For me the hour was late. 9:00 p.m. is when I usually pass into the arms of Morpheus. I get up at 4:40 a.m.

   Someone knocked at my door. I live in a big city and, therefore, with Indy’s cutbacks on safety, I was apprehensive. I saw a short man, oddly dressed in the fashion of the early Twentieth Century. He looked familiar. In one hand he held an umbrella. In the other hand he held an unlit cigar. He rapped again at the door, with the handle (now I saw) of the umbrella. I asked him…

   The contract Mayor Ballard entered into a contract with Vision Fleet has garnered attention from the media of communications and news coverage that seem most comprehensive in our local political goings-on these days: the local blogosphere.

   As I understand the numbers, the City would pay $35 million for 400 French-manufactured electric vehicles. Photos I have seen of the vehicles purportedly to be provided by the terms of the lease show tiny cars. I was reminded of the original…

   The people of Marion County who reside within that political entity called Indianapolis formally are on notice as to what many suspected would occur for the past several months: Greg Ballard will not seek re-election as Mayor.

   Ballard courageously announced his support for the Republican candidate for Marion County Sheriff a day or two before the election.  Now, one foot almost on the jetway for a flight to Berlin for whatever purpose on the dime of the Indianapolis taxpayers,…

   “That bastard Royko!” the voice croaked from behind me and nearly caused me to spill the beer sipped. I set down my cigar and turned around. I recognized the voice.

   The ghost of the Honorable Mayor Richard J. Daley, who ran the City of Chicago from 1955 to 1976 was an ethereal presence a few feet away.

   Hizzoner looked around the basement for a moment, then at the table, laptop, and mini-fridge, as well as the 19-inch Hitachi color TV I bought new in 1985. “You sit down…

   In Sunday’s edition of the daily newspaper of the City of Indianapolis, columnist Matthew Tully and Opinion Tim Swarens wrote “two views” about whether Mayor Gregory Ballard should seek a third term.  Tully’s side of the dueling columns—big surprise—was “Mayor should pursue another term.”

   The opposite view, written by Swarens, would be a delineation, one would infer, of the “down” side of Mayor Ballard’s first seven years as Mayor. Such an inference would have been invalid.…

   Is Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard a Kurt Russell-type character?

   In the 1980 film “Used Cars,” a used car lot owner is threatened with prosecution for false advertising after a television ad is altered, by people connected to her lot’s competitor, to claim her lot has a “mile of cars.” The movie was promoted, in part, by a photo shoot in Penthouse magazine, the box office ticket sales were mediocre, and Wikipedia tells me it has gained cult status.    Kurt Russell plays an…

   The Kokomo Tribune (pronounced, by most locals, TRIBune) was an afternoon paper. When it was delivered, my mother would grab it to read about whomever had received a speeding ticket, filed for divorce, or died. She was into gossip. That newspaper was important, to me, for its coverage of local sports and, later, the occasional photograph or item about some debate award or other thing I had received.

   For national or international—i.e., “real”—news, my old man received The…

   In the early 1960s, Indianapolis had more than one daily newspaper. Writers from the Indianapolis Times won a few Pulitzers before the paper shut down in 1965. The Indianapolis Star was a decent paper, although very conservative for my tastes. Still, the reporters covered local stories well, and tried to act as a check on local corruption and local politicians. The sports section was pretty good, too.  On Sundays that section was thick with good coverage of major sports and, each May, the…

   Sorry, Mayor Gregory "I've Never Met a Tax Raise I Couldn't Okay or a Well-connected Donor I Couldn't Benefit" Ballard and his coterie of campaign contributors will not be on Civil Discourse Now. Instead, two guests today have studied the cronyism that is YOUR Indianapolis city political system for several years.

   Pat Andrews, who blogs at “Had Enough Indy?” and Gary Welsh, of “Advance Indiana” will be our guests when we stream live today from The Sinking Ship, 4923 North…

   I was wakened about 3 a.m. The voice came from the kitchen. I rose, closed the bedroom door quietly behind me, and started to reach for the wall switch. Simultaneously I noticed a strange glow of sufficient strength to find my way, and a voice hiss, “Lights stay out.”

   The latter annoyed me. “This is my house.”

   “Not while Hizzoner’s in it, it ain’t,” the voice hissed in a familiar accent.

   In May I wrote about a seance I had arranged. With corruption so rife in…

   Apparently Mayor Ballard, before he leaves office, wants to commit Indianapolis to as many long-term leases—if he cannot sell City assets cheap—as possible. His latest contract is with a New Jersey waste management corporation—we neither make these things up nor need to make them up. Okay, so the fictional Tony Soprano ran a waste management company in “The Sopranos.” Tony was an environmental sort of guy.

   The pitch of Covanta, the company in question, is that they turn waste into…

   The column was below the fold, but still on page one of Sunday’s edition of what was a fairly good newspaper.  The Indianapolis Star consists of a lot of ads (to make money in a time when many people read the stories the day before on the internet the paper prints the next day; such is technology), sections provided by McNew a/k/a USA Today, a few good articles, and, well, the rest.

   Matthew Tully did not disappoint (if one anticipated he would provide his usual contribution to “the…

   Indianapolis needs a new building for its courts, jail, and police.

   The Ballard administration has floated an idea. The City pays for construction, then hands over the keys to a foreign conglomerate and pays rent to that new landlord.

   Wait—why would be build a structure, give the structure away (i.e., “sell” it for an absurdly low price), and pay rent to the entity to which it was given?

   Here are possible reasons:

   1) The entity that will charge rent and make…

   "Civil Discourse Now" was scheduled to stream live this morning from the Athanaeum, downtown. Unfortunately, weather forecasters overlooked a storm front. A lot more snow was dropped on Indianapolis than predicted, and the folks at the Athenaeum will not open until later in the day. Consequently, we will stream live from our good old "undisclosed" location, from 11 am to 1 pm. Gary Welsh will be our guest panelist, if he can manage to navigate his Bradley Armored Personnel Carrier through…

   Snow storms happen in Indiana. People whom we elect to political offices, such as mayors whose duties (unlike legislators' jobs) include hands-on response to such events, should be prepared to respond. Mayor Hudnut was there in the 1978 blizzard. In the 1970s, Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic lost office largely due to his inept response to inclement winter weather. 

   The response of Indianapolis city government to the snow with which we were hit over a month ago was poor. Streets…

   Busts of four former mayors of Indianapolis---all elected since Unigov was enacted (the "whys" of Unigov are for a later blog)---stand on simple posts on the South side of the East wing hallway of the first floor of the City-County Building, not far from the elevators for the Circuit and Superior Courts. The heads of Richard Lugar, William Hudnut, Stephen Goldsmith and Bart Peterson are arrayed in chronological order, left-to-right, as they harmoniously face the same direction. The busts…

Dear Mayor Ballard:

   How are you? I know you have been busy, what with the new cricket field proposal (and, to be fair, games to be included on the schedule there would include hurling and Australian rules football; I always wanted to be one of the guys in the white hats and raincoats in the end zone who wave the little flags in Australian rules football---I watched it back when ESPN first started and had nothing with which to program between real games). Your travel schedule must…

   A few days ago I blogged about Greg Ballard's "legal corruption." The point was that so many actions of his administration that reek of "corruption," as defined in The American College Dictionary, are not illegal. For example, out in the open and in front of everybody, he awarded a sweet deal to a big campaign contributor on the Broad Ripple parking garage. If there was no money under the table, only money out there contributed consistently with applicable campaign laws, and Mayor Ballard…

   In 1787, the Framers met in Philadelphia to draft what became the Constitution of the United States. We should get a couple of things straight about the Constitution.

   Only 36 delegates signed the final product. Three other delegates present on that day abstained. A total of 55 men attended the Convention, at one time or another, during that summer. There were some men, chosen as delegates, who refused to attend. Perhaps most famously, Patrick Henry said he would not attend…

   I take a break from this week's series about how the internet has affected writing and publishing to comment on Senate Bill 621, a legislative effort that largely would remove "checks and balances"---important concepts to the Framers of the United States Constitution as well as every civics textbook, American history lesson, college intro to poly sci courses, etc.---from the operations of the Mayor of the City of Indianapolis.

   Why would Republican Mayor Greg Ballard, who seems…