By Dan Carpenter
TheStatehouseFile.com

Gov. Mike Pence’s new health insurance proposal is potentially – potentially – good news, and there’s more good news in the reaction of some of his prominent critics, who’ve elected to accentuate the positive rather than dwell on the faults.

Faults are not hard to find. An expanded Healthy Indiana plan as laid out by Pence would be more cumbersome, more given to surprises and less generous and even less respectful toward the working poor than the broadening of Medicaid, a huge federal gift that many states, some headed by Pence’s fellow Republicans, have taken and run with.

Commentary button in JPG – no shadowWhether the state’s homegrown alternative is accepted or rejected by the federal government, months already have been lost by hundreds of thousands of uninsured Hoosiers and the hospitals that must carry those who don’t choose to go untreated. Many more months will evaporate as Pence and the feds perform their kabuki dance over Healthy Indiana, which the state was given till Dec. 31 to continue in its current, profoundly limited, form.

Still, the wall appears to have come down, even if the debris from it frustrates access to Pence on the part of those who’ve pledged to work with him to break the political stalemate that’s keeping Indiana stuck in the station. Obamacare will continue to be the anathema that rallies the GOP primary troops and applies the litmus test to presidential hopefuls such as Pence; but under whatever cover they can muster, the men and women in charge of vital services to the needy in their sovereign states are acknowledging that the Affordable Care Act is reality, is working, and is the best, essentially the only, deal in town.

Pence has been accused from the right of accepting Obamacare in everything but name and slapping some Hoosier lipstick on the pig. The more eager-to-please advocates on the other side submit that he’s at least gotten into the neighborhood of expanded Medicaid – close enough, perhaps, that the feds can get him to the point of the feds’ satisfaction. The cynics on that other side offer the worst-case scenario: that he’s bought more time, time the ailing needy in Indiana can’t afford, and will hold the Alamo with national attention until national office no longer beckons.

I prefer to think that the train is chugging, that the momentum fueled by moral obligation and no-brainer economics will not be stopped, and that Pence in some form of collaboration with Washington and the Indiana health-care industry will see his signature accomplishment as governor emulate that of the president whose name he dares not speak except in vain. Delicious irony, that. Then he can do his best Mitt Romney in the primary debates and insist he’s come up with a homegrown health-care plan that the party ought to adopt. And that’s fine, Governor. Whatever. Just get this thing done. People are dying.

Dan Carpenter is a freelance writer, contributor to The Indianapolis Business Journal and author of “Indiana Out Loud.”

By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

They stand, one by one, as their names and ranks are called, old warriors at home in the embrace of family.

The old warriors, my father among them, listen as the school’s head recites their years of service. For many of them, time has left its marks. Their faces are etched with lines and their hair is a thin gray going to silver. Their postures are a little more stooped. Their gaits can be unsteady when they walk.

Commentary button in JPG – no shadowIn some cases, it has been nearly 70 years since they first heard the bugle’s call.

They are back now to pay their respects both to fallen comrades and to family.

Each year at my son’s school the sixth grade has a Memorial Day program at which the school honors both the alumni who lost their lives in this country’s service and the service of grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins of current students.

The program begins with instrumental versions of patriotic songs, then a call of the roll when the aged veterans stand to be recognized. As each name is called, the veteran and the sixth-grader to whom the veteran is related stand.

When the last name is read, the applause that sweeps the auditorium is prolonged, emphatic and heartfelt.

As the crowd claps for them, my father and the other veterans stand with their heads bowed. As applause pounds on, my son stares at his grandfather, his eyes wide with wonder.

From there, the program moves to first a recitation of the poem “In Flanders Field” and then a version set to music, with the sweet voices of the sixth-grade choir adding poignancy to the lyrics:

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

For much of the song, my father keeps his eyes locked upon his grandson, who sings from the back row. As the song reaches its end, Dad bows his head once more.

Dad enlisted in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II. He was in the Engineer Corps and spent the bulk of his time in service in the Aleutian Islands. He didn’t fight Nazis, the Italians or the Japanese, but rather boredom, confusion and loneliness.

We tend to sentimentalize the experiences of the Americans who grew up in my father’s era by calling them “the greatest generation” – as if we can minimize the disruption war and other hardships brought to their lives by saying something nice about them. It is as if by calling them great we can pretend they didn’t feel frightened or desperate or depressed when they were pulled away from family and friends and sent off to serve with the uneasy knowledge that they might not come back.

I have a photo of my father when he first entered the army, when he was just a few years older than my son is now. In the picture, Dan looks young, fit, innocent – and so much like my son that it both bewilders me and breaks my heart.

I look at my young son, whose life’s focus now is on playing as much baseball as he can with his friends – a passion he shares with his grandfather – and I wonder what it cost my Dad to go away as he did.

And I wonder what it cost so many others who went away and did not come home.

The sweet voices sing and recite, each word a tribute to sacrifice, and at the end the sixth grade class thanks the veterans who are their grandparents, parents and relatives for serving.

And as that thanks is offered, a single word is thought but not spoken by the others in attendance.

Amen.

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

Jennifer Nelson for www.thweindianalawyer.com

The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed a misdemeanor conviction for patronizing a prostitute, with two judges ruling the state was unable to rebut the man’s entrapment defense by showing he had a history of trying to buy sex.

Kenneth Griesemer was convicted of Class A misdemeanor patronizing a prostitute based on his interaction with an undercover detective posing as a prostitute on Washington Street in Indianapolis. He saw her, circled back in his car and asked the detective if she needed a ride. Detective Tabatha McLemore declined, saying she was trying to make money. She asked how much money he had and then told him what she would perform for $20. She said he could pick her up down the street, where he was arrested by police. During this interaction, Griesemer simply nodded in response to McLemore’s questions.

Griesemer argued in Kenneth Griesemer v. State of Indiana, 49A04-1308-CR-382, that his conviction should be reversed because he was entrapped. The judges found he established police inducement, so the burden of proof shifted to the state to demonstrate that the conduct was not the result of police efforts or that Griesemer had a predisposition to commit the crime.

The state argued Shelton v. State, 679 N.E.2d 499, 502 (Ind. Ct. App. 1997), supports that police merely afforded Griesemer an opportunity to commit a crime, so the state may not have induced his criminal behavior. In Shelton, two brothers were charged with road hunting for stopping their vehicle on the side of the road and shooting at a deer decoy set up by police.

“We cannot, however, hold that the facts herein are analogous to those in Shelton. Detective McLemore was not merely standing on the side of the road dressed like a prostitute. She was the first to mention money, a sex act, and the possibility of exchanging the two. ForShelton to be analogous, the deer decoy would have needed a sign or recording announcing to passers-by that they were welcome to shoot at the deer for twenty dollars,” Judge Melissa May wrote. “As the deer decoy contained no such explicit invitation to commit criminal behavior, we decline the State’s invitation to follow Shelton. Detective McLemore’s question and statements were sufficient to induce Griesemer to commit patronizing a prostitute.”

The state did not present any evidence to demonstrate Griesemer was predisposed to patronizing a prostitute, so it did not rebut his defense of entrapment, the majority held.

Chief Judge Nancy Vaidik dissented, writing, “I believe that the State proved that Griesemer was predisposed to commit the offense because the State established that Griesemer was not reluctant to commit the offense.”

She did not agree with the majority’s suggestion that in order to demonstrate predisposition, the state needed to show Griesemer has a history of patronizing prostitutes or is familiar with the jargon of the prostitution business.