problem" with American workers is that they get paid too much. 

If good workers were really in short supply, you’d expect pay to rise quickly as companies tried to outbid each other for talent. Instead, employers spent years carping about a lack of good job applicants while letting pay stagnate.

Another thing that is tiring is listening to beneficiaries of current injustices dissemble and create reasons why the current injustices are indeed just.

 In the years following the Great Recession, the U.S. labor market was incredibly concentrated, with a relatively small number of businesses posting help-wanted ads across different industries and cities. That appeared to put downward pressure on wages; the more concentrated the local market, the lower pay tended to be, the study’s authors found. This, the study’s author’s argued, was a sign that U.S. employers had an enormous amount of monopsony power—meaning they were essentially free to set low wages, because few other businesses were around or hiring. 

An example of how this works:

Let’s say you manage a small construction company, and you’ve been getting away with paying your crew relatively little because there aren’t that many other contractors posting help-wanted ads in your town. You need a new carpenter. But you don’t want to tick off the rest of your men by offering this new potential employee a more generous wage. So you post the job with the same mediocre hourly rate you’ve offered for the past three years. Nobody good responds, and to you, this looks like there aren’t enough talented carpenters out there. But in reality, there’s only a shortage of people willing to work at the artificially low wage you’ve set your heart on paying. The real problem isn’t a skills shortage, it’s that you aren’t offering market wages, because the market isn’t functioning.

 I've written previously about monopsony power. The idea is that when there is only one buyer, that buyer maintains considerable bargaining leverage with any and all sellers. Anyway, I would encourage anyone who wants to know more about this dynamic to go read the Slate article. It's really good.