by Dave Kitchell
—
Of all the movie lines that have ever been uttered, one from the late Claude Rains often seems apropos for American government officials.
It was Rains, the prefect of police in the Humphrey Bogart classic “Casablanca,” who was pushed by the evil German Lt. Strasser to instantly find a reason to close Café American, operated by Bogart’s character, Rick. After blowing his shrill police whistle in the middle of
the joint and announcing that the café was closed and the patrons had to leave, Bogart asked him why.
“I’m shocked, utterly shocked, to find gambling going on here,” he said.
At that moment, Rains, who had been playing in the casino in the restaurant, was approached by a café employee who said, “Your winnings, sir.”
Delicious hypocrisy was a blue plate special at the café that evening.
And so it is with Gov. Mitch Daniels.
When he initially ran for governor in 2004, he said he wouldn’t be running for anything else after serving as governor. His career would be finished and he had no ambition to run for president.
Flash forward to 2010 and we see Daniels as, guess what, a possible presidential contender. I’m shocked, utterly shocked, to find hypocrisy here.
Those who read the Tuesday edition of the Indianapolis Star might see the resemblance between Daniels and Rains again, and I’m not talking stature.
One one page, Daniels is quoted, sternly warning the trustees of the state’s major universities about the top heavy spending at their institutions. He cites a national study from the Goldwater Institute that indicated a meteoric rise in administrators per student. Yet, he doesn’t extrapolate that growth for the Indiana universities, and Purdue and Indiana officials both acknowledged major cuts, including retirement buyouts that would save $6.6 million at Purdue. Readers who turned the page to the Opinion section would find The Star, which has been vehemently pro-Daniels, telling the state that the cost of running its Department of Correction has soared 76 percent from 2001 to 2008. At least half of that period happened during Daniels’ tenure, yet there appears to be no budget-wielding ax to cut the department’s cost, which will be more than $1 billion in seven years.
Let’s see, if it comes down to spending cuts, Hoosiers don’t care how much they spend to feed and house criminals, but college students and faculty members are fat and sassy? Hypocrisy, anyone?
And what about the Major Moves funding Daniels secured by leasing the Indiana Toll Road? It is said to be enough funding to pay for state transportation projects for 10 years, but even as the number of Indiana workers declines and unemployment remains high, Daniels sits on the $3.8 billion deal and the interest it generates like it’s a war chest instead of a possible stimulus for the state that could generate jobs — particularly public works jobs that translate into permanent infrastructure — for people who need to work. Of course, there’s the much reported appearance by Daniels on Fox News. In that appearance, he criticized the federal government stimulus money for states. Yet, as his spokesperson, Jane Jankowski, was later quoted, if Indiana receives a check from the federal government, the Daniels administration will be glad to cash it.
Or how about the case of privatizing the Logansport State Hospital food services? When Daniels tried to do that, he found the winning bid, and thousands in cost savings, came courtesy of the people who were already there — state employees. Apparently the state administration in place hadn’t been running government like a business, but the employees could.
Now, Daniels is opening the door of the state hospital to allow scores of employees to leave, as well as patients. It’s a policy that could save money, yet it also could lead to more homeless former state hospital patients turning up in jails, which are already being used by the state to house offenders because, as The Star notes, the state prison system is near capacity. Or how about the Daniels plan to hire IBM to privatize the Medicaid program for the neediest Hoosiers? It failed and the state is running it again.
Shocked anyone? Maybe not.
Maybe we’ve been “shocked” so many times like this before that we don’t shock easily anymore.
Maybe it’s time for a governor who might be a presidential candidate — simply because his party has to have a nominee like a week has to have seven days — to look into the mirror. If he does, he should think about another line from “Casablanca” uttered by Bogart himself in the final scene: “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
• Dave Kitchell is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com.
