Evan Bayh has the right message for Democrats: Pay attention to the middle class. But his solution is, predictably, more government:
Bayh proposed several measures to create economic opportunity for the middle class, including a $6,000 tax credit to make college more affordable, a plan to cut health insurance premiums for 57 million middle-income Americans and a program to boost retirement savings.
Pointless advice from Hillary to Arkansas Democrats:
We do things that are controversial. We do things that try to inflame their base,” Clinton, D-N.Y., told the Arkansas Federation of Democratic Women, according to the New York Times. "We are wasting time.”
You're a lousy, conservative, scumbag warmonger, and, oh, by the way, would you please speak at our meeting?
His words echoed those of NAACP chairman Julian Bond, who spoke Sunday and blasted the war in Iraq and attacks on voting rights — even as he urged President Bush to attend the group's convention.
The backlash over fireworks legalization continues to grow:
Three Northwest Indiana legislators who voted this year to legalize fireworks now say they want to give cities and counties the power to impose tighter restrictions on backyard barrages.
A fourth local lawmaker, meanwhile, says he wants to completely scrap Indiana's new fireworks law and make sparklers the only Independence Day incendiary device available to Hoosiers.
A. The U.S. House passed legislation to make it clear that most online gambling is illegal and forbidding the use of credit cards to gamble online, because "the Internet's widespread availability makes it too easy to gamble, something that can create betting addictions and financial problems." But:
B. The bill would exempt state-run lotteries and horse racing.
OK, Indiana is back in the black. But, as even the governor acknowledges, that was not achieved without a gimmick or two:
Daniels warned that the state still has work to do. Most notably, it still owes more than $600 million in back payments to universities, public schools and local governments. Those payments were delayed to help lawmakers save money in past years, and only a fraction of the revenue has been repaid.
It used to be easy for anti-establishment rock stars (who manage to stay anti-establishment while making millions from it, by the way): Just support the liberal. It's apparently a little tougher these days, now that Iraq has beome THE issue, as we see in this account of John Mellencamp's ire:
Potential presidential candidate Evan Bayh says this about Democrats and Iraq:
. . . the Democratic Party has "a diversity of views ... about what to do in Iraq," which may have muddled the party's stance.
Most people aren't paying attention to this. I think it's going to be a big deal, but I have no clue how it's going to turn out:
Indiana started taking applications Monday for statewide video franchises, upending the decades-old system by which each locality decided which cable company or companies could operate on its turf.
I've met Evan Bayh -- nice enough fellow, astute politician (having people think he's a moderate, despite his voting record), in the normal intelligence range. But, come on. Anybody who writes about him this way needs to get a life:
