Public Safety Director Stumbles Badly In First Major Decision

Public Safety Director Troy Riggs has been on the job for less than two months, and he's already made a serious blunder in agreeing to name Rick Hite, the interim IMPD chief foisted on the City by his incompetent and egotistical predecessor, Frank Straub, as the City's new police chief. Hite possessed absolutely no qualifications for a high-ranking police officer position when Straub named Hite as interim chief after firing Chief Paul Ciesielski over serious differences with Straub's maniacal and erratic management style. Although Hite worked for the Baltimore Police Department for many years, he lacked formal training required to be a certified police officer in Indiana. Most of his work at the Baltimore Police Department was not related to work as a police officer. He had worked on the security detail of the mayor and later worked on a program intended to stop inner city teens from joining gangs. It was only after Straub had already named Hite as interim chief that it was discovered that he lacked the credentials of a certified law enforcement officer required to hold the position. Before being named to the post, Hite had been working at the the Department of Public Safety in a position newly-created, Deputy Director for Training and Strategic Initiatives, one of a number of new positions created by Straub during his tumultuous tenure. Hite was required to spend months in training and exam-taking to become certified after his initial appointment as interim chief last spring--still requiring a waiver from the more formal training requirements other officers on the force are required to undertake.

News of Hite's announcement comes as a Foxt 59 News report informs us that Ciesielski testified in a recent deposition that he blamed Straub for the demotion of three high-ranking officers in the wake of the Officer David Bisard fatal alcohol-related crash that killed one motorcyclist, Eric Wells, and critically injured two other persons. Straub had ordered Ciesielski to summon Darryl Pierce, John Conley and Ron Hicks, who had just arrived at the scene of the fatal accident, to return back to IMPD headquarters for a meeting to discuss Straub's public image problems. The three former high-ranking officers have filed a lawsuit against the City claiming they were defamed as a consequence of their demotions and public statements made by Straub at the time, which gave the appearance the three had engaged in a cover-up of Bisard's state of intoxication at the time of the accident, a fact that did not become known to them until blood test results came back days later. Straub insisted on scapegoating the three high-ranking officers knowing full well that he had ordered them to drop their work at the investigation scene to return to headquarters for the meeting with him and Ciesielski.

"He was not happy,” Ciesielski said of Straub once he learned of the blood test results. “He was upset and very concerned about how, you know, we were going to handle this in the media.” Ciesielski said in his deposition that he believed Straub wanted the men demoted to bolster his own image. At the time of their demotions, Straub faulted the officers for failing to “report . .  their information up the chain and kept senior officials above them better informed.” Ciesielski said he did not believe Straub's statement to be true. Ciesielski said Straub forced him to send a department-wide e-mail critical of the officers for having "failed in their leadership." In fact, no investigation had been undertaken to determine that the three men had failed in their leadership before Straub made the unilateral decision to demote the officers. By installing Hite to the role of IMPD Chief, the new public safety director is simply perpetuating the negative legacy left behind by Straub. Riggs could have started with a clean slate and hired someone competent to handle the top police post, but he has instead demonstrated poor judgment in entrusting this important job to someone the vast majority of the rank-and-file police officers know is not remotely up to the task of performing.

Wow! Obama Really Did Want To Do In General Petraeus

There's a lot of buzz about a scoop the Washington Post's Bob Woodward got on an interview Fox News analyst and former Pentagon aide under three Republican presidents, Kathleen McFarland, had with Gen. David Petraeus in Kabul back in 2011 as his command there was winding down. The focus of Woodward's and other mainstream media reports has been on a message Fox News President Roger Ailes had supposedly asked to be delivered to Petraeus encouraging him to jump in the Republican presidential race and even offering to leave his post at Fox News to run his campaign. McFarland even suggested to Petraeus that Rupert Murdoch would help bankroll his campaign. None of it made much sense and Ailes is laughing it off as a joke. "It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have,” Ailes said. “I thought the Republican field [in the primaries] needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate.” What's unclear is why McFarland turned over a digital recording of their interview, which Petraeus cleared with her on several occasions was off-the-record, to Bob Woodward.

The major point missed in the mainstream media was a discussion McFarland had with Petraeus about the Obama administration's feelings toward him. McFarland shared with Petraeus the gossip she was hearing that Obama was concerned that Petraeus might be interested in jumping into the 2012 Republican presidential race or four years later in 2016. McFarland shared with Petraeus that Obama's folks wanted to make sure that didn't happen and were making calculations about what they could do to keep Petraeus out of either the 2012 or 2016 presidential races. Interestingly, according to the gossip McFarland had picked up on, the Obama folks were equally concerned about 2016 when it would be critical to win a third term. Of course, constitutionally Obama is barred from seeking a third term. Presumably she meant getting someone of like mind to succeed him in order to continue his agenda for another four years to lock up an entire generation of Obama rule, but with Obama's dictatorial and anti-democratic views, anything is possible I suppose. He did, after all, manage to get elected despite not being a natural born citizen as required by the Constitution and campaigning on a patently false biographical narrative--a first in American presidential politics.

Petraeus made it clear to McFarland he wasn't interested in running for president, although he clearly was flattered by the talk from the tone in his voice. "My wife would divorce me," he said. "And I love my wife." McFarland at one point during the interview sought to ingratiate him further with an offering of how “everybody at Fox loves you.” Petraeus said he would gladly settle for the role of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or as CIA Director. As he explained, he expected the military to be "retrenching" considerably in the near future, and the real area of expansion would be in intelligence gathering--a "growth industry" as he put it. He said he had a great deal of respect for the people who worked at the CIA, describing them as "unsung heroes." Petraeus candidly told McFarland he was surprised by Obama's interventionist approach in Libya and did not anticipate further interventions elsewhere, perhaps offering a hint of his views on not only the Obama administration's meddling in Libya, but also its current role in efforts to overthrow the Syrian government and escalating threats of a military strike against Iran. To hear McFarland convey the gossip of what was going on in the heads at the White House, the administration was more than happy to pigeon-hole Petraeus at the CIA in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind role that would minimize his political threat to Obama.

McFarland's eye-opening interview with Petraeus makes me more curious about the real role of a White House attorney temporarily assigned to work in Afghanistan as a civilian attorney. When Tampa Bay socialite Jill Kelley was exposed for her role in triggering the investigation of Petraeus' extramarital relationship with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, it was revealed that Kelley had made three trips to the White House in the days and weeks prior to the November election and Petreaus' ouster as CIA Director following public disclosure of the affair two days after the election. A White House attorney who had worked as a civilian attorney in Afghanistan and had been introduced to Kelley by high-ranking military officials at MacDill Air Force Bases had reportedly arranged for her visits to the White House. My research uncovered only one attorney on the White House counsel's staff who had worked in Afghanistan during the period of time Petraeus was still commanding our troops there--Michael Gottlieb. According to a speech Gottlieb delivered to graduates of Northwestern University's School of Communications earlier this year, he had been asked by a brigadier general in the Army, who was in charge of detainees in Afghanistan, to come to work for him there. It turns out that a Harvard classmate of Obama, Mark Martins, happened to be the brigadier Army general who served in that role in Afghanistan during Gottlieb's assignment there.

If McFarland's gossip about the Obama administration's concern on the perceived threat posed to Obama by Petraeus, it makes one wonder if there wasn't an ulterior motive to dispatch a White House attorney to Kabul to keep a closer eye on Petreaus. Appointing Petraeus as CIA Director in 2011 took care of Obama's perceived threat in 2012. Exposing his relationship with Paula Broadwell took care of his political ambitions for 2016 and beyond. It still boggles my mind to think that McFarland breached her confidence with Petraeus by not only discussing the content of her off-the-record conversation with Petraeus, but giving a digital copy of her recorded interview to Bob Woodward. Woodward doesn't state in his story that he got the digital recording from her, but I can't imagine he obtained the recording from the only other person in the room--Gen. Petraeus. Other news reports suggest Petraeus had no idea McFarland was recording the interview.

UPDATE: McFarland now claims she did not record the interview and does not know how a recording of her interview with Petraeus made it into the hands of Woodward. She says there were two other people in the room in addition to her and Petraeus:

I realize conspiracy theorists have used this off-the-record interview to claim it was some plot to put Petraeus in the Oval Office. But it was little more than one defense analyst (me) trading some political gossip and laughs with one of the country’s most important military leaders(Petraeus). 

Perhaps those same conspiracy theorists should ask themselves some different questions. Why was an audiotape created of what was supposed to be an off-the-record interview with just four people in the room, which General Petraeus himself said several times was off the record? I certainly saw no recording device, nor did I give my permission for the interview to be taped. So who taped the interview? Why did they keep it hidden away for the last 18 months? Why was it released at this time to a Washington Post reporter? That is surely more interesting than two people, neither of them politicians, joking around about the presidential campaign. Indeed, this is why they call it the silly season.

Was Paula Broadwell in the room? Did she make a recording and release it to Woodward? Or did the FBI seize the recording during its search of Broadwell's home and computer where reports indicate she was found to be in possession of classified documents and now someone at the agency or within the Obama administration is releasing it to further discredit Petraeus and Fox News?

Tab For Chicago's Dispute With Parking Meter Vendor Tops $60 Milllion

The financial albatross former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley hung around the necks of his successors for 75 years after entering into a one-sided privatization agreement for the city's parking meter assets has worsened. Chicago Parking Meters, LLC is now seeking payments totalling $61 million from the City for parking revenues it claims it lost due to street closings for street repairs and festivals and free parking provided to disabled drivers. In 2008, Chicago received a one-time payment of $1.15 billion in consideration for a 75-year lease that gives the parking meter vendor control of the city's 35,000 metered spaces and all revenues derived therefrom. The bills for out-of-use parking spaces didn't kick in until Daley left office in 2011 after the entire $1.15 billion payment had been spent for current obligations. Daley now works for the law firm which represented the private vendor in the one-sided agreement. Based on the size of the bills submitted to date by the private vendor, it would have been necessary for the City to set aside the entire upfront payment received from the private vendor in an interest-bearing investment in order to have sufficient revenues to cover payments for out-of-use parking spaces.

Indianapolis entered into a 50-year lease agreement with a private consortium headed up by ACS that provided only a $20 million upfront payment to the City, although the City receives a small percentage of the revenues the private vendor collects from parking fees that have more than doubled and expanded hours of operations for spaces subject to metered rates since the privatization deal became effective. Ballard gave nearly one-third, or $6.5 million, to Ersal Ozdemir, one of his largest campaign contributors, to build a new parking garage in Broad Ripple that allows him to retain all of the revenues. To date, the City has been less than transparent in providing financial data on the parking meter deal with the private vendor, including how much the City is paying to the private vendor for parking meter spaces that are out of use due to street construction or special events. Numerous news reports have documented complaints from motorists, who claim they are being fraudulently handed out $20 parking fines by the private vendor for expired meters despite still having time on the meter. Mayor Greg Ballard recently vetoed a proposed ordinance that would have barred the private vendor from handing out more than one parking ticket to a motorist for an expired meter on the same day after motorists complained about receiving three to four $20 fines for the same expired parking meter offense.

Eleven Apply For Marion County Judicial Vacancy

A vacancy on the Marion County Superior Court was created following the appointment of Judge Robyn Moberly as a federal bankruptcy judge for the Southern District of Indiana. Eleven applicants filed applications with the office of Gov. Mitch Daniels by Friday's deadline, including one former judge, Gary Miller, and one current judge, Carol Orbison, who both were dumped during controversial slating sessions conducted by the Marion County Republican Party. Orbison's term on the bench will end at year's end. Fellow blogger Paul Ogden, an unsuccessful, non-slated candidate for judge during this year's May primary is among the applicants. Gov. Daniels, who fills vacancies on the court, has criticized the Republican and Democratic Parties' practice of handpicking Marion Co. judges in backroom meetings where candidates are typically nominated without respect to their qualifications and only after the candidates pay slating fees to their respective party in excess of $10,000 in exchange for being endorsed for a judicial slot. The system is viewed as being one of the most corrupt systems for picking judges in the United States. Per the Indiana Law Blog, here is the complete list of applicants:

Gary L. Miller
Steven J. Rubick
Paul K. Ogden
Curtis J. Foulks
Jeffrey M. Gill
Patrick J. Dietrick
Maura J. Hoff
Stanley E. Kroh
Tiffany U. Vivo
Gary W. Bippus
Carol J. Orbison

Daley Nephew Finally Brought To Justice: Sun-Times Gets The Credit

David Koschman

Under relentless pressure and good-ole fashioned investigative journalism by reporters for the Chicago Sun-Times, the thug nephew of former Mayor Richard Daley is finally being brought to justice for killing 21-year old David Koschman during a drunken street brawl that happened more than 8 years ago. Former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, appointed as a special prosecutor to re-open the case long ago closed, has charged Richard Vanecko with a charge of involuntary manslaughter. Both men had been drinking on Rush Street with their respective group of friends when a street confrontation between the 6'3", 230-pound Vanecko and the 5'5", 125-pound Koschman ended with Koschman laying on the sidewalk suffering from a severe, irreversible head injury after Vanecko allegedly struck and knocked Koshman to the ground. He died in a Chicago hospital with his mother at his side days later.

The Sun-Times took up the cause of Koschman's mother, Nanci, who publicly championed the need for justice in her son's death, with the noble work and backing of its reporters. Former State's Attorney Richard Devine, who succeeded Richard Daley as the county's top prosecutor, first and Devine's successor, Anita Alvarez, later, had both repeatedly declined to investigate the case. A lengthy investigative series by the Sun-Times into Koschman's death pressured a Cook County judge to order the appointment of a special prosecutor to consider criminal charges in the case based on new evidence uncovered by the Sun-Times, which showed that police and prosecutors had actively ignored evidence and otherwise obstructed the investigation to protect Daley's nephew. In announcing today's indictment, Webb said there was an ongoing investigation of the actions of authorities in blocking action in the case, who had claimed the imposing Vanecko had merely acted in self-defense when he struck Koschman:

Webb’s statement also noted that, “while the grand jury investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Koschman’s death has concluded, the grand jury inquiry of how the authorities handled their investigation into Mr. Koschman’s death continues at a vigorous pace.”

To date, he said, “Thousands of documents have been reviewed, and more than 50 witnesses have been interviewed.”

Webb praised city of Chicago Inspector General Joseph Ferguson and his staff, who Webb said “have provided invaluable and continuing assistance in the investigation of this matter.” . . .

At a news conference, a tearful Nanci Koschman said she planned to go to her son’s grave Tuesday to tell him the news so that now he could be “at peace.”

She also said she doesn’t want Vanecko to go to prison. “It would hurt his mother,” she said.

 

“I’m happy. It makes me feel better,” she said of Vanecko’s indictment. “But it doesn’t bring David back.”

 

She added: “I’m assuming he won’t go to trial because he knows he did it. It will be on his record.”

 

“I know [Vanecko] didn’t go out that night to hit David. I wanted it on the record that this man hit my son for no reason.”

 

The indictment marks a stunning swing in a case that current and former police officials and prosecutors had insisted didn’t merit criminal prosecution.

Police and prosecutors had cited the failure of key witnesses to identify Vanecko as the man who struck Koschman in a police line-up as a reason for not filing charges against him. The former college football lineman had changed his appearance dramatically by shaving his head prior to the line-up. At least two of the witnesses told the Sun-Times that they still believed they had picked Vanecko out in the line-up despite denials by police. Koschman's mother didn't know the identity of the man accused of striking her son until years later when contacted by the Sun-Times. The Sun-Times relates the chronology of events that led a Cook Co. judge to appoint a special prosecutor who announced today's indictment:

On Feb. 28, 2011, the paper published the first in what, over the coming months, would be dozens of stories uncovering problems with the way the case was handled.

The next day, March 1 — six weeks before Daley left office — the police formally closed the case, without seeking charges from Alvarez’s office. They now identified Vanecko for the first time as having punched Koschman in the face but said, without explanation, he’d done so in self-defense.

On March 2, the newspaper reported that Michael Connolly, one of the two bystanders who saw what happened on Division Street back in 2004, said that a statement from Alvarez’s office saying Koschman “was the aggressor and had initiated the physical confrontation” was a “flat-out lie.”

Also, the newly released police reports attributed statements to Koschman’s friends that they told the newspaper they didn’t make.

Acknowledging those discrepancies and under fire for not being able to find any files on the Koschman case from her office’s involvement in 2004, Alvarez asked the Illinois State Police to investigate the police department’s handling of the case. “I think there should be an independent police investigation,” Alvarez said.

At first, the state agency agreed. Then, it got a new boss: Alvarez’s chief deputy, Hiram Grau, who had been a deputy superintendent with the Chicago Police Department at the time of Koschman’s death, in charge of the department’s detectives. And the state police quickly reversed course and declined to get involved.

Meanwhile, Ferguson — the city of Chicago inspector general and a former federal prosecutor — began a separate probe of the way the police handled the Koschman investigation . . .

In December 2011, Nanci Koschman went to court, asking for the appointment of a special prosecutor.

“Had Vanecko not been a member of the powerful Daley family, he would have been charged with the homicide,” she said in a court filing prepared by attorneys Locke E. Bowman and Alexa Van Brunt of Northwestern University Law School’s Roderick MacArthur Justice Center and G. Flint Taylor of the People’s Law Office, who agreed to take the case without any fee. “Mr. Vanecko is not entitled to escape prosecution simply because he is the nephew of former Mayor Daley.”

 

The petition went on to say: “Despite . . . witness statements, the 2004 Chicago police investigation was closed without charges in part because the police claimed to be unable to determine the identity of the person who had thown the fatal punch. Such a blatant failure to connect the dots has the hallmarks of an investigation governed by politics, not professionalism.”

 

And it singled out Alvarez — who now was arguing that she should oversee any new investigation — for criticism: “Despite the suspicious circumstances surrounding the Koschman investigation, Alvarez has publicly defended the work of the Chicago police and the Cook County state’s attorney’s felony review unit.

 

“Alvarez is in no position now to conduct the kind of probing and objective ‘fresh look’ that this matter so urgently requires.”

 

Koschman’s mother said she asked for a special prosecutor after reading the Sun-Times stories, which also reported that Devine — a Daley family friend who, as state’s attorney at the time of Koschman’s death, was Alvarez’s boss — was representing one of Vanecko’s brothers in a civil lawsuit over the investment of city of Chicago pension funds.

 

“Everybody knew everybody — except for David and me,” Nanci Koschman said then. “We didn’t know anybody.

 

“So he died. And nobody cared.”

The public owes the Sun-Times reporters the credit they deserve for doing the job good reporters are suppose to do. It's unfortunate that the newspaper didn't exhibit that kind of journalistic prowess in exposing Barack Obama's corrupt relationship with convicted political fixer Tony Rezko, who paid cash bribes to him, or his illicit relationships with men on the down low, including the unsolved murder of one of his alleged former lovers, Donald Young, the former choir director at Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church who was gunned down in his apartment shortly before the 2008 Iowa Caucus for no apparent motive after speaking to Larry Sinclair, who claimed to have performed oral sex on Obama and used cocaine with him during a trip to Chicago when Obama was still a state senator. America could have been spared the intentional destruction of our Republic by the mystery man whose true masters live far beyond the borders of this country.

Ballard Has The Audacity To Seek Additional Travel Funding For His Overseas Junkets

It takes a lot of audacity to carry out the mean-spirited line-item vetoes that Mayor Greg Ballard made to the council-approved 2013 budget that slashed funding for the city council and other county offices held by Democratic officeholders, while keeping his own budget intact, in retaliation for the council's decision to assess a $15 million payment-in-lieu-of-taxes ("PILOT") on the Capital Improvement Board in order to fund public safety, including new police and firefighter recruit classes the mayor's introduced budget failed to fund, payable from the CIB's surplus funds being held in abeyance to gift to billionaire Herb Simon's Indiana Pacers. It takes even more audacity for Mayor Ballard to come back to the same council and ask approval to transfer $25,000 in funds to the mayor's budget to pay for such things as travel expenses incurred by his personal security team that he insists travel with him on all of his overseas junkets. That's exactly what Mayor Ballard sought in Proposal 391, a move blocked by Democratic members of the Rules & Public Policy Committee.

Since taking office as mayor in January, 2007 and throwing in the trash can his phony promise to bring an end to "country club politics" in Indianapolis, Mayor Ballard has traveled overseas more than any other mayor in the history of the city on trips billed as "trade missions," and he's accepted gifts from pay-to-play contractors totalling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, including free memberships to the City's most elite country clubs. The so-called trade missions have never created any jobs and are nothing more than a scheme devised by Ballard to take free overseas trips with the pay-to-play contractors who are helping finance a lifestyle Ballard and his wife Winnie could not otherwise afford on the mayor's salary. The trips provide an opportunity for the people doing business with or seeking business from the City to wine and dine the mayor and his wife out of the viewing of the prying eyes of the public in exotic overseas settings. Pay-to-play contractors launder money through DevelopIndy to finance the trips so Ballard can claim no taxpayer dollars are used for the trips.

The cost of the IMPD officers assigned to Ballard's private security detail are paid for out of the mayor's travel budget, and those undisclosed expenses have cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. There is absolutely no reason the private security detail should accompany Ballard on these useless junkets. Nobody in these overseas countries he visits has a clue who he is. Even many well-recognized American celebrities travel throughout the world without body guards accompanying them. It's just an example of how preoccupied Ballard and his wife are with the trappings of the office. The City-County Council should not only reject funding for this wasteful spending request, but it should also investigate just how much money Ballard's travel outside the state is costing city taxpayers, and it should request under the guise of transparency that DevelopIndy turn over documents disclosing which businesses and individuals contributed money to the organization to pay for Ballard's junkets and how much and on what those monies were spent.

If you or I did what Mayor Ballard is doing, the IRS would bring income tax evasion charges against us if we failed to disclose on our tax returns the value of all the gifts and gratuities Ballard has been accepting since becoming mayor, the annual value of which I estimate exceeds his annual salary. A good prosecutor could also bring Ballard up on bribery charges. What he's doing is no different than the $5,000 cash payment former City-County Councilor Lincoln Plowman accepted from an undercover FBI agent for attempting to grease the wheels to gain the necessary zoning approval for an imaginary strip club proposed by the undercover agent with one big exception: Plowman wasn't giving away tens of millions in taxpayer dollars to the people stuffing money in his pockets. At least Plowman reported to the IRS the payments he received from strip club owners on his individual tax returns. If Ballard were actually transparent enough to make his income tax returns public, I suspect we would find he's not paying taxes on the substantial gifts and gratuities he's accepted as mayor.

Speaking of the CIB, it now appears that Mayor Ballard is poised to raise taxes yet again to provide more money for the City's longest running racket. Ballard is reportedly planning to ask the council to raise taxes on tickets paid to professional sporting events and other events, as well as the tax paid on rental cars, in order to provide more funding for the cash-rich CIB to give away to the billionaire sports team owners who lavish free tickets, gratuities and campaign contributions on him and members of the City-County Council. Ballard's boss, Herb Simon, has already communicated via his rent-a-civic leader Jim Morris that the $33.5 million the CIB already gave to his Pacers simply won't cut it if he wants the team to remain in Indianapolis. It's also known as extortion. What was that about public safety being job one, Mr. Mayor? Yeah, right. This is in addition to the income tax increase he will ask state legislators permission to raise this year through a referendum in order to fund a $1.2 billion white elephant mass transit plan that includes a new light rail running from Noblesville to Union Station in downtown Indianapolis. This will allow the wealthy suburbanites who can afford the cost of season tickets for the Colts games to ride the train downtown a few times each year while consuming as much alcohol as their hearts desire without the risk of getting a DUI. The pay-to-play contractors are already dividing up the contracts that will accompany that plan to line their own pockets, knowing full well that the plan is nothing more than a boondoggle that will never be self-supporting and require the infusions of tens of millions of new public expenditures every few years to maintain its solvency.

Indiana Gives Away A Lot Of Money To Businesses According To New York Times: Incentives Represent 6% Of State Budget

The New York Times did something it's done too little of in recent years: Good journalism. The newspaper compiled data detailing how much state and local governments nationwide spend on incentives to businesses. What it found is that state and local governments are giving away a staggering $80 billion each year to businesses. The Times has also created a useful online database that allows you to see a state-by-state analysis, which details per capita spending and budget percentage, as well as the recipients of business incentives, including the amount of money they received. According to the Times' figures, Indiana spends $142 per capita on state incentives, which represents 6% of the state budget. Metal Technologies of Auburn is identified as the top recipient of incentives, receiving $35.2 million. Several Indianapolis businesses ranked near the top, including EnerDel ($21.3 million), Arcadia Resources ($17.8 million), ExactTarget ($15.1 million) and Angie's List ($14.2 million).

The Times' analysis had this finding that will come as no surprise to critics of government picking winners and losers in the business world: "Yet at least 50 properties on the 2009 liquidation list were in towns and states that had awarded incentives, adding up to billions in taxpayer dollars, according to data compiled by The New York Times." The data would have been more useful if the Times had tracked political contributions by businesses and individuals applying for these incentives across the board. Instead, it singled out a red state, Texas, which is controlled by Republicans, to give the appearance that sort of thing only happens in Republican states. Other news organizations have found a direct correlation between various federal incentives handed out by the Obama administration over the past four years and contributions those applying for federal aid had made to Obama's presidential campaign. That's the Chicago Way, after all. The Times will probably continue to ignore that major political scandal.

The Times' data, while somewhat helpful, is not without flaws, a fact acknowledged by the report: "A full accounting, The Times discovered, is not possible because the incentives are granted by thousands of government agencies and officials, and many do not know the value of all their awards. Nor do they know if the money was worth it because they rarely track how many jobs are created. Even where officials do track incentives, they acknowledge that it is impossible to know whether the jobs would have been created without the aid."

As examples of the flawed data, the Times identifies a $10 million incentive offered to LiteBox. As we all know now, Gov. Mitch Daniels and Mayor Greg Ballard were tricked by that company's founder, a man with a checkered past, into making a big public announcement on his plans to build large, multi-media, mobile video walls attached to semi-truck trailer beds. The state and city lost nothing because the company sort of just faded into the sunset without breaking ground on the project and never received the pledged incentives after the media started asking tough questions economic development professionals failed to ask of it before the announcement. I also noticed that very well-publicized public giveaways by the City of Indianapolis totalling in the tens of millions of dollars to billionaire Herb Simon's Indiana Pacers and Ersal Ozdemir's Keystone Construction, for example, aren't listed in the database. 

Florida Officials Confirm Bennett's Application For Florida's Top Education Post

Within a day after losing his re-election bid as Indiana's State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett was urged by proponents of education reform in Florida to apply for the state's vacant education commissioner spot. After much soul-searching, Bennett filed an application for the spot late Friday, the deadline for submitting applications. Florida's State Board of Education is scheduled to interview finalists from among the approximately 50 people who applied for the spot on December 11 and are expected to make their decision quickly.

Bennett's loss to Democrat Glenda Ritz could turn out to be a blessing in disguise if he is chosen for the Florida position. It pays nearly three times what his current salary is, and he's not required to run for office in order to hold the position. According to news reports, Florida's last commissioner of education earned $275,000 a year. Bennett's annual salary as Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction is only $79,400. Florida's Board of Education members are appointed by the state's Republican governor, Rick Scott. An education reform group backed by former Gov. Jeb Bush is pushing for Bennett's appointment.

Same-Sex Marriage Amendment No Longer Sure Thing In Indiana

Supporters of a constitutional amendment that would write into Indiana's Constitution a ban on recognition of same-sex marriages or similar relationships for unmarried couples once viewed its enactment as a fait accompli, particularly with the election of  Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly. Yet Republican leadership in the House and Senate are showing little enthusiasm in pushing the issue during the current legislative session, and Mike Pence, an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, no longer wants to talk to about the issue.

It's doubtful Republican leaders have had a change of heart on the issue. What has changed is public opinion towards the issue. Before the amendment becomes law, it must pass two consecutive sessions of the General Assembly and be approved by a majority of the state's voters. The measure easily passed the House and Senate during the last session, and supporters of the amendment undoubtedly have the votes to pass it through both chambers once again. What Republican leaders now are less certain about are the political implications of taking the debate to voters. In short, they no longer believe the issue is a net positive for them politically. In the 2012 election, opponents of same-sex marriage lost in all four states where the issue was on the ballot. In three of those states, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington, opponents had brought the issue before voters. In Maine, proponents successfully reversed an earlier vote against same-sex marriages. Recent polling survey in Indiana now shows the public is more divided than ever on the issue, whereas just a few years ago opponents far outnumbered supporters.

Given the current political climate, Republican leaders are now questioning what, if any, political advantage there is to putting the issue on the ballot in 2014 other than to drive turnout of voters who may be less inclined to support Republican legislative candidates because of the issue, particularly among younger voters, whose views are much more supportive of same-sex marriage than older voters. Indiana law already outlaws same-sex marriage, and there is further concern the language contained in the amendment backed by its proponents overreaches and causes unintended consequences. It not only includes the provision contained in current state law defining marriage as between one man and one woman but also adds language barring the legal recognition of similar relationships for unmarried couples, including opposite-sex couples. This has raised particular concern that the law could impact domestic partnership relationships that are currently recognized by many employers for employee benefits purposes. Proponents of the amendment also don't really have a case to make that a constitutional amendment is needed to prevent a state court from overturning it because the Indiana Court of Appeals has already upheld its constitutionality. If the state law is overturned by a federal court on federal grounds, a state constitutional amendment will make no difference.

I could be misreading what's going on in the minds of Republican legislative leaders. It wouldn't be a first for me. I won't be surprised, however, if they pass on taking up this contentious and unnecessary debate during the next legislative session where they have far more important fish to fry.