A kiss on the lip with tongue to Mitch Daniels from the Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein:
The good Mitch, by contrast, is a principled but practical conservative who respects the intelligence of voters and would rather get something done than score political points. Daniels is a genuine fiscal conservative who took a $600 million state budget deficit and turned it into a $1 billion surplus but managed to do so without cutting spending for education and even increased funding for child welfare services. He pushed hard to lower property taxes but didn’t hesitate to propose temporary hikes in income and sales taxes to keep the state in the black. He privatized the state’s toll road and then used the $4 billion proceeds to launch a major public works investment program.
Tellingly, both Mitches like to talk about the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Washington Mitch conjures the image of long lines and uncaring bureaucrats and asks, cynically, whether you want folks like that determining your medical care. The Indiana Mitch, by contrast, rolled up his sleeves and transformed his DMV into an efficient, consumer-friendly operation.
Pearlstein spends a bit of the time comparing Daniels to Mitch McConnell, who if you remember, had a closer than expected race last election.
But the real problem is this- Daniels is concerned with good governance because he actually has to govern. He is accountable for his actions. Republicans in the House and Senate aren’t, and they couldn’t care less about governance, let alone good governance. Anything that goes wrong, they will just blame on Obama and the Democrats. Hell, they spent the first few months of this year blaming the DOW on Obama, a tactic that got dropped as soon as the DOW recovered.
Add to it that if Daniels were running in a house seat, the idiot teabaggers would probably work to oust him because he did raise taxes. As one of the wingnuts admitted yesterday, even St. Ronnie of Reagan would not pass the purity test these days. Add to it the completely rigged House seats where only the most extreme candidates on either side stand a chance, where screaming “You lie” in a join session of Congress gets you millions in campaign funds, and you whittle away any and all Republicans concerned with governance.
Add to that a Senate held hostage by ridiculous rules that a small group of corporate whores “moderates” exploit to funnel money to their states and to shake down the lobbyists, and you end up with what we have now. When the Republicans get back in power one day, it will be back to business as usual- tax cuts and praising Jesus. They won’t be led by a group of good government conservatives, and this is even assuming Pearlstein is even right about Daniels.
Ash
As someone who lives near the IL/IN border and does a lot of work in Indianapolis, I feel I am justified in saying that Daniels doesn’t suck. He’s not that great, but he doesn’t make me want to kick him in the balls. Usually.
Dave Fud
Well, if we get more of the Good Mitch and less of the Evil Mitch, then I guess we all get more of what we want: responsible Republicans who we can disagree about some things but still expect competence from at the end of the election.
Unlike those teabaggers in Washington.
I’m to the point where I would like to push a more state-centric union so that the leeches have to go to 50 state capitals instead of 1 national capital to corrupt legislatures. It’s like shooting legislators in a barrel at this point if you are a lobbyist.
Mike G
The blog Bats Left Throws Right has good coverage of Indiana issues, and is considerably less complimentary toward Daniels:
We’re going through the umpteenth consecutive Mitch Daniels Holds The Line On Taxes By Wielding His Budgetary Hatchet cycle, this time axing $150 million from higher education, and no one asks what he’s saving that $1 billion rainy-day slush fund of his for if we’re in the fourteenth straight month of torrential downpours. Or why he seems to imagine it belongs to him, when that OMB he successfully flushed down the crapper kept insisting the Clinton surplus was the people’s money illegally hijacked. For that matter, nobody bothers to ask him why, despite his Enormous Brain, tax revenues have come in below expectations for almost a year and a half.
The man is given camera time to say he’s “protecting Hoosier taxpayers”, that “nearly every other state is raising taxes”. Yes, and in five years maybe they won’t be covered in algae. But no one even raises the point. The state is now being run in the interests of Mitch Daniels’ talking points being kept in place long enough for him to get out from under, and imagine he can become President.
http://doghouseriley.blogspot.com/
Comrade Dread
If you haven’t read Taibbi already, prepare to have your opinion reinforced.
Though, when I read about a lot of the dysfunction and civil rights abuse that goes on in State government, I’m not sure I’d want them to have more power either.
Scott de B.
You are talking as if state legislatures aren’t already corrupt. As a general rule, state government is more corrupt than Federal government, and city government is more corrupt than State government. It’s been that way forever.
freelancer
Fucking Wapo:
Yes, and a car wreck will attract its share of morbid onlookers, but if you stage a reinactment of 2 girls 1 cup in front of said car wreck, the grossout rubberneck factor skyrockets.
“able to command such attention” is the new standard.
We are all 2g1c now.
Tom Hilton
This. We saw it during the ARRA fight: Republican governors were, by and large, much more supportive than Republicans in Congress…because the governors actually have to run things. (And even the governors who publicly opposed ARRA paid tribute to virtue by taking credit when the checks started coming.)
timb
I’m a Hoosier and Daniels may not be a teabagging tool, he is definitely a wingnut and contributes to Indiana staying and remaining a Third World country. He does liket he protect the folks with money from having to spend it….and he sells off chucks of the government, just in time to realize privatizing children’s welfare had the same result on children’s welfare as his OMB tax recommendations did to balance the budget.
He’s a jackass, just not a crude one
matt
So the good mitch replaces property tax that affect all those rich farmers that cover the state with a nice regressive sales tax…how is he good when he makes the poor pay more?
Ecks
So he’s privatizing highways (read, selling off future income streams for payoffs now) in order to be able to look good spending money now (“look at me, I’m fixin’ yur roads!”), while leaving future governors down the road holding the back, with stuff to pay for and no income to do it with.
Right out of Maggie Thatcher’s playbook, and people eat it up every time.
scudbucket
It’s like the lunatic fringe devises more interesting ways to demonstrate their incoherence. First, it was that 1 =3 (father, son, and holy ghost) = pi. Now it’s that budgets will balance by cutting taxes. Don’t they understand where their
waterkool-aid comes from?AnotherBruce
@freelancer: It’s always been amazing to me that media outlets never seem to notice that they might be culpable for this bullshit. Gosh isn’t it amazing that Sarah Palin is able to command this attention?
It’s almost touching that on some level, the WaPo really feels that it’s just a neutral entity, making observations and reporting facts.
David Hunt
Back when Dennis Miller was still funny, he defined a local politician as “a politician whose darkest secret keeps him from seeking a higher office.”
freelancer
@David Hunt:
Dennis Miller was funny? I just gathered that he was smug and esoteric.
Notorious P.A.T.
Those idiots make it sound like we all are hungry for more Palin news, so they are just giving it to us. It sure seems to me that the 28% of the country who will fall for anything are interested in her and the rest of us wish she would go shoot a moose.
Notorious P.A.T.
@freelancer:
We’re talking, like, 20 years ago.
David Hunt
@freelancer:
About 20 years ago when he was doing the news on SNL, he was funny. At least he was funny to me. He had an HBO special doing his stand-up that I enjoyed. Admittedly, he was also smug and esoteric.
I haven’t watched him much at all since that time, but I think his problem is that he started looking to make jokes that specifically reinforced his political views and stopped trying to be funny for the sake of being funny, thus making jokes that reflected his world-view.
Or maybe he just stopped being funny or I grew up…
Davis X. Machina
Mike G beat me to it. Doghouse Riley at Bats Left, Throws Right is what you would get if you crossed the Rude Pundit and late James Thurber….
On all things Indiana, he’s your man.
K. Grant
Back when we lived in South Bend, a good number of folks called Daniels the ‘Governor of Indianapolis’. This was not meant as a compliment. He routinely ignores the rest of the state, where the economic situation is not quite as rosy as the gated confines of Carmel and other points smack in the middle of the state, and likes to pretend that all is right and proper in his world.
That, his slobbering love of all privatization enterprises, and his ridiculous ‘just call me Mitch’ hack populism, simply makes him (like Thune in South Dakota) a more pernicious type of tool. He is simply better at disguising his ‘toolness’.
timb
@matt: Excuse me. Are you aware whose class interests these hardscrabble journos represent? Hint: steve likes it that way. What does he care?
NobodySpecial
Slightly OT, but did anyone see Kathleen Parker slobbing Santorum’s knob for the reading public?
Demo Woman
Mitch Daniels was OMB under Bush, enough said! That is his legacy.
freelancer
@NobodySpecial:
[pukes in paper shredder]
Linkmeister
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Speaking for myself only, I’d prefer she fight a duel with a moose. With seconds. At fifty paces.
That would fair and balanced, right?
Demo Woman
@NobodySpecial: Yes, she is reinventing Santorum. hahahahahaha.. Compared to Inhofe he might be more moderate.
Linkmeister
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Speaking for myself only, I’d prefer she fight a duel with a moose. With seconds. At fifty paces.
That would fair and balanced, right?
eemom
@Notorious P.A.T.:
oh dear no. I wish that a moose would to do Palin whatever it is that meese do when they are very, very pissed off at people who slaughter their relatives.
And then let a wolf get a shot at her from a low flying helicopter.
Leelee for Obama
@freelancer: For all of us! And thank you!
EWWWWW!
Notorious P.A.T.
@Linkmeister:
Good call. I would rather see that, too. I stand corrected.
srv
I missed this, Zombie Reagan:
eemom
@Linkmeister:
I’ll accept that too. It’s fair except for requiring them to count to 50, which would put Palin at a disadvantage.
Joey at IU
He also just cut 200 million dollars from our universities. He’s a prick. He’s one of those wonderfully stupid people who is needlessly condescending. Basically, he’s a better spoken Dubya.
tamied
@Demo Woman: Speaking as a native Pennsylvanian, I have to say he’s one of the biggest a-holes in the world. I just knew after we finally got him kicked out of office that he would eventually be foisted onto the national stage.
John Sears
Dear God.
Mitch Daniels is one of the reasons I booked OUT of Indiana.
As mentioned above, he was Bush’s OMB guy and helped destroy the Federal budget, then he comes home and helps lay waste to Indiana afterward when the Feds are too broke to help out.
Daniels has utterly destroyed the state’s education system; he’s tried to sell off all the major roads lock stock and barrel to private interests (which is bitterly unpopular), and he’s a vote stealing thug to boot. When Indiana passed its dubiously constitutional voter ID law, Daniels’ response was to close all the DMVs he could in predominately black neighborhoods; if I recall correctly, he tried to leave Gary without a single full service branch. The brilliant excuse? That people there didn’t drive cars, so why would they need ID?
I guess if you’re too poor to have a car, for Daniels, you’re too poor to vote.
It goes on and on and on. Fuck Mitch Daniels.
Svensker
@eemom:
Mooses are very tough customers, particularly when they are in mating frenzy. Stuck in a hotel in rural Ontario once and saw TWO documentaries about this. Both films involved a scientist wearing a moose outfit. Seriously.
John Sears
@Svensker: Are you sure one of the documentaries wasn’t about furries instead?
Midnight Marauder
OT, but since it’s been one of those
daysweeksmonthsdecades, I thought that everyone here could use the radiant joy of the gift that keeps on giving, Mr. “I AM The Cow On The Tracks” himself, Michael Steele. And what is this latest incarnation of the gift, you ask? Well, take it away TPM:Best Boss Ever? Michael Steele & The RNC Interns
You have no idea how much you will thank me for clicking through. There are 17 pictures, but there’s a strong chance you won’t even make it past the first one since you’ll be dead from laughing so riotously.
Edit: In case you were wondering, yes, all the interns are white. And yes, they all pose with Steele in their favorite “What Up?” hip-hop positions. Just like the encyclopedia taught them.
Zifnab
Fucking ‘tarded.
The only thing they privatized was the god damn tax system. They sold the roads to a private corporation. The private enterprise levied tolls. The tolls were used as profits to pay back the state. And the idiot denizens were too stupid to realize that a gasoline tax would have given them the same roads, the same education, and the same child welfare services minus whatever massive cut their new corporate overlords were taking off the top.
Stupid stupid stupid.
Capri
It’s interesting that Mitch was un-invited to speak at the GOP governor’s convention when it came out that he had increased taxes. In a sane world he’d be one of the GOP’s rising stars. Instead he needs to be rehabilitated.
As a Indiana resident for 20+ years and someone basically to the left of Mao, I have a little perspective on this.
Mitch is a good govenor. He privitized one road in the state. The folks who live near that road (South Bend, I’m looking at you) care about it and are mad as hell. The rest of the state (not just Indianapolis) not so much. But he’s trying not to let bridges collapse a la Minnesota. Since his tenure the social safety net has been increased – more people and money for child services and health care for otherwise uncovered people. I now do all my DMV stuff on line and it is a dream. When I need to go into the actual DMV (on Saturday, they now have worker friendly hours) I’m in and out in a few minutes.
There’s a reason why Daniels won re-election by a large margin even though Obama took the state and it was a good year for democrats overall. He’s pretty broadly popular – and remains so despite the current economic climate.
Indiana had a string of Dem. govenors for a long time including Evan Bayh. The last one took over after the death of a semi-popular govenor and was an incompetent hack. So if it hadn’t been Daniels, it would have been another Republican that took over. Looking at some other states, Indiana made out OK.
Folks have been crying about spending or not spending Indiana’s rainy day fund since I got here. During recessions people call on spending it to cover budget shortfalls. During better times Republicans have run on a platform of gutting it and returning the money back to the people. So far, it’s not been quite rainy enough to tap.
Finally, the head of the university where I work “earns” $450,000 a year, and higher administration in universities have the same con game going as the wall street types. “Oh no, I we don’t pay her half a mil a year she’ll leave.” So, there’s some fat in those higher education budgets that could be trimmed.
GReynoldsCT00
@Midnight Marauder:
man, we’re just breeding a new generation of assholes
Hoosierville
One of the best moments in the history of Indiana politics was when Mitch Daniels was plastered on the front page of The South Bend Tribune, above the fold, 1/4 page (when they were using the big paper), full color….standing on a Man Maker. Even the Tribune despises him. I used to have it hanging in my office but someone nailed it.
You should have seen the poisonous Teabagger type lit the state Rep party was mailing to the northern parts of the state (courtesy of NOT “my-man Mitch”) back in the last local mayoral elections. I think it actually turned the tide back to the Dems favor in SB.
He also just recently cancelled the privatization of the social services contract he gave IBM because they had screwed it up so badly and his boy Todd Rokita (Secy of State) is running for something next year…possibly governor and they’re spending a bunch of money on ads bragging about Rokita’s acccumen in prosecuting “investor fraud.” What a racket…free face time…otherwise, no one would know who he is up here.
tamied
@Midnight Marauder: OMG. You were right, I couldn’t get past the first one. And not from laughing, from wanting to hurl.
Brick Oven Bill
@37 – not quite, at least one Asian, but…”model minority” and all.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
#37 – not quite, at least one Asian in there, but…”model minority” and all.
bago
Those photos make Steele look like someone who is at the very least entertaining. The interns though… yeesh. Apparently there are a legion of sticks in anal confinement yearning for freedom.
geg6
@NobodySpecial:
This might be the most ridiculous meme out there, that Man on Dog Rick could possibly win any sort of national office. Ferchrissake, this asshole couldn’t win re-election to a senate seat in PA, including the redneck, KKK-friendly, bum fucked central T of the state. Everyone here hates him. Hell, my own shitty county, Beaver (which went for McCain in ’08) hates his stupid ass. Hell, his fellow Catholics hate him. Even they think it’s just too goddam freaky to take home your stillborn child to spend the night in bed with you and make your other seven kids hold and hug it before burying it. Plus the tax payers are never thrilled when you claim a local address that is in a working class, mostly African American town like Penn Hills with a less than $90K 3 br house that no one has ever seen inhabited by anyone other than renters while living full-time in a $700K home in Leesburg. And then making the school district pay for your giant brood to go to cyberschool and, later, trying to make them pay for private school in Leesburg. And costing the school district a fortune in legal fees. And that’s not even to mention his attempt to get a county homestead exemption on the home he’s never lived in in order to get a tax break.
Nope, even the hillbillies around here don’t much like a politician who tries to rip off tax payers for personal gain.
Midnight Marauder
@tamied:
I don’t think you could crystalize all the reasons and ways that Michael Steele has failed in the past year any better than that first picture. Steele’s goofy open-mouthed finger-pointing; the smarmy look on the face of “Captain of The Football Team/Mr. Popularity” that he’s posing with; the fact that you can see half the backdrop and half of the room where they’re taking picture in every single picture (what is the point of having the backdrop again?); and of course, the ever-present flag pin.
Gots to have the flag pin, baby!
@bago:
That is only because you can’t hear him talking through the pictures in between poses.
@Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions:
Joseph Cao is an intern now?! Wow, I guess that HCR vote must have really set his career back.
John Sears
@Capri: Don’t forget he also wanted to build an enormous (over 100 mile long) toll road between Evansville and Martinsville.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Indiana_Toll_Road
Daniels is a tool.
DanF
Speaking as a Hoosier, I’ll also add that he LOVES to outsource government – even functions performed by Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration – which has been such a colossal cluster-f**k that even state Republicans want to cancel IBM’s contract.
The result of his tenure has been the shifting of the tax burden ever downward onto counties and cities and doing whatever it takes to make himself look good at the state’s long-term health. He’s not a crazy-ass Republican – he’s worse – he’s crafty-ass Republican.
I will say this in his favor, given the total disarray of Indiana Democrats, we could have a more Palin-esque governor instead.
I bet he runs for President in 2012. He’ll dupe a lot of people into thinking he’s great. Fortunately he gives off a shifty vibe.
John Sears
@DanF: Man, I’d love to see him creamed in 2012.
Anne Laurie
@Midnight Marauder:
Hey, they found an Asian kid! (#6)… who is also the only one in a pose that’s not gonna require him to scrub the shot from his Facebook cache once he gets out of college and has to start looking for a real job. Of course, used to be that most of these jolly RNC larvae probably don’t need to look any further for paid employment than Daddy’s used-car dealership or Gramp’s trust fund, but the Rethugs have done their best to break even the unbreakable economic safe havens…
The Populist
I love how these idiots think raising taxes is so bad. Most will never be rich enough to whine about it, yet they protect the very people who would have THEM pay more and carry the burden tax-wise.
I don’t like raising taxes but if these buffoons can’t fund the schools, pay for police and fire and help the poor from starving for god’s sake then something is fucking wrong.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
OT, but Douche-hat sez that Warren finally mustered the balls to suggest to his fellow KKKristians in Uganda that killing homos might be less than perfectly Jesusy. Anybody here know what he’s referring to?
The Populist
I might add the very people whining about raising taxes should not be too upset if we all took a hatchet to that bloated pentagon budget.
Support the troops? Sure, let’s bring them home, give them raises and close bases in the very towns that contain all these rabid assholes. I mean they don’t want taxes and they support the troops right? Then I propose that approach and I dare any of them to tell me off.
DanF
@Midnight Marauder:
OMG! OMG! OMG! Number seventeen is a terrorist fist bump!! Also, too!
freelancer
@Midnight Marauder:
Jesus Christ, can we get TNC to revoke Steel’s black guy membership card?
John Sears
@Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: This segment from Rachel Maddow lays it out very well: http://firedoglake.com/2009/12/11/early-morning-swim-rachel-maddow-on-rick-warren-anti-gay-bill-in-uganda/
Basically, Rick Warren’s the head of this enormous quasi-Christian feel good movement based around his Purpose Driven Life book (a very creepy movement indeed).
In particular, they’re wrapped up in Uganda, which is currently being turned into a Warren-driven theocracy. Uganda’s evangelical whackos have proposed a law making homosexuality a criminal offense in some cases punishable by death. Warren was called out to denounce it, and refused for several days, claiming he couldn’t interfere in foreign political affairs… despite having flown to Uganda to meet with the First Lady on at least one prior occasion.
He has finally succumbed to pressure and acknowledged that, gee, maybe stoning teh gay (or whatever method they were/are going to use) isn’t such a great idea. At least, not great for his public image.
Notorious P.A.T.
I found the ladies in those pictures far too attractive. In a just world, all such Republicans would be leathery, shriveled harridans a la Coulter.
DanF
@John Sears:
That would be sweet. Daniels has always reminded me of a skinny Dick Cheney for some reason. It’s probably the smirk.
John Sears
@Notorious P.A.T.: Are you sure Coulter’s a woman?
I’m not making the old ‘Mann Coulter’ joke here – to me, she doesn’t look human. More like a badly designed Fembot (or whatever they were called) from Austin Powers.
freelancer
@Notorious P.A.T.:
What the hell pictures were you looking at?!
John Sears
@DanF: Only you can sort of respect Cheney, in a Sith Lord sort of way. He’s upfront about his evil, whereas Daniels is a smarmy little piece of shit.
Blue Raven
@DanF:
So’s number three. Shall we introduce them to a few US border guards and tell them they’re Canadian science fiction writers?
Skippy-san
I am sick of hearing about Health Savings Accounts. I have to save for my retirement, I have to save for emergencies, I have to save to put a down payment on a house, and now I get told that I have to save for getting sick too. I’m also supposed to pay my taxes and social security and I’m told that I’m supposed to give 10% to charity, or I’m not a good soul.
After doing all of that saving-in any meaningful amount to make it worthwhile and allow me some sort of cushion to fall back on to- what’s left to live on? E.G. live now while still physically capable of enjoying it?
1100 + whatever a poor family can save from month to month-is only a couple of doctor visits from exhaustion. Even with an HSA-a person still needs insurance. Which many of his candidate population may not be able to get.
But the head of Aetna made 4 million dollars last year…….
Mike G
Basically, Rick Warren’s the head of this enormous quasi-Christian feel good movement based around his Purpose Driven Life book (a very creepy movement indeed).
I have a Porpoise-Driven Life.
I found that aquatic mammals have more astute reasoning skills than the average evangelical Christianist.
Kyle
Support the troops? Sure, let’s bring them home, give them raises and close bases in the very towns that contain all these rabid assholes. I mean they don’t want taxes and they support the troops right? Then I propose that approach and I dare any of them to tell me off.
If there’s one thing Teabaggers love more than bitching about taxes and government, it’s living off of tax-funded, government-provided services, like the military, the VA, Social Security and Medicare.
S. cerevisiae
A porpoise-driven life sounds like a very good life.
Crza
@DanF: If you haven’t heard by now, Daniels actually did cancel the contract with IBM. It’s not just a matter of Republicans wanting to do so anymore – that shit is done. I’m not sure how much credit he deserves for cancelling it, as he was so fucking pumped up about privatizing things in the first place (with very mixed results overall, to put it as generously as I can), but at least he didn’t adopt the seemingly standard Republican mantra of “it’s not working? um, er, uh… PRAY HARDER.”
I’m pretty sure IBM’s role in everything will end sometime in December, but don’t quote me. Huh, I guess I should know the exact date by now, being a state employee – we all shared had a nice, bitter laugh about how colossally fucked up that mess was.
As for Daniels’ “dislike of high taxes” mentioned in this article… that dislike clearly doesn’t extend to sales tax. So far Indiana’s sales tax increases have been anything but temporary, unless the article means that the rate increase from 5% to 6% was temporary… as it was very quickly raised AGAIN to 7%. That’s either the highest rate in the Midwest or tied with (I think?) Tennessee, and last time I checked it was the second-highest rate nationwide behind California.