i found an interesting revelation buried in this indy star article:

Indiana stands to reap hundreds of millions of dollars under the economic stimulus package Congress is expected to consider for states and could see its share go even higher if Gov. Mitch Daniels gets his way.

The money, state officials say, would help Indiana offset investment losses in its Major Moves road-building fund and could accelerate the timetable of big projects such as the extension of I-69 from Indianapolis to Evansville.

okay, so mitch is trying to get more money for indiana. nothing special there. the major moves fund doesn't have as much money as it should—that was entirely predictable, and anyway, we already knew that. let's read on (emphasis mine).

Although just how much any state might get is up in the air, Daniels and Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., hope to persuade Congress to rethink its traditional approach to parceling out federal transportation dollars.

Those dollars typically have been distributed under a formula that has returned just 92 cents to Indiana for every $1 in federal gas taxes that Hoosiers send to Washington. Some states get more than they send.

Daniels and Bayh are urging Congress and President-elect Barack Obama to distribute the stimulus money based on a state's economic health.

wha-what? but i thought indiana was an island of growth! that's what the governor kept telling us all year. if we distribute transportation money based on the state's economic health, then surely indiana's share of the money would go way down, right? if not be reduced to zero, because things are so f'in' awesome here, right?

alas, no. as it turns out, we aren't doing so hot here in indiana. governor daniels has surely known this all along, but hey, he had an election to win. now that he's won, he can stop pretending. ¶

Compared to Laos, Mali or Guyana, Indiana is doing fairly well... ¶

And people bought it. My Poor Wife ran into two fellow teachers one September morning who were discussing what a great job Daniels was doing--"reluctantly" discussing it, since they were both Democrats. These were people--one an African-American--who had watched with their own eyes as their own school, and their own school system, fell further and further behind as they were dealt from the bottom of an already stacked deck, bought an argument based on a ruse. But, you know, the commercials said he'd increased spending... ¶