Hard-hit Gary stops garbage pickup

Paul S. Kaczocha
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/15/09 16:19

GARY, Ind. – In another sign of the economic crisis hitting working class cities around the country, angry residents and laid off city workers rallied in front of this city’s new General Services building. The crowd brought uncollected garbage and dumped it in front of the building sign. This was only the second day of a stop in the collection of household waste here.



The issue started in October last year when Mayor Rudy Clay announced that the city was going to privatize the garbage collection and start charging its over 28,000 households a $12 monthly fee for trash pickup, under a no-bid contract with Allied Waste, a subsidiary of RSG Inc. which made over $2 billion last year.

The citizen group, Miller Citizen Corporation (MCC), took the city to court, arguing that garbage collection was part of the property taxes residents pay. Ultimately the courts ordered the city to bid the contract, declaring that the fee had to be approved by the City Council and that people’s water could not be cut off for lack of payment of the garbage fee.

Another citizens group, the Central District Organizing Project (CDOP), also joined the fight supporting the 49 laid-off city workers, many of whom were at the rally.

The MCC charged that according to the city’s own figures it cost only $2.9 million annually to pay the workers with benefits, pay for fuel and maintain the equipment, while Allied Waste was charging over $5 million on top of the $2 million tipping fee the city already pays to them. The city argues that it is trying to save money and close a $26 million dollar gap in the budget.

The issue came to a head last week when the City Council voted 6-3 against charging residents the $12 fee, many arguing that there was not even a signed contract yet with Allied. As a result garbage collection ceased this week.

The head of the MCC, attorney Douglas Grimes, charged at the rally that the city “did not need to privatize a basic service that had been done by the city for over 100 years.” He also charged that Allied had a 36 percent profit margin.

“Private enterprise is not here to help you unless they can help themselves, privatization is rarely cheaper,” he added. “The city can rehire these workers and begin to collect garbage again. Just walk down the street and you can see the garbage trucks behind the fence.” The MCC and CDOP, which organized the rally, urged citizens to take their garbage to City Hall.

Lori Peterson, from the CDOP, charged the city with dereliction of duty for saying that they were no longer going to pick up the garbage. “It’s like saying they won’t send out an EMT, fireman or police if someone calls in need,” she stressed.

The workers also spoke about how they had taken 23 percent in cuts to save their jobs and had been lied to when the city laid them off. The Teamsters Union is fighting the layoffs, which did not occur by seniority amongst other issues. Allied had rehired some of the younger, less experienced workers.

“We all live here in Gary, and they hired a company from out of the city and hire outside the city,” the workers charged.

Both the MCC and CDOP are demanding a rehiring of the workers, an end to the fee and the resumption of city-based collection.

Construction braces for slowdown in Northwest Indiana

Construction braces for slowdown in Northwest Indiana
(http://www.post-trib.com/news/1372558,construction.article)

January 12, 2009

By Erik Potter

Post-Tribune staff writer

Local and national experts expect the economic turmoil that first hit the residential housing market in 2007 to spread to the commercial construction market this year.

The Associated Builders and Contractors, a national trade group for construction firms, issued a report last month detailing the expected business climate in 2009.

The forecast is almost universally gloomy across all sectors of the industry: a 20 percent fall in retail and restaurant construction from 2008, a 20 percent decline in hotel construction, a 15 percent to 25 percent drop in office construction, and a 25 percent  to 35 percent fall for manufacturing construction. Institutional buildings, such as schools and hospitals, will likely see a 5 percent slip from 2008. The one bright spot is power construction, especially in alternative energy, which is expected to grow.

Industry fortunes will continue to sour in 2009 and 2010, predicted Associated Builders and Contractors Chief Economist Anirban Basu in the group's annual report.

Locally, the current crop of construction projects, arranged before the credit crunch hit in the summer of 2007, are nearly all completed, and tight credit markets and a skittish business climate mean new projects aren't coming up to replace them.

"There's not an abundance of work out there to bid (on)," said Jeff Brant, vice president of Schererville-based Brant Construction. "Projects -- banks, churches -- are really down right now. Everybody is holding onto their money."

Locally, the $3.8 billion BP Whiting expansion will help mitigate the drop in construction opportunities elsewhere, but the strict qualifications for bidding on the BP project likely mean those benefits will be concentrated to a few firms, Brant said.

Statewide, construction backlogs -- the number of projects firms have on their books for the next year -- is down 5 percent to 15 percent, estimated J.R. Gaylor, president and CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors of Indiana.

"It's really the availability of credit and investment that's hurt us across the board,"?Gaylor said, adding that lines of credit and bonding is what allows developers to finance new buildings on the speculation that someone will buy or lease them.

A stimulus package focused on infrastructure in the new Congress could help the construction industry, which saw its national unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) jump from 9.6 percent in December 2007 to 15.9 this past December. Indiana saw 5.7 percent fewer construction jobs in November versus the previous year.

But the time involved for a Barack Obama administration to get sworn in, negotiate a stimulus bill, choose the projects to fund and get those projects under way could stretch into the latter portion of 2009.

"That's why our outlook for 2009 remains quite bleak,"?Basu said.

William Putz, president and owner of Trinity Construction Corp. in Merrillville, said he hopes to see a capital gains tax abatement as part of a stimulus package. "Business will jump on that and that will help," he said.

Looking long-term, Putz took an optimistic view. Eventually, people will have to start replacing their worn-out goods, factories will modernize and the economy will recover. "General Motors, Ford, (they) will have to redo and retool and rebuild their plants. Auto workers don't do that. Construction workers do that."

Contact Erik Potter at 648-3120 or epotter@post-trib.com.

 

Daniels keeps pushing his reform plan

Daniels keeps pushing his reform plan
(http://www.post-trib.com/news/1372572,gabyrne.article)

January 12, 2009

By John Byrne

Post-Tribune staff writer

INDIANAPOLIS

Say what you want about Mitch Daniels' politics. You have to admire the guy's moxie.

Not content merely to try to shepherd a balanced state budget through the closely divided General Assembly during one of the state's worst financial slumps in memory, the governor has also charted a course this year toward reforming local government.

He insists the time is right to press ahead with recommendations in the Kernan-Shepard Report, the 2007 study that found the state's many levels of municipal, township and county government redundant and inefficient.

Daniels has set a precedent in the past for these ambitious legislative agendas, but he may find he has reached for a bridge too far this year.

Last year, the governor pushed a wide-ranging scheme to overhaul the state's revenue system by capping property taxes and raising the state sales tax.

The herd of cats in the Statehouse more or less went along with the plan then, and in one sense, Daniels is dealing from a position of even greater power in the 2009 legislative session.

He did just beat Jill Long Thompson easily to win a second term, even as Hoosiers flocked to the polls to elect Democrat Barack Obama.

Some would call that a mandate. But a mandate only gets you in the door in the legislature. You need some kind of a cudgel to keep a majority of 150 elected representatives in line for four months until the legislative session ends.

And 2008 was an election year. Daniels had the threat of angry voters to terrify any legislator considering standing against a plan designed to lower homeowners' property taxes. And he defined the debate early by announcing a detailed plan even before most lawmakers got to the capitol.

The governor again released an in-depth proposal this year, calling for the consolidation of small school districts, the replacement of county commissioners with a single executive officer and the elimination of all township government, among other sweeping changes.

Nobody's on the ballot in 2009, however, so lawmakers aren't feeling that itch to make their constituents happy.

And "Let's eliminate school districts" isn't exactly as powerful a rallying cry as "Let's lower property taxes."

Plus, the governor finds himself fighting a rearguard action to protect the 2008 property tax package.

The governor and most Republicans believe it essential for the General Assembly to pass tax caps again this year, the next step in getting them on the ballot so Hoosiers can vote on whether to enshrine them in the state constitution.

The Democrats have staked out the position that given the economic crisis and the fact the caps can't get on the ballot until 2010 in any event, it's smarter to wait a year to see if the state's finances stabilize before the legislature considers the caps again.

And already, key GOP lawmakers have tweaked the governor's government reform plan.

Senate President David Long, R-Fort Wayne, told reporters voters should have the ability to craft local government changes through ballot referendums.

Daniels was cool to the idea.

"First I'd observe that all this system, nobody had an option when it was put in place," Daniels said. "It was put in place in a uniform fashion way back when. And I think we'd really have to think through carefully, do you really want a hodge podge of different systems in different counties."

But he knows four months is a long time, and a lot can change before the end of April.

"Sen. Long's suggestion I thought was made in a constructive way," the governor added. "He's looking for ways to get a majority together, to get a consensus together, and that's exactly what I hope the legislative leaders would all do."

Contact John Byrne at (317) 631-7400 or jbyrne@post-trib.com.

 

Report: Tar sands threaten birds

A January 5, 2009 article by Gitte Laasby of the Post-Tribune reports on the local environmental impact of tar sands extraction and refining in Canada.

Up to 166 million of the birds we see in our back yards could disappear as a result of extraction and refining of oil from Canadian tar sands, according to a new report.

BP is expanding its Whiting refinery to be able to increase its use of tar sands.

Dark-eyed juncos, white-throated sparrows, horned grebes and short-billed dowitchers are just some of the birds on a long list of species that are in decline and whose summer habitat could be in danger, states the report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Boreal Songbird Initiative and the Pembina Institute.

As global warming and other trends show, the environmental impact of human activity on other species, and ultimately on human life, is immense. The idea that we can continue to act in our economic and social decisions as if those actions have no long term consequences is increasingly threatening our own ability to meet our human needs, and is immediately devestating to species that act as a forewarning to us of the ultimate impact on our own species should we not change our ways.

"At a time when bird populations are rapidly declining, this report puts into perspective the far-reaching effects of tar sands oil development on North America's birds," said the report's lead author, Jeff Wells, a scientist with the Boreal Songbird Initiative. "The public needs to understand the real and long-term ecological costs of this development and determine if this is acceptable."

Half of America's migratory birds nest in the Boreal forest in Canada, but tar sands mining and drilling cause habitat loss. Each year, 22 million to 170 million birds breed in a 35 million-acre area that could eventually be developed for tar sands oil. Anywhere between 6 million and 166 million birds could be lost over the next 30 to 50 years, the report states.

"Some people don't think much about where their oil and gas comes from," Wells said. "You always expect there to be a junco in your back yard in the winter, but you don't think about where they're coming from. What impact it could have as they're drawing gas in. They're also drawing down the birds from that region."

Between 8,000 to 100,000 birds die every year after they land or drown in the oily water in tailing ponds, and that number could double or triple as a result of mining expansions, the report states.

Environmental protection, like so much else in our modern society, must be viewed from a global perspective. The productive forces that humanity has developed over the years are such that it is invalid to assume a localized impact of that activity. In much the same way that global capital drifts around the world seeking the highest profit no matter what the devestation in lost jobs and broken lives for the people in areas away from which capital has drifted, so the environmental impact of activity in one region has a huge impact on many other regions.

Increasing tar sands refining and pipeline infrastructure also delivers pollution to the Great Lakes.

"The resulting decrease in air and water quality affects migratory birds, which will suffer elevated mortality numbers as a result of contaminants and toxins from refining," the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a statement.

Birds are an indicator of the health of the environment for humans, too, Wells said.

Refining Canadian crude causes up to three times more greenhouse gas emissions than regular refining, and birds are also impacted by global warming, the report states.

As President-elect Barack Obama said in Portsmouth, NH on October 8, 2007:

“We cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now. We are already breaking records with the intensity of our storms, the number of forest fires, the periods of drought. By 2050 famine could force more than 250 million from their homes . . . . The polar ice caps are now melting faster than science had ever predicted. . . . This is not the future I want for my daughters. It's not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn't have to be.”

McDermott Calls for Daniels' Ouster over Little Cal Funding

The Post-Tribune reports in an article by John Byrneon (January 9, 2009 11:34 AM) that:

Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott Jr. told listeners on his WJOB radio show Friday that Gov. Mitch Daniels should get bounced from the Statehouse if the Little Calumet River levee project doesn't get funded by the legislature this year.

The levee is designed to protect Highland and other areas from flooding. Right now Highland residents have to pay for flood insurance on their homes due to being listed by the Army Corps of Engineers as living in a flood plain. Once the levee is completed the Army Corps of Engineers can be petitioned to remove the determination that Highland is in a flood plain, and if accepted residents will no longer have to pay extra for flood insurance.

According to the The Times (nwi.com) in an article by Charles F. Haber on February 27, 2006:

The overall project involves rebuilding the levee along both banks from I-65 to the Illinois border. After starting at I-65 a number of years ago, the work has been completed through Gary up to Cline Avenue.

The Times article continued:

When a significant portion of the project is done, the Army Corps will be petitioned to revise the flood map, Wszolek said. When this happens, about 2,500 properties on the north end of Highland are expected to become eligible to pull the plug on their flood insurance, he said.

In the past, Gardner [executive director of the Little Calumet River Basin Development Commission] has said the entire town must be protected by the new levee before even one home can be removed from the flood plain designation.

The Highland stretch of the project will run in three phases: from Cline Avenue to Liable Road, from Liable to Kennedy Avenue, and from Kennedy to the Norfolk & Southern Railroad tracks. Officials have said the three phases may not necessarily be performed in that same sequence.

The Post-Tribune article continued:

McDermott was quick to say he called for Daniels' impeachment in jest.

"It's not like we're seeking to have him removed from office," McDermott said.

But McDermott did say the General Assembly must find adequate funding to complete the Little Calumet levee project this spring.

Daniels' proposed two-year budget includes just $2 million for the levees, far below the $13 million estimated tab to complete the work.

"If they can't find the funding by the end of the session, they've lost all credibility with the people of Northwest Indiana, and the governor, for failure to take a leadership position on that issue, should be impeached," McDermott said.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Daniels called the cost of the levees "a moving target," but said he hopes the legislature can find the cash to complete the work.

"I hope we'll finally get a number that's reliable and a plan for finishing it. It's a very important project, as we saw, regrettably, again this summer," Daniels said.

Worsening poverty calls for united effort in region

While Governor Daniels and his Republican allies move forward with ramming their service-cutting budget down the throats of the working families of Indiana, a budget that State Senator John Broden said "almost turns into an anti-stimulus package", it is clear that poverty is becoming the hallmark of the state's inhabitants.

As has been documented in another post on this blog, roughly 40% of children state-wide are living in dire straits.

Mark Heckler in the Post-Tribune today highlights the worsening poverty in the NW Indiana region and calls for a united effort in response.

Some facts from the article:

Approximately 1.4 billion people live in poverty, which the World Bank defines as per capita incomes of between $1.25 and $2 per day.

In 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau defined poverty for a family of four at an annual income level of $21,027. According to the soon-to-be-released 2008 Quality of Life Council Indicators Report, 14 people out of 100 fall within this category in Northwest Indiana. This is up substantially from the 9 percent poverty rate for our region in 2005.

Northwest Indiana's children fare far worse. Among children under the age of 18, nearly one in four children in our communities lives in poverty.

As the article points out, these statistics put numbers to a stark, devestating, and harsh reality that NW Indiana working and poor families face; a reality that includes homelessness, hunger, joblessness, and the inability to meet the basic needs of survival for one's family.

And these statistics date from 2007, prior to the current financial crisis which is exascerbating the problems.

The article encourages action along the following lines:

-- volunteer time to support organizations fighting poverty
-- give money and food to those who cook meals and maintain food pantries to feed the hungry
-- support economic development efforts to attract, keep and diversify businesses in our region
-- bring more affordable housing online

These are excellent steps in a positive direction, but larger scale responses are needed as well.

President-elect Obama's plans to put people back to work are a good step.

A massive federal/state jointly funded program to build low-cost quality housing in NW Indiana would put many to work and provided living space for people living in bad conditions or homeless today.

A single-payer national health care system similar to Canada's would help everyone financially by relieving them of the devestating health care expenses that either prevent people from getting care or drive many into bankruptcy.

Winning the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would go a long way toward helping to ensure that working people got paid a living wage, and would help to lift many now living in poverty to a better life.

Peace and an end to the massive military expenditures that undermine our economy, our position in the world, and create so much unjust and unneeded death and destruction would help us meet our domestic needs.

Hope is in the minds of many as we near the inauguration day and President-elect Obama gets closer to taking office. While a tempered outlook is required due to the political realities that the President-elect faces, there is every reason to hope that help in terms of job programs and an economic stimulus will make a positive difference to the lives of the working people of Indiana.

We have the right to expect that our Governor create a budget that augments the direction that President-elect Obama is charting rather than attempting to undermine it, and to voice that expectation to the Governor.

Finally, many are asking what is wrong with capitalism itself, as a system. Was it greed that created the current crisis, and will increased transparency and regulation ensure that this never happens again? These are good questions that deserve to be asked and explored further.

Plainfield, Lebanon will drop rules on political yard signs

In a victory for democracy and free speech, the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana (ACLU) has won the right for people to show political signs.

As reported in the Indianapolis Star:

Ken Falk, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which filed the suits, said the local ordinances tried to curtail one of the purest forms of free speech.

Many cities and towns in the state adopted similar laws years ago to curtail the visual clutter of yard signs during campaign season and to treat candidates equally.

In many communities, the ordinances say election signs may be no larger than a real estate "for sale" sign and may not be displayed more than 30 days before of an election.

In September, as the race for president was heating up in Indiana, the ACLU sued three communities -- Plainfield and Lebanon in metropolitan Indianapolis, and Highland near Chicago -- when local officials attempted to enforce their rules on yard signs.

All three suits were triggered by complaints to the ACLU by supporters of Democratic nominee Barack Obama after the local governments removed their yard signs or asked that they be removed.

Falk said Tuesday that the suits against Highland and Lebanon have been settled. Both city councils voted late last year to delete the controversial wording from their sign control laws and agreed to pay attorney fees and other costs sought by the ACLU.

Plainfield is in the process of completing a settlement in the case against them.

In the big dollar world of campaign outreach, yard signs are a way for each individual or family to express themselves and participate in the election process. While the rationale for the anti-sign laws may have been to protect neighborhood aesthetics, the controls on signage had the effect of muting the voices of people challenging the incumbent, and was therefore anti-democratic.

The US electoral system favors incumbents, so silence equates to support of the incumbent. Low cost expressions of support for candidates allow an individual or family to stand up and be counted prior to the election, and thereby influence their neighbors, or stimulate further discussion.

Daniels' lean budget proposal leaves some wanting

Showing once more how out of touch Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is with the needs of the working families of Indiana, IndyStar.com reported

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels unveiled a budget blueprint Tuesday that was immediately assailed by Democrats because it set aside almost no new money for public education or jobs creation.

While Reuters reports that nationally

Private employers shed 693,000 jobs in December, up sharply from the revised 476,000 jobs lost in November and far more than economists estimated

the Governor continues claiming that "Indiana is facing the global economic crisis in better shape than most states, but only if tough choices continue to be made."

The tough choices the Governor is making include cutting funds for education and Medicaid health care for those most in need, and ending other programs entirely. At the time of greatest need, the Governor's response is to continue his ideological attack on State provided services.

Today when people face a disappearing job market and reeducation is a pressing need, the Governor should be making education free as part of stimulating the Indiana economy. However, the rationale behind cutting education funds is really to attack the union teachers and other union workers in the school system under the guise of lowering costs.

Cutting health care funds for Medicaid is unconscionable. With many working families going without health insurance, and many underinsured, to cut support for the Medicaid/Medicare system sends the message that our disabled and our elderly don't matter.

The Governor did propose raising the funding for K-12 education by $80 million, but that is an almost insignificant fraction of the aproximately $6 billion Indiana spends on K-12 education annually.

Education funding has been shifted to the State budget rather than local budgets, which makes it appear the State budget grew. The state raised the sales tax to 7% in response to the shift in education funding, an increase which disproportionately impacts working families struggling in the current financial crisis.

While raising the sales tax and eliminating funding for public broadcasting, the arts, the Purdue life sciences initiative, tourism programs, education, health care, and other programs, the Governor is sitting on a surplus of $1.3 billion dollars that Daniels claims will be needed if the financial crisis is long. While December state revenues have fallen $33 million, spending now is the only way to help people survive the financial crisis and to contribute to stimulating the economy by keeping people working.

Democratic House Speaker Bauer said

"There's no question there's going to be pain in the next year or two," he said, "(but) you don't get out of this hole without filling up what made the hole, and that's the loss of 80,000 jobs. There's really no jobs program in the budget he presented."

Republican State Senator Kenley, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, does not see a jobs program as needed due to the Indiana Economic Development Corp., which looks to the private sector to create new jobs. Clearly that is not working today.

The budget priorities as relate to education are expected to be an arena of struggle in the upcoming period. Essentially, Daniels is using the financial crisis to attack public higher education and unions, claiming that

schools need to do a better job of spending their money, cutting the 40 cents of each dollar that he said is spent in "the back office" rather than the classroom.

"Put bluntly, the education system of this state, or any state, must be a learning system for children, and not an employment bureau for adults," Daniels said.

"That's a pretty callous statement," said Frank Bush, executive director of the Indiana School Superintendents Association. Teachers and administrators are licensed professionals, operating more efficiently than they are given credit for, he said.

School officials also disputed Daniels' claim that costs are going down.

"I don't think our utilities are going down. Health insurance definitely is not going down," said Dennis Costerison, executive director of the Indiana Association of School Business Officials. "We'll be paying more for Elmer's glue next year than we are this year."

And, he and Bush both said, schools must pay teachers more as they gain experience -- incremental jumps required by state law.

Using the financial crisis as a pretext for anti-union activity, as in the attack on education which is an attack on unionized teachers and other education workers, cutting support for those most in need of health care, and not providing for a jobs program while unemployment runs rampant shows how much Mitch Daniels and the Republicans are out of touch with the times.

Protect and expand education and health care funding. Protect union jobs. Indiana needs a jobs programs that puts people to work meeting the State's human services and infrastructure needs. Its time for the Governor to stop pretending that the private sector is the answer and respond to the needs of the working people of Indiana.

Pinched patients may forgo care: Doctor visits are casualties of the economy and rising costs

The Indianapolis Star is reporting a decline in physician revenues as Hoosiers forego medical care in a recession environment.

Physician offices are seeing declining revenues as patients, worried about their own financial health amid the economic downturn, put off appointments or fall behind on medical bills.

While some patients are kept away from doctors' offices because they lack health insurance, others have coverage but face thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs from co-payments and high deductibles.

That both those with and without health insurance are foregoing needed health care is indicative of the basic problems in the US healthcare system, a system which is increasingly making it difficult for anyone regardless of insurance coverage to get needed care.

Revenue at physician offices in 12 Midwest states, including Indiana, fell almost 9 percent this year compared with last year, according to data from Sageworks, a North Carolina company that tracks sales of U.S. privately held companies.

"What may be different in this downturn compared with previous ones is the fact that health care has become so much more expensive," said Peter Cunningham, a senior fellow with the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington-based research group. "Families have very little cushion in their budgets for health-care expenses."

According to a recent study by the group, one in three families reported problems paying medical bills when their out-of-pocket health spending totaled just 2.5 percent to 5 percent of family income.

Working families in the United States are unable to meet their health care needs. The best solution for this is to restructure the health care industry to be similar to those of all other industrialized countries, and create a single payer system that gets rid of the bloated costs for insurance administration that eat up 1/3 of our health care dollars without providing any services.

About 45.7 million Americans, including 717,000 in Indiana, are uninsured. But that number could rise as the economic downturn continues.

When the richest country in the world can't provide health care to its citizens, fundamental change is clearly required.

Governor Daniels Asks Indiana State Workers to Sacrifice

Continuing the trend of trying to offset the cost of today's economic crisis on the backs of working people, As reported in the Indianapolis Star, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has

asked police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public employees to make a personal sacrifice: voluntarily forgo their pay increases for 2009.

Given the disproportionate distribution of wealth in this country, there is no reason to ask working people to sacrifice until there have been significant efforts at a redistribution of wealth, particularly targeting the wealthiest 1% of the nation.

The request came in the wake of the governor's decision earlier this month to freeze the wages of state workers, including his own, in hopes of reducing a projected $763 million state budget spending gap through June.

State workers are struggling already. The Federal Poverty Threshold is $21,200 for a family of four in Indiana. The median family income in Indiana of $47,422 is defined as "low-income" because it is just over 200% of the of the poverty threshold. Many state employees earn significantly less than that. In fact, poverty is widespread in Indiana.

As reported by Suite101.com:

The major cities that have reached critical poverty levels (50% above the state average) are the following:

* Bloomington (29.6%)
* East Chicago (24.4%)
* Gary (25.8%)
* Marion (16.9%)
* Muncie (23.1%)
* South Bend (16.7%)
* Terre Haute (19.2%)
* West Lafayette (38.3%)

In a State administration where a Clerical Assistant 4 grosses $24,437 after many years of working at the State, asking State employees to forego their raises is wrong. In a state with rampant poverty, it is not helpful to resolving the economic crisis to deny State workers raises.

There is no doubt that States are struggling in the face of lowered tax payments due to unemploymnet rates raising, people buying less, and other reasons. Unlike the Federal government, States can't print money. However, States can take some important steps including overturning constitutional or legal requirements for a balanced budget, creating new community initiatives to meet working family's needs such as free community health clinics, three free meals for children in school even when schools are closed for classes, lengthening the time schools stay open so parents don't have to pay for child care, providing ongoing unemployment payments until the economic crisis is over and there is full employment, providing free lifelong education from kindergarden through post-graduate and continuing education, and active lobbying with the Federal administration for funds to support these types of programs that benefit working families.

This is not the time to deny public workers their often desperately needed raises. Restore the raises, stop privatization of State programs, and provide for the needs of working families in Indiana.

Central Indiana Home Sales Down

According to the Indianapols Star article Hope rises for Central Indiana home sales in 2009,

home sales in Central Indiana dropped 29 percent during November compared with the same month last year

. For the year, home sales are down 16%.The article predicts that home sales will rise in 2009 due to the lowest mortgage rates in 50 years. However, if the current trends in job loss and economic decline are not stemmed, the cuts in mortgage rates will have minimal effect on home sales. Further, as the article points out, the rate cuts have the effect of

cutting the cost of buying a home mortgage and giving homeowners with good credit an opportunity to refinance their mortgages.

The key phrase there is "homeowners with good credit." In order to encourage a widespread renewal in the home market, its important to keep up the push for government intervention to create and protect jobs at living wages. Its also important to recognize the impact of falling home prices.

The average sales price in the 13-county study fell from $143,182 to $128,867, a 10 percent drop, from November 2007 to November 2008.

When a home owner with a mortgage can't sell their house for as much as the mortgage buy-out they are effectively locked into their home. This issue needs to be addressed. At the end of the day, the current economic crisis has not responded to fiscal stimulous efforts. This is a structural crisis that can only be resolved by putting working families back to work at a living wage, providing universal quality affordable health care, and protecting people's retirement funds and expanding Social Security benefits, including raising Social Security retirement payments.

Demand Illiana Highway Be Built

The Indianapolis Star, in an article titled Stimulus money may spur Illiana highway, is reporting today that the Obama plans for infrasture investment have revived hopes that the Illiana highway will be built. This highway

would loop from Chicago's southern suburbs through southern Lake County to link with I-65

A feasability study is due to be released next year.

There are concerns that the State of Indiana will not participate in this infrastructure project, killing it, because the Governor wants the state's share of the funding to be provided by private funding. According to state Rep. Ed Soliday (R-Valparaiso):

"The Daniels administration likes an Illiana Expressway, but they want it privately funded, and money isn't exactly flowing at the moment," he said.

This is likely to be an issue with other infrastructure initiatives as well. The working people of Indiana deserve to see these large infrastructure projects implemented, and the jobs they represent created. The state should ensure this and similar projects happen and should not use the pretext of not having state matching funds to undermine President-elect Obama's fiscal stimulus package.

Recession Hits Indiana Kids Early and Hard

It says a lot about how a society functions when its children are among the earliest and hardest hit in an economic crisis. As the Indianapolis Star reported today in an Associated Press article titled Recession hitting Indiana's needy children:

...Indiana children felt the effects of the recession in its earliest stages, with more than a third eligible for free or reduced-price lunches this year.

The 2008 Kids Count in Indiana Data Book released today by the Indiana Youth Institute showed the percentage of K-12 students in Indiana eligible for free lunches and text books rose to 29.7 percent this year and those eligible for reduced-price lunches rose to 8.0 percent.

The report further highlights the overall financial crisis for working people that I discuss in my prior posting. The statistics on children receiving help are staggering in their implications for the struggles of working people in Indiana today, but continue a trend that tracks the growing inequality in the distribution of wealth. As reported in the article:

The latest percentage of children living in households so needy that they qualify to receive free lunches and text books was a full 1.5 percentage points higher than the 28.2 percent eligible in 2007 and compared with 25.8 percent as recently as 2004. The percentages have risen steadily each year in that span.

The statistics continue, addressing county by county disparities and looking at the next tier up on the economic scale, children who are eligible for partial support for lunches.

County-level data provided by the institute showed more than half of the schoolchildren in two counties, Marion and Fayette, qualified for free textbooks and lunches or reduced-price lunches. Marion, which includes Indianapolis, is the state's most populous county. Fayette County, in east central Indiana, has been hit hard by manufacturing layoffs.

Another county, Grant, also hit by manufacturing layoffs, had 49.9 percent of schoolkids qualify for the subsidized lunches.

Only one county, Hamilton in Indianapolis' affluent northern suburbs, had fewer than 10 percent of schoolchildren qualify for free lunches and textbooks, with 7.6 percent eligible.

The percentage of students eligible for reduced-price lunches rose slightly to 8.0 percent this year from 7.9 percent last year.

Among the other indicators in the report:

-- The percentage of children under age 18 living in poverty rose to 16.6 percent -- about one in six statewide -- in 2005, the most recent year for which data was available.

-- The number of children enrolled in the Hoosier Healthwise state medical plan for low-income children rose by nearly 9,000 children from 2006 to 2007 and has more than doubled since 2000.

The rate of child abuse and neglect cases per 1,000 children under age 18 fell nearly 10 percent to 11.9 percent in 2007 from 13 percent in 2006.

There is no doubt that the working people of Indiana are being hit hard by this recession. We need to work together, to unite, to win union jobs at living wages, and support all unionization efforts. We further need to demand that government services be expanded in this time of crisis and need, not contracted to achieve fake goals of "fiscal responsibility" or a "balanced budget". Its time to put people before accounting, and stop playing games with the lives of the working families of Indiana.