Tag: indiana

The new Indiana district maps are out.

Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner.

A lot of people are going to concentrate on the US House maps. If you compare the old one:

…to the new one:

…you can see why: there are four freshmen Republicans in Indiana, and this map directly helps at least three of them (particularly IN-09’s Todd Young, who gave Baron Hill a somewhat surprising upset last year). It also will encourage IN-02’s Joe Donnelly to abandon his own district in order to run for and lose either the Senate or the Governor’s race in 2012. All of this fairly obvious; but it’s the state house races that are interesting. And possibly a bit of applied vengeance.

Continue reading The new Indiana district maps are out.

Union Reform bills pass in Ohio, Indiana Houses.

In Ohio, the final vote on SB 5 was 53-44; it’s already passed the Ohio Senate, but changes made to the bill require another quick vote on the legislation either today or tomorrow. This particular legislation goes a bit farther than the groundbreaking Wisconsin union reform bill; it redefines collective bargaining privileges for public sector union employees to cover wages only, institutes merit pay for public sector union workers, and makes strikes by public sector employees illegal. Most interestingly, it extends collective bargaining reforms to police and firefighter unions, which is quite possibly a reaction to the rather contemptible activities and passive-aggressive threats done and made by Big Labor in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, in Indiana the final vote on HB 1216 was 54-44: this reform bill will raise the threshold for union payscales for public work projects from $150,000 to $350,000, and will also no longer require non-union companies to guarantee union jobs on projects in order to bid on them. Entertainingly, this was one of the ostensible reasons that Indiana state representatives hid in Illinois for a month. Short version: it did not end well.

And, of course, a few days ago the Florida state House passed HB 1021, which bans the automatic collection of public sector union dues. Slowly but surely, reform is coming to help embattled states fight the entrenched partisan interests strangling trade and wealth generation from within…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Indiana GOP mocking their AWOL colleagues.

Call this fallout from the defeat of Wisconsin Democrats; call it a wondrous example of political-themed poetry/music/parody songs THAT ACTUALLY SCANS; or just call it funny. Any way you look at it, this parody of John Denver’s “Country Roads” by Indiana legislators making (deserved) fun of their AWOL Democratic colleagues is worth watching. Via The Campaign Spot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnLNnGDzV3c&tracker=False

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Indiana to fine boycotting Democrats.

$250 dollars a day starting Monday, until they return and start doing their jobs. The article suggests that Indiana Democrats may not take this seriously*, as fines of this sort have been threatened in the past but never actually imposed. To which I say: given the language, rhetoric, and now live ammunition that have been scattered around towards Republicans by obedient Democratic lackeys… why should anybody assume that this is merely a threat this time?

Seriously. Look at this one Google search term alone. Tell me again why any Republican legislator should still have any sort of fellow-feeling towards any Democratic legislator who has spent the last month cynically inciting their weaker-minded followers up to the very edge of violence. We have come to the end of showing any consideration, and the end of toleration of nonsense. If Indiana Democrats don’t want to pay the fine, then they should stop pretending to be latter-day Robin Hoods, delete the number of their union boss masters from their cell phones, and go back to work.

Via All Politics Blog.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading Indiana to fine boycotting Democrats.

#rsrh First rule of the Internet (eventually… S,KNSFW).

Be very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very careful when you throw an online contest to pick Something’s New Name, or the Best Whatever, or… anything, really.  Especially when there’s a possibility that an inappropriate, yet legal-by-the-rules choice will seriously embarrass the contest throwers.

This is a lesson that the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, has now learned with regard to the proposed name of its new government center.  No… no, you’re going to have to click through for this one.  I run a respectable website, here.

Via Political Wire, via Hot Air Headlines.

Democratic Death Panel Watch: Baron Hill, IN-09.

The DCCC is cutting Hill loose; while it’s being – nervously – categorized as being merely an internal dispute, the practical end result is that the section of the DCCC that can do unlimited funding (independent expenditures) has canceled critical ad time while the section of the DCCC that cannot (coordinated) will be offering, at best, a token 87K. Hill, of course, is the super-genius who did this last year:

Continue reading Democratic Death Panel Watch: Baron Hill, IN-09.

From the Dan Coats (R CAND, IN-SEN) conference call.

This should have been up a couple of days ago, but I’m having computer issues. Dan Coats did a conference call on Monday, and I took the opportunity to ask him a question on Republican unity, post-primary:

Actually, I asked two questions, but the first wasn’t much of anything; just Coat’s reaction to Evan Bayh’s tacit admission that Brad Ellsworth is going to lose the election. It was a funnier question in my head than it was in the actual call.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

NRLC-PAC endorses Dan Coats (R CAND, IN-SEN).

The endorsement of Dan Coats by NRLC-PAC (no link yet [here you go]) is no less painful for Brad Ellsworth for being completely unsurprising:

As a member of both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, Dan Coats was a leading champion for pro-life policies. Dan Coats was the author of key pro-life amendments, including a law that prevents the government from penalizing medical training programs for refusing to provide training in abortion. In addition, he was part of successful efforts to curb federal funding of abortion and an early supporter of the successful pro-life campaign to ban partial-birth abortion.

His opponent, Brad Ellsworth voted to enact President Obama’s pro-abortion health care legislation – legislation which will provide government funding for health plans that pay for abortion on demand, and also contains multiple provisions that will promote the rationing of lifesaving medical treatments.

Continue reading NRLC-PAC endorses Dan Coats (R CAND, IN-SEN).