Category Archives: Politicians

The Real Deal

We Hoosiers are lucky:

Perhaps most appreciated was the governor’s overhaul of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. It’s gone from one of the worst in the country—a place, he says, “where people would take a copy of ‘Crime and Punishment'”—to one of the best, with an “average visit time of seven minutes and 36 seconds.”

I had my own experience about four years ago, before the BMV was overhauled, where I made some seven trips to the license branch and various other government offices over a period of weeks just to renew my driver’s license.

But as Kim Strassel tells us in her interview with Mitch Daniels, this is only the very tip of the iceberg. In a state challenged by our reliance on the automobile industry in particular and manufacturing in general, instead of imploding like Michigan or profligate California, we had a governor whose common sense, hard work, business savvy, and courageous budgeting has left Indiana in a much better spot than many other states. Especially given our special old-economy obstacles.

Washington: Over the edge

Michael Lewis diagnosing political insanity as only he can:

1) To the political process all big numbers look alike; above a certain number the money becomes purely symbolic. The general public has no ability to feel the relative weight of 173 billion and 165 million. You can generate as much political action and public anger over millions as you can over billions. Maybe more: the larger the number the more abstract it becomes and, therefore, the easier to ignore. (The trillions we owe foreigners, for example.) (more…)