Sovereignty's Defense System | Indiana Century S1E12

We've spent eleven episodes building something. Reactors that pay counties ten million dollars a year. Rail lines that turn a region into a neighborhood. Fiber that connects every Hoosier. A bank that keeps our money here. A corps that trains people who were written off to become builders.

Once you build something valuable, someone will try to take it. Not with violence. With legislation. With lobbyists. With a quiet change to the law when no one's paying attention.

This episode is about defense. Institutional defense. The systems we put in place to make sure what we build stays built. Constitutional locks. Revolving door bans. Transparency portals. Citizen enforcement. The things that keep the foxes out of the henhouse.

We walk through the four constitutional amendments. Amendment 1 (Infrastructure Corridors) protects property owners while making project development predictable. Amendment 2 (Public Asset Lock) requires 60% voter approval to sell any state owned infrastructure asset. Amendment 3 (Revenue Lock) requires 60% voter approval to change revenue allocations from truck tolls, cannabis, and Host Community Fees. Amendment 4 (Public Banking Authorization) puts the Bank of Indiana in the constitution where a simple majority can't undo it.

Each amendment requires a long, difficult process to pass. Two differently constituted General Assemblies must approve the same language. Then voters decide. That's the point. These locks are meant to be hard to remove.

We also cover the revolving door ban. Indiana already has a one year ban for state officers and, as of 2025, a three year ban for legislators. The Indiana Century Project proposes a five year ban for everyone working on the project, with citizen enforcement and real penalties.

The transparency portal would be a public website. Every meeting, every document, every revenue stream. Searchable. Real time. Sunlight as disinfectant.

Citizen standing is written into the amendments. Any Hoosier can sue to enforce them. You don't need to prove you were personally harmed. If you win, the state pays your legal fees.

Indiana has done this before. The property tax caps amendment passed in 2008-2010 with over 70 percent voter approval. The 1851 constitution added a debt prohibition that has protected taxpayers for 175 years. We know how to build locks. We just need to build them again.

Featured book: How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Democracies don't fail in a day. They fail slowly, through a thousand small erosions. The same is true of public assets.

IndianaCentury.org

Transcript

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Welcome to the Indiana Century Podcast, hosted by Corey Easter Day. Episode 12, Sovereignty's Defense System. Part one. The threat that's always there. We have spent eleven episodes building something. Reactors that pay counties $10 million a year. Rail lines that could turn a region into a neighborhood. Fiber that connects every Hoosier. A bank that keeps our money here. A core that trains people who are written off to become builders. An animal welfare system that treats pets like family. We have talked about building a lot. Once you build something valuable, someone will try to take it. Not necessarily with violence, not necessarily with a coup, but with legislation. With lobbyists, with a quiet change to the law when no one is paying attention. With a governor who decides to sell off the assets to pay for a tax cut. When a legislature that raids the future fund to balance a budget. Could be a corporation that convinces a friendly politician to privatize the bank. The forces that extract from us don't give up easily. They have been extracting for decades. They have money, they have lobbyists, they have friends in high places. When we start to build something that threatens their ability to extract from us, they will try to take it back. Today, in episode 12, we talk about defense. Not military defense, but institutional defense. The systems we put in place to make sure that what we build stays here. The constitutional locks, the revolving doorbands, the transparency portal, the citizen enforcement mechanisms. These are the things that keep the foxes out of the henhouse. This is Sovereignty's defense system, and without it, nothing we build will last. Part 2. Why good things get taken. Let me tell you a story. It's a story that's played out in state after state, year after year. A state builds something good, maybe a public bank, a renewable energy fund, a transportation authority. It works, people benefit, things are going well. Then, a few years later, a new governor gets elected, or the legislature changes hands, or maybe a corporation moves into town and starts lobbying. Slowly, quietly, the good things get dismantled. The public bank gets privatized, the energy fund gets raided to balance the budget. The transportation authority gets sold off to a private company that raises tolls or cuts service. The people who built it are gone by that point. The people who remember why it was built are retired. The thing that worked for a generation just stops working. Indiana has its own painful example. In 2006, the state leased the Indiana toll road to a private consortium for 75 years. The state got $3.8 billion up front, which seemed like a good deal at the time. The operator later went bankrupt. Tolls have risen multiple times. The state lost long term revenue for a one time payout. The lease still has decades left to run. That is what happens when you sell the future for cash today. The people who extract are patient. They don't need to win every fight. They just need to win eventually. They know that people who build get tired. They know that attention spans are short, and that legislatures can change the law with a simple majority and a signature. Indiana has seen this pattern repeat. A public health system that worked got defunded, a public education system that was the envy of the Midwest got hollowed out. Infrastructure that was built with pride got left to crumble. Good things get taken because we don't lock them down. We build them, we celebrate, and we move on to the next thing. We assume that what we build will last, but assumptions don't stop lobbyists. Hope doesn't stop legislatures, and good intentions don't stop the slow, steady pressure of extraction. That's why we need a defense system. Part three How Democracies Die. This episode's featured book is How Democracies Die by Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Zyblat. It's a book about the slow, quiet erosion of democratic institutions, not through coups or military takeovers, through elected officials who change the rules to benefit themselves. Levitsky and Zyblat studied democracies that failed around the world. They found that democracies don't usually die with a bang, they die with a whimper, a change to the voting rules here, a weakening of the courts there, a normalization of corruption, gradual concentration of power. One day you look up and the democracy is gone. Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking. Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors, Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Zyblat, have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang in a revolution or military coup, but with a whimper, the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of longstanding political norms. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from nineteen thirties Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Zyblat show how democracies die and how ours can be saved. The same thing can happen to infrastructure, to public assets, to the things that we build together, not through a dramatic takeover, through a quiet change to the law, a sale of assets that no one notices, a raid on a fund that's framed as temporary measure, a privatization that's sold as efficiency. Illinois has done this repeatedly, raiding dedicated transportation funds to balance its budget. It's a slow bleed, not a sudden death. Levitsky and Zyblat argue that the best defense against democratic erosion is institutional locks, rules that are hard to change, checks on power, transparency, citizen enforcement, things that make it difficult for bad actors to do damage. That is exactly what we are trying to build for Indiana. This isn't about just reactors and rail lines. It's about the locks that protect them, the rules that keep them public, the transparency that makes extraction visible, the citizen enforcement that gives people standing to sue when the rules are broken. The book's title is How Democracies Die, but its lesson is how to keep them alive. Build locks, guard the guards, make it hard for people who would tear things down. That's the philosophy behind Sovereignty's defense system. Part four. How hard is it to change the constitution? Before I walk through the amendments, let me explain how hard it is to change Indiana's Constitution. This matters because the whole point of these locks is to make extraction difficult. Indiana has one of the most restrictive constitutional amendment processes in the country. A proposed amendment must pass a simple majority in both chambers of Indiana's General Assembly. Then the same amendment must pass again in the next session after a general election has taken place. Then it goes to voters at the next general election, where it needs a simple majority of those voting on the question. Let me translate that for you. You need two separately elected legislatures to agree on the exact same language. That means a minimum of two years just to get it on the ballot. In practice, it often takes longer. Many proposed amendments never make it through both sessions. That's the point. These locks are meant to be hard to install and hard to remove. We're not writing rules that a future legislature can change with a late night vote. We're writing rules that require sustained, bipartisan, multi-year effort to alter. If a future generation genuinely wants to change the system, they can, but it will take work. It will take a consensus, and that's exactly the bar for taking away something that belongs to the people. Part five, four constitutional amendments. Let me walk you through the four constitutional amendments that lock down what we're trying to build. Amendment one, infrastructure corridors. This amendment creates a clear process for designating critical infrastructure corridors for high speed rail, energy transmission, and broadband. It requires a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly to designate a corridor. It requires a fair market value plus one hundred and twenty five percent compensation for property owners, plus relocation assistance. It requires community benefit agreements for the project. It gives property owners the right to sue and recover attorneys' fees if their rights are violated. So why does this lock matter? The biggest threat to infrastructure isn't just cost. It's lawsuits, delays, property owners who get trampled. The amendment protects both the project and the people. It makes the process clear, fair, and fast. Without it, a handful of landowners could tie up a rail line in court for decades. With it, the process is predictable and just. Amendment two public asset lock. This amendment requires sixty percent voter approval to sell any state owned infrastructure asset. The rail line, the fiber network, the reactors, the state bank. Once we build it, it's ours. No future governor can sell it to pay for a tax cut or balance a budget. No future legislature can privatize it with a simple majority vote. The 60% requirement is a lock within the amendment, not the threshold for passing the amendment itself. Once the amendment is in the Constitution, selling an asset requires convincing nearly two-thirds of voters to agree. This lock matters because the single biggest threat to public assets is a cash strapped legislature looking for a one-time payout. The Indiana toll road lease was a disaster. Selling public assets for short term cash is like burning your furniture to heat your house. It'll work for one winter, maybe, and then you have no furniture and no heat. This amendment prevents that. Amendment three revenue lock. This amendment requires sixty percent voter approval to change the allocation of revenue from truck tolls, cannabis, and the host community fees. That money belongs to the people, not to the legislature. If they want to spend it differently, they have to ask us. Again, this sixty percent requirement is a lock inside the amendment. This lock matters because dedicated revenue streams are always at risk of being raided. A future legislature could decide that host community fee money would be better spent on something else, maybe something that benefits their donors instead of your county. This amendment prevents that. The money goes to property tax relief, schools, health care, and animal welfare. Amendment four. Public banking authorization. This amendment provides explicit constitutional authority for the Bank of Indiana. No ambiguity, no future attorney general ruling that it's unconstitutional. The people vote to authorize it and it's locked in. This matters because public banking has opponents. Big banks don't want competition. They will fund legal challenges, they'll fund politicians who promise to shut it down. This amendment makes it much harder. It puts the bank's authority in the state constitution where a simple majority can't undo it. Four amendments, four locks, each requiring a long, difficult process to pass. Once passed, they make extraction expensive, privatization painful, and selling out hard. Part six. Keeping the foxes out. Indiana already has a revolving door problem, and the state has taken some steps to address it. In 2025, the Indiana legislature passed Senate Bill 238. That bill extended the cooling off period to former legislatures to lobby from one year to 1,095 days. That's three years. Indiana already has a one-year restriction for other state officers under Indiana Code 4261. The State Ethics Commission enforces these rules with civil penalties up to three times the value of any benefit received. But here's the problem. The revolving door still spins too fast. A three year ban is better than a one year ban, but it is not enough. The existing law doesn't cover everyone involved in the Indiana Century Project. The Indiana Century Project provose So for the Indiana Century Project, we propose a five year revolving door ban for anyone who works on the project. That includes the Governor's Office, Bank of Indiana, Energy Authority, the Indiana Century Corps, the Future Fund. No one who works on these projects can lobby the state or work for a contractor on related projects for five years after leaving government service. Why five years? Because it's long enough that the immediate reward for corruption disappears. If you can't work for Duke Energy for five years after leaving the Utility Commission, then favoring Duke Energy while you're on the commission doesn't pay off the same. You've lost the incentive to sell out. This revolving door ban would be enacted as a statute, not as a constitutional amendment. It would strengthen existing law under Indiana Code four hundred two six eleven. The State Ethics Commission would enforce it, with real penalties, fines, forfeiture of pensions, in extreme cases, criminal charges. Citizens would have standing to sue if they believe the ban has been violated. Here's the honest caveat. Because this is a statute, a future legislature could weaken it. That is a risk, but a five-year ban with strong enforcement and citizen standing is harder to undo than a one-year ban with weak enforcement. The political cost of weakening it would be high, and the citizen standing provision in the constitutional amendments give ordinary Hoosiers the power to challenge any attempt to gut the ban. Part 7 The Transparency Portal. Locks don't work if no one can see what's happening. Indiana needs a transparency portal. This portal would be a public website. Every meeting related to the Indiana Century project would be logged. Who attended, what was discussed, any major decisions made, every document would be published. Contracts, environmental reviews, financial statements, every revenue stream would be tracked, where money comes from, where it goes, in real time. Searchable. This transparency is very important. When everyone can see what's happening, it's harder to hide corruption. A lobbyist meets with a regulator, the meeting is logged. A decision is made about a contract, the rationale is published. Money moves, and you can see where it went. The portal would be an administrative implementation, not a constitutional amendment. It would require new statutes and the actual building of a website. The Indiana State Ethics Commission already has some transparency functions, but not at this scale. The portal would likely be run by the state budget agency or the inspector general's office. Because the portal is statutory, a future legislature could defund it or weaken it, that is a risk. But once a portal exists and people are using it, cutting it off becomes politically expensive. Transparency creates its own constituency. People who rely on the portal will fight to keep it, and the citizen standing provisions mean that they can sue if the portal is shut down in violation of the amendments. Part 8. Citizen Enforcement. Locks also don't work if no one can enforce them. Right now in Indiana, it's hard for ordinary citizens to challenge government decisions. You need money, you need lawyers, you need standing, which courts often interpret narrowly. The constitutional amendments include explicit citizen standing provisions. Any Indiana resident can sue to enforce the amendments. You don't need to show that you were personally harmed. You don't need to prove financial loss. You just need to show that the amendment has been violated. This is important because people who would tear down what we built have money. They have lawyers and lobbyists. Ordinary Hoosiers don't. Citizen standing levels the playing field. A farmer in Tipton County can challenge the sale of a public asset. A teacher in Kokomo can challenge a raid on the future fund. A nurse in Evansville can challenge a violation of the revolving door ban. If you sue and win, the state pays your legal fees. You don't have to risk financial ruin to enforce your rights. The system doesn't just allow you to sue, it encourages you to sue by removing the financial barrier. Right now, before you can sue the state, you often have to exhaust administrative remedies. That means you have to go through a long, expensive, confusing process before you ever even see a judge. The amendments waive that requirement. You can go straight to court. These provisions are in the constitutional amendment themselves. Article I, Section twelve of the Indiana Constitution already guarantees open courts and remedy for injury. The amendment expands that guarantee to cover these specific assets. That makes citizen enforcement harder to undo. These provisions don't just protect the assets. They empower the people who care about them. They turn every hoosier. Into a potential guardian of sovereignty. Part 9. Lessons from Indiana's First State Banks. Indiana has actually tried state banking before. The history offers lessons for what we are building today. The first state bank of Indiana lasted from 1834 to 1859. Indiana was young, cash poor, and starved for credit. Private banks were unstable. The state bank provided stable currency and credit when there was no alternative. It survived the panic of eighteen thirty seven better than private banks did. By most measures, it worked well. But the bank had problems. Branches were run by political appointees, not bankers. The legislature forced the bank to finance bad canal projects. When the political winds shifted, the bank was wound down. A simple legislative vote killed it. Not a constitutional amendment, not a vote of the people, just a majority of politicians in one session. The second state bank of Indiana came after the Civil War. It was short-lived. National banks absorbed deposits and lent elsewhere. Indiana just couldn't compete. The second bank faded within a decade. Here's what those early banks didn't have. They didn't have constitutional protection. A simple legislative vote could kill them. They didn't have a trained workforce. They had political hacks instead of bankers. They didn't have local partners. They tried to do everything themselves. And they didn't have a funding flywheel. They relied on state deposits and bond sales, which dried up when the state got into debt. The Bank of Indiana is different. It's locked in by amendment number four. No future legislature can kill it with a simple vote. We are planning to run it by bankers, not politicians. It's partnered with local banks instead of competing with them. It will have stable deposit base from the Indiana Future Fund and state deposits. And it will be supported by the Indiana Century Corps, a trained workforce that will operate the bank and the infrastructure it finances. Those lessons from 1834 are why the Indiana Century Project builds locks and not just the bank. The early state banks proved that public banking can work. They also proved that without constitutional protection, professional management, local partnerships, and a stable funding base, even good ideas can be killed. The Bank of Indiana is designed to last. Part ten. This defense system protects everything we've built. Pillar one, energy resilience. The public asset lock protects the reactors from privatization. The revenue lock protects host community fees from being raided. The revolving door ban prevents utility regulators from cashing out at Duke Energy. Pillar two, connectivity revolution. The infrastructure corridors amendment protects the rail rights of way. The public asset lock protects the fiber network. The transparency portal makes every contract visible. Pillar three, agricultural renaissance. The revenue lock protects the grain reserve and the carbon bank. The citizen standing provisions give farmers the right to sue if those funds are rated. Pillar four, health and compassion. The public asset lock protects the rural hospitals that we take over. The transparency portal makes every decision about hospital closure and operation visible. Pillar five, the funding flywheel. The revenue lock protects the future fund. The public banking authorization protects the Bank of Indiana. The defense system is the skeleton that holds the body together. Without it, the pillars are vulnerable. With it, they are permanent. Objections and responses. Alright, let's walk through some objections. Objection one. Sixty percent is too high, it makes it impossible to change anything. That's kind of the point. We're not trying to make it easy to change, we're trying to make it hard to extract. If a future generation genuinely wants to change the system, by selling reactors or their own rail system, they can build a sixty percent coalition. That's not impossible. It's just hard. It should be hard to take away something that belongs to the people. Objection two citizen standing will lead to frivolous lawsuits. Courts already have mechanisms to dismiss frivolous lawsuits. The amendments don't change that. What they do is remove barriers for legitimate lawsuits. The people who would tear down what we build already have teams of lawyers. Citizen standing gives ordinary people the same tool. Objection three. The revolving door ban will make it hard to recruit good people. Good people don't go into government because they are planning to cash out. They go into government to serve. The revolving door ban ensures that the people who come to serve stay focused on service, not on their next job. If someone won't take a government job because they can't lobby for five years afterward, that's someone we don't want in government. Objection four. Constitutional amendments are too hard to pass. The difficulty is the point. We're building for generations, not for the next election cycle. The amendments require two consecutive sessions of the General Assembly and then a majority of voters. That's a high bar. That's the bar for things that are meant to last. Objection five. The transparency portal could be defunded by a future legislature. That's true, it is a risk, but once a portal exists and people are using it, cutting it off becomes politically expensive. Transparency creates its own constituency. People who rely on the portal will fight to keep it. The citizen standing provisions mean that they can sue if the portal is shut down in violation of the amendments. Objection six This is just paranoia. No one's going to take our stuff. The Indiana toll road was taken. Illinois has raided its transportation fund repeatedly. Indiana's first state bank was killed by one legislature. The forces that extract are real. They're patient, they're well funded. They will try to take back whatever we build. The defense system is not paranoia. It's learning from experience. Part twelve Conclusion and Preview. Let's talk about where we are. We have spent eleven episodes building something. Reactors, rail lines, fiber, a bank, a core, an animal welfare system. Each piece is valuable. Each piece is worth protecting. Value attracts extractors. The same forces that have been taking from Indiana for decades will try to take from us again. They'll try to sell off the assets, they'll try to raid the funds, they will try to privatize the bank. They'll try to undo everything that we build. The defense system is how we stop them. The four constitutional amendments, each requiring two sessions of the General Assembly and a vote of the people. The revolving doorband, strengthening Indiana's existing ethics law. The transparency portal, making every decision visible. The citizens' standing provisions, giving every Hoosier the power to enforce their rights. How Democracies Die taught us that democracies don't fail in a day. They fail slowly, quietly, through a thousand small erosions. The same is true of public assets. They don't get taken in a dramatic coup, they get taken through a quiet change of the law when no one is paying attention. The defense system makes those quiet changes impossible. It makes extraction visible. It makes privatization painful. It makes selling out expensive. And it gives ordinary Hoosiers the power to enforce their rights. Next week in episode 13, From Tennessee Valley to Indiana Century, we look back at the largest public works project in American history to see what it teaches us about building big. The TVA transformed a region. It proved that public ownership works. It also made mistakes we need to learn from. And we'll talk about how the TVA is building nuclear today with Indiana at the table. Plus, the recent news about Governor Braun and Eli Lilly exploring nuclear energy in Indiana. The pieces are coming together. Next week, we connect the past, to the present, to the future that we are building. Before we get there, I want you to think about something. What's the most valuable thing your community has built? Maybe a school, hospital, park, factory. Now imagine someone moves into the state, tries to take it away. What would you do to stop them? That is what the defense system is for. It's not paranoia, it is protection for the things that we build. I'm Corey, this is the Indiana Century Podcast, and remember, sovereignty isn't given, it is built.