IMPORTANTVILLE: Inside Indy's opioid crisis—Donnelly's effectiveness—Knowing Nathan Altman—Lugar documentary
IMPORTANTVILLE
By @AdamWren
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INSIDE INDY'S OPIOID CRISIS: Last fall, before Marion County declared a public health emergency Friday, I embedded with Dr. Krista Brucker, spending time with her at Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital Emergency Department as she treated patients with opioid overdoes. For months, Brucker has been trying to get Indianapolis to reckon with the fallout from the opioid crisis, namely, getting Marion County to establish a needle exchange.
"PALE BLUE LIPS and fingertips haunt her—almost every hour, of almost every shift. Amid the sterile and omnipresent whites of the hospital, those hues consume Brucker’s attention. They’re the telltale physical signs of an opioid overdose, as a patient’s oxygen uptake slows to a trickle. On duty in the high-acuity area, Brucker has treated those patients night in and night out for nearly two years of the state’s opioid crisis. On certain days, the 35-year-old might see as many as a dozen overdoses come through her department in one eight-hour shift. If police and emergency medical services save the lives of overdosed drug users—injecting them with life-saving opiate antidote Narcan on the scene, knocking the drugs out of the brain’s opiate receptors—Brucker’s job is to keep them alive.
But on a Monday night in October, statistics, not colors, were on her mind, as she walked into the Indianapolis Public Library Services Center to brief citizen members of the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office Community Justice Academy. Brucker, a respected IU professor of emergency medicine, had been invited to discuss the opioid surge. The number of deaths from drug overdoses since 1999 in Indiana has skyrocketed 500 percent, and Marion County leads the state in both overdose deaths and emergency room visits due to overdoses.
More, from me in Indianapolis Monthly.
WHAT'S NEXT: City County Council is expected to take up the topic of a needle exchange tonight. READ the agenda.
Good Monday morning, and happy race week. Ed Carpenter is now the fastest man in Indianapolis, clocking a 229.618 mph average on Sunday, per The Star's Jim Ayello. And it's looking increasingly unlikely that Indy Car fan favorite James Hinchcliffe will race Sunday, per WTHR's Bob Kravitz.
REMBER NATHAN ALTMAN? Indiana's possible independent candidate for U.S. Senate is still trying to get on the ballot. The big question looming over the DeveloperTown co-founder's bid: Can he get 26,699 signatures to become the state's first independent candidate?
ALTMAN tells IMPORTANTVILLE that he will be making announcements this week about the state of his candidacy and signature-drive efforts.
ASK ALTMAN any number of policy questions, and Altman will punt, as he did in a Friday interview with me. The reason behind that: a concept called Liquid Democracy, an open-sourced technology that facilitates delegative democracy. MORE HERE.
BASICALLY, if he wins, Altman would crowdsource his positions on any number of issues to engaged supporters and issue experts. Not only is Altman trying to become Indiana's first independent candidate for U.S. Senate, he's also trying to way we vote.
PREMIERING TONIGHT: WFYI's new documentary, "Richard Lugar: Reason's Quiet Warrior," airs at 9 p.m. Reason's Quiet Warrior is a documentary about the life and times of Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana. Written and produced by John Krull with WFYI Public Media, in partnership with Franklin College.
HAPPENING TONIGHT: Pence will participate in a 7 p.m. interview on Fox News tonight with Martha MacCullum, per POLITICO's Playbook.
HAPPENING TONIGHT, part 2: Marion County Democrats will host their Young Candidate forum at 6 p.m. at the IBEW at Meridian and 18th. On the panel: Jim Harper, Secretary of State; Derek Camp, State Senate District 31; State Senate District 39; Poonam Gill, State Representative for District 88; JD Ford, and Greg Rathnow, State Representative District 93. Indiana Week in Review's Brandon Smith will moderate.
HAPPENING TONIGHT, part 3: INDIANA GOP will host their spring dinner at the JW Marriott, where VP's former press secretary Marc Lotter and senior political adviser Marty Obst will be the featured speakers.
IRONIC TIDBIT in Maureen Groppe's fact check of Republican attacks against Senator Donnelly's effectiveness, an issue Republicans have put at the center of the Indiana Senate campaign: "The center rated Vice President Pence’s legislative effectiveness as falling “below expectations” for five of his six terms in the House. In 2014, when Pence was Indiana’s governor and contemplating a 2016 presidential bid, his spokeswoman dismissed the center’s analysis saying: “Clearly, the authors don’t understand how Congress works.”
FOR THOSE keeping track at home, Trump, Pence, and Indiana Republicans are using a metric Pence once discredited against Donnelly. That's politics, folks.
IMPORTANTVILLE READS
WHAT TRUMP-PENCE WHITE HOUSE STAFFERS FROM INDIANAPOLIS ARE READING, from The Boston Globe: "Listing a White House gig on your resume used to be considered a sparkling credential, reflecting a stint at the apex of the country’s political power.
But as with so many other things about Donald Trump’s unconventional presidency, former staffers in a White House plagued by constant intrigue and controversy are finding their association with this president a bit more complicated for post-administration prospects. That’s left current and former staffers — and there are a lot of them — stuck with the advice no job-seeker wants: Adjust your expectations.
The big corporations where jobs come with mid-six-figure salaries have largely avoided the top tier of former Trump staffers. One company that picked a former top Trump aide to be its chief executive tried to paper over the association, leaving the word “Trump” off the press release when announcing the hire....Current and former staffers say there’s been a similar churn at the middle levels, leaving scores of former White House employees looking for positions. Some wonder if White House experience is more of a ball and chain than a springboard." MORE: https://goo.gl/SDrBUo
RYAN MURPHY PROFILE, "How Ryan Murphy Became the Most Powerful Man in Television, by The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum. A searingly good profile of the Carmel, Indiana, native. https://goo.gl/1vrQDz
"He obtained a journalism degree at Indiana University while working three jobs, including selling shoes at a mall, and aggressively pursuing newspaper internships. On his first day as a crime reporter, in Tennessee, he made the disastrous decision to wear a white suit, Tom Wolfe-style, to a murder scene. At the Miami Herald, he insinuated himself into the Styles department and wrote a profile of Meryl Streep, insisting that the newspaper pay for the rights to an Annie Leibovitz photograph. (The other interns hated him.) At the Washington Post, his colleagues’ reaction was equally poor when he rejected what he considered dull assignments, saying, 'No. I want Bob Woodward to be my mentor!'"
IN FOCUS with Dan Spehler: In a tight race for Senate, how influential a role will Vice President Pence play in this November's election? And what's our panel saying about the latest poll showing Mike Braun with a one-point lead over Sen. Joe Donnelly? WATCH the panel. LAST WEEK's winners and losers.
FUN READ: Indy Car's 'Simon Pagenaud’s Paris," from Indianapolis Monthly. YOU HAVE A 24-HOUR LAYOVER IN PARIS. WHERE DO YOU START? “Not enough time!” says Pagenaud. “But the first thing I would do is go on one of those boat tours, because as touristy as it sounds, it’s the best way to see Paris from the inside.” From the Seine, you’ll get stellar views of the Louvre, Notre-Dame, and everything in between. Next stop: the Eiffel Tower, of course. In Pagenaud’s book, it’s a sin to pass through Paris without snapping a selfie under the monument. Then, for the most sweeping views of the city, walk up to Trocadéro, a large square just on the other side of the Seine that lends lovely vistas of Paris. Pagenaud would finish off the day with a glass of Bordeaux at a corner cafe.
THE KICKER
From Bob Kravitz's dispatch on whether Hinchcliffe should buy a ride in Sunday's Indy 500: "As things stood Sunday, Hinchcliffe was still without a ride, but a lot can (and likely will) happen between now and the start of next week. Jay Howard, the one-off Schmidt-Peterson driver who is rumored to be the likely victim in any transaction, said unequivocally that he will be in his No. 7 car and will compete in Sunday’s Indianapolis 500. Which leaves…who knows? The options are limited. But money talks.
“You should ask for a million [dollars],’’ somebody said to Howard, who said he was told not to discuss the matter at any length.
“$2 million,’’ he said with a smile.