2014 Session’s First Half A Textbook Case Of “Missed Opportunities”

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INDIANAPOLIS – The challenges we faced coming into the 2014 session of the Indiana State Legislature were immense:

  • How to help Hoosier families who have seen their incomes decline over the past decade.
  • How to keep our best and brightest from leaving Indiana.
  • How to address the crisis facing Hoosier girls, one of six of whom gets raped or sexually assaulted.
  • How to not only put Hoosiers back to work, but make sure they are paid decent wages.

We have had numerous chances to fully address these problems, but we have avoided looking for answers. If there is such a thing as a textbook case of missed opportunities, the first half of this session is it.
Consider what our priorities have been so far. It doesn’t take too long.
Our biggest priority has been deciding whether to open up our state’s most cherished document to tell the world who can marry whom in Indiana.
Our second biggest priority has been a step toward elimination of the business personal property tax, something that will not create jobs, but will add to the burdens faced by families, homeowners, local units of government, and schools.
And it’s not like we haven’t had the chance to consider some things that will help our middle class. Here are just a few things that House Democrats have advocated this session:

  • Increasing the state’s minimum wage.
  • Asking the people of Indiana if they support an increase in the minimum wage.
  • Asking for a study of the wage equity gap in Indiana.
  • Restoring a Small Business Innovation Program to assist technological start-up companies.
  • Establishing Manufacturing Reinvestment Accounts to help small businesses purchase equipment and hire new workers.
  • Creating an Indiana Goes Back to Work Tax Credit to encourage employers to hire unemployed Hoosiers.

We tried to get rid of Indiana’s faulty wage suppression law. We asked Congress to do something to help 70,000 Hoosiers who lost their unemployment benefits. We tried to increase Indiana’s earned income tax credit. We tried to provide more than $500 million for state and local infrastructure.
We tried to get the women and minority program, Indiana Plan, funded again in Evansville.
We asked for a plan to encourage our top college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to stay in Indiana. We asked that our state finally study why so many Hoosier girls have been raped or sexually assaulted. We tried to end ‘pay-to-play’ in Indiana for people who want taxpayer-funded assistance. We asked that the Indiana Inspector General keep the people of our state better-informed.
Indiana House Democrats believe all of these ideas offer chances to help millions of Hoosiers. House Republicans did not agree. They stopped all of the things I just mentioned.
There were some successes. We did get the majority to support our proposal to increase the exemption our state provides for families with children. They supported our plan to provide the funding to help local firefighters, police and EMTs purchase the equipment they need to keep their communities safe. They even agreed with us that the Indiana Attorney General needs to keep the public better-informed.
But when you consider what we did, and what we could have done, the bottom line is this: we can do better. We have time to do better. Indiana House Democrats will do our part. I just hope the majorities feel the same way.

  

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28 COMMENTS

  1. What Evansville’s Nancy Pelosi wannabe actually means is it was a session of “missed opportunities” to SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!

    Thank goodness she got her ears laid back when she ran for Congress. Although, she and her husband seem to have made a little something off the taxpayers with their sweet LST dock deal.

    Nancy in San Francisco and Gail in Evanspatch. Oh yeah!

  3. Pence has his social agenda and he will not be dissuaded from prosecuting it. It will be to the overall detriment of Indiana but The Scowl cares not. His narrow constituency is on the march. Predictably, he is hell bent on catering to the crazies and letting the least able fend for themselves.

    Gail Reicken is as fine a legislator as this area has ever sent to Indianpolis.

      • What she said is the same stuff democrats have said for years and has failed for years.

        I do not respect a legislator who did not respect our constitution and ran away with it to Urbana when she was not going to get her way.

        She takes about jobs, but was against allowing workers to the freedom to work for whom they choose without paying a tribute to a union.

        Indeed, democrats have turned unemployment compensation into a benefit. Some of the ideas she she floated are good ideas, but where were they when democrats were in power? Seems like the minority party always has great ideas until they get back in power. I go by what she did when she was in power.

        Gail is qualified to measure me for new shoes, but I don’t know that I could get past that ketchup stain.

        But hey, you want a democrat utopia, then move that mobile home west young man. There’s a humdinger of one in Illinois.

  4. I agree 100% that many opportunities are being shunted aside. Maybe they could get more important work done if the legislators would spend less time appeasing retarded voter bases with nearly meaningless scooter legislation and anti-American marriage amendments.

    • Being as the majority of states have constitutionally defined marriage as one man and one woman, same sex marriage must be the anti-American marriage.

      BTW “retarded” is derogatory term nearly on the level of the “N” word.

      • I think all marriage inequality amendments and laws eventually will be declared unconstitutional same as other similar Jim Crow laws were. And anything that is not advancing American ideals is retarding them. If the shoe fits, wear it.

        • Marriage in equality is giving special rights to homosexuals based on consent and commitment but denying it to other non traditional unions who would meet the same qualifications.

          You were using “retard” as a noun not a verb. Are you sensitive to homosexuals but apathetic to those with learning disabilities? I don’t think you are, but you need to correct your infractions when you become aware of them.

          • Check the phrase “appeasing retarded voter bases.” I used retarded as an adjective. I could’ve just as easily used imbecilic, but you probably wouldn’t have understood any better.

          • You have often bragged about calling a black guy the ‘N’ word in anger. You have said it was ok because it was you and you claim he insulted your daughter. It’s not ok for either reason. You’ve been afforded several opportunities to recant if not apologize and refuse to do so, you usually double down with attacks on gay folks or women. Sometimes your ‘defense’ of the indefensible takes the form of unintelligible spite of uncertain etiology. Regarding your abhorrent use of the ‘N’ word, you once famously said you have nothing to apologize for.

            As you lectured What_Next, you need to correct your infractions when you become aware of them. Your grousing about ‘retard’ or whatever is a transparent attempt to curry favor with Elkybee who has legitimate credentials to dislike it when used as a pejorative. She has worked in that field and helped many people. She hands you your hat every time you attempt to stay with her on any subject and you would like to co-opt her but have no clue how to go about it. Truthfulness would go a long way but you and I both know that’s out of the question.

            You’ve got a lot of business reprimanding anyone for their use of words.

          • You did use it as an adjective. so that pretty well exonerates you and no family of with a “retard” child would be insulted by your adjective at all.

            It’s amazing the hoops a liberal will jump through rather than just dealing with their own obvious insensitivity.

          • In the future, when I think you’ll be attempting to read my posts, I will try to make things really really simple so you can better understand.

          • That’s a lie Bandana, I have never “bragged” about calling someone the N word.

            I have said if you call my daughter a whore, right after she has given birth to you 3/7 tha tyou do not support, then I will call you the N-word, B-word, and mix in a few F-words before I put my boot up your A-word. That’s being a father not a racist.

            Sorry that you don’t know the difference, but that’s on you not me. However, you will never absolve yourself of your own use of the N-word by judging me.

          • @What_next,

            Went right over your head didn’t it?

            So you would call someone’s developmentally challenged child a retard?

      • IE,Try [regressive] “scooterville” or “little eventsville” indiana. Frozen in time,promoting true regressiveness through the ugly,ill conceived baseless,little valued,touch pointed legislation.
        This only brings on more needless and,thus,worthless,attention to “your localized” failing social economics infrastructure. Not so good for your social economic balance,certainly challenges thats sustainability for some needed improvements.

        Try working on the actual causes for your woes,quit putting last nights sheets on the line,so to speak.

        “bibendum,politicus stercore”

        regional,political horse manure.

        • But, but, but, we have a dog park and a great lawn as a collection point for what dogs produce.

  6. @Bandana

    You’re trying to deal with a chaucerian fraud.
    Don’t expect any sort of genuine or sincere response at all.

    Jimmy Swaggert, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyers, Rick Warren, Bill Donohue christian pickpockets and charlatans all of them.

    Then you have those that do their bidding Rick Santorum, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Mike Huckabee, Mike Lee, Paul Broun and the like, some of the most fanatical, maniacal theocrats on the planet. They’re as dangerous as the Iranian mullahs, maybe even more so.

    You can get away with the most hideous offenses and violations of ethics immorality in this country if you just justify them first via the christian folklore guide.

    Anti-science, anti-intellectuals, anti- everything that isn’t their flavo, as they define it. of white “christian conservative male rule and power” and anti-anything or anybody that stands in their way.

    They are incredibly dangerous and need to challenged and stopped at every corner of American society.

    • As you purport to be virulently anti-Christian, can we also believe your bigotry extends to Jews, Muslims, and other one God religions that have white males among their faithful?

      Also, the “Brains” mislabel is insulting to us who have them and know how to use them.

    • I agree. At least we have been instructed that using that word is a sign of ‘being a (presumably good) father’. Like many of the prejudices still kicking but on life support, that one will take a natural die off to finally be gone.

      Gail Reicken’s point is well made. This will be a wasted legislative session. It was baked in the cake all along, the social agenda trumps everything. Disenfranchisement, gay marriage, tax cuts for the wealthy paid for by the disadvantaged…

      • Good daddy, go pay your tithes at the CP if you want to atone for your latent bigotry by confessing it in others. If I wanted to be part of it I would have paid my indulgence to Josh and had my sins absolved.

        So how much did Gail get done when she followed Bauer to Urbana? I would admire her if she had been one of the democrat’s who didn’t go howling across the state line with our constitution in tow. Instead I can’t get past the Urbana size ketchup stain on her shirt. She cares more for the agenda of her pals than our constitution and needs to go the way of Ellsworth.

    • I have given you genuine responses only to be called a bigot and sociopath by you. But that’s typical from your side. If you can’t defeat with reason, demean and destroy.

      If you’re going to ignore me then ignore more.

      But if you’re going to talk about me then man up and talk to me rather than running your hate campaign from the side lines.

      And deal with your Christo-phobia. It’s just ugly hate.

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