How A Bill Becomes Law (In Indiana)

     With the 2026 legislative session wrapping up this weekend, it's a little late, but the Chamber of Commerce has a nice PDF with a flowchart graphic that explains the Hoosier process of turning a bill into law.  It's not an easy procedure, and combined with our part-time legislature, I'm sure it spares us no end of trouble.  Every law creates a new kind of crime -- and not every bad, distasteful or unpopular thing needs to be outlawed.

Hey, Look

     It's eleven at night and the cat wants me to go to bed so much that he's trying to steal things off desks so I'll chase him down the hall to my bedroom.  And if you don't mind, that's what I'm going to do.  He's positively indignant that I haven't laid down so he's got a warm place to sleep.

A Roaring March Day

      This morning, it was over 70 degrees outside and dark, as thunderstorms -- even a tornado or two, farther north -- rumbled across the state.  By midday, clouds and sunlight were chasing one another, pushed by strong and gusty winds, and in late afternoon, it poured down rain.

     A little before sunset, I had to go outside at the North Campus to check on a client's equipment just as the rain was tapering off; I'd worn a zip-up sweatshirt, since temperatures were supposed to hit 30 overnight.  It would surely still be 40 or higher at the end of the workday, right?  The inside of the front door of the building was fogged up.  It was above freezing outside, barely.

     I'd had enough foresight to bring an insulated vest but I'd left it in my car.  It was still better than nothing.  I walked around to the client installation to the whistling of wind through the pine trees, wishing I'd brought a coat.

     That's Indiana in March.  The whole month will go back and forth like this.  We're in for a slow warm up through the weekend, with another swift drop starting late Sunday, probably with more storms.

     Meanwhile, my raccoon man had to cancel.  Something about not wanting to be on a steep roof during a thunderstorm, a decision that speaks well for his judgement.

Not A Euphemism

      We have raccoons in our chimney.  There is no fireplace at Roseholme Cottage, but there used to be a coal-burning furnace, with a flue ten inches in diameter feeding the chimney at a point about four feet above the floor, well below where the gas furnace and water heater now connect with standard four-inch flues.

     The big, capped flue and empty lower chimney must have looked like a good deal to the raccoons this Fall.  They came and went fairly quietly, with occasional scrabbling sounds; the main gang (the official collective nouns include a nursery, a mask or a gaze) in our neighborhood lives in the storm drains, and relocates during heavy rain.  But a few of them favor rooftops, and they'd spent some time on our neighbor's roof and chimney a couple of years ago.

     They began using our radon vent pipe as a handy ladder to our roof, and getting in the chimney.  I figured the furnace fumes would force them out this Winter, but apparently once they're lower than the connection point, the draft draws in sufficient fresh air.

     Now they're living in there, coming and going at all hours, making various raccoon noises, and being worrisome.  It's gotten to be too much.  I've scheduled a raccoon relocator to stop by tomorrow, look the situation over and give us a quote, and there's a chimney firm lined up to follow him with a genuine raccoon-proof cap, or proof until the raccoons figure it out, and clean the chimney out before they install it.

     Ahh, Nature!  This is at least less strange than the squirrel that had apparently become addicted to furnace fumes, and would wriggle into the flue and lay there, inhaling hot carbon monoxide and shutting down the furnace by obstructing the draft.  That was quite a few years ago and I eventually installed a hardware-cloth barrier in the flue.  There's no easy fix for raccoons -- clever, strong and dexterous, they call for heavier forces than I can bring to bear.

Public Relations

1. Local, Local, Local
     Indianapolis had its very own electric power utility for decades, and people liked Indianapolis Power & Light.  Rates were low; while the other large utilities in the state served mostly rural customers, IPL's customer base was the dense Indianapolis metro, and they leveraged efficiencies of scale and Hoosier frugality to deliver reliable power at low rates.  They put one of the city's first radio stations on the air, and followed it up in the late 1950s with the first or second commercial TV station*

     By 1957, IPL was out of the broadcasting business -- and very firmly in the Power & Light business.  They made money for their investors and kept on delivering power to customers at some of the lowest rates in the state, while maintaining and expanding their generating stations.  In 2000 or 2001 (sources differ), international power giant AES bought IPL, and in 2021, they retired the IPL branding in favor of their own name.

     Now AES itself is being snapped up by "a consortium led by BlackRock subsidiary Global Infrastructure Partners and Swedish private equity firm EQT AB [...] for a total enterprise value of $33.7 billion [...]."

     AES has never been quite as well-liked as IPL; rates have gone up and reliability is not quite what it was, at least in part thanks to a growing population and aging infrastructure.  The sale to the consortium is even less popular; recent announcement of public open houses resulted in what are being described as "credible threats" on social media.  Events were rescheduled, and have now been postponed indefinitely.  The goodwill IPL built by being the all but invisible, affordable suppliers of wall-socket juice is gone, just when the company most needs it.  And the state regulator is feeling the heat.

2. National and International
     Meanwhile, I'm hearing an old familiar tune: "Now the President has finally gone too far!  His supporters will turn on him!"

     Gasoline prices are skyrocketing and stocks are tumbling as I write this, and the surprise-war against Iran is leaving the usual piles of dead and injured in its wake.  I still wouldn't get too excited about the prospects for a man whose public image has already survived a bungled pandemic response, an attempted and ugly coup, two impeachments, felony convictions, civil sexual assault conviction, an unpopularly harsh ramp-up of immigration enforcement and a sprawling sex-crimes scandal, not to mention his own rambling and semi-coherent speechmaking.  While he's shed supporters here and there, the people who love President Trump really, really love him, and by now they have years of practice rationalizing away any negatives.  If the economy tanks hard, Donald Trump may yet succeed in Hoovering himself off the national stage just like Herbert did, but A) I would not count on it and B) a hard crash is a lousy thing to wish on your fellow citizens.

     Unlike nearly all of his predecessors, this President can't be steered much by public opinion, especially in this second term, and to the extent that he is, it's by crowd reaction at his events, which are not a balanced cross-section of the American electorate.  I don't know how we and our country are getting out of this -- if we manage to get out at all -- but expecting a miracle is a recipe for disappointment.
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* Supporters of competing WTTV and WRTV (then WFBM) claims to be first are still duking it out -- in May, 1949 IPL's WFBM was inarguably on the air first, but their transmitter promptly failed, and they were still repairing it that November, when WTTV came on and stayed on.  But the joke's on them: in 1944, experimental W9XMT was the first TV station on the air in town, and the Wm. H. Block Co. department store received a license for WWHB in 1947 and got as far as transmitting test patterns before deciding the television business was too iffy for them.

Ugh

     A nasty headache has had hold of me all day, from a morning of wordless, sensation-based nightmares to an afternoon of slogging though basic chores.

     I blame research, or maybe the time change.

     Also, could governments maybe not site their nuclear-weapons research efforts in cities full of historical architecture?  That'd be nicer for everyone.  Even the the U.S. and the USSR mostly figured that out, and they could barely agree on what was for lunch.  Also, you know, cities, kinda full of people who weren't in on the plan and probably wouldn't have agreed to it if asked....

What's With Iran?

      Wander around social media in recent days and you'll probably trip over someone reminding that "we created the mess in Iran."  It's almost true, too -- but it's not the whole story.

     I guess I could remind you, "War is not healthy for children and other living things,"* like the brilliant Lorraine Schneider, gone too soon, but if you haven't noticed that by now, you haven't been paying attention.

     So how did that part of the world end up where it is at this moment in history?  Some of the blame lies with Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., grandson of no less a figure than Theodore, who masterminded the events that brought the Shah to the fore in 1953.

     But here's the catch: the Shah of Iran, the guy they threw out in 1979, was already the Shah by that time, and had been since 1941, when his father was forced to abdicate.  After WW II, he tried to modernize by convening the country's 1906-created elected legislature for the first time -- and stacking the deck by appointing senators who were aligned with his power.  Subsequent elections undermined this convenient arrangement, leading to the opposition party winning a majority and triggering the oil nationalization crisis that spurred Western intervention.

     And that Shah's father?  Here's where it gets even weirder, because Reza Khan (later Reza Shah) was not, in fact, the scion of some ancient Middle Eastern ruling family.  He was almost Just Some Guy, who ended up in the messy ending of WW I and the ongoing Russian Revolution and civil war that followed it as a soldier, an officer, fighting the Soviet Union, sometimes with the British.  And in 1921, the British helped in the coup that collapsed the Soviet-dominated Persian government under Amad Shah Qajar, who was at that time, yes, you guessed it, the Shah of Iran (no relation); and his was the long-established ruling line, or as close as it gets in that part of the world.  For the new government, Reza Khan was Minister of War.  In 1923, he stepped up to Prime Minister and by 1925, he'd convinced the rest of the government to depose the Shah.

     That left a vacancy at the top, and, ahem, one man was ready to...is "serve" the right word for an autocrat?  His peers voted him in.

     That's how Reza Khan became Reza Shah Pahlavi, and how his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, became next in line for the throne he'd later be kicked out of.

     We can't blame the CIA for all of it.  We can't blame the Brits for more than their share, or the USSR, or the various Iranian governments or even, I suppose, lay it entirely at the feet of Reza Khan.  But it was a world-class mess long before the the first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini grabbed the top spot in 1979 -- and one of his political motivations was that he blamed Reza Shah for the murder of his father, when he was two years old.

     I have simplified some things, and skipped steps; the details of what happened and who was trying to accomplish what at which time are tangled at best; there are few unbiased histories or first-hand accounts. This is history so thick you can stack it up like mud bricks.  This is history plastered with warning signs.
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* I have distinct memories of a counterfeit postage stamp with this image on it somehow passing muster in the U. S. mail and making the news afterward in the late 1960s or early 70s, but I can't find any mention of it online.

Noem Out, Mullin In

      Does it make a difference?  There are questions about what DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was spending her department's money on, especially the fat stack of cash resulting from the giant omnibus bill Congress passed, but both she and current U. S. Senator/possible new Secretary Markwayne Mullin are pretty much in lockstep with the rest of the Trump Administration on immigration and other issues.  If he avoids making a new series of TV commercials with himself as the star in the public's dime, and maybe sells off a luxury jet or two, I'll count it as a slight gain.

     The Senate will be short one Republican until Oklahoma's Governor appoints a replacement (and despite his recent showing of independent spirit, you can count on the new one being a Republican, too) -- but the slim GOP majority in that body already falls well short of the 60 votes needed to steamroller Democratic opposition.

     "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," except, presumably, for his taste in shoes.  I've have never been terribly impressed with Senator Mullin's verbal abilities.  He comes off looking a bit light on intellectual horsepower, but the job calls for administrative ability and we'll see how he does.  He likes to present himself as a brawler, which often doesn't augur well in a leadership job.

     I'm not a fan of deporting otherwise law-abiding wage earners who pay taxes just like the rest of us; it seems to me that if you could ease 'em into citizenship, it would count as a win.  But present policies are not going to change, despite the new name at the top.

When Is A War A War?

     The Washington, DC press corps keep asking about the conflict with Iran: "Is it a war?"  Trump administration officials keep responding, too; you can't fault them for lack of answers.  But apparently, it depends on who you ask and how they're feeling.  It's certainly not a war per the U. S. Constitution, which requires Congress to pull that lever.  Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, Archivist of the United States, former Director of USAID and General Factorum Marco Rubio (he's a Cabinet working group all by himself) has called it a war, told reporters it's not a war and then explained, "They declared war on us," which is what you can expect from even a grotty little theocracy nobody likes after a wave of aerial attacks has knocked out a lot of their military and killed their Supreme Leader and most of his backup singers, along with an unknown number of civilians.

     War or not, it's leaving the usual piles of bodies and burning through munitions and materiel at an appalling rate, faster than the Iranians can make more but also faster than the United States can.  Word is the Iranian government is picking a new Supreme Leader,* and word from the Israeli military is they plan to blow him up, along with any successors.  The problem with that is, they'll run out of guys to do the surrendering, which neatly mirrors the Swiss plan for self-defense, but in a part of the world with a lot more practice in chaotic amateur armed conflict.

     I don't know if that would be a war, either.  And the dead aren't expressing an opinion.

     War, as Marine Major General Smedley Butler famously observed, is a racket, and we'll find out what's making noise by and by.  War excuses all manner of abuses on the home front, too.  I wonder what they'll be? 
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* No matter how many times I type it, it looks like a title from a comedic opera, or maybe a brand of cigars.  But it's no joke.

Yes, You're Right

     I'd like to apologize to everyone who told me that if I voted for Kamala Harris, the United States would get in yet another war in the Middle East.

     I did, and now here we are, at war in the Middle East.  You were right.

An Umbrella Won't Help

     There are credible reports of high-ranking U. S. officers describing the current situation in the Middle East,* including U. S. involvement, in terms that are, how to put it, distinctly not military.

     Nope, they've been speaking of it in religious terms, and I don't mean the Sermon on the Mount.  I take offense at this -- not at their belief, but at applying it to their jobs in that way.  Even if they were right -- and I don't have an inside line, or any certainty that anyone else does -- it's not their job.  It's not the job of their troops.  Mere humans don't get to put a thumb on those scales, one way or another, and our secular Constitutional republic is not in the "Holy War" business.  Shut up and soldier. 

     As a general reminder, various preachers in the West have been talking up Armageddon any time war flares in the Middle East since at least World War One and the upshot has always been that the war came and went and their coffers were all the richer, every time -- but the sky never did split, and the official word is still, "No man knows the hour."  You can look it up for yourself, which I think was one of the points of the Protestant Reformation.
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* Various news organizations are nudging journalists that "Ayatollah" is not a political office but a religious title and there are plenty of them; the late Ali Kamenei's political title was "Supreme Leader."  The same memos point out that what's going on right now does not count as a U. S. war unless Congress declares it, which must be a huge comfort to the dead of this and the many other undeclared conflicts we've waged. 

Reefer Alliance

     Sometimes, the Fates serve something up that's so on the nose, you know the fix is in.  Case (literally) in point, United States v. Hemani, now before the U. S. Supreme Court.

     Uncle Sam says Ali Danial Hemani is a pot-swilling terrorist supporter, who shouldn't be allowed to own guns on account of being an habitual drug user, since, as question 21.f. on the BATFE Form 4473 quaintly asks and warns, "Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside."  It's right there in plain text:* even pot use is a downcheck, and the buyer will not, in fact, be purchasing a firearm that day if the answer "Yes."

     On the other side, the defense says he's an almost stereotypical Texas gun owner, a pillar of his community, active in religious organizations and youth sports, who just happens to enjoy a little herb from time to time.

     I have no idea if either of these description is anywhere close to reality.  I never met him and I haven't been following the case.  What I do know is that we've got the Feds on one side, and on the other, everyone from the NRA to NORML, from the ACLU to Gun Owners of America is weighing in or even filing Friend of the Court Briefs.

     It's one to watch, and in the meantime, always ask, "Who brought these brownies?" before digging in.
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* Of course, the current version of the same form still gives you three choices for the answer to question 14, Sex: Male, Female or Non-Binary.  Presumably anyone who ticks the third box vanishes from Federal sight immediately, since the Federal government only recognize the first two options now, and the sale is denied on account of there not being anyone buying.  And they were just right there...!