ballard to eliminate arts funding

abdul hinted at it a few days ago, and the ibj confirms it: mayor ballard doesn't so much plan to cut arts funding as to eviscerate it. over the next three years, he plans to slash the arts budget from a paltry $1.5 million to the paltriest number of all: zero dollars. similarly, he wants to slash the city's parks budget by 13 percent.

where is the $70 million in "fluff" that ballard promised would be so easy to find? apparently, to mayor ballard, arts and parks—the kinds of stuff that make indy a pleasant place to live—are no more than fluff to be excised. ballard went to the statehouse and begged them to institute the governor's property tax plan, knowing in advance that it would force local governments throughout the state to make massive budget cuts... and these are the kinds of cuts he had in mind?

the city's cultural leaders—who have suspected cuts would be coming since ballard's election—are dismayed:

"We obviously all recognize there are going to be cuts he needs to make," said Glen Kwok, executive director of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. "But what was outlined to us was not reasonable. To have a three-year phase-out program to zero was completely unfathomable."

[...]

"There are few line items in the budget with such a good rate of return," said Kwok of the International Violin Competition. "And if public safety is truly at the top of the mayor's agenda, which I know it is, one must consider the long-term impact on today’s youth."

Since he took office, Ballard has noted cultural leaders' concerns, and pledged to assist them wherever possible, particularly from the bully pulpit.

But many arts leaders have remained skeptical.

"Part of the problem is, Mayor Peterson worked so hard from the beginning to establish a profile in the cultural community," said John Pickett, executive director of the Indianapolis Opera. "When he went in to help major arts organizations, his statements had much more weight than Mayor Ballard's would."

Other cities Indianapolis competes against directly—both for businesses and talent—do far more than even Peterson did to support the arts, Pickett pointed out.

Denver, for example, has a dedicated sales tax as well as a seat tax at major sporting events, which together generate $13 million for its cultural arts community annually.

mayor peterson had his flaws, but at least he had a vision for this city that i broadly agreed with. i'm not sure what kind of spartan vision the mayor has for us—other than building a chinatown on the south side, of course—but it doesn't seem like the kind of place i'd want to live. or as IUPUI's brian vargus put it:

"Oliver Wendell Holmes said taxes are the price we pay for civilization. Ballard's [idea of] civilization is some kind of Marine Corps."¶

the day the blogosphere broke

it was bad enough yesterday when blogger spontaneously marked a bunch of popular blogs as spam (or "splog"), rendering them uneditable. (the paranoid quickly blamed their enemies, but as usual with such things, the problem should be attributed to human error.)

but then, sitemeter, the popular traffic-tracking service, updated their scripts without properly testing them first, and forgetting about a javascript bug in IE 7. this resulted in many thousands of sites—this one included—becoming unreadable in that browser (firefox and all other browsers are unaffected). this site explains the problem and lists some workarounds. i've fixed this blog so that readers who are cursed with IE can see it, but haven't gone through all the static non-blog pages (music pages and the like) to update those; hopefully sitemeter will fix their scripts so i won't have to.

update: naturally, as soon as i posted about the sitemeter problem, it seemingly resolved itself. so i'm going back to my original code; let me know if you have problems. ¶

on the fringe

as i did last year, i am again participating in visualfringe, the visual art show attached to indyfringe. this year i should have two pieces hanging at henry's coffee bistro at 627 east street, including the piece pictured above.

visualfringe has an extra twist this year: patrons get to vote on their favorite artwork, and the winning piece will be commemorated in the form of a be indypendent sticker. the show runs through august, but voting only takes place tonight and tomorrow before 5 p.m.

word is that the mayor and city council are about to slash arts funding, so the art community needs your support more than ever. so come on out to fountain square, check out some local art, vote for your favorite, and maybe buy something if you can afford it. (i know i could use the money; i'm planning my wedding.)

p.s. i forgot to mention: fans of databending and glitch art (like my visualfringe submissions) will definitely want to stay tuned, as i'm working on a databending and glitch art primer that will consolidate much of what i've learned from my years of experiments. part 1 is coming soon—it's about the wordpad effect (which i used to create the picture above) and along the way will cover lots of valuable info about bending bitmap image files. ¶

ted stevens's indiana connection

you probably heard that sen. ted stevens of alaska has been indicted—the first sitting US senator to be indicted by a federal court in 20 years. stevens was notorious for "pork" spending (including the famous "bridge to nowhere") and for declaring that the internet is "a series of tubes".

but did you know where he was born? susan guyett knows!

Hoosiers in the news include U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. The longest-serving Republican senator was indicted this week on several felony counts of accepting unreported gifts amounting to more than a quarter-million dollars. Stevens was born in Indianapolis in 1923 and was an Indianapolis Times delivery boy in the 1930s.¶

welfare privatization halted

governor daniels loves talking about how he balanced the state budget, but he really only has a couple budget-balancing tricks in his toolbox. his favorite is surely privatization, in accordance with his belief in running government like a business. there's only one problem with that: government is not a business and shouldn't be run like one.

last month, the state halted the rollout of one of its more controversial privatization programs (though they're all controversial): the privatization of the FSSA, the people who administer the state's welfare program. at the time, they claimed that they had to halt the rollout because they were so busy helping flooding victims. but now we learn the truth—the federal government made them stop:

The problem centers on the performance of a team of vendors led by IBM Corp. and Affiliated Computer Services, which last year won a $1.16 billion, 10-year contract with the Family and Social Services Administration to process applications for Medicaid, food stamps and other welfare benefits received by nearly one in six Hoosiers.

The effort has in many cases replaced face-to-face interviews for welfare assistance with call centers and computers, creating an obstacle for people without easy access to those technologies, said Glenn Cardwell, a former Vigo County state welfare director who is among the more vocal critics of the new system.

naturally, the people most likely to need welfare assistance are those who are least likely to have computers with internet access or lots of time to dick around on the phone. so how bad are things at FSSA now under mitch roob? this bad:

Roob said FSSA has a 60-day standard for approving food stamp applications rather than the 30-day standard followed by Food and Nutrition Services and most states.

FNS expects states to process 95 percent of food stamp applications within 30 days. Indiana's average is about 83 percent.

Beyond timeliness, advocates are concerned that the system is dumping people off welfare rolls.

State data show the number of people receiving food stamps has dropped more than 11 percent -- from 67,370 to 59,617 -- from May 2007 in the 12-county region centered where FSSA rolled out the changes in October.

Medicaid enrollment dropped by more than 4 percent -- from 86,574 to 82,874 -- in those counties.

In the state's remaining 80 counties -- which largely went unaffected by the welfare changes since they were rolled out -- Medicaid rolls grew from 735,703 to 755,623, or 2.7 percent, Cardwell said.

The privatization expanded to 27 counties in western and Southern Indiana on March 24. It reached 20 additional counties in northeastern and southwestern Indiana in May.

The Family and Social Services Administration's own numbers appear to indicate the volume of calls coming in is overwhelming the vendors.

Zach Main, director of FSSA's Division of Family Resources, released statistics last week showing 11.5 percent of callers to the vendors' 800 number abandoned their calls, or hung up, without completing them. Some were on hold more than 10 minutes.

The goal is to eventually reduce the abandonment rate to 7 percent, Main said.¶

what does a city controller do, anyway?

because apparently "know what's going on with the budget" isn't in our city controller's job description. from today's indy star:

[City Controller David] Reynolds said he was surprised to find out that last year's county income tax increase -- to 1.65 percent from 1 percent -- did not set aside money for police and fire pensions. The General Assembly earlier this year agreed to assume those pension costs. But Peterson had promoted the tax increase to the public partly as a way to pay for the pensions. Instead, Reynolds said, the extra money went to public safety operations.

he was surprised, huh? that's funny, because i've known since november!

Bond Buyer reports that "Indianapolis' planned $460 million pension obligation bond issue, a key piece of Mayor Bart Peterson's plan to shore up the city's finances, is up in the air following his surprise defeat last week at the hands of Greg Ballard, who campaigned on promises to hold down debt and eliminate property taxes. With Peterson out at the end of the year, the pension obligation bond is one of several projects and financial plans that have come under renewed scrutiny. As a result, officials have yet to decide whether they will move forward with the deal under the current administration or wait until Ballard takes office, said Barbara A. Lawrence, executive director of the Indianapolis Bond Bank. "It was our intent to move forward with the bond issue, and obviously that is still an option, but we are weighing our options given what happened in the election last week," Lawrence said. The bank — which would serve as the issuer for the pension deal — plans to decide by next week. While Lawrence left the door open to moving forward, it still requires city/county counci approval. If the deal is put off until Ballard takes office, it's uncertain whether the city would proceed as Ballard has said in published reports that he wants the state to assume the liability.

here's a little history lesson for mr. city controller. see, the deal was all set up and ready to go. then mayor peterson lost the election. ballard had made it clear that he didn't want the COIT increase money to go to the pensions. so, rather than bind his hands into a deal he didn't want, peterson officials decided to wait until ballard was in office and let him make the call. ballard, obviously, decided not to go through with the deal, and spent the money on public safety . later, during his embarrassingly ill-prepared state house testimony, carolene mays criticized ballard for not using the COIT money to pay for pensions and instead asking the state for a handout. (in the end, he lucked out and got the handout anyway.)

how is it that i, a lowly blogger, know all this stuff, but our city controller claims to be surprised? it seems like the kind of thing he should be aware of, and it wasn't exactly a secret.

higher up in the star story, we see that the city needs to borrow $154 million to cover expenses for 2008. apparently, the property tax reassessment ordered by governor daniels has led to a major revenue shortfall, forcing the city to borrow more than usual. thanks, mitch! then again, i'm sure everything will be fine once the mayor cuts all that "fluff" out of the budget, right?

Ballard on Monday declined to reveal any more details about how his budget will make up for lost property tax revenues or fulfill his campaign promise to cut $70 million in "fluff" in three years, aside from spending cuts of nearly $8 million so far this year.

oh... well, with quality help like city controller reynolds, i'm sure the mayor will find that pony fluff any day now. ¶

nuvo on panhandling

nuvo (or at least nuvo.net) seems to be having issues, causing its weekly email update to go out on friday afternoon (two days after the paper edition). but at least i got the email, because otherwise i would've missed this story on the city's campaign against panhandling, which is excellent. it's much more in-depth than anything that's appeared in the star or IBJ, and actually includes some criticism of the project (gasp!).

here's a key criticism, which i don't think i've seen in print anywhere other than this blog:

Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a coalition of social justice-based homeless advocacy groups in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Berkeley and Los Angeles, opposes the donation box approach and the accompanying efforts to rid the streets of "undesirable" individuals.

"You can't replace the immediate needs of individuals by giving to bureaucracy," Boden believes.

[...]

"The idea that programs like these boxes and meters are a good way to help the homeless seems to suggest that the governments who propose them see homelessness as the individual's problem," says Boden, who was homeless himself for a while, and believes this approach to "helping" is "incredibly callous, discriminatory and classist."

One of the actual roots of this problem, according to Boden and many other homeless advocates, is decreasing funding for affordable housing.

"If you don't address the cause, whatever program you adopt isn’t going to have its desired effect," he said.

boden goes on to state that "these meter projects are really about pushing the homeless out of downtown areas", something i've been arguing for some time now. i'm sure the homeless advocates who are in favor of the program mean well and don't feel that way—as they insist in the article—but mayor ballard has stated explicitly that his primary motivation is "to get them out of Downtown so that citizens and visitors don't have to look at it".

here's another important bit:

Larry Zimmerman, an anthropology professor at IUPUI, has serious reservations about the boxes campaign. Since 2003, Zimmerman has been doing research on the archaeology of the homeless.

[...]

From his own research, Zimmerman has seen that in general many people who mean well fail to understand the complexity of the problem because they just have no idea of how the homeless really live.

Zimmerman and his research assistant Jessica Welch recently published an article based on their research, which examined the types of items homeless individuals often leave behind in their temporary shelters. A large number of toiletries are frequently found, most often donations from local churches.

"For the homeless not to have greasy hair or not to smell would make them easier to deal with," Zimmerman notes, "but the reality is that using hair conditioner isn't all that realistic when you don’t have water."

Similarly, their research found that while churches often bring the homeless canned food, they also rarely think to bring can openers and, as a result, much of the food ends up thrown away.

In much the same way that these types of well-intentioned donations reflect a lack of understanding of the practical daily needs of the homeless, Zimmerman and others worry that the boxes reflect a misunderstanding of homeless people who live their lives outside of the shelters and are being excluded from the money raised by the boxes campaign.

"The shelters are part of the solution but not the whole solution," Zimmerman says.

Demand frequently exceeds supply where shelters are concerned, particularly in bad weather. It is not rare for homeless individuals to be turned away from area shelters for lack of space. And with limited resources, those who need help the most are often unaware of social service providers or even the locations of shelters. Still others are unwilling to adopt the usually religious, often stringent, conditions attached to accepting help at a shelter.

"As often as not," according to Zimmerman and Welch, "people don't go to the service providers because that can involve certain 'costs' that they would rather avoid." These costs often include subtle forms of religious indoctrination that accompany accepting a bed at one of the shelters (all of the overnight shelters in Indianapolis are operated by religious groups). Other "costs" are the regimentation and rules that even secular centers may impose, that often "feel like jail."

i could quote more, but i've probably quoted too much already. just go read the article.

update: when i wrote that i hadn't seen these criticisms "in print anywhere other than this blog", perhaps i should've looked around a bit first. kelley curran made some of these points in the news tribune, as did dustin at a blog called on the margins, both from a christian perspective. and while the star's news coverage didn't include much criticism, dan carpenter did a column about the issue last month. ¶

council coincidence, or cause and effect?

earlier today, republicans called for councilor paul bateman to resign his seat from the council ethics committee. bateman is affiliated with the russell foundation, which is being investigated for missing or misspent funds. bateman has denied any wrongdoing, but republicans claimed he was unfit to serve on the committee, and he diplomatically agreed and stepped down.

a few hours later, this happened:

Two members of a bipartisan City-County Council ethics committee today recommended City-County Councilman Monroe Gray be censured for failure to disclose his company's subcontracting work for a major city contractor.

Last year, the Marion County Ethics Board decided that the former council president violated ethics rules by answering "no" to a question on an economic interest statement asking whether he received compensation from any business entity doing business with the city.

As penalty, the board recommended he file an amended ethics form.

The council committee's report today suggests stronger action be taken.

do you think it's a coincidence that both these events happened on the same day? or did perhaps tom john deliberately force bateman off the committee in order to shift the partisan balance in preparation for today's 2-1 vote against monroe gray?

p.s. cue right-wing whining about how all democrats are corrupt scumbags in 3,2,1.

update: the updated version of the star censure story now mentions the fact that no democrats were present to vote:

Democrat Paul Bateman said Thursday that he would give up his seat on an ethics committee after news he is being investigated for his ties to a bankrupt charity. Democrat William Oliver did not show up.

that kind of hurts the bipartisanship of the panel, if there are no dems present. this seemingly important detail is buried in the final paragraph of the article.

2nd update: when i wrote "cue whining about how all democrats are corrupt scumbags", i wasn't expecting that whining to come from matt tully. but i suppose it's not so surprising, considering all his recent love letters to republicans, that he would start writing more hate mail to democrats. wake me up the next time tully writes something about a republican that's half as critical as this column, because that's when i'll know i'm dreaming. ¶

astronaut claims UFOs are real

in a surprising radio interview, dr. ed mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, claims that extraterrestrials are real, have visited earth multiple times since WWII, and the truth about it all has been covered up... though he suspects the truth will begin to come out soon.

generally, radio interviews about UFOs are a dime a dozen, but this one is striking considering the highly respected source—dr. mitchell holds the record for longest moonwalk. in the interview, mitchell claims to have been "briefed" about the existence of alien visitors and to have worked closely with scientists who have first-hand knowledge of the subject.

the radio producers later contacted NASA, which issued a statement denying involvement in "any sort of cover up".

there's no way to really know whether dr. mitchell speaks the truth, whether he's simply mistaken or delusional, or whether it's all some sort of hoax (and if so, whether he's in on it). the laws of probability suggest that intelligent life must be out there somewhere, but stating that aliens have been to earth—and their visits have been covered up—is the type of claim that usually gets you branded a crackpot.

you can listen to the interview here. at the very least, it should make for good sample material.

update: this is not the first time dr. mitchell has spoken on the existence of UFOs, though this interview may contain his boldest statements yet on the topic.

also, his wikipedia entry and official bios suggest an interest in other paranormal subjects. ¶

maybe this is why the RNC is out-raising the DNC

the RNC has apparently taken to guilt-tripping former donors into giving:

Dear Ms. Luidhardt,

I don't want to believe that you've abandoned the Republican Party, but I have to ask... Have you given up?

Our records show that we have not yet received your Republican National Committee membership renewal for the critical 2008 presidential election year.

As the Treasurer of the RNC, I know our Party's success depends directly on grassroots leaders like you.

So I am surprised and concerned especially because I know how generously you supported President Bush and the RNC in the past. You helped to advance our vision for America and elect Republicans at all levels of government.

Ms. Luidhardt, I know other things come up, and perhaps you've just been delayed in renewing your membership. If that's the case, I understand.

But we've not heard from you this year - - and I hope you haven't deserted our Party.

nice country you got there. it would be a shame if democrats got elected and ruined it! OMG obama is so scary! donate now!

this letter reeks of desperation. i'm not an expert in fundraising—that's my fiancée's bag—but i suspect that badgering your prospects and insinuating that they're a bunch of traitorous quitters probably isn't the best way to win their loyalty.

(h/t bilerico, where alex was nice enough to type out the email, making it easier to cut-and-paste.) ¶

shorter gary welsh

shorter gary welsh: you should totally believe what you read in tabloids like the national enquirer. enquiring minds want to know! ¶

you can take the man out of middle management, but you can't take the middle management out of the man

there's a profile of mayor ballard by brendan o'shaughnessy in today's star. the piece is somewhat balanced in that newspapery way, in the sense that it tends to alternate between praise and criticism. but it still includes a couple misconceptions i'd like to address.

the thrust of the piece is that ballard acts more like a middle-manager than an executive-style leader, and some of his supporters actually claim to like that. (we'll see if they're singing the same tune in a couple years.) so, instead of holding press conferences or doing stereotypical "mayor" stuff, the new mayor is more likely to give a four-hour presentation to a bunch of police sergeants about management (based on his book, natch). while the article does offer the suggestion that doing such motivational speeches might be a waste of the mayor's precious time, it neglects mention that the presentation sounds a bit crap. (on the contrary, the article states that ballard "was speaking with the command and confidence of an expert", something i've sure never seen—every time i see him on tv he comes off like a doofus. then again, this is a presentation he's given dozens of times before, so he's had years to practice the material.)

the article is notable for a few reasons: for one, it contains on-record quotes critical of the mayor from the county GOP chairman, tom john, which is surprising, though why john chose to attack over those particular issues is puzzling. also, it mentions ballard's idea to "build a chinatown" on the south side—surely the stupidest thing an indianapolis mayor has said in at least a decade—without a tully-esque "i think a chinatown would be kewl" defense. but on other key issues, the mayor's position is left unchallenged.

for starters, the article mentions that "one of his most controversial moves" was seizing control of IMPD because he "ran the risk of alienating the black community" by "taking power away from Anderson, who is black". that's all true, but it doesn't mention that IMPD remains as controversial as ever: ballard's been in control for six months now, but crime hasn't really gone down, the murder rate is on pace with last year (when he and his supporters screamed incessantly about it), and the IMPD is facing a crisis of public confidence after this year's arrests of eight law enforcement officials. those are some glaring omissions.

then there's this howler:

The mayor also has avoided a mainstay of modern politics -- using polls to help tell him what voters want. Instead, he relies on meetings in the community and claims his best skill is listening.

After all, he said, attending community meetings of fewer than 50 people is how he ran a campaign that led to the biggest political upset in recent city history.

this is simply ridiculous. the 2007 election was not about ballard. the vast majority of voters knew little to nothing about ballard, who he was, or what he stood for. they just knew he was not-bart; they voted for the Other Guy, whoever he was... and some of them have since realized their mistake. (ironically, the issues that people claimed to be most upset about in 2007 were issues that mayor peterson had little to no control over, but they led to his ouster anyway.)

the piece concludes with a retelling of ballard's appearance at the statehouse, where he disagreed with every other mayor in the state in asking the legislature to slash local budgets... oh, and take my pensions, please! you know, the time when he came "without charts and slides to help illustrate his point" and "stumbled in answering some of the lawmakers' questions"?

But mayors around the state now owe Ballard their thanks. In passing the tax package this year, lawmakers agreed to pick up those pension costs. The move also helped save taxpayers up to $500 million in interest costs.

this is straight republican spin. mayors around the state owe ballard exactly squat. the legislature didn't suddenly decide to take over pension debts just because ballard asked for it. even tully didn't try to pull that one (his exact words: "To be clear, lawmakers decided to take over pensions independent of Ballard.") so how did such crap make it into a supposed news article?

not just that, but the article doesn't acknowledge the dark side of ballard's pension bid. last year, indianapolis raised the county income tax in order to pay those pensions. at the time, ballard and his crew crowed endlessly about how horrible and out-of-touch this tax increase was. now ballard is in office and the city no longer has to pay for those pensions, so you would think ballard would want to repeal the tax increase he campaigned against mightily, but of course, that's never going to happen.

the article's sidebar is a good read, though: direct, to-the-point, and informative. ¶

post-roselyn rebranding

last month i mentioned my dream of taking photos of all the former roselyn bakery signs that have been rebranded by their new tenants.

yesterday, i happened to be in the neighborhood with a few spare minutes, so i parked and got some cellphone pics of this sign, at 38th street and ruckle. i particularly like the big green spot.

i tried to get some shots of the one downtown (now dunkin donuts), but i was driving and it was backlit, and my phone doesn't take very good photos, so those didn't turn out. (i've posted them to flickr anyway, so at least you can see what the sign looks like now.) i'll probably have to (pay to) park and bring a real camera in order to get some decent shots of that one.

i'm pretty sure there are more signs still out there, perhaps on the east or south sides, but i'm not exactly sure where.

update: post edited to reflect the correct spelling of "roselyn". a google image search for the correct spelling returns a couple tiny pics of old, unaltered signs, but i'd love a larger, better photo if anybody has one. ¶

new airport terminal to feature local restaurants

traditionally, flying out of town has often meant getting something to eat at the airport, which has generally come down to a choice between mcdonald's, au bon pain, or the asian place with the bourbon chicken. maybe the kolache factory, if you could find it. slim pickin's.

when the new terminal opens in october, the airport will still have a mcdonald's, three starbucks, two au bon pains, a qdoba, a tgifriday's, and so on. but it'll also have a number of locally owned restaurants: harry & izzy's, shapiros, king david dogs, 96th street steakburgers, a scaled-down version of cafe patachou, and more. (unfortunately, no yat's.)

i must admit that other than patachou and shapiro's, i've never eaten at many of these businesses. (these days, we tend to eat at a lot of chain restaurants because we're dieting and it's easier to get nutritional info.) but it's pretty exciting that they'll be opening up locations in the airport. i know that if i had to eat at the airport, i'd happily choose a locally owned business over eating at another mcdonald's or qdoba. and the addition of patachou promises to really improve the breakfast situation, where the choices at IND have been particularly meager. ¶

mayor cancels on the quitter

when i read it on HPR i could hardly believe it.

in these times when the mayor is getting a lot of flak for his seeming inactivity on crime, when the indy star has daily health updates about a local cop who was shot in the head in the line of duty, on the very day when the star publishes another editorial begging the city to "drive down the crime rate" alongside a letter from the prosecutor about his "battle plan", you would think that mayor ballard would be focusing on crime. after all, crime was the signature issue of his campaign, and he threw such a fuss about putting himself in charge of the police department.

so when i saw that the mayor was scheduled to hold a press conference this morning announcing that he's going to be the new campaign chair to re-elect jon elrod, i was surprised, to put it mildly.

we're counting on mayor ballard to run the city, especially since right-wingers keep telling us how mayor peterson left it in such a shambles. but instead of taking charge and gittin' 'er done, the new mayor was spending his time helping his buddies campaign for the indiana statehouse?

it seemed bad enough for the mayor to be playing politics instead of running the police force that he fought to win control over (let alone the city he was elected to run). but to campaign for jon elrod, who famously abandoned his state seat in order to run against andré carson for congress, only to quit and run crying back to indiana house 97 after that proved to be too hard? it didn't seem real.

in the end, someone at the mayor's office must've realized what a PR nightmare it would've been for the mayor to be seen stumping in this political climate (particularly for an opportunistic quitter like elrod) and cancelled the mayor's appearance. of course, cancelling the press conference isn't the same as cancelling his involvement with the elrod campaign. i imagine ballard will continue to waste time he could be spending running the city on helping his buddy jon elrod run for re-election; he just might not want to advertise that he's doing it. ¶

apple basic I as a sound file

back in the '70s and early '80s, one major way of storing software was on audio cassette. a sonified version of the program data would be stored on the tape, and you would plug your cassette deck into a port on your computer and play the tape to load the program. i had a TI-99/4A and used to play old zork-style text adventure games that i had to load off cassette (and with multiple games on one tape, it was easy to load the wrong one by mistake).

someone has posted an mp3 of the original version of apple basic I that came with the rare apple I computer, way back in the '70s—and they took it a step further by decoding the data and posted the binaries, too.

the sound of the mp3 is quite similar to what you get when doing audio databending—and i imagine the process of sonification used back in the day isn't much different from what happens when you convert a binary file into WAV format. in other words, databenders should check this out, as you might learn something. ¶

shorter gary welsh

shorter gary welsh:


[graphic found on net; source unknown]¶

new track: rockin' the pop charts

recently i was invited to contribute to a compilation for a new record label out of france called handicap records. the comp, which will be the label's first release, will be 12" featuring tracks by six artists, including the wood crew, killjoy, and doormouse. the record is scheduled to come out in the fall, around the same time as my wedding show (featuring doormouse), which i thought was appropriate. (we'll see if it actually comes out by then; having put out a record myself, i know how easily the schedule can slip.)

so here's my new track, soon to be released on vinyl. it's titled "rockin' the pop charts". if you liked my last EP, mash smarter not harder, then you'll love this track, because it continues on in the direction i embarked on with that that EP. (if you're not familiar with mash smarter not harder, what the hell, man? it's been available for free download since may!)

with the mash smarter material, i let the tracks move organically, at a natural pace, to really explore some of the ideas without rushing anything. as a result, some of those tracks were pretty long—the epic closer "the future sound of retro" clocks in at almost 9 minutes. but since this track is for a vinyl record with five other tracks on it, i didn't have time for such nonsense. in other words, this track is like mash smarter but moves twice as briskly. if that sounds like your cup of tea, then hurry up and get to clicking. ¶

condensed matt tully

i was considering doing a "shorter" version of today's tully column, but after reading it, i've concluded that the only way i can really communicate the stupidity, laziness, and utter thoughtlessness of this piece of writing is by quoting it. so join me for this condensed version of today's tully.

here's the setup: tully has "never understood the controversy" around the lease of the indiana toll road. so, rather than, you know, sit down and review the arguments pro and con, as you might expect a political columnist to do, he simply decides to drive down the toll road one day and tell us about it. cue tully:

This column probably would be more interesting if I'd found anything to complain about: A traffic jam. A pothole to rival those that marked Indy's streets this spring. An obvious sign of mismanagement.

Anything.

really, he found nothing to complain about while driving the toll road? well, maybe that is...

Mile Marker 121: [...] One valid complaint: Gas prices are roughly 20 cents higher per gallon than what I saw at gas stations off the Toll Road that morning.

but... i thought you said...

Mile Marker 56: [...] Greenwood [a fellow traveler] asks why the state didn't fix up the road itself and use maximized profits to fund other road projects. Indiana Democrats have asked the same question for years.

that is a good question. if only there were a political columnist, perhaps working at a large newspaper, who could maybe write a column about it.

the trek goes on. at the same mile marker, another traveler tells tully that further west, the roads "are a little beaten up".

Exit 23: I have to wait about 30 seconds to pay my 50 cents. Construction crews are rebuilding the exit ramp area. Road construction can be a hassle, but as a rule I never complain about roads under repair.

it's not worth complaining about because you have a rule that you won't complain about it?

Mile Marker 21: [...] the biker from Chicago, was right. The roads are bumpier. For the next 15 miles, construction and traffic are heavy, and my car endures a few shakes, rattles and rolls.

then, after a mere 15 miles of "heavy" construction, he reaches his destination and the column is over.

let's review. he whines that he "doesn't understand" the toll road controversy, but rather than demonstrate why critics of the deal are wrong or analyze their complaints, he decides to drive down the toll road and tell us about his trip. this is like responding to complaints of unethical business practices at mcdonald's by ordering a big mac and reporting that it was hot, delicious, and covered with secret sauce.

he declares that he didn't find anything to complain about, then in the course of the column lists 3–4 things to complain about! and then he concludes by saying he doesn't understand the complaints!

some of you may recall a post i wrote back in april titled "tully needs to read tully, where i pointed out a blatant contradiction between tully's then-current column and one he'd written a few months before. but now he has truly topped himself by thoroughly contradicting himself within six paragraphs.

don't they have editors at the star who are supposed to read these things? ¶

opera relocating to old greek church

i know they've been working on getting this deal together for awhile. it's great for the opera, and good for the neighborhood, which was understandably concerned about finding a worthy new tenant:

When Indianapolis Opera relocates next spring to a Greek Orthodox church building on Pennsylvania Street, the move will put the company less than half a mile from its current headquarters.

But the relocation could revolutionize the opera's performances, adding edgier shows to the standards it will continue to perform at Clowes Hall.

"We would be in a better position to take risks in a smaller space, because we wouldn't have to depend on filling a 2,000-seat hall," Jim Caraher, the opera's artistic director, said after Friday's news conference announcing the move from a brick house at 250 E. 38th St. to property formerly owned by Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, 4011 N. Pennsylvania St.

Because the Holy Trinity sanctuary will be converted into a roughly 400-seat theater, Indianapolis Opera will no longer be faced with performing only favorites such as "Carmen" or "La Boheme" that fill Clowes and help balance the budget.

i grew up right around the corner from holy trinity—people would park in front of our house to attend the annual greek festival. so it's sad to think that the church is relocating to the suburbs, presumably taking the festival with it (greek fest 2008 will still be at the old location). but mini-opera house... that's pretty cool, too. ¶

trafalgar councillor on kiddie porn: "it wasn't a turn-on or anything"

shocking news out of trafalgar, a smaller indy exurb in johnson county: the head of the town council has been arrested on child porn charges.

allegedly he took his computer into the repair shop, and his local geek squad or what-have-you discovered his kiddie porn stash: 74 files, allegedly including images of kids "as young as 2 years old." pretty sick, perverted stuff.

but perhaps the oddest part of the story is his (alleged) half-assed confession:

Knapp told police he did not derive pleasure from the images and did not know why he had downloaded the files, the affidavit said, aside from simple curiosity.

"I might download four or five and never watch them," Knapp told a detective, according to the affidavit. "Why I did it, I don't know. It wasn't a turn-on or anything."

Knapp said he began downloading the files "a year ago or so" from the "LimeWire" Web site, which police described as a free file-sharing site on which users download music, videos, images and other files.

"I'm not a pedophile and I don't mess with kids or anything," Knapp reportedly told the detective, further admitting that his actions were "stupid."

maybe next he'll say, "yeah, i watched the videos, but i didn't touch myself or anything." ¶

shorter indiana blogs (tag cloud edition)

for the old-schoolers who don't know a tag cloud from a methane cloud: in a tag cloud, words that appear more frequently are shown in a larger text size. (stop words, or common words like "the" or "and", are removed from the data.)

so let's take a look at some blogs and see what they're talking about. tag clouds courtesy of wordle. you can click 'em to view 'em larger (and to create your own), but you'll need to have java installed.

shorter advance indiana:


in contrast, here's shorter blue indiana:


obama is the top subject at both blogs. but republican blog AI hasn't been talking nearly as much about mccain as has liberal blog BI. note also that words like "state" and "Indiana" are used frequently at BI but don't appear at all at AI.

shorter masson's blog:


shorter hoosier political report:


shorter stAllio!'s way:


i've been talking way too much about abdul lately, but that'll pass soon, as he's generally not worth paying attention to.

shorter commonplace book:


it's funny that "tags" is the #1 word here. that probably should've been treated as a stop word.

anyway, i could keep this up all day, but i need to get some work done. feel free to create your own and link to 'em in the comments. ¶

leadership, not finger-pointing and yard signs

a year ago, marion county republicans couldn't stop talking about crime. they counted off every murder with delight, imagining that then-mayor peterson was somehow at fault. the foundation of then-candidate ballard's campaign was that he would put IMPD under his control, and together they would put an end to crime in the region.

this year, things are different. mayor ballard is the head of IMPD. the murder rate hasn't gone down—we've been averaging a murder a day for the past couple weeks. and the rate of crime committed by cops has seemingly gone up infinity percent.

now that their guy is in charge and things haven't gotten any better, you'd think republicans would be singing a different tune. in a sense they are, but really their song is exactly the same: six months into mayor ballard's administration, and they're still blaming everything on bart peterson and sheriff anderson.

yesterday, marion county democrats issued a press release demanding that the mayor do something about, you know, his signature issue, and complaining that he has been "oddly quiet about the mounting problems" facing IMPD.

cue abdul, official mayoral apologist, proponent of "police beatings", and the one person who was complaining the loudest about crime last year (though he did so anonymously under the name "joe friday"). today abdul responded to the dem press release, in his usual vapid style: he blames all IMPD's problems on the former administration, and provides three links as proof that the mayor has "spoken out" about IMPD's problems.

let's take a look at abdul's links, shall we?

link 1: IMPD works to solve several murders:

The murders have gotten the attention of Mayor Greg Ballard.

"I had a good-sized meeting this morning with [Public Safety Director Scott Newman] and senior officers and we talked about what's happening," Ballard said.

oh, they had a meeting and talked about it! i feel so much better now. but wait! there are more ballard quotes near the bottom:

"We want the neighbors to help out the police. We want these people off the street," Ballard said.

[...]

The nine murders in an eight-day stretch has the mayor putting renewed importance on the "Peace in the Streets" campaign.

"I'm hoping that [the Peace in the Streets initiative] becomes part of the community, that people understand that. I'm hoping to get yard signs and signs all over the city and the message itself so that people understand we don't want to go there. I'm hoping - we'll never know obviously - somebody may be thinking of doing something wrong in a domestic situation or whatever - and they say - no, we have peace in the streets," Ballard said.

see, the mayor does have a plan to address crime! he wants to put up a whole bunch of yard signs—i mean lots and lots of them, not just a few—and those signs are going to make people stop committing crimes somehow! brilliant!

link 2: Mayor Urges Safety Heading Into Holiday Weekend

"The weather promises to be hot and there's a lot of things the people with free time and hot temperatures can do that are harmful", said Ballard, " and I would be remiss if I didn't express my concern."

this seems to be an extension of the yard sign program. all the criminals are going to think about mayor ballard expressing his concern, and that will inspire them to stop their law-breaking ways. but wait, there's more:

Ballard, along with Public Safety Director Scott Newman, IMPD Chief Michael Spears, members of the Concerned Clergy and representatives of Peace In The Streets, discussed the recent rash of violent crime in the city and the arrest of several police officers.

Ballard, Newman and Spears all pointed to the fact that the arrest of those officers were the result of IMPD investigations and new policies will be announced soon on how the department plans to deal with it in the future.

it might be comforting to think that all the cops who've been arrested recently were busted by fellow IMPD officers, but it's not accurate. some were, but half of them were nabbed by the FBI... as is made clear by...

link 3: 3 Indianapolis Officers Arrested On Drug Charges

"I'm very much disgusted and outraged at the conduct of a small number of officers who chose to disrespect the trust that the public has in them," said Indianapolis Metro Police Chief Michael Spears.

"Nobody likes for this thing to happen, but it's important that it's rooted out," said Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard.

only one ballard quote this time around, and it's one sentence long. maybe in abdul's world, a one-sentence quote in a news article counts as leadership.

maybe someone could sit abdul down and teach him how to use a dictionary. because "oddly quiet" doesn't mean "completely silent". the mayor may have spoken once or twice about IMPD in the past month, but his statements have been rambling and, more importantly, devoid of substance. if anything, abdul's links prove how worthless the mayor has been on this issue. this was his signature issue, and yet nothing has been improved, and on those rare occasions someone with a camera asks him about them, he simply expresses his "concern" or talks about yard signs, or tries to blame it on the prior administrations. how pathetic.

bonus abdul: abdul claims to be "somewhat surprised" that there hasn't been a "bigger public outcry" about the recent rash of murders, and speculates that the reason is because the victims have all been po' folks. of course, he's being disingenuous here. he doesn't mention that last year, in the guise of "joe friday", he was complaining louder than anyone. so tell us, adbul: why aren't you complaining about crime this year? could it be because you you only used the issue for political reasons to attack a democratic mayor, and now that there's a republican in charge, you don't care about crime or murders anymore? ¶

understanding satire

i touched on this ever so briefly in the previous post, but wanted to come back to it again.

abdul hakim shabazz has been getting heat from fellow republicans for his blog post suggesting that "what this town needs are a couple good police beatings."

today, in his defense, abdul writes:

The way I figure it, if someone doesn't have enough synaptic activity to understand sarcasm and satire when they read it, then what would be the point of trying to explain it to them?

this is another one of those old soft-shoes that abdul knows by heart: i didn't mean that horrible thing i said; i was joking! the don imuses and ann coulters of the world regularly trot this out when they get criticized for tossing around racial or homophobic slurs, or fantasizing about their political opponents dying in a terrorist attack. but the only thing funny here is the thought of abdul trying to explain satire to someone else—because his post was not satire.

in situations like this, the coulters and abduls of the world compare themselves to jonathan swift. swift, their thinking goes, suggested cannibalism and infanticide in a modest proposal, which is considered a great work of satire. therefore, when i daydream of violence toward my political enemies, that's satire, too. but it doesn't work that way.

the core of satire is irony. the entire point of a modest proposal was to draw attention to the plight of the irish under english oppression. the english, swift wrote, "have already devoured most of the Parents", so they might as well eat irish babies, too. what swift truly wanted, though, was the opposite: for the english to treat the irish better.

abdul's post has no such irony. there is no sympathy for violent criminals. no, his post is not so much a satire as a revenge fantasy. he's sick of seeing violence against innocents, so he fantasizes about the aggressors getting beaten up, too. maybe he doesn't really mean it, and if there were a true upswing in police violence, he might be aghast. (then again, in the past when police brutality has been alleged, he's always been the first to write that he's seen the tapes and the police did nothing wrong, that guy was asking for it, etc.) but you can't help but sense that part of him would enjoy it.

we all want to see bad people get their comeuppance. we enjoy watching entertainment about people who punish evil, and root for those people, even if they're rule-breaking vigilantes like jack bauer or dirty harry, or cold-blooded murderers like dexter. one of my favorite shows is death note, and yes, part of me is rooting for the murderous kira. that's okay because it's just a story; if kira existed in the real world, i wouldn't be a fan.

if abdul's post is satire then tell me: what is he satirizing? is it the fact that we seem to have a lot of dirty cops in town? is he mocking the concept of biblical eye-for-an-eye justice? because i just don't see it. and abdul isn't known for being particularly deep. ¶

hindsight, consequences, and all that

do you think that maybe mayor ballard would've thought twice about his central campaign plank—taking control of IMPD—if he'd known that 2008 would be the year of dirty cops?

naturally, ballard apologists are spinning themselves dizzy in their attempts to portray all these arrested cops as proof that things are getting cleaned up under valiant greg ballard after the two-headed abomination that was bart peterson and sheriff frank anderson. but that theory doesn't hold much water when you consider that most of this month's arrests were made by the FBI, not IMPD. (to be fair, the alleged police-pimp who was arrested yesterday was nabbed by IMPD.)

politically speaking, if everything's going to fall apart, you want it to happen under the other guy's watch, not yours. if sheriff anderson were still in charge of IMPD, this would be the perfect opportunity to hoot & holler about how they hate him. if this had happened under the peterson/anderson watch, no doubt bart-haters would be dancing in the street. instead, they're stuck doing the it's-not-our-guy's-fault-it's-the-guy-before-him's-fault, which is such a familar old number by now that they must be getting as sick of it as the rest of us. or maybe, when they hear people laughing at them, they'll claim they were just being satirical.

also, while we're speaking politically, do you really believe that when IMPD detectives were going through the books of alleged johns, they just happened to choose the name of a former bart peterson official at random? ¶

shorter abdul hakim shabazz

shorter abdul hakim shabazz: what this city really needs is more police brutality. ¶

new backgrounds

it's a new month, so enjoy some new blog backgrounds (or don't enjoy them, as is your wont). originally i meant to put up new ones at the beginning of june, but the storms hit right around then, and we were without power for 37 hours, which put a damper on my computer time.

these new backgrounds come from my databending experiments, but they're not as loud as the ones from february, which were bent jpgs. these are actually raw data, reinterpreted as images and then meticulously cropped to form patterns. (pattern 3 was originally grayscale, and i altered it to make it purple, but the others have no edits except crops.)

if you hate these, then oh well. the current plan is to put up a new set at the beginning of september. ¶

shorter matt tully

shorter matt tully: how do i love mayor greg ballard? let me count the ways:

10. he's lousy at public speaking.
9. his panhandling plan won't work, but it's something.
8. he flip-flopped on the super bowl and arts funding, which is good because his old position was stupid.
7. he's been really lucky so far. i mean, really lucky.
6. he didn't do too good a job at fixing potholes.
5. i think his chinatown idea is great.
4. did i mention how lucky he's been?
3. he hasn't messed up! (other than #10, #9, #8, #6, #5, and #2.)
2. actually, he hasn't done much at all, except for...
1. he's in charge of the police department now. see, that's something!

love,
matt tully xoxoxoxoxo ¶

shorter gary welsh

shorter gary welsh: barack obama has only himself to blame for the fact that people like me keep printing outlandish smears against him. ¶

shorter mitch daniels

shorter mitch daniels: a vote for the incumbent is a vote for change! war is peace! ignorance is strength! freedom is slavery! ¶

city councillor arrested, right-wingers rejoice

last night, councilwoman doris minton-mcneill got arrested. if you piece together the news reports, here's what happened: she called the police about someone she didn't like in her home. by the time the police showed up, the man she'd called about had left. after talking to the cops for a minute, she tried to run into her house, apparently bumping into a cop and knocking her over.

that's why she was arrested: for bumping into a cop. surely not her best day, but hardly a high crime, either. of course, from the way republicans like tom john are reacting, you'd think she'd murdered someone.

i knew gary welsh would be all over this—a black democrat getting arrested is his bread and butter. sure enough, not only does he have a post about it, but he takes it to the next level, claiming that minton-mcneill pissed herself in the back on the squad car—exactly the kind of classy detail i expect from him. (when called out for his tactlessness, he responded with more tactless allegations. compare this to his reaction when news or eric dickerson's arrest got out: gary threw a fit that lasted two full months about how it the allegations were untrue and it was all a democrat dirty trick.)

so there you have it. a politician bumps into a cop accidentally, and within hours, people are online howling about how she pissed on herself. from now on, right-wingers will insist it's a fact that she pissed on herself, regardless that this "fact" has not appeared in any reputable media source, only as an uncredited claim in a smear merchant's blog.

update: the police report alleges that she willfully pushed the cop out of her way.

2nd update: an eyewitness claims that she didn't push the police officer, and that furthermore "the officers wouldn't listen to Minton-McNeill's requests for help [...] or look for the man" who minton-mcneill had called them about. ¶

RIP george carlin

george carlin, a comedy legend, has passed away of heart disease. he was 71.

carlin's "filthy words" routine was the subject of a landmark first amendment case, FCC v pacifica that i studied in college in my first amendment law class. ¶

google street view glitches disappear

last year, google introduced their street view feature, and i spent a few days virtually wandering the streets of san francisco, looking for bizarre glitches.

google street view is essentially a street-level view of the city, achieved by driving a customized van with funky cameras on its roof throughout the city streets. the cameras on those first san francisco vans were vulnerable to two types of glitches. there were solarization errors, where the images were corrupted by too-bright sunlight. and there were stitching errors, because the panoramic images were "stitched" together from multiple camera lenses, and things didn't always match up.

since then, a lot more cities have been indexed into street view (including indy), and the tech has improved. the new cameras are truly panoramic, so there are no stitching errors, and they're not as sensitive to bright light, so solarization glitches are minimized. the street view of indianapolis, for example, has occasional glitches, but most of the major ones are mapping errors, where the data from the camera doesn't match up to the maps quite right.

now, i see that google has apparently re-indexed san francisco with newer cameras. all the glitches that i'd so carefully collected are gone; only the screenshots on flickr remain. overall, this is good news, because street view becomes dated quickly. (remember when gas was only $3.25/gallon?) but it's a bit of a shame, because some of those glitches were fantastically surreal—and suitably psychedelic, considering the location. ¶

tail between legs, elrod slinks back to indiana house

i'd heard the rumors, ever since ipopa first floated them, but never thought it would be true. yet it is: jon elrod is dropping out of the congressional race for indiana's 7th district and retreating back to the seat in the indiana house that he had abandoned.

state law forbids candidates from simultaneously running for state and federal office, so elrod had chosen to give up his indiana seat for a shot at the big time. carolene mays and david orentlicher made the same gamble in the democratic primary and lost. but no other republican had chosen to run for indiana house 97, elrod's old/current seat, leaving a vacancy on the ballot for him to slip back into.

however, the voters of his district will surely remember his opportunism, come november. they'll think, "jon elrod doesn't care about representing our district. this is just a stepping stone to him. he's only here because he knew he couldn't defeat andré carson." and they'll be correct.

there's no undo button in politics. you can't just reload an old saved game if you make a poor decision. he might've had a good chance of reelection if he'd simply stayed put. now, i suspect his chances aren't as good.

this been a hell of a week for republican congressional candidates. first word gets out about eric dickerson's bankruptcy, and now this. and unlike the dickerson story, this one will be a lot harder for republicans to ignore.

now, locals republicans need to find another sucker to run against carson... and they don't have much time. ¶

AP wants bloggers to pay for block quotes

this is another one of those topics where i have nothing to add to the conversation; i can only point out to my readers that the conversation exists. from boingboing:

In the name of "defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt" the Associated Press is now selling "quotation licenses" that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that "fair use" -- the right to copy without permission -- means "Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.").

It gets better! If you pay to quote the AP, but you offend the AP in so doing, the AP "reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher's reputation."

a lot of bloggers are announcing a formal boycott of AP stories: they will no longer link to or quote from AP stories, and will instead find alternate news sources to promote. i'm on board with that, but i won't go quite so far.

as a general rule, i won't link to or quote from AP stories—unless the point of the quote is to criticize the AP or its coverage. in other words, i'll no longer be quoting the AP as a news source; i'll quote AP only as an object of derision, at least until they atone for this assault on fair use rights. ¶

all of this has happened before...

one of the things that's so sad about gary welsh's anti-obama schtick is that it's so unoriginal. roy edroso has his number:

If you missed the one on Michelle Obama, now might be a good time to have a look, as conservatives are complaining that the "Whitey" Tape story is being pinned on them unfairly. Of course Larry Johnson got that ball rolling, and the smarter conservatives refused to fall for it. So instead of telling us that the story was true, they told us it was believable, given the towering evil of Mrs. Obama. It's an old blogosphere trick, but not so well known that it doesn't bear pointing out.

that's pretty much the ultimate "shorter gary welsh", condensed to its essence. but roy wasn't writing about gary; i'd be surprised if he'd ever even heard of gary or his blog.

far from being an intrepid journalist as gary pretends, his "reporting" on obama is nothing more than an echo of something much larger. there are thousands just like him throughout the country, repeating the same smears and smug self-justifications, and they're largely interchangeable.

not only is gary's obama blogging credulous, over-the-top, sleazy, and slanderous, but it's boring. it's been done before, on a thousand other blogs. at least when gary writes about indiana politics, even when he's at his worst, there's a fair chance that i haven't heard it before. his obama blogging is just banal.

in the early days of this blog, i wrote far more about national politics. these days i generally don't, other than the occasional short post to note major events. i just feel redundant; there are so many blogs out there discussing national politics that i rarely feel i have anything new to add. i'm an artist and the blog is just one of my projects; i don't have time to compete at that level. most of my posts now are about indiana politics because it's easier to be relevant in the much-smaller pool of indiana blogs.

in contrast, gary's blog is called "advance indiana"! what do larry sinclair or michelle obama have to do with advancing indiana, or for that matter, "re-affirming our state's constitutional principles"? gary's obama rants aren't even on-topic! ¶

eric dickerson files bankruptcy

some marion county republicans were disappointed when eric dickerson, who had run against julia carson for congress in 2006, opted not to get into the race again this year. the IBJ reports on a possible reason: dickerson is bankrupt:

Former car dealer and congressional candidate Eric Dickerson has filed for personal bankruptcy after three failed businesses left him saddled with more than $1 million in debt. Dickerson says he is virtually broke save for a $101,000 inheritance he is set to receive from the estate of his late mother. He claims only a few assets, including $10 in cash, 7 cents in a Chase Bank checking account, 25 cents in a Fidelity Investments account, two late-model Chevy trucks worth about $3,000, and a horse, pony and four chickens worth $250. He lives with his girlfriend on a 5-acre spread in Sheridan.

Most of Dickerson’s debts are connected to businesses he formerly owned—a Buick dealership on North Keystone Avenue in Indianapolis, a collision-repair center in Westfield and a Maggie Moo's ice cream shop in Circle Centre mall.¶

re-rebranding

old-schoolers will remember roslyn bakery. the bakery chain, with its distinctive (and distinctively-shaped) signs, was an indianapolis institution. their buttermilk jumbles were perhaps my sister's favorite cookie growing up.

at the end of the '90s, the whole chain shut down suddenly after the main bakery downtown failed two health inspections in a row. (i'm fuzzy on the details, but i know it involved copious numbers of rats.) the brand was eventually relaunched and sold in local supermarkets, but the many roslyn stores remained shuttered, until they were bought or leased by new clients.

most of the new tenants didn't have cash to tear down those funny-shaped signs, at least not right away. so it was fascinating to watch as new upstart businesses simply slapped their names on the existing signs, appropriating the roslyn trademark shape in the name of 21st century beepers or panda express. for years i daydreamed about driving around town and photographing all the former roslyn signs that had been rebranded... but i waited too long. most have since been removed. (if anyone has any old photos of roslyn signs, either rebranded or in their original form, please send 'em my way.)

this sign, downtown, at the former panda express, is one of the few remaining roslyn signs i know of. the photo is by robin jerstad of the IBJ. as you can see, panda express is now gone, and now the location is becoming a dunkin donuts. you can still see the words "panda express" on the sign, but now a dunkin logo has been slapped on it, too. i suspect that sooner or later, dunkin will tear down this sign and put up a more rectangular one, so i'm glad i came across this photo while the sign's still up. ¶

shorter gary welsh

shorter gary welsh: i know barack obama is corrupt, because i'm from illinois and everyone from illinois is corrupt. and if you don't believe that obama had coked-up gay sex with an ex-felon in the back of a limousine, then you're probably a dope-smokin' hippie like ruth holladay (who i hate). ¶

ACLU sues city over mistreatment of panhandlers

here's an unsurprising development:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed a lawsuit today against the city over what its attorneys see as a too-aggressive crackdown on the homeless in Downtown Indianapolis.

The suit, filed on behalf of four men, says Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers have hassled them even though they weren't breaking state panhandling laws. Two men who were holding cups but not speaking were told by officers they couldn't solicit contributions, the suit says.
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Two others who were not soliciting -- but appeared homeless -- have been forced multiple times to produce identification and wait while officers conducted records checks, the lawsuit says.

Such treatment violates the U.S. Constitution's protections of free speech and against unreasonable searches, argues the suit, filed this morning in U.S. District Court. It seeks class-action status and has four homeless men named as plaintiffs: Richard Dellantonio, Douglas Ayres, Ryan McClellan and Richard Byrd.

unsurprising because, as i've written before, it's clear from the mayor's own comments that the city crackdown on panhandlers is born not out of human compassion, but out of disgust and loathing. mayor ballard wants to get rid of those filthy panhandlers, and if that means strong-arming and hassling them, so be it. ¶

beyond satire

after melyssa/miss ann dropped by in the comments of my previous post (at least i think it was her); i decided to stop by her blog, the hoosiers for fair taxation blog. at least i think it's still her blog—she made a big deal earlier this year about her growing political disillusionment and stated that she was going to pass the blog on to a successor, but i don't think that's happened yet.

i stop by HFFT every once in a while for a chuckle, but i was utterly unprepared for what i found there today. this is the current top post at that blog, in its entirety, with links from the original:

FoxNews reports rumor that government will unleash weapons on convention protestors

Big thanks to Sean Shepard who alerted us to this disturbing news article on FoxNews. Obviously a serious rumor is circulating that the government intends to unleash a dibilitating sound frequency on activists and citizens exercising their first amendment rights during the democratic convention in Denver this summer. The sound causes people to involuntarily defecate.

Now contrast that with the Marines and their training exercises happening here in Marion county. The conservative Indiana Minority Report suggests that the government is preparing to install martial law and is practicing in Indiana. Could it be that they will impose martial law and use force to silence property tax protestors?

some bloggers are easy to parodize, but this... i couldn't write a parody of this if i tried. where would i even begin? ¶

does gary welsh kill puppies?

reliable sources tell me that blogger gary welsh, of advance indiana, loves killing puppies. in particular, my sources inform me that his favorite method of killing them is by drowning.

when gary was recently confronted about these rumors, he notably refused to deny the allegations and instead attacked the messenger, simply for trying to get to the bottom of this serious story about whether he is a puppy murderer.

the fact that he refuses to deny the charges pretty much proves that they're true. after all, what does he have to gain by leaving such shocking charges unanswered? if the charges were in fact false, i'm sure he would have no problem making an emphatic denial.

when will the mainstream media start reporting on this important story of a puppykiller in our midst? ¶

hoosier political report

a few months back, jennifer wagner, one of the state's most prominent and popular bloggers, quit blogging to go work for the jim schellinger campaign. we all know how that turned out: schellinger was defeated in the primary by jill long thompson.

now jen is back with a new blog, hoosier political report. the new site has been active for a couple weeks—thus other blogger announced its arrival long ago—so let's check in and see how things are going there.

hoosier political report essentially replaces the old taking down words blog, with a focus on statewide politics and the governor's race. as usual, jen's commentary and analysis are incisive and insightful. so fans of TDW will definitely find things to like here. but HPR has lots more than what TDW had, so let's look at the new features.

one feature is a daily news update, with a roundup of links to political stories from throughout the state. as someone who is too lazy to check all the major indiana papers—i often just check the indy star and move on—this is a great feature. you can also sign up to receive it as a daily email, which sounds awfully convenient.

another new feature of HPR is other bloggers: HPR is apparently a group blog, and in particular jen promises bipartisan commentary. i'm a bit skeptical there: it seems that the most popular and most successful blogs tend to have a common viewpoint, be it center-left, far-right, hipster, or what have you. i can't think of many quality blogs that successfully blend viewpoints from the right and left, the occasional guest post aside. then again, it could work, and the presence of the other side could help keep everyone more honest. i guess we'll see how that pans out.

a couple of the new posters have already joined up. chris faulkner is an admitted republican, but his two posts so far are pretty good, with nothing objectionable. likewise, i don't know scott downes's political affiliation (i suspect democrat), but his posts so far are perfectly fine.

on the other hand, i'm unimpressed, to put it lightly, by the introductory post by average white male obamican. the whole schtick for this persona is apparently that he can't decide between obama and mccain. seems like an obvious choice to me: a vote for mccain is a vote to continue the horrific policies of george bush (including... no, especially the occupation of iraq), and a vote for obama is a vote to stop the madness. i don't understand why i should care about the opinions of someone who claims he won't know who he's voting for "until I pull the lever", nor what value such musings are supposed to add to the conversation. (never mind the annoying pundit habit of imagining yourself and your beliefs to be "average" or "typical". you can't make yourself into everyman by editorial fiat, unless you legally change your name to "every man" as one of my friends did.)

those are just the bloggers who've posted already. looking at the category listing in the sidebar, i see one more name that troubles me: joshua claybourn. longtime readers may remember that my last attempt to engage claybourn didn't go so well. it all goes back to claybourn's involvement in a 2006 political scandal that came to be known as the "facebook scandal".

as you may recall, claybourn was a supporter of then-rep john hostettler, who was in a contentious race against brad ellsworth. a commenter at in the agora—a group blog shared by claybourn and a few others—noted that ellsworth's daughter, then a 19-year-old IU student, had photos on her facebook page that suggested she engaged in underage drinking. claybourn, on acquiring this dirt on ellsworth, promptly passed it on to the evansville courier & press, and then feighned surprise when the story turned up in the newspaper.

that's where i came in. i posted some uncomfortable questions in the comments at ITA, and not only were my comments deleted, but i was banned from commenting altogether. (eventually my commenting rights were reinstated, but the whole thing left enough of a bad taste in my mouth that i haven't much interest in reading or commenting at that site since.) i don't think he ever did give a satisfactory answer to my question. and on top of that, he repeatedly and substantially edited his post without a disclaimer noting that it had been edited, and at the time the site had a "no caching" policy that made tracking down the original content difficult. (though i believe i was eventually able to piece it together.)

now, in the end it all turned out okay: i got a link from atrios, claybourn won the coveted "wanker of the day" award, and ellsworth got elected despite such republican dirty tricks. but still... jen wagner herself wrote more than once about claybourn's role in the facebook scandal, so i'm a bit puzzled why she would want him on her new blog.

then again, that was two years ago, so i thought i should check in on ITA and see if josh has changed. what did i find? sexist attacks on hillary clinton. the repeated suggestion that there's no difference between gay marriage and incest or polygamy. a huffy post about those crazy artists these days, in which he fell for a hoax and then denied that it was a hoax after this was pointed out to him. and that's just since april. here's hoping his contributions to HPR will be minimal.

overall, i must recommend HPR, both for its daily link update and for quality analysis of indiana politics. but i'm concerned about the attempt at bipartisanship, if it means giving a larger platform to the likes of josh claybourn. time will tell how this strategy works. ¶

obama ftw

last night, barack obama won enough delegates to effectively wrap up the democratic nomination. now we go about healing the rifts of the primary.

clinton supporters are understandably upset. their candidate was treated like trash by the misogynist media, which has had it out for all things clinton since the '90s. despite all that, hillary ran a hard-fought campaign and almost pulled it off. like atrios, i'm inclined to believe that if hillary hadn't voted for the iraq war, she would've been a shoo-in. same goes for kerry: he probably could've won if not for that iraq authorization vote...

as for obama's chances in november, i'm pretty sure he has it on lock. but i understand why some clinton supporters are concerned. let's face it, after the atrocities of the bush administration, the democrats should be able to run ficus and get a landslide victory. so the fact that mccain is even polling in the double digits is hard for some to understand. but remember that all those polls were taken while the democratic primary was ongoing. while emotions are still high now, and some clinton supporters claim they won't or can't vote for obama, i'm confident that most of them will come around eventually. they just need time to heal.

wedding show advance tickets now available!

also, just added: Sir. Vixx!

advance tickets now available for $10 each! go to http://animalswithinanimals.com/wedding/ to get your tickets, or just paypal $10 per ticket to stallio@animalswithinanimals.com.

(don't forget to include your name and mailing address)¶