An Open Letter To The National Pundits
Dear National Pundits,
Mitch Daniels is not a god.
Yours very truly,
Jennifer
Permit me to elaborate.
Did Republican Mitch Daniels win last week’s election in a landslide alongside Democrat Barack Obama, who took Indiana by a narrow margin? Yes, he did.
Has he publicly avoided the big social issues that Republicans trot out when they can’t think of anything else to talk about? Yes, he has.
Did he run a good campaign with an effusively positive message? You betcha.
Did he have a decent opponent with a strong message who forced him to defend his unpopular record? Not a chance.
I’ll give Daniels credit for a win, but I won’t give him all the credit for his big win, and I certainly don’t know that he’s earned all the lavish praise these 30,000-foot critics are heaping on him.
This is a guy whose concept of sound business principles includes grabbing the nearest pricing gun and selling off our stuff. We do that twice a year with the accumulated junk in our garage and basement. It’s not exactly high-brow economic policy.
Did you know, for example, that we taxpayers allegedly have been making payments to the operators of the Indiana Toll Road because the road is not generating the contractually guaranteed minimum revenue from the now-increased tolls?
And while he talks about the big pot o’ cash we got from the one-time lease, Daniels went and gave $50 million of it to Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard for a seemingly frivolous roundabout project that now may not get completed because Brainard, a fellow Republican, can’t come up with the rest of the cash to get the job done. All that while other cities wait patiently for construction projects that have been on the list for years.
FSSA privatization? Nothing went as planned, and people — the neediest people — were left without benefits or stuck on hold trying to figure out what to do next.
Ethics? Don’t even get me started on all the scandals that have plagued this administration, many of them at the highest levels of government.
Fiscal responsibility? I guess if you count shoving all your liabilities off on local government and hoping no one notices.
Look, Daniels won by a huge margin, and I accept that. (If for no other reason than it gives me four more years to talk about him.)
But let’s be honest: He got a free pass.
He never had to mention his opponent during his campaign because she never got her act together after the primary. Might he still have prevailed over another challenger? Sure. All I’m saying is that the national pundits and Republican insiders should take a closer look at their new hero before they carry him across the threshold.
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I disagree that Daniels got a free pass. But if you say he did, blame Hillary and Barack. Also blame Democrats for fielding such a weak candidate who ran a poor campaign.
Also, why is selling state assets a bad idea? If the asset costs more to maintain than it’s worth then it’s a liability, like the Toll Road.
Face it, he’s a good Governor and just what this place needed to drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
It’s a shame his first name isn’t Peter.
Abdul - did you miss the part where we’re allegedly paying for the toll road anyway? It’s been losing money for us because legislators (mostly Republicans) didn’t want to raise the user fees. Now we’re STILL paying because it’s not making enough money for the people who leased it? Looks to me like it’s still a liability. If he hadn’t gotten in such a damned hurry, we could have really made the lease airtight or we could have kept it - Mr. Smartypants sure blew that one didn’t he?
I know you get up early to do your radio show, so I’ll spare you the snark, but did you read the part of my post where we’re paying the Toll Road operator because they can’t make money with our asset?
That would be like me selling a Walkman at a garage sale and then having the buyer continue to ask for batteries for life.
I’ve said it before: The only true success story of the Guv’s administration is the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, which also happens to be the only thing he didn’t privatize.
Human ingenuity is a beautiful thing. Selling stuff is a lazy, short-term solution.
Where on earth did you hear that taxpayers are paying for the toll road’s losses???
The lease has NOTHING to do with taxpayers and never has … even when INDOT ran the road, taxpayers never factored in. The road was bonded, and bond payments came from toll revenue. Any money transposed (if ever) between the state and ITRCC comes from the original $3.8 billion!
Nice that you publish one inane sentence with NO backup and influence thousands of readers who don’t know any better. Very responsible journalism.
I’ve heard it from some mighty credible sources.
So you’re saying the money we got from the lease of the Toll Road is not taxpayer money?
Interesting logic, my friend.
Are you, however, admitting that we are paying the Toll Road operators because they aren’t making their guaranteed minimum on the road?
I’m not a journalist. I’m a commentator. And I didn’t put that out there as fact, did I?
Read carefully.
Since you felt it correct, in your words to not comment with facts “And I didn’t put that out there as fact…”, please allow me to do so.
If you take the time to read the 102 page CLA in its entirety and subsequently the 263 pages of the Operation Standards you will find no mention or insinuation of any sort of “contractually guaranteed minimum revenue.”
Furthermore, no taxpayer puts any money into the Indiana Toll Road unless he or she uses it… Again, not to overwhelm with “facts” but this means no matter what State (or Country) the user hails from he or she is paying their fair share.
Unlike our Nations traditional funding format (Gas Tax) which Indiana remains a donor State, receiving only 90.5 cents back for each dollar we contribute to Washington. (Since you don’t seem to be consumed by “facts” today I’ll save you the time, Governor Daniels has improved it nearly 5 cents with Major Moves – matching fed funds)
So the next time you pass 10 cars on 465 with out of state tags, waive because your paying for one of them…
T’was a resounding mandate from the voters who saw through the partisan negativity to re-elect an outstanding governor.
Look at the bright side … four more years of snark for you!
Mitch may like to tout it as a mandate, but voters were faced with choosing between Scylla and Charybdis. Let’s hope we can survive four years of the whirlpool without drowning in a sea of debt created by Mitch.
The sea of debt was inherited,Jen and other foundlings. It was Mitch who pointed out that $.24 of every property tax dollar went to paying off bonded debt. This, in spite of that quaint prohibition contained in Article 13 of the Indiana Constitution which, they don’t teach much about in Indiana Law schools. It is only one sentence long but written back when government schools were able to teach folks how to read.
Just curious. Who alleged that the state was making payments to the toll road consortium?
If those folks had wanted to be named, I’d have named ‘em, sugar.
I find it interesting that no one — not even the ITR spokesperson who commented earlier this morning — denied that the State currently is making these payments.
Perhaps I hit a nerve and freaked out the Mitchies. Ah, just like old times.
If you read an amendment to the toll road lease there is a section, (12.13) that creates a “Toll Freeze Account” in the amount of $60 million for reimbursement of lost revenues during a toll freeze period. I don’t know if this has ever been used, but it is there and it doesn’t matter if you want to call the $3.8 billion taxpayers money or not it still belongs to the state.
Jen is right about FSSA, the ethics problems, for example Mitch Roob working for ACS then coming to the FSSA only to have a contract awarded to ACS for the FSSA come on that stinks like week old fish. It took him two tries with the BMV, remember Joel Silverman who’s solution to waiting times at the BMV was to remove the clocks and the ever popular forcing a new computer system without proper testing.
Mitch Daniels is supposed to be a great business mind yet everything he does is a quick fix instead of rolling up his sleeves and trying to figure out how to make the state fiscally sound for years to come. How about the toll road instead of leasing it why not keep it raise the tolls, then take a few years to pay it off and keep the ever increasing revenue for 70 or so years. Selling everything that is considered to be a “liability” isn’t the way to handle the problem try to fix it first if you can’t then maybe selling it is the only option, but that can’t be the first option every time.
Mitch Daniels isn’t a “good governor” he’s barely average, he’s the consummate “pay not attention to the man behind the curtain”, he “fixes” the problems that require little more than a signature or executive order, he sells what he can, and he tries to ignore the big problems, (the property tax issue).
If the commentator cannot name sources on the notion that the taxpayers are funding the toll road lease, then the notion isn’t credible.
If this were true, it would be a major news scoop. So, bring it on.
“Just curious. Who alleged that the state was making payments to the toll road consortium?”
“If those folks had wanted to be named, I’d have named ‘em, sugar.”
“I’m not a journalist. I’m a commentator. And I didn’t put that out there as fact, did I?”
In other words, believe _nothing_ on this website. In fact, journalist usually go out of their way to provide readers with evidence to back stuff up. Commentators use Ouija boards for their blather. Wonder if the payments issue came from the ghost of Frank O’Bannon.
Friends, instead of trying to get me to name my sources, which I’m not gonna do, perhaps you should be wondering why no one has denied that the State is making these payments.
State officials, the floor is yours to make that denial.
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“Friends, instead of trying to get me to name my sources, which I’m not gonna do, perhaps you should be wondering why no one has denied that the State is making these payments.
State officials, the floor is yours to make that denial.”
Why would one waste their time denying something that can’t even be verified? This is a gossip website. Government doesn’t have the time to sit around all day and issue denial after denial based upon gossip.
I’m not wondering about the lack of denial. Why would a government official deny an unsubstantiated rumor, “Sugar”?
Most bloggers worth their salt will show some kind of acknowledgement- a quote, a link, something- to back up their claim.
Well, perhaps credibility doesn’t matter to you.
Ah, the good old days of TDW revisited.
Isn’t it fun when she parts the wizard’s curtain just far enough for people to know there’s something behind it we should see and then lets his minions fall all over themselves trying to deny the curtain is even there?
Let’s be clear:
The state is making NO payments to ITRCC in regards to “lost toll revenue.”
There is no set minimum that the company has to reach. No payments are being made by the state of Indiana or by ANYONE if ITRCC loses revenue from year to year. Nowhere was that ever stated, and nowhere in the lease is it mentioned.
I don’t know how much clearer it has to be.