Indiana and Amazon: A Post-Pence Story

Indiana governor's race: Woody Myers enters 2020 race as a Democrat

Eric Holcomb is the Governor of Indiana. This makes him the successor to Vice President Michael Pence.

It would be a great victory if the Democratic Party could pick up this Governorship in the November election. The Governor will play a role in whatever reapportionment follows the 2020 census, so it would be a victory with some consequences for the partisan balance going forward both in that state and in the US House of Representatives. But perhaps as important, it would be symbolic -- a rejection of Holcomb would look a lot like a repudiation of Pence, even should Trump and Pence receive a new term on the same day.

The Democratic Party's best hope to pull off this result, its most plausible gubernatorial candidate, is Woody Myers, a former New Yorker. Myers, pictured above, was health commissioner of NYC under Mayor Dinkins.

The fact that Myers ever worked in NYC may work against him in Indiana at present. The fact that he has a public health background may work for him.

And it isn't just a matter of Covid-19. There are other issues in which being a physician and a former public health official may give Myers some cred. In November 2019, journalists said that Holcomb had pressured an investigator in the govt of Indiana to drop an inquiry into the death of a worker at an Amazon facility. Holcomb was trying to keep Indiana Amazon-friendly, because Amazon was considering Indianapolis as the site of its new headquarters.

The Governor has denied interfering in an investigation. That some such an inquiry WAS opened and then quickly closed, though, is a fact. This certainly may be one of the issues that Myers will stress in his campaign in the coming months,

Watch this space.

Comments

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

The Lyrics of "Live Like You Were Dying"

Back in 2004 Tim McGraw recorded the song "Live Like You were Dying." As a way of marking the one-decade anniversary of this song, I'd like to admit that a couple of the lines have confused me for years. I could use your help understanding them. In the first couple of verses, the song seems easy to follow. Two men are talking, and one tells the other about his diagnosis. The doctors have (recently? or a long time ago and mistakenly? that isn't clear) given him the news that he would die soon. "I spent most of the next days/Looking at the X-rays." Then we get a couple of lines about a man crossing items off of his bucket list. "I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing, I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu." Then the speaker -- presumably still the old man -- shifts to the more characterological consequences of the news. As he was doing those things, he found he was loving deeper and speaking sweeter, and givin...

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable a...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog