Think About It with Michael Leppert

In the Secretary of State race, the commitment to service matters. I find myself teaching this simple lesson with more enthusiasm lately: elected positions in American government exist as opportunities to serve. "Yea, yea, old man, we know that" is often the expression I see on the faces of my students when I start. Occasionally, one of them might actually say it out loud.

Students are usually reluctant to school the teacher that way. Good thing. Mainly because this is not that simple anymore.

When I was a young state employee and was learning my way around the Indiana Government Center, I recall wondering why anyone would want to be the Indiana Secretary of State. To me, especially way back in the mid-1990's, and before my thirtieth birthday, I couldn't think of anything more boring than the "chartering of new businesses," or the "commissioning of notaries public." Forget about the oversight of state elections too. That would be like wanting to be a referee in the NFL. No one ever celebrates the lowly football referee, and I feel strongly about this, no one ever should.

In 2022, hiring a new secretary of state is upon Indiana voters, and the historically business-as-usual decision is anything but that. Oversight of elections is just about as serious and under threat as it has been since the post-Civil War era. The once perfunctory role has become a battleground for the commitment to honestly count the votes and abide by the honest results.

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For many Americans, including me, the attraction to the exhausting news surrounding Great Britain's royal family is dumbfounding. The mere existence of a "royal" family is so antithetical to my view of our culture, I usually open my participation in any conversation about the Windsor's with an eye roll, not a bow.

Elizabeth II's passing last week led to Charles III's ascension to the throne, a change that has not occurred since February 6, 1952.

The throne is inherited. So is Indiana's budget surplus.

That's just a silly comparison, right? Not to me it isn't. In August, at the prodding of Gov. Eric Holcomb, the Indiana General Assembly approved a program to send $1 billion of what is approximately a $6 billion surplus back to Hoosiers. It is a move that most economists believe would only exacerbate the thing it was trying to mitigate — inflation. I appreciate the effort, though my preference would be to either refund it all or do something unquestionably good with it.

There is no good reason to simply continue keeping it. Unless one is interested in the inheritance.

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Stephen King's 1982 novella, "The Body," was adapted into the award-winning, 1986 film, "Stand by Me." There are significant differences between the two versions of the story, but both are primarily about friendship. It is a tale about Gordie LaChance, his friend, Chris Chambers, and two other 12-year-old friends, who go on a journey to find the dead body of a missing boy near Castle Rock, Oregon. It was Labor Day Weekend in 1959.

Think of the countless times in your life when a friend helped you choose to do the right thing when your instinct was to do something else. Those friends might have been a sibling, a coach, or a teacher, or maybe just another 12-year-old who was growing up with you. Maybe you've experienced them all. If you're living well, there will be more.

Indiana's Attorney General, Todd Rokita, could use a good friend these days. He seems to be on a streak of bad decisions that a trusted and caring adviser could have been able to prevent him from making. I have asked around a little, and I don't know that he has such a person in his life right now. If he does, that person needs to step it up a little.

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Lawlessness is being romanticized in real-life America these days. The subtleties of this progression are causing a bewilderment in people who once took pride in their simple understanding of right and wrong. A cleansing reset of that understanding is in desperate need. Maybe it will help if we try an exercise in objective contextualizing.

In the not-too-distant past, a subpoena had unwavering meaning and authority. If one was issued by any American entity with authority to issue one, the citizen who received it, appeared in front of that entity. "Subpoena" is an old word with old meaning, from Middle English back to Latin, translating to "under penalty." The Trump years have turned what once was an inarguable writ to appear into the beginning of an exhaustive and litigious episode of resistance.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is the most recent character in lawlessness. And of course, why not, Lindsey Graham? He is only the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee of what once was considered the most deliberative body in the world. Now, he is refusing to comply with a subpoena issued in Georgia, with which he is obviously required to comply. And why? Did Graham break a law, or is he just unwilling to honestly answer questions about someone else who likely did? Either way, this lawlessness is being tolerated by the public for some sad reason.

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It's too hard for too many to love the first day of school.

I am old enough to have forgotten whether I loved the first day of school when I was a young student or not. I might have been too cool for that then, but clearly, I have changed.

There is no question that I love it now. I was with some friends on Sunday night this week and one of them asked, "do you have to teach tomorrow?" I corrected her quickly and said, "I get to teach tomorrow."

Over the years, especially lately, I have been reading about the way we pay, or more accurately, underpay our K-12 teachers a competitive wage in Indiana. Yes, that is undeniably true. Lucky for me, I teach at a university. That was sarcastic. I'm not getting rich either.

I am lucky though. I am in a financial position that allows me to choose to do what I love. My kids are grown and out of the house, and while they still don't reach for the check at dinner, neither of them asks me for money anymore either. My plan is to start softening them up for that beautiful day when I start asking them.

Mister Rogers once said, "the most important people in a child's life are that child's parents and teachers. That means parents and teachers are the most important people in the world." I agreed with that before I became a teacher. Just like I knew I wanted to be a father, my drive to teach just seemed instinctual too. It wasn't like I wanted to become a movie star or sing at Carnegie Hall. It wasn't some pipe dream. Turns out, becoming a teacher these days is not the lofty goal it should be.

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It's time to have a heart-to-heart talk about truth, lies, facts, and fiction. A whole new season of make-it-up-as-Trump-goes began last week. So, I felt obligated to share some research about how bad many of our countrymen, and yes, they are mostly men, have gotten in recognizing nonsense when it lands on them.

First, a short list of facts:

On Monday, August 8, the FBI executed a search warrant at the home of former President Donald Trump. The warrant was issued by a federal magistrate in Florida, who had the legal authority to do so, after a determination was made that probable cause existed that a crime was being committed on the property. The FBI seized and removed several sets of documents. Many of these documents were defined as confidential, classified, and, or top secret. Regardless of these labels, many of the documents were not authorized to be there and were being sought by the National Archives and Records Administration, which had been trying to gather them for months.

Whew. Again, those are facts. These are not all of the facts, but for simplicity's sake, the paragraph above is entirely factual. These facts, as is the case with all facts, should not be confused with truths. Truth is more akin to what one believes.

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On Friday night, while the Indiana General Assembly was turning back the clock on human rights, I was at the Egyptian Room of the Old National Center to see a comedy show. With all of the tragically unfunny things going on for the last few weeks under the dome a few blocks away, the timing of the Marc Maron tickets I bought months earlier were a welcome reprieve.

Right around the time the show was ending, the legislature was passing Indiana's new abortion ban. Shortly after I got home, Gov. Eric Holcomb was signing it into law. Early the next day, Eli Lilly and Company issued a statement informing the state of its negative view of it.

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"I am here today to represent Jesus," was the most baffling utterance I heard last Thursday night. It was Senator Mike Gaskill's opening comment made on the floor of the Indiana Senate during the debate on an amendment to a proposed new abortion law. Gaskill is a Republican, representing Senate District 26, which covers portions of Delaware, Madison and Henry counties in central Indiana.

To hear him tell it, Jesus is a constituent. Yes, that Jesus. And apparently, according to Gaskill, his lord, savior, and constituent does not believe there should be an exception to the proposed new abortion prohibition for survivors of rape and incest. Gaskill voted that way shortly after his comments, again, on behalf of an intolerant son of the Father.

I'm no biblical scholar, but that surprises me more than the news that Jesus lives nearby.

The Statehouse has become the capital of chaos these days. It worries me. But it worries me more when I imagine how few Hoosiers recognize how deeply rooted the chaos has become.

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I couldn't get the song out of my head on Monday at the Statehouse. I stood in line for an hour to get into the building to attend a rally in support of women's reproductive rights. My old lobbyist badge that used to allow me to skip those lines expired long ago, so there I waited with all the other angry people.

I watched throngs of them, of every kind, stand in line to get into the building. Many of them never got in. But I did, even though I was almost a half an hour late for the rally I was there to attend. And after I listened to the last few of the speeches, I walked out of the east doorway of the building. There were a couple of thousand people out there, spilling out onto Capitol Avenue and Market Street, leading the police to close the block to traffic.

As the song goes, "oh lord."

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It's not a surprise to those of us who have been watching it grow, stagnate, and then grow some more. But when the State of Indiana closed out its books for the fiscal year last week, the news about it still should have made more of an impression on Hoosiers than it did.

Indiana ended the year with $6.1 billion in reserves.

That news should jolt taxpayers. But it doesn't. I don't know why it doesn't. But I will keep trying to make sense of it until the day Hoosiers clearly understand the terrible news.

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