When it comes to the time being a sensitive subject, there’s arguably no one who watches the clock more closely than Indiana Hoosiers.
This is the state where people fought – and ultimately lost – the right to have different counties be on different time zones. (Though there still are a few spots in the northwest corner of the state where, while standing on the shore, you can technically land a fish an hour before you caught it.)
So in some ways, it’s fitting that lawmakers here in the Indianapolis state house are counting down the minutes as they fight over the state budget. As of this morning, there's no budget. Inside the state Assembly chambers, there’s a rumble that lawmakers will have something to vote on when they reconvene just about now, at 1 p.m. EST. By then, legislators will have 10 hours and 59 minutes to get something passed. Otherwise, government services will begin to shut down.
The last time lawmakers in this Rust Belt-meets-agriculture state blew past its June 30 deadline was during the Civil War. Back then, when the state general assembly adjourned without passing a budget, Gov. Oliver Perry Morton simply didn’t recall the legislators – and for a year or so, he ran the state government on his own. (Lawmakers later forgave Morton: There’s a statue of him standing at the entrance of the state house here in Indianapolis.)
Since then, say locals, meeting that midnight budgetary deadline has been a point of Hoosier pride. That’s not to say folks haven’t bent the rules a bit. Inside the state general assembly’s chambers, there is a wooden clock mounted onto the balcony just above the lawmakers' seats. At one point, many years ago, there was a switch, tucked next to the House speaker’s podium, which would turn off the clock.
When the fiscal budget debates dragged a bit too close to midnight, “they’d stop the clock and battle it out,” said Alan January, director of patron services for the Indiana State Archives. “It’d buy them a few minutes, a few hours, maybe longer.”
As legislators race from meeting to meeting today, quite a few have cast a longing glance toward that podium. The switch is gone. It was removed years ago. The clock, though, remains and is still ticking down. To read more about state lawmakers across the country racing to beat the clock, check out this story.
Most of today's news attention will focus on the White House Rose Garden and President Obama's news conference (live blogging starts here, latimes.com/ticket, at 9:30 a.m. Pacific, 12:30 p.m. Eastern, 4:30 p.m. GMT).
Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden flies way out West to Ohio today to talk about helping the middle class and the nation's economy.
But just a few months after congressional passage of the administration's whopping $787-billion economic stimulus plan, a new national poll shows Americans' confidence in its efficacy fading, especially in the Midwest, where Biden is heading.
Just about half (52%) believe the much-touted stimulus plan will or has had any impact restoring the economy, down from 59% in April. The Washington Post-ABC Poll found Obama's personal popularity remains high, in part because his Republican opposition remains in such disarray unable to offer a coherent political alternative.
The shift in public assessments of the stimulus package has clear political ramifications: At the 100-day mark of Obama's presidency, 63 percent of people in states that were decided by fewer than 10 percentage points in November said the stimulus act had or would boost the economy.
Today, in the telephone poll of 1,001 Americans conducted Thursday through Sunday, the number has plummeted to 50 percent in those closely contested states, with nearly as many now saying the stimulus program will not help the national economy.
The new poll confirms other surveys showing the president's popularity dipping slightly, his disapproval rating jumping about 5% and particular unhappiness focused on his handling of the automobile manufacturing crisis and the federal deficit. They add up to a serious warning signal, with unemployment lines (see photo) expected to increase even further.
Currently, 90% of Americans are worried to some degree about the exploding federal spending deficit, a galactic number certain to gain politicians' attention on both sides. And yet to come is the final bill for Obama's healthcare legislation.
We publish many transcripts and speech texts here so that Ticket readers can get both our take and the actual words in proper context. This speech by President Obama is 8 days old. But it's of interest because he is now going out on the road as Fundraiser in Chief of his Democratic Party and its numerous candidates.
Tomorrow Obama takes his personal 747 all the way out to naughty Las Vegas, where he said bankers shouldn't go and party on taxpayer funds. And there the president will speak at a big fundraiser for the re-election campaign of Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid. The next day Obama visits Los Angeles to do a Democratic National Committee fundraiser. (Do you suppose bankers are allowed to excursion there?)
You'd think Reid would be in good shape politically after four terms. There's no clear Republican opponent. And HR already has about $3.3 million in the bank before tomorrow's rake-in at Caesars Palace (see photo above) with Bette and Sheryl and the crowd, as The Ticket reported here previously.
But polls show way more Nevadans dislike Reid than like him. Which is a problem at election time. Which is still 17 months off.
And no one wants to be Daschled like the last Senate Democratic Majority Leader was in 2004 when voters back home saw him being all partisan on TV and suspected maybe their old pal wasn't investing full time in Dakota doings. You know, getting a little too big for his britches back East.
So we thought we'd share the full text of one of the president's most recent fundraising speeches, to give you a little feel for what the glitz-crowd will have to pay big bucks to hear on The Strip.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Remarks by President Obama at a Keep Indiana Blue Fundraiser, Indianapolis, May 17, 2009
THE PRESIDENT: Hello, Indiana! (Applause.) It's good to see you guys. It's good to see you. Hello, hello, hello! (Applause.) It is good to be here. (Applause.) And it's a pleasure to be with your outstanding representatives in Congress -- Andre Carson, Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth, Baron Hill -- give it up for these outstanding members of Congress. (Applause.) We're here to make sure they can stay right where they belong: in the United States Congress, representing your hopes, representing your dreams, carrying your voices to Washington, D.C. (Applause.)
It's good to be back in Indiana. (Applause.) We spent a little time in Indiana. It reminds me of why I like getting out of Washington so much. People are friendly. (Laughter.) It brings back a lot of memories from all those days out here on the campaign trail.
So I want to start out tonight by saying thank you -- thank you to all of you here in Indiana. (Applause.) I know that I'm here tonight because of you, and folks like you across this country who made ...
Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin makes a rare one-day speaking foray out of Alaska this week.
Doesn't everybody want to go to Indiana in April?
Some politicians way up there in Alaska are apparently grumbling because the legislative session isn't over yet and Juneau might shrivel up even more. According to the Anchorage Daily News, only nine of the 419 bills introduced this session have completed their journey through the Legislature, which must be the governor's fault. The session is due to end Sunday.
This slow legislative progress could mean one of two or three only things: 1) like every other legislature composed of humans, they are leaving a lot until the last minute, 1a) Alaska already has enough laws and these elected folks have finally realized it, or 2) some Alaska politicians on the losing ends of Palin's successful 2005-06 political insurgency are trying to score some points.
And if it also bruises Palin for a possible 2012 GOP presidential try, so much the better.
"She is putting her national political ambitions ahead of the needs of Alaska," said Democratic state chair Patti Higgins.
Palin's office released a somewhat defensive statement Monday, saying that she had long ago consulted with legislative leaders about this 36-hour absence, and none of them expressed any concerns then.
Her statement (see full text below) also pointed out that the GOP vice presidential candidate last year has spent far more time in the state capital during the session than her two immediate predecessors, Republican Frank Murkowski and Democrat Tony Knowles.
By Palin's count, Knowles was absent an average of 38 days during sessions and Murkowski 45 days. Palin has been out of Juneau 14 days, the statement said.
Having spent virtually all of last fall out of state in the presidential campaign, Palin, who faces a re-election campaign next year, appears sensitive to charges of inattention to state business. Although she did make a quick weekend trip to Washington for a banquet this winter, she turned down all media interview requests, which helped avoid calling attention to her presence there.
And she ended up not being a speaker at a major Republican fundraiser there in June, where she was replaced by Newt Gingrich, who is slowly re-emerging from image rehab.
Palin is scheduled to speak Thursday night in Evansville, Ind. to a sold-out Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner and the next morning at a breakfast for a nonprofit group of parents with Down syndrome children, like Palin's son Trig. The expenses are to be paid by the governor's PAC.
A busy week of campaigning in store for the new president as he tries to seize back the initiative in the ongoing national debate over the economic spending, er, economic stimulus package.
The Obamas spent their first night at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland on Saturday and will return late this afternoon.
Monday morning the president will fly to Elkhart, Ind. which just so happens to be hard hit by new unemployment. There, in a noon-hour townhall meeting, he'll talk up his economic stimulus legislation in time for the networks to assemble their film packages for the evening news. Listen for more depressing economic data and talk of urgency.
He'll return to the White House in time for a 5 p.m. Pacific nationally-televised press conference, which will allow him to dominate the Tuesday morning news cycle too.
Tuesday: Same deal, only he flies down to Fort Myers, Florida to highlight the increased unemployment in that politically crucial state. Back to his own bed that night and Wednesday in the Oval Office. Sometime in here soon someone will be told to leak word of the president's latest nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, since Tom "I Had a Back-Tax Problem" Daschle withdrew his name last week.
Thursday, however, Obama will travel again, flying out to Springfield, Ill., to celebrate the 200th birthday of the nation's first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who wasn't really an Illinois native but try to tell that to Springfield where his history and tomb are a local industry.
(Did you know, btw, robbers actually tried to steal the 16th president's body for ransom in 1876? Look it up. And that explains why after being moved 17 times over the years his remains were permanently encased in 10 feet of concrete in 1901.)
Obama will speak at a Lincoln banquet Thursday in the suddenly Blagojevich-less city where the 44th president once was present in the state legislature. In that same city, Obama launched his hopelessly longshot presidential campaign almost exactly two years ago after disinviting at the last minute someone named Jeremiah Wright from giving the campaign's opening invocation.
Back home again for the night. On Friday after work, as the president-elect indicated he would do every six weeks or so, he will pick up the family. And the Hawaiian native will take them back to their South Side home in balmy Chicago to get away from the awful Washington winter for the long holiday weekend.
Occasionally during the next couple of weeks, The Ticket is republishing some of our favorite items from the 4,000 we've written in the last 18 months. This one originally appeared on Dec. 4, 2008:
It's about Planned Parenthood of Indiana now offering special festive gift certificates good for its services. Nothing says the year-end holiday celebrations of life like a real professional abortion.
That Jon Stewart is a funny guy too, who can spot a good story when he sees one. And tell it with tongue in cheek excellently.
Obviously, he's also got excellent blog-reading taste. Thanks, Jon! (Now, why won't this video go in the middle where it's supposed to?)
It's about Planned Parenthood of Indiana now offering special festive gift certificates good for its services. Nothing says the year-end holiday celebrations of life like a real professional abortion.
That Jon Stewart is a funny guy too, who can spot a good story when he sees one. And tell it with tongue in cheek excellently.
Obviously, he's also got excellent blog-reading taste. Thanks, Jon! (Now, why won't this video go in the middle where it's supposed to?)
Here's an original holiday gift idea to help the person who may have everything, including a little something they don't really want. A new way to mark the festive yearend celebration of life -- a gift certificate for an abortion.
This year, for the first time, Planned Parenthood of Indiana is offering holiday gift certificates for that certain someone in your life who may want a breast exam, a pap smear or perhaps not want another life in their life.
Calling them an "unusual yet practical gift this holiday season," the organization is selling gift certificates in $25 denominations, redeemable at any of the group's 35 statewide locations for their services, including health screenings, birth control and abortion services.
A Planned Parenthood website page notes that a standard women's health exam costs $58 while abortions in the first trimester can run from $350 to $900.
There's even an online page to order the certificates if you know someone in Indiana who desires such services.
"People are making really tough decisions about putting gas in their car and food on their table, so we know that many women especially put healthcare at their bottom of their list to do."
The official explained the group offers a range of services that can be purchased with the gift cards including pap smears, breast exams, birth control prescriptions and abortions. The organization performs about 5,000 abortions a year, according to one published figure, out of 92,000 patients treated.
Indiana's health commissioner, Judy Monroe, ignores the mounting political denunciations and calls the idea "really a meaningful gift."
It has taken a few days for antiabortion groups to move beyond disbelief and begin commenting on the Christmas holiday sales item. "It is difficult to think of a more tasteless, ghoulish thing to give anyone," wrote one blogger.
Indiana's Right to Life president, Mike Fichter, calls the Christmas gift certificates "a mockery" of a holiday designed to celebrate life by "peddling new ways to promote its destruction."
"Christmas," said Jim Sedlak of the American Life League, "perhaps more than any other time of the year, is dedicated to the miracle of life and divine love." He said the gift cards "would be more accurately described as death certificates."
Officials of Planned Parenthood, which operates abortion clinics in Indianapolis, Merrillville and Bloomington, stress the health and pregnancy prevention part of their services.
But Fichter is unpersuaded. "The tragedy is that almost 6,000 fewer children will be celebrating a first Christmas this year," he said, "because they were aborted in Planned Parenthood's Indiana clinics."
John Edwards -- remember him? -- tiptoes back into the public spotlight tonight.
Well, not actually a spotlight. His appearance and remarks at Indiana University are closed to all cameras and media. We'll see how long it takes someone to Twitter from inside.
This could be the first move in the attempted public relations rehab of the man who was once a senator, was once his Democratic Party's candidate for vice president and, this election season, was given a shot at the top nomination -- until Democrats actually started voting.
After months of dismissing as trash the tabloid reports of an extramarital affair with a campaign videographer named Rielle Hunter while his wife was fighting cancer, Edwards admitted in an ABC interview on an early August Friday night that, well, yes, he did have that fling.
But it was short. He confessed to his wife awhile back. And he wasn't the father of the woman's child.
Edwards went into seclusion. He and his wife, Elizabeth, skipped the Democratic National Convention in Denver as potential distractions. She emerged only in September to continue her work against breast cancer.
Now, according to CNN, Edwards has another speech scheduled in San Francisco tomorrow and an on-stage debate at an upcoming bankers convention with Karl Rove, the Svengali-like political mastermind blamed for many heinous things, including the JohnKerry-Edwards ticket's defeat in 2004.
Although sex scandals have doomed the political careers of many politicians such as Gary Hart and Bob Livingston, Americans may be becoming somewhat immune to such personal betrayals.
Although a certain ex-president has not had to run for reelection, Bill Clinton's humanitarian work S.M. (Since Monica) seems to have caused many to move on when thinking of him. A multimillionaire, he now commands a small fortune for every speech and didn't hurt the crowd count while campaigning for his wife, Hillary, in last winter's Democratic primary season, although she did lose the nomination.
So much, it appears, for John McCain's Pennsylvania strategy.
The instant the polls closed in the state, as well as in New Hampshire, ABC News and NBC News called them both for Barack Obama.
It should be noted that CBS News and CNN held off on Pennsylvania.
(UPDATE: CBS, as well as Fox News, have given Pennsylvania to Obama; CNN, as was the case during the primary season, is being more cautious in its projections and is holding off in making a call for the Keystone State.)
(UPDATE II: CNN just joined the pack -- Pennsylvania for Obama.)
If these calls prove correct, it seems unlikely that McCain can win any of the states -- which accounted for 252 electoral votes -- that Democrat John F. Kerry won in 2004. The Republicans had seen New Hampshire, to some degree, and Pennsylvania, to a much larger degree, as possible pickups.
Without either, every state deemed competitive across the rest of the country -- all carried by George W. Bush in 2004 -- would have to end up in McCain's column for him to win.
That's a tough task. Still, among these other states where the polls have closed -- which include Virginia, Indiana and Florida -- none have yet to be called for Obama.
-- Don Frederick
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Our Bloggers
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the Countdown to Crawford blog here at The Times.
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