Honda Win Bigger Than Expected

The new Honda plant in Greensburg officially announced this morning is much larger than originally expected according to the Star's Norm Heikens. The plant will employ 2,000 new workers, instead of the original 1,500 projected. Also, the cost to build the new plant will be $550 million, up from the $400 million figure originally announced. It is expected to take 24 months to build the plant which will produce Honda's 4-cylinder car (likely the Civic), with production to begin by 2008.

So how much will taxpayers expend to lure the Honda plant? Heikins writes, "Government will kick in at least $85.5 million in incentives to the project. That includes money for wastewater treatment and new or expanded roads. He adds, "Another $56 million will go to regional improvements including an upgrade of the I-74 interchange." Heikins also reports that the financial impact of the plant in the regional economy is expected to be $1.5 billion.

Some of you wondered how Indiana Democrats would react. They are applauding the announcement according to the Star's Mary Beth Schneider who writes:

Indiana Democrats applauded the news Tuesday but weren't about to give Daniels much credit for it."It's great news for Indiana," said Mike Edmondson, the party's executive director. "Certainly, everybody is excited about the prospect of new jobs. That doesn't change the fact that the state is lagging behind the national economy, and he has no substantial strategy to turn that around. And it doesn't change the fact that the governor refused to listen to the people of Indiana (on the Toll Road lease and other issues)."

With the economic infusion from this project and the kick-off of the Major Moves program, Indiana's economy may soon begin a significant uptick. Let's hope anyway.

The Word Not Happy With "Would Jesus Discriminate?" Campaign

While many in the Indiana GLBT community have welcomed the recent "Would Jesus Discriminate?" Campaign--part of a nationwide effort to end religion-based discrimination, Indiana's largest GLBT publication, The Word, is not. In its July edition the newspaper editorializes against the manner in which the Jesus MCC, one of the midwest's largest GLBT churches, is conducting the campaign. The newspaper complains of church members placing the "Would Jesus Discriminate" signs in public rights of way, which is against the law, throughout the Indianapolis area, as well as its perceived intolerance of the church towards others' points of view. The Word writes:

So what gives with the MCC Church and their recent anti-homophobia campaign? Church volunteers posted signs in public rights of way and then screamed discrimination when towns and cities rightfully asked that they be removed as they would any other illegal postings. And, we’re told by at least one source, church leaders were reminded in advance that such postings were illegal and might result in a backlash, but they went forward anyway.

While this newspaper does not and never would support discrimination, we find the MCC’s double-standard difficult to deal with, but somewhat sadly, we feel, typical of a church which we feel in many ways is as intolerant of others’ points of view as many they criticise for being inflexible and unresponsive to gay and lesbian needs.

The Word seems as much or more concerned about the manner in which Jesus MCC attempts to bring folks over to its side and its efforts to speak for the GLBT community as a whole as it does its illegal placement of yard signs in public rights of way. Illustrative of this The Word explains is:

. . . from witnessing and attempts at proslytizing by church members to those who are happily not religious or who have chosen (or been born) into a non-Christian religion, to suggesting that some of the MCC’s leadership speak for many in the general gay and lesbian community who might not agree with parts or all of their message, especially as it relates to their brand of Christianity.

It saddens us when anyone tries to speak for us gays as a group, because just as this newspaper does not have that right, nor do we expect it, neither do any of the often self-appointed "leaders" who step forward and throw themselves in front of TV cameras and call daily newspapers pretending to talk for you and me.

As far as the current hooha and the MCC Church—nothing against their beliefs, but we feel that any attempt to convince outsiders that they speak for you or me any more than local rights groups, rabbis, or mainline Christian leadership do is wrong —regardless of whether or not they feel they have a unique relationship with a higher power.

The Word, despite its criticism, emphasizes that it "support[s] the church's message and oppose[s] any sort of homophobia."

It should be pointed out that, while locally people associate the "Would Jesus Discriminate?" campaign with Jesus MCC, the campaign is actually the brainchild of Mitch Gold, a North Carolina furniture maker who is Jewish. He founded the "Faith In America" campaign to help educate the country about the harm brought about by religion-based bigotry against the GLBT community based upon fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible by relating past efforts using similar Biblical pleas to discriminate against African-Americans, women, Jews and other minority groups.

UPDATE: After posting this item, AI noticed that the Faith In America website used our June 15, 2006 post on the Jesus MCC Town Hall Meeting verbatim on its press room site. AI doesn't object to their use of it, but it would have been nice if the organization had asked first and then attributed it to AI rather than commit a copyright violation.

Daniels Scores Big With Honda Win

A late afternoon Star report quoting the Columbus Dispatch reports that Indiana's Greensburg site has been chosen for the new Honda plant. The $400 million factory will provide 1,500 good-paying jobs to Hoosiers. What a way for Gov. Mitch Daniels to top off his trade mission to Asia. This is a big win for the Governor and the state of Indiana.

Irsay Let Off The Hook For Hit and Run

First, the Marion Co. Prosecutor's office let Nancy Irsay slide on a very serious driving while under the influence case, now comes word that the Hamilton Co. Prosecutor's office is letting her off the hook altogether for a charge of leaving the scene of an accident. Irsay's case was being prosecuted by deputy prosecutor Barb Trathen so Irsay went out and hired Scott Newman, who doesn't even practice criminal defense work anymore but used to be Trathen's boss and wahlah, the charges are dropped. The Star's James Gillaspy writes:

Despite her incriminating statements after a car crash in November, Nancy Irsay will not be punished for leaving the scene of the accident.

Hamilton County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Barbara J. Trathen has dropped the case against the widow of former Indianapolis Colts owner Robert Irsay. Trathen sought the dismissal after reviewing legal arguments by defense attorneys Eric J. Benner and Scott C. Newman, a new member of Irsay’s legal team and Trathen’s boss when he was Marion County prosecutor and she was one of his deputies.

Irsay, 55, was charged with leaving the scene of the accident at her home on Nov. 8, 2005. Carmel police sent to the 1300 block of W. 116th Street had found her BMW sport utility vehicle at the end of the driveway. Its bumper had been torn off when it entered the roadway and hit a passing truck about 2 p.m.

Initially, Carmel police said, a man in Irsay's employ claimed to have been driving the BMW. About an hour after their arrival, after witnesses had told investigators that a woman was driving, investigators located Irsay and began to question her.

Irsay, who was facing a pending drunken-driving prosecution in Marion County, admitted that she was the driver only after one officer told her that her driver’s license was valid. She said then she would not have left the accident scene if she had known her license was valid, prosecuting and defense attorneys agree.

Benner and Newman claimed Irsay’s admissions are inadmissable, however. They contend the statements were solicited in violation of her Fifth Amendment defense against self-incrimination and before being advised of her Miranda rights as a suspect entitled to legal counsel and a warning that anything she said could be used against her.Defense attorneys also argued that the case should be dismissed because there was no damage to the truck that would require Irsay to remain at the scene, and because her driveway was part of the scene.

Now let's get this straight. There were eyewitness accounts of Irsay hitting the truck while behind the wheel of her BMW, and then leaving the scene of the accident. Why do you even need her own admissions to prosecute her when you have eyewitness evidence from others that she committed the crime? Note that both Trathen and her boss, Prosecutor Sonia Leerkamp, were out of town and unavailable for comment. And who said our criminal justice system isn't fair?

Don Marsh Doesn't Like Downtown Indy

The Star's business writer Madhusmita Bora tells us that Don Marsh, CEO of Marsh Supermarkets, gave his employees a pep talk on Monday to assure them that things aren't as bad as they look, and that the grocery store chain is still in business. "We have great stores, outstanding employees and a fine reputation, and we intend to go forward as planned," Marsh is quoted as saying.

AI has some advice for Marsh. Take some time away from all the sporting events and trips on your private jet to tour your downtown store--that would be the O'Malia's in Lockerbie you purchased from the O'Malia family a few years back and quickly turned into a run-down, roadside stand. You might start with a thorough cleaning of the place. To be blunt, it's dirty and the stench of spoiled milk in the dairy section is enough to keel anyone over.

As for the "fresh produce" you're trying to pawn off on us, the gig is up. The store has obviously become the dumping ground for any produce you wouldn't dare put out in your Marsh brand stores because of the nose-turning reaction any discerning shopper would give to such aged and unappealing fruits and vegetables. And as for the eggs, there's a reason the government requires them to be dated. Imagine my reaction when I once discovered that not one of the egg cartons was date stamped. Your store manager wisely pulled all of the cartons from the shelf when I complained to him. Also, try offering milk that doesn't expire within a day or two of its purchase.

The bakery and deli were the best features of the old O'Malia's store, but you closed the O'Malia's bakery and now offer your customers an assortment of "nothing fresh-baked" and a variety of unappealing deli dishes. The only section of the store that lives up to the O'Malia's name is the meat department. And those butchers back there are none too happy with what you've done to their store. Just ask them if you doubt me. For that matter, ask any employee who is still working there from the good ole days and you'll get the same answer: "This store sucks!"

Downtown residents can only hope that new development plans underway on the north end of Massachusetts Avenue will bring some much-needed competition to your pathetic store. And the same goes for the Kroger store at 16th & College. In case the people running Kroger haven't figured it out yet, your store is now surrounded by half-million dollars homes, not the ghetto. Get a clue.

Roberts And Alito Align With Conservatives In Death Penalty Case

The death penalty case of Kansas v. Marsh decided by a 5-4 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court today provided an excellent test to learn where Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito would place themselves ideologically on matters of criminal justice. In today's decision narrowly upholding Kansas' death penalty statute, Roberts and Alito came down squarely on the side of the Court's most conservative members, flanked by Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the opinion, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.

This was not a case about the constitutionality of the death penalty in general as a cruel and unusual form of punishment. Instead, the Court examined a unique provision in Kansas' death penalty statute which compels a jury to sentence a defendant to death if the mitigating circumstances do not outweigh the aggravating circumtances. Thus, if a jury determined that the mitigating and aggravating circumstances were equal, it would nonetheless be commanded to impose the death penalty. The Kansas Supreme Court concluded that the statute's weighing equation violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution because, "[i]n the event of equipoise, i.e., the jury's determination that the balance of any aggravating circumstances and any mitigating circumstances weighed equal, the death penalty would be required."

The defendant argued that "an equipoise determination reflects juror confusion or inability to decide between life and death or that the jury may use equipoise as a loophole to shirk its constitutional duty to render a reasoned, moral sentencing decision rest on an implausible characterization of the Kansas statute--that a jury's determination that aggravators and mitigators are in equipoise is not a decision, much less a decision for death. Justice Thomas disagreed writing, "Weighing is not an end, but a means to reaching a decision. Kansas' instructions clearly inform the jury that a determination that the evidence is in equipoise is a decision for death."

Justice David Souter's dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Stevens, dismisses the idea of a tie-breaker in favor of the death penalty as an absurdity. His opposition to the majority's position is best summarized in this paragraph:

In Kansas, when a jury applies the State's own standards of relative culpability and cannot decide that a defendant is among the most culpable, the state law says that equivocal evidence is good enough and the defendant must die. A law that requires execution when the case for aggravation has failed to convince the sentencing jury is morally absurd, and the Court's holding that the Constitution tolerates this moral irrationality defies decades of precedent aimed at eliminating freakish capital sentencing in the United States.

Souter pointed to the experience with the death penalty in Illinois, noting that the state had actually released more death row prisoners because they were later determined to be innocent than the actual number of death row prisoners executed. He writes:

When the Governor of Illinois imposed a moratorium on executions in 2000, 13 prisoners under death sentences had been released since 1977 after a number of them were shown to be innocent, as described in a report which used their examples to illustrate a theme common to all 13, of "relatively little solid evidence connecting the charged defendants to the crimes." (citations omitted) During the same period, 12 condemned convicts had been executed. Subsequently the Governor determined that 4 more death row inmates were innocent. (citations omitted) Illinois had thus wrongly convicted and condemned even more capital defendants than it had executed, but it may well not have been otherwise unique; one recent study reports that between 1989 and 2003, 74 American prisoners condemned to death were exonerated. (citations omitted)

Commentators are already speculating that the Court would have swung the other way narrowly had Justice Sandra Day O'Connor still been on the Court instead of Justice Alito. The Court actually re-heard arguments in this case so that Justice Alito could participate in the decision. You don't have to be an opponent of the death penalty to find fault with the majority's decision today. It seems that a jury should be convinced that the aggravating circumstances exceed the mitigating circumstances, not merely equal them, before a death sentence is compelled. If a majority of the Supreme Court justices have not detected there are iniquities in the criminal jutice system because of the uneven hand in which the death penalty is being applied across the country in capital murder cases, then they are completely out of touch with reality. By their ruling today, they have given a green light to more injustice and, in the words of Justice Souter, more "freakish capital sentencing."

More Extremism From Drozda

Tucked inside of Mary Beth Schneider's wrap-up on new laws taking effect on July 1 in today's Star is more information about Sen. Jeff Drozda's extremist legislative plans for next year. You may recall that Sen. Drozda earlier announced his plan to introduce legislation to ban same-sex couples from adopting or fostering children. Now he plans to provide a different form of criminal justice for sexual offenders than other criminal offenders. Schneider writes:

This year's barrage of laws affecting sexual offenders are just the beginning, said Sen. Jeff Drozda, R-Westfield.

Next year, he said, he will seek legislation eliminating the "good time credit," for which offenders get one day off their sentences for every day of good behavior behind bars. He wants a mandatory minimum sentence of five to eight years in prison, depending on the crime, for people convicted of child solicitation or exploitation and those who possess child pornography.

Keep in mind that the legislature just enacted two new laws cracking down on sexual offenders. Violent sexual offenders will now be electronically tracked for the rest of their lives. Additionally, some sexual offenders will be barred from living within 1,000 feet of a school, park or youth center and from working or volunteering at those and other places that attract children. They can be charged with a felony if they violate this latter law.

Fundamental notions of due process and equal protection are constitutional principles extremists like Drozda are all too willing to discard in an effort to politicize the criminal justice system. Sexual offenders deserve punishment for their crimes, but no less or no more than persons convicted of comparable crimes.

Star Continues To Protect Realtors

The Star does a wrap-up of new laws taking effect on July 1. The story by Mary Beth Schneider tells us for the umpteenth time that Indiana now has a "In God We Trust" special license plate. Gun owners will now be able to get life-time permits she tells us. If you're riding in a funeral procession, you will no longer have to fasten your child in a car or booster seat. And, if you're a physician, you can tell your patient you're sorry when you screw up without having your apology used against you in a malpractice lawsuit.

There is also another new law the Star isn't telling you about. If you're a discount real estate broker, you're out of business under a new law passed to protect traditional real estate brokers. As AI told you yesterday, Home Yeah has already closed up shop because of the new anti-competition law. The only MSM news publication to date to cover the new law is the Courier-Journal, which is an out-of-state newsaper. Go figure.

Newspaper Reporter Suspended For Pride Parade Participation

The Washington Blade is reporting today that a long-time columnist for the Allentown Morning Call was suspended after he served as grand marshal for a Pride parade. The Morning Call is owned by The Tribune Company. The Blade writes:

Frank Whelan, who is gay, said he was suspended for two days without pay over what the newspaper called a violation of its ethics policy, which prohibits employees from publicly associating themselves with causes.

Whelan, who has not worked since the parade, said he is planning to file a civil rights lawsuit against the paper and pursue the matter with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces laws against workplace discrimination.

"I was naive enough to believe the Morning Call would be happy (for me) because they are always talking about how they believe in diversity," he said.

Morning Call spokeswoman Vicki C. Mayk said Whelan violated the paper's code of ethics by marching in the Pride in the Park parade in Allentown on June 17. The ethics policy prohibits employees from participating in "public demonstrations in favor of or in opposition to a cause." She pointed out that a news release issued by the parade's organizer, Pride of the Greater Lehigh Valley, stated that Whelan and his partner, Bob Wittman, were selected as grand marshals in part to highlight the need for "marriage equality."

"We felt that clearly tied his participation to an issue," Mayk said.

A Gay Pride event is no different than any other ethnic event. Applying the Morning Call's standard, an African-American journalist in Indianapolis could be disciplined for participating in Indiana Black Expo, which promotes equal opportunities for African-Americans. During Indy's recent Pride Festival, a gay news reporter for one of Indianapolis' local television stations stopped by my booth to say hello but would not sign a petition opposing legislative efforts to ban same-sex couple adoptions. He cited a similar ethics policy of his employer as the reason he could not sign the petition, which was understandable since he is a news reporter.

In Whelan's case, however, he worked as a columnist for the newspaper, not as a reporter. Columnists express their personal viewpoints each time they write a column, making the policy problemmatic. Does it mean that Whelan could write a column sympathetic to gay marriage, but still run afoul of it by participating in an event which officially supports gay marriage?

Interestingly, Whelan's EEOC complaint is based on age discrimination. He says he was among dozens of employees offered early retirement last fall but turned it down. He believes his parade participation is being used as a pretext for getting rid of him because of his age. The newspaper's owners seem to be somewhat duplicitous on this issue. The Tribune Company's Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV regularly sponsor floats in Chicago's Gay Pride Parade, which took place today. Today was no different, both had floats in today's parade. George Takei, who played Sulu on Star Trek, served as the parade's grand marshal, and the theme for this year's event was "Pride, Not Prejudice." How ironic.