it didn't seem right to post anything non–colts-related yesterday, especially after that close loss at the end. but it's a new day: the day before the election.

the hot rumor circulating the blogs this weekend is true: greg ballard did not vote back in 2003. the man wants to be mayor, but four years ago he couldn't even be arsed with voting for mayor. that really shows a commitment to the city and its problems, don't you think? i guess we'll see how many of his supporters decide to emulate their hero by staying home tomorrow, and how many one-up their man and actually vote.

but let me say this, my fellow hoosiers: if you're smart enough and plugged-in enough to be reading this blog, you should definitely get out there and vote. if for no other reason, do it so that when you run for future office, future wilson allens won't be able to dig up your voting record and leak it to the press.

in other happenings...

star editor dennis ryerson printed a column about the rishawn biddle situation. there's not much new in the column; even the apparent refusal to refer to biddle by name is not new. and while it addresses complaints about biddle's firing, it does not address the most important questions. namely, rishawn's ramblings apparently did not have to go through an editor before they got posted to expresso, as other star blogs do. why not? and how much responsibility does the star share for creating the environment where rishawn could post whatever nonsense he wanted without a filter, and for hiring an editorial writer who had previously been fired for shoddy work?

also, abdul has a post titled was rishawn wrong? if anything, abdul's post demonstrates exactly what was wrong about rishawn's post, as abdul is able to make pretty much the same argument as rishawn did, but without being offensive or pulling out his thesaurus of 19th century racial slurs.

in answer to abdul's question, i again have to say yes. black politicians face far more scrutiny than white politicians do, simply because they're black. there are tons of non-black politicians in indiana who behave horribly, but people don't group them together and wonder whether, for example, white politicians in lawrence reinforce stereotypes of white people as being rich, amoral, stuck-up assholes. plus, the fact that abdul himself can off the top of his head list a half-dozen black marion-county democrats who he has no problems with suggests that there isn't anything uniquely bad about black politicians or even marion county black politicians; there are simply fewer of them than white politicians and they get far more scrutiny.

beyond that, the rishawn saga has pretty much boiled over. it did hit the AP wire and a few national blogs, but for the most part didn't get a lot of national attention, and locally everyone has gone back to talking about the election. so things could've gone a lot worse for rishawn, but he's probably not breathing any sighs of relief, either.

update: i almost forgot... i wanted to mention the parallels between what i was saying about about black politicians facing more scrutiny and the recent national discussion about whether hillary clinton "played the gender card" recently. (of course, it doesn't matter whether hillary did play such a card, only whether the media decides she did, which they apparently have. but that's an unrelated point.)

black politicians face far more scrutiny than whites, but they can't easily acknowledge this in public or they get accused of playing the race card. similarly, part of the animus against hillary clearly is that she is a female, but she can't really come out and say that without the media freaking out. read garance's tapped post about what she calls "the secondary conversation" for more. ¶

arg! i have an update to this post, but blogger refuses to publish it... at least you can view it from the comments page if you click "show orginal post"...

maybe posting this comment will break blogger out of whatever feedback loop it's apparently stuck in. ¶

I've filed complaints about Chief Greeson calling me a "bull dyke" at a public meeting. His boss (Earl Morgan) has not filed a complaint with Human Resources as is required by the city's sexual harassment policy.

Chief Greeson gets a pass from city hall to do what the city will not permit from an opinion columnist over at the Indy Star.

This is hypocrisy at its worst. And lots of people are upset about the "bull dyke" remark as well as Aaron Haith's racist remark about Abdul.

This weekend supporters at the democrats unity rally, which bussed in 100's of African American teenagers, gave Ballard supporters across the street "the finger" more than once.

I witnessed this vulgarity, as did a 7 year old girl who was there supporting Ballard with us.

Fortunately we were able to get photos of the offensive gestures. The photos are published at www.BartLies.com ¶

And by the way...there is PROOF of the "bulldyke" remark. I have a notorized witness affidavit which has been ignored by city hall.

As a citizen who takes her responsiblity to oversee my government seriously, I will not permit this to go on.

If I don't stand up FIRST for myself, then who will? I will not tolerate this behavior from public officials charged with SERVICE to the public.

I'm following the same advice given to all abused women and I'm talking and talking loudly. I won't shut up until something is done about this man and he is fired.

Should Peterson be re-elected his administration will be facing a lawsuit from me and I will do everything I can to get the lawsuit into the national media. I have not filed as of yet because I do not wish to file a frivolous lawsuit and have no intention of punishing Ballard's administration for the misdeeds of bart's. And I believe it is quite likely that Ballard will win tomorrow. ¶

so you admit your suit is frivolous.

as for a "notarized affadavit" constituting PROOF of anything... sorry, but no. that only certifies that some dude says he heard something. ¶

Thanks for staying on the Biddle story. I read Abdul's commentary, and have a question. Shouldn't there have been a standard of decorum for Rishawn Biddle in his blogs and editorials for the Star? If it is true that Biddle's blog posts and columns weren't being checked before they were posted, why was that? ¶

pila: i'm not aware if there was a specific policy in place for expresso and the other blogs (i suspect not), but here are the site's terms of service, and here are the "rules for talkback", which apply to commenters and thus presumably also to the site's bloggers. ¶

...and a mighty strange dude too who seemingly lives in a post office box in Beech Grove. Kinda makes one wonder what he's trying to conceal... ¶

No, I admit that filing suit right now with no intention of carrying it forward against Ballard's administration would be elected is frivilous.


I'm waiting to see if Peterson stays in office....THEN I'm filing suit, so as to make sure it is not frivilous.

The last thing I want to do is file suit against the city and withdraw it once Ballard is in office. ¶

What? No comment about the vulgarity of the Peterson rally attendees who are documented giving the finger to Ballard supporters including a young girl?

I suppose that is ok too! Talk about hypocrisy! ¶

if you're only filing suit to "punish" peterson, and are not interested in filing if ballard wins, then your suit is frivolous by definition. ¶

Nobody has mentioned that Melyssa's little rally looked like Klan meeting without the hoods. Lily white! Not a single person of color - Bart's crowd was about 50/50. The county is about 1/3 non-white but Melyssa had her little "white power rally"...

The party of Abraham Lincoln is now an abomination and anathema to 90% of the descendants of the freed slaves. Tragic! ¶

"I've filed complaints about Chief Greeson calling me a "bull dyke" at a public meeting. His boss (Earl Morgan) has not filed a complaint with Human Resources as is required by the city's sexual harassment policy."

That policy, not to mention Human Resources, are for city employees and you are not one of those, thank goodness. You don't have any ground for suit and you are not fooling anyone.

You may or may not be a bulldyke, but you sure the heck are one hateful ball of spite. ¶

Actually you are WRONG. Peterson told me at the Light of the World church that the city's harassment policy exists also to protect citizens from harassment by city employees (and that would include Chief Greeson). Google Melyssa Donaghy vs. Bart Peterson to watch the YOU TUBE of Peterson stating it.

I do have grounds for a lawsuit. However there is no reason to go forward with it now since Ballard's administration did not slander, libel, or sexually harass me.

The offending persons within city government will be gone soon enough. People like Kobi Wright and Chief Greeson will undoubtedly lose their jobs.

I take a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that I was instrumental in bringing much public awareness to the arrogance and lies within Peterson's administration. It wasn't just the tax crisis, but the pea shakes, the crime, abandoned houses, corruption, city contracts...etc. The activists brought more attention to these matters via our carefully planned protests and rallies.

Peterson lost because he made a whole lot of people mad. I harnessed the anger via their property tax bills and the COIT increase and made it clear that the taxpayers were not going to go away until changes were made.

There was a central group of us that met regularly and plotted our strategy to get people elected that we can trust to have open and accountable government. You would be surprised if you knew who we all are. Some of us you would never see at a protest. And it worked.

I'm grateful our city has a fresh start with someone that is worthy of the public's trust.

And St. Allio....Greg is really accessible, especially before the election. You could have met him easily because he was always out and about. You didn't get out and try. It would have been cool if you got to know him and wrote an opinion based on talking with him. He would have loved that!


Don't expect things to be perfect when he takes over. I suspect the city's health is far worse than what we know. Bart's government was not very open to the people. If you don't believe me, just look at what lengths he went to shut people out of that city council meeting. ¶