Harry Targ
Governor Braun and sectors of the Republican majorities in the Indiana legislature are advocating mid-decade gerrymandering. While we may correctly regard such advocacy as profoundly anti-democratic, that is to take away the Democratic seats in Congress, we might use such a gerrymandered strategy to our advantage.
How is that possible? First, a gerrymandered election, of course, would require that all of our Indiana Congress people face electoral challenges. Second, incumbents in all nine districts would have to answer for Indiana's declining real wages, access to health care, and educational resources and the fact, as the United Way ALICE study has shown, that 38 percent of Hoosier households earn below a livable wage (see below). Third, contested elections in all nine districts would offer the opportunity for candidates, and their supporters, to show how most of the incumbents voted in ways to reinforce these deplorable conditions as a result of federal legislation.
And finally, candidates in all nine districts could articulate a vision of national policy, and state policies, that would help Hoosier citizens improve their lives. For example, proposals being introduced in the California legislature, which could also be introduced at the federal level, would require that those who make the highest income and wealth in the country, particularly billionaires, pay a wealth tax to help support healthcare, education, housing for the masses of people in the United States (and states like Indiana) who are suffering. And one thing would be made crystal clear: the health and wellbeing of the American people is not a partisan issue. Voters of both parties can understand that.
The Indiana Economy Hurts Working
People of Both Parties: A Little History
The material below indicates that
under Republican rule in Indiana for over a decade the economic circumstances
(and education, good paying jobs etc.) have worsened for Hoosier workers and
their families. The Republican "business model" is a disaster for
workers. From 2017 through 2022,
the Indiana economy grew more slowly than the nation as a whole. In
inflation-adjusted terms, the Hoosier economy expanded by 10.8%, while the
nation economy as a whole grew by 11.3%.
“...the dismal growth of 2017 through 2020 accounts for all
the lagging performance of the Hoosier economy. The expansion from 2009 to 2019
was the worst relative performance of our economy in state history. By 2019,
the Indiana economy was slipping into recession due primarily to the tariffs
put in place by the Trump administration. "What the new GDP data tells us
about the Hoosier economy". Michael Hicks Muncie Star Press, reprinted
in the Journal and Courier, January 8, 2024)
Tax abatements, huge job promising government funded
projects, military contracts, the privatization of education from K through
college, real estate speculation, and more are a substantial cause of the
movement of wealth from the 99 percent to the top one percent. And we see in
Indiana that 38 percent of households exist below a liveable wage,
healthcare is scarcer and more expensive, there are pockets of food deserts, and
across the state growing environmental degradation. It is time to say enough is
enough.
However, Hoosier politicians and corporate/university elites suggest that the Indiana economy is booming and will only improve with lower taxes, more support for industrial projects like LEAP, and a general reliance on the "free market." The United Way ALICE reports suggest that economic circumstances of large percentages of Hoosiers have worsened over the last decade. The number of households in Indiana living below a livable income have increased since the last decade.
Let us be clear, the interference of President Trump and recent visits of Vice-President Vance to Indiana suggest that the new MAGA agenda is designed to radically transform both federal and state policies back to the era of the Gilded Age, when wealth was accumulated at the top and the vast majorities of the population, White and Black, men and women, most workers, Democrats and Republicans suffered enormously.
