Since 1901! The oldest continuously running democratic club in the nation.
New to the site? Check out the first post, Welcome...

Meeting Minutes for November General membership Meeting of the Indiana Democratic Club
11/28/2006 @ 7:30pm

Meeting called to order by: IDC President Ken Kern at 7:45pm at the Julia Carson Government Center in Indianapolis.

Tonight’s Sponsor: Martin Hinman

Pledge of Allegiance led by: Marion County Clerk-Elect Beth White

Speakers:

• Hon. Baron Hill, Indiana 9^th District U.S. House Representative (Unable to attend due to a late flight)

• Hon. Julia Carson, Indiana 7^th District U.S. House Representative

It’s wonderful to be here. “I’ve been sitting in a Congress that hasn’t been so wonderful. Good things come to those who wait and we’ve been waiting for awhile since Newt came…” Thanks to the poll workers who did the hard work. Congratulations to elected officials and already elected officials.

People were worried about her, but she wasn’t. “What will be will be.” But this election was quite vicious. David Orentlicher is “a top quality individual” and they slung a lot of mud at him but he carried on and won. All the negatives they ran against Baron Hill, were very harsh, were outright lies. Fortunately they did not work and money did not talk in that race. With all that money “wouldn’t it be great if all that money went to education.”

“Every knows Bush is a liar, and everybody knows he fabricates everything. He got us into this war to kill [so many people]” and now he’s in Iran trying to get peace when he’s the one that started this thing.

There is a town hall meeting on Thursday about Plan B/Medicare. Tabernacle Baptist Church at 10am. She also wants to do another town hall meeting on safety such as tornado warnings in the district. “We need to be prepared.”

When they go back to congress, they are going to fix the budget and may have to do a continuance to figure it out. Not much else may get done since it is a lame duck session. (“Right after the turkey it’s a lame duck”)

Crime is on the increase and people are “afraid to stay home and afraid to leave home.” People blame Peterson, but what can he do on his own to stop it? How can he have stopped all the killing? “But as a community we can come together, bring our ideas together and work on it together not regarding partisan politics.” We can work together to figure out what happened.

How did she make it through, with a single mother and crime and everything else? It was her upbringing and her community coming together to help. We need to get back to more communities. Politics cannot solve it all. We have to get together more than just sitting around this table and work things out – try not to get too partisan over religion, faith or whatever.

We have a woman Speaker for the first time in history. Nancy Pelosi is nothing to play with – very sharp, family oriented.

Happy to be an American, wouldn’t want to be born anywhere else. This is the place to be and we have a great democracy – we can’t let it be eroded. We must continue to support our troops – they are beginning to understand what she has been saying: Bush called them to war with no weapons, armor, training – she said that all the time. We were not prepared to go to war. We now need to work out a sophisticated way to downsize our force and start to bring them home. THAT is supporting the troops.

She came tonight also to let you know “the rumors of my demise are unfounded. [Franklin] Roosevelt ran the country from a wheelchair. … if anyone tells you ‘Julia Carson is dieing’ just tell them so are they.”

• Hon. David Orentlicher, Indiana House Representative

“We have a lot to be thankful for. We not only elected our great congresswoman but she gets to be in the majority.” Thankful for city and county ticket and now we will have “really good government in Marion County.” We have Dem control back in the State House and can now start working on getting things done that we need to get done.

Also thankful for our candidates, even the losing ones, that show ew have the best candidates no matter what.

Big issues: health care, full day kindergarten, property taxes. Now the Governor is taking these issues on while the Indiana Dems have been talking about these issues for years. It isn’t about money, it’s about philosophy. The Indiana GOP wants block grants for local areas but we know kindergarten is the most important thing so we need to (and can afford it) do it at a state level.

Health Care reform – this is the right time. It’s time to do something about it (and fortunately the governor is now behind it). Thinks it is right that a cigarette tax is the way to help fund this. Not only is it a deterrent and can reduce smoking but it can also raise revenue to help with Health Care. But what the Governor is wrong about is how to get coverage such as through health savings accounts. In theory they might work, but in practice we have two decades of experience with these accounts and consumers aren’t doctors so they aren’t as good as doctors at making decisions about their healthcare – if they think about the ER bill they are less likely to go. Most of the people who support accounts don’t do a lot of health care research. Charlie Brown will propose something similar to Medicare. Rep. Orentlicher is working with the university to study and showing that the VA is the best solution and will have a proposal based on that approach. He thinks we will do something, though. If we pass a cigarette tax, we’ll have the money to do it.

Property tax reform is the least likely to pass of the big three. We all know how bad our property tax system is within the old city borders, but now everyone in the state is facing it so now representatives across the state need to work on this. Their possible solution is to allow cities and counties to replace property tax with sales and income tax. The big argument will be “for every dollar you raise in sales and income tax, how much needs to go to reducing property taxes?” Some areas want to do as low as $.25 per dollar property tax relief – we should be at $1/$1 but something in the $.80/$1 has a good shot.

The new toll road that Daniels wants isn’t looking good especially since his own study showed it wasn’t a good idea. “but this is a man who’s more interested in his own ideology than data.” But we do need to work more on mass transit for the region. People look at mass transit when they decide where to move (along with schools).

December 15^th is the deadline for getting ideas in for bills. If you have ideas, you have until then to get them into your Representative.

Thank you for all you’ve done. There is so much that went into this big victory.

Orentlicher Q&A:

• Any chance of moderating or repealing the Voter ID law?
  Doesn’t look good. Also remember once we get something through the House it has to get through conference committee with the Senate.
• Any feedback on the Governor’s FSSA privatization proposal?
  Once people find out more about this, it’s harder and harder to get public support for the privatization.
• Can the Legisalture have hearings about privatization (specifically FSSA) to bring the problems to the light of day?
  Rep. Orentlicher is on the FSSA oversight committee. We need to bring these people in to bring them to account. But this year the only thing the committee did was commission a survey. Nothing looking into privatization or anything, which is what you get with one party control. Maybe during the session have the committee devote time to bringing in the people involved to bring issues to light.
• Any public accounting on Major Moves and its money to make sure none of it is finding its way into anyone’s “back pocket”?
  That should be available. We’ll have to make sure to dig it out and make sure people see it.
• What about simplified voting such as the Vote By Mail systems in use in a few states that is not only simple but saves a ton of money?
  The GOP in the Senate don’t want us to pass any laws that increase voter turnout. Their goal is to pass laws to depress voter turnout. The Dems in the house can try, and maybe we can embarrass them on something with it – the way to go is to argue it with savings of money.

• State Senator and Marion County Auditor-Elect Billie Breaux

What a great time to be a Democrat. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is we are always thinking of ways to be beneficial to those we serve. The Marion County Ticket was running not for titles, but because they want to server. She’s had the opportunity since being elected to go to the City/County Building. It’s been very interesting.

She thinks back to when Daniels came into the Governor’s position and pretty much cleaned house of everyone and you really want to do that. But she came into the position to make the Auditor’s office run well and do what it does well, so she is interviewing each employee about what can be done and what is good about the office. They are relieved that someone is coming in that isn’t just going to unilaterally fire everyone. She hasn’t hired anyone, but as told them she has an open ear and is open to them.

She also still has a toe in the Senate. She has an opportunity on December 5^th to share the podium with Governor Daniels to talk about full day kindergarten, and is pleased he supports it. But it is her pleasure to remind him that former Govs. O’Bannon and Kernan were behind it and it was the Indian GOP in the state House and Senate that stopped it. Other states have been doing full day kindergarten for years. While they are working for early education, we’re still trying to get full day K. We need to set a good foundation at that age of education.

Thanks to everyone for their support, and we’re going to need it even more now that we are in power. The Auditor’s office has been in the hands of the GOP for 40 years. They have not yet even done an office for 2004. There are reports that are not done that the City/County council has been asking for for a long time. She is a sticker for guidelines and dates.

The thing herself, Rep. Orenticher and others are going to have to be careful of is what they try and attach to the bill that is not acceptable.

Breaux Q&A:

· With full day kindergarten, can they ask the Gov. to pass it with no riders?
Yes. That is very possible and appropriate.

· Can the Central Committee be amenable to making sure that no office is ever unchallenged in the future (such as US Senate this year)?
She is certainly open to it, but cannot speak for the whole committee.

Club business:

Minutes: Accepted as handed out. Moved and seconded, passed.

Treasurer’s Report: Accepted as handed out. Moved and seconded, passed.