Yesterday I posted a video from the recent WTHR investigative report that revealed Governor Mitch Daniels and his minions -- namely Mitch Roob, of FSSA privatization infamy -- have been a bit generous in their job creation numbers.
As in, roughly 40% of the jobs they're citing don't exist.
Daniels wasn't featured in the first report, but yesterday's follow-up brought out Bad Mitch. You know, the spiteful, snarling Mitch that can't stand it when people question his judgment.
(See also then-OMB director Mitch Daniels dismissing critics of the Iraq War by calling their $200 billion price tag "very, very high" -- the current tab has pushed past $1 trillion.)
Regardless, it appears that the Mitch's got their signals crossed:
To help clarify how many job commitments have resulted in actual jobs, WTHR asked the governor if the state would release specific information to show which job commitments have been fulfilled and which ones have not, along with the number of jobs each company has created in Indiana.
"The IEDC board meetings are public, and plenty of enterprising reporters choose to attend them and those numbers are available there," Gov. Daniels replied.
His statement contradicts what Roob told 13 Investigates a week ago when WTHR asked for the same information.
"Most of what IEDC has is sheltered from public disclosure for competitive reasons," Roob explained. "That is a competitive weapon that companies believe can be used against them by their competitors... the confidentiality we promise to companies that do business in Indiana is very important to us. That is confidential information."
In the four stages of crisis recovery that Mitch Daniels has used, we're almost to step four. For those of you keeping track, we've gone through (1) Ignore, (2) Dismiss, (3) Irrationaly Defend, and are almost back to...(4) Ignore.
Now there's a headline that Governor Mitch "We don't need no stinkin' jobs" Daniels probably didn't want to see just days after asserting that the federal stimulus funding his own administration says is creating jobs isn't, uh, creating jobs. Confused? So is Mitch, apparently:
But as the two-year, $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act continues forward, a higher percentage of money will be distributed through competitive grants.
"These grants are the next phase of the stimulus program," said Cris Johnston, who as Indiana's executive director of government efficiency and financial planning has tracked much of the state's stimulus spending.
"The federal government spent most of the summer putting together the guidelines for these programs, so this is really starting to take off now."
Governor Mitch Daniels, yesterday on Fox News, talking about federal stimulus spending in Indiana:
"I don't think you can point to much effect so far. Government spending doesn't create jobs...We have to improve the conditions for people to create wealth," Daniels said. "I'm very concerned that a lot of policy in Washington is headed in the wrong direction."
Governor Mitch Daniels, today and for the last six months, talking about federal stimulus spending in Indiana:
Governor Daniels has already taken action to utilize stimulus funds in the smartest and fastest ways possible. Before the federal package was signed into law, Indiana had identified 'shovel ready' highway and clean water projects throughout the state. These projects will put more Hoosiers to work. Indiana was among the first states to certify its participation with the U.S. Department of Labor to provide an additional $25 weekly to Hoosiers eligible for unemployment insurance.
Talk about being left out in the cold -- after years of experience in the home and business weatherization industry, it appears that numerous local contractors across the state were denied stimulus dollars for that purpose. The (purported) reason may (not) surprise you.
While many are happy the money's finally been approved, critics have questioned how the state has allocated its portion of the $52.7 million to weatherize 19,700 Indiana homes.
Every Indiana county is served by a not-for-profit community action agency with years, if not decades, of experience doing weatherizations. But four of the 24 agencies did not get any stimulus money.
Instead, that funding went to private companies. Most notably, $20.7 million, nearly 40 percent of the total funding, went to the Indiana Builders Association, which has given $185,000 to Gov. Mitch Daniels' political campaigns since 2004. The association also hosted a reception for Daniels' re-election bid in August 2008.
The association has never administered a home energy conservation or weatherization program. Yet, it will be weatherizing 3,285 homes, serving 38 counties including LaPorte.
I have no doubt that the IBA is fully capable of doing the work they have been charged with completing. One does have to wonder why existing, locally-managed weatherization entities would be passed over, especially with the oft-cited goal of state officials being to maximize efficiency with stimulus programs.
The headline of a story in this morning's South Bend Tribunereads simply: "Foes say climate legislation threatens RV industry comeback."
The argument, so these foes say, is that any attempt to curb carbon emissions will cripple the just-now-recovering recreational vehicle industry that has suffered so much under the current economic downturn.
[Vice President of public policy at the Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce Kyle] Hannon believes, perhaps, no area in the country would be affected more by cap and trade.
"The biggest draw to businesses now is we have reliable and affordable energy here," Hannon said. "I'm worried about the whole country, but for local businesses this will be a real problem. We will not have affordable energy if this passes. It could create a 40 to 60 percent hike, and it will hurt job creation and effect the RV business here."
First things first: there are certainly valid arguments on both sides of this issue, especially in terms of the disproportionate impact this legislation could have on Indiana.
That being said, I can't help but wonder if Hannon is missing a more critical point -- namely, the fact that the RV industry of yesteryear will almost certainly need to evolve if it is to survive. The movement toward "green" vehicles and energy efficiency has begun, and will undoubtedly continue its march forward in the decades to come. Argue all you want about cap-and-trade, but there can be no denying that innovation will need to come to the RV industry if it is to survive in the long-term.
That revolution can begin right here at home, and regardless of what happens with this current legislation, our state's industrial backbone will be strengthened by a decided movement forward, rather than back.
Last night saw Governor Mitch Daniels take to the boob tube in order to unveil his budget proposal to the world, a mere four or five weeks after it would have been constructive for him to, you know, unveil this budget proposal.
In a live TV address Monday night, Gov. Mitch Daniels revealed the broad strokes of a new two-year budget plan that includes increases for public education and spends about $300 million of the state's surplus.
The use of reserves is a major departure for the governor, who has prided himself on spending no more than state coffers take in. This change would clear the way for an unbalanced budget for the first time under Daniels.
But he said overall state spending will be reduced by almost 3 percent.
First of all, while it is nice to see Daniels join the discussion a six months after it started, you kind of have to wonder what the hell happened in the last few weeks to make the guy change his mind on so many key gripes he had with the budget proposal he helped kill at the end of the legislative session.
Just a short while ago, dipping into the state's reserves was a deal-breaker. Now it's the centerpiece of Daniels' much-ballyhooed plan.
Oh, and education spending is going up. Or is it? Word on the street is that the pledge to not cut any school's funding extends only to the per pupil figure, something that could find urban and rural districts losing cash next year while Mitch's friends in the suburbs enjoy double-digit increases.
A lot of potentially fuzzy math, and not a lot of details at this point.
So I guess if anything, we should give the guy full credit for at least being open and up-front about his latest plan to blatantly disregard the rule of law in the name of political expediency.
A new $3.1 billion price tag for the extension of Interstate 69 between Indianapolis and Evansville can be reduced by ignoring some federal rules, Gov. Mitch Daniels said.
Speaking Monday to a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of Southwest Indiana in Evansville, Daniels said the Indiana Department of Transportation estimate released last week could be trimmed by bypassing some federal highway construction standards.
``Throw away the rule book to the extent the feds will let you do it,'' Daniels said he told INDOT officials.
Daniels discussed ignoring the mandated width of the interstate median or simply making the road top much thinner than, you know, the law allows.
Indiana under Mitch Daniels: Leading the pack in the race to the bottom.
(Oh, and stay tuned for next week, when Governor Daniels will announce how much money Hoosier businesses could save by just ignoring those pesky federal minimum wage regulations!)
Governor Mitch Daniels has to be on cloud nine. His legislative agenda derailed, and the world crumbling around him, all it took was 48-hours of vague veto threats to send the General Assembly toward a special session. And with that special session comes a great opportunity for the Mitch to try and re-market himself as the great steadying force of our state government. Mike Smith of the AP looks at where we stand:
The Senate passed a two-year budget bill on the final day of the regular session, but it was defeated in the narrowly divided House.
Daniels said he would have vetoed it anyway, mostly because he said it would have chewed through the state's reserves and left a $1 billion shortfall at the end of the biennium. He noted that tax collections in April were $255 million below the target set in the fiscal forecast released earlier that month, and he thinks revenue in May and June won't meet the forecast either.
So, he essentially said to lawmakers, go back to the drawing board and pass a budget plan that spends about $1 billion less than the one voted on April 29.
Lawmakers, for their part, appear less than enthusiastic at the prospect of slashing funding on, well, everything. Even the Republican leadership is having a hard time finding their bearings.
[State Sen. Luke] Kenley said that having another revenue forecast conducted was fine, but, "We are never going to crystal ball this enough to give him a comfort level."
Kenley also alluded to the possibility that if a budget can't be concocted to meet Daniels' exacting, inexact standards, a veto-override could be in the cards. With Rep. Brian Bosma leading his House Republicans down the path of "lapdog," though, it would probably take a lot of trauma to present that as an opportunity.
Lest you think the disastrous end to the legislative session was a purely partisan affair, both the Senate Republicans and House Democrats have made it abundantly clear that they have serious problems with the way Governor Mitch Daniels handled himself in the final negotiations. Now, both caucuses are calling for the man downstairs to stop his vague grandstanding and start providing the details needed to find a workable solution.
"I've invited the governor to tell us what his solution is because obviously we haven't met his standards," said Senate Appropriations Chairman Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville. "We need to hear more from him."
House Speaker Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, agrees, saying "he needs to come out with a budget - not just vague references. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Then we can work on it from there."
Daniels, meanwhile, has made no decisions on when the special session will happen or the course it will take.
Of course, this was likely Daniels' plan all along -- he had a much better political interest in a special session, anyway, and we can expect to see him continue his tsk-tsking for at least a few more weeks.
For those of you who have already watched President Obama's weekly radio address, you know that Indiana's own Baron Hill was on the receiving end of a PAYGO love-fest courtesy of the leader of the free world. Here's where we're at:
In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama called on Congress to pass a pay-as-you-go legislation, known as PAYGO, that would require new federal spending to be offset by budgetary cuts or tax hikes.
"We need to adhere to the basic principle that new tax or entitlement policies should be paid for," he said, asserting that PAYGO "helped transform large deficits into surpluses in the 1990s. Now we must restore that sense of fiscal discipline."
Fiscally conservative Democratic lawmakers, known as Blue Dogs, told Obama on Friday that they're working on a PAYGO plan and that they prefer to offset new spending with spending cuts elsewhere. Rep. Baron Hill of Indiana will introduce legislation next week, a Democratic aide told FOXNews.com
And they said the Blue Dogs and Obama couldn't get along...
And so it went, up and down the street, in between tents and tables, squeezing past pedestrians to inspect the offerings in one booth after another, we milled around this marketplace in downtown Baghdad for more than an hour. I told reporters afterward that it was just like any open-air market in Indiana in the summertime.
"I think, rightly understood, the cap and trade legislation represents an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals in Washington, D.C.," Pence said in a telephone interview.
Real War = Peace. Energy Independence = War.
Any questions?
And by that, I mean any questions as to why the Republican Party was summarily rejected by the American people last year?
With all of the tea party nonsense going on around the statehouse last week, it was easy to miss the sense of urgency beginning to develop as the General Assembly gets down to crunch time. With just a few dwindling days remaining to pass legislation, at least one problematic fix is raising the possibility that Gov. Daniels could call a special session.
Indiana's unemployment trust fund has been running a deficit since 2001, meaning it has been paying out more in benefits than it takes in from business taxes.
The economic crisis exacerbated the problem, and the fund ran out of money last year. The state has already borrowed $725 million from the federal government to cover unemployment claims, and that amount is likely to surpass $1 billion by the end of the year.
The task for lawmakers is threefold - restructure the system so it is solvent on a long-term basis; raise enough money to pay back the federal government; and build a comfortable reserve for the future.
The proposed solutions also have been threefold - raise taxes on employers, cut benefits and limit eligibility, all during a painful national recession.
Among the many reasons that it would be a very bad idea for legislators to push this debate into a special session were those protesters last Wednesday. Taxpayers are hurting, and they likely won't have much sympathy should lawmakers be forced to make the costly decision to push the debate past the due date.
For his part, Gov. Daniels is characteristically helpful:
Gov. Mitch Daniels was unavailable for comment, but his press secretary said he "considers this issue one that must have a resolution."
The Indiana Department of Workforce Development released unemployment figures this morning for March that show Indiana has a 10% unemployment rate, the highest that number has been since November 1983. According to the Indianapolis Business Journal, the state now ranks eighth in the nation in unemployment. In March 2008, Indiana's unemployment rate was 5.3 percent.
During last year's gubernatorial campaign, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels referred to Indiana as being on a "hot streak" economically and in several speeches called Indiana an "island of prosperity" in the contest with Democrat Jill Long Thompson and Libertarian Andrew Horning. We now see that as those speeches were given, Indiana was really on the hot seat and an island of propaganda when it comes to the Govfather's economic policies.
The IBJ article cited figures showing the Indianapolis metropolitan area's non-seasonally adjusted rate jumped a half-percentage point, to 8.7 percent, according to the report. The number of unemployed in the area leapt from 73,088 in February to 77,462 in March - a jump of 4,374, the report said.
"Uncertainty in the manufacturing sector, particularly automotive, is causing a ripple effect in Indiana," Teresa Voors, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, said in a prepared statement. "We saw employment declines in auto manufacturing, transportation and logistics as Indiana plants produce, assemble, transport and warehouse fewer products."
Indiana's unemployment rate continues to exceed the national jobless rate, which was 8.5 percent in March, up from 8.1 in February.
For a sobering story on this gloomy Monday, be sure to check out Will Higgins' piece in the Star this morning that examines the numerous problems facing members of the Indiana National Guard as they return from service abroad.
The mill has since closed, and Hardman, his wife and infant daughter have moved in with his in-laws in their three-bedroom Danville home. During the day, he stays home with the child; evenings, he cooks dinner for the others, who all have jobs.
"It's not crowded, and everyone gets along really well," Hardman said. "But it kinda sucks."
About 170,000 veterans who have served since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and returned to civilian life find themselves in similar straits: Their unemployment rate averaged 7.3 percent last year, compared with 5.8 percent for the overall population, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The most recent unemployment numbers, for February, are gloomier still: 11.2 percent, compared with 8.8 percent.
Indiana's updated unemployment numbers will be released this Friday, and expectations are that we will see another dramatic decrease in the workforce across the state.
Another month, another set of ugly numbers as Indiana continues to fall well below the revenue stream projected for it. I'll let the Associated Press be the bearer of bad news on this one:
Indiana state tax collections were down $157 million in March, with total revenues $755 million less for the first nine months of the fiscal year than lawmakers had approved for spending.
Revenues have fallen short of original projections in eight of the nine months so far in this fiscal year. They were $4.1 million ahead of initial expectations last July, but have been below projections every month since.
This is the part where Mitch Daniels and his posse start talking a big game about small government. But let's remember this: Daniels has been downsizing Indiana's public sphere for quite a while now, and the results haven't exactly been the "island of growth" we were promised.
Much was made yesterday of the $21 million earmarked for a program that will provide summer employment to younger low-income Hoosiers. It's a great program, but what caught my eye was a theme I think we'll see repeated quite a bit over the next year or two.
"Our template for stimulus funds is jobs, speed and lasting value," Gov. Mitch Daniels said Tuesday. "This program puts young people to work, does it quickly and adds the best kind of enduring legacy in the enhanced natural beauty of Indiana."
The new state program, dubbed the Young Hoosiers Conservation Corps, will be funded with $21 million in stimulus money. Marion County will receive $3 million for programs to train and hire young people.
Federal requirements say the jobs will be for those between 16 and 24 with family incomes at or below the federal poverty level, which is about $23,000 for a family of four.
Lest we forget, this is the stimulus money that Mitch Daniels didn't want, and said repeatedly was a terrible idea. What a difference a few months can make, eh?
Congressional goofball Mark Souder had the following to say about President Obama's most recent move to reform the ailing auto industry:
He also criticized Obama's move to ask GM's chief executive, Rick Wagoner, to step down.
Souder said Wagoner made mistakes, but he has a Harvard Business School degree and worked for decades in the industry.
Yes, because if there is one thing the last eight years of Republican-dominated government has taught us, it is that putting all of our faith in a Harvard MBA graduate is a great path to inescapable success.
As Doug is always pointing out, Mike Smith's piece entitled by the Journal & Courier "Remember, lawmakers must pass a new budget" is more than a little misleading.
Sure, there would be political hell to pay if lawmakers didn't pass a spending bill for the next year (or two), but there's no constitutional requirement that action has to be taken. Regardless, the clock is ticking.
First, the House Democrat budget would break with tradition and only cover one year. House Democrats say uncertainty over the recession's depth and length make projections for future revenue too unreliable to pass a two-year plan.
Senate Republicans plan to pass a traditional two-year budget, saying it would at least give those who get state dollars some idea of what to expect over a longer period.
But House Democrats haven't budged so far.
"Right now we don't know where we're going to be in six months, let alone a year," said House Speaker Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend. "That's why we think in these precarious times it fits."
There's a lot of ground to cover in the next few weeks, and the lack of any legal requirement that a budget must be passed raises the possibility that a special legislative session may be necessary to resolve all of the issues still on the table. Should that scenario develop, watch for a lot of noisy jostling to spin the struggles one way or the other.
A staggering figure, to say the least, and an analysis of Census data by Families USA revealed that roughly 1.6 million people across Indiana were without insurance for a period of at least six months.
"At this point, almost everyone in the country has had a family member, neighbor, or friend who was uninsured," Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said in a statement "and that's why meaningful health care reform can no longer be kept on the back burner."
Ethnic minorities were disproportionately affected. In Indiana, 53 percent of Hispanics and 42.3 percent of blacks were uninsured, compared with 26.4 percent of whites, according to the report by Families USA.
Lower-income Hoosiers were more likely to be uninsured, and most uninsured Hoosiers in the report - 77.4 percent - came from working families.
As economic conditions worsen and health costs continue to skyrocket, the discussion in Washington shouldn't be whether we need comprehensive health care reform, but rather how soon we can start bringing about the changes we need.
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The Indiana Department of Workforce Development released unemployment figures this morning for March that show Indiana has a 10% unemployment rate, the highest that number has been since November 1983. 
