There were a lot of story lines out of Election night,Trump’s victory, the GOP Sweep, but we think the most under-reported story line was the fact that highest vote getter in the state of Indiana in 2016 was not Donald Trump, but Attorney General Elect Curtis Hill.  Take a look at these results…

• Curtis Hill – 1,642,555
• Donald Trump – 1,556,122
• Todd Young – 1,422,962
• Jennifer McCormick – 1,420,075
• Eric Holcomb – 1,396,409
• Glenda Ritz –  1,238,685
• John Gregg – 1,234,500
• Evan Bayh – 1,157,645
• Hillary Clinton – 1,036,426
• Lorenzo Arrendondo – 993,183

I think it says quite a bit that Hill, an African-American, was the highest voteg etter, but according our research, he got more votes than anyone else in Indiana history.

I think it also says quite a bit that  Clinton only got 43,000 more votes than Judge Arrendondo and Ritz actually outperformed Bayh and Gregg.

What do you think?

Now that our long, national nightmare (the 2016 Election) is over, I can get back to work on a few things that I’ve put on hold.  Here are the top 10.

1. Get back to work on my novel, “Sub-Leasing Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
2. Rebooting the stand-up comedy routine and hitting the area club circuit.
3. Break out the colored pencils and sketch pads.
4. Finally get past the sabertooth that keeps killing my character Takkar in Far Cry Primal on my PS 4.
5. Get a few thousand comic books bagged, boarded and boxed and into storage.
6. Get the annoying, yappie dog to the groomers so he doesn’t look like a mop with legs.
7. Get back to a regular workout routine and lose the 20 or so pounds that have been creeping up since January.
8. Purge all the crap out of my office so I can see what the top of my desks look like.
9. Hit the IRT, Symphony, the Museum of Art and try to see Voyage of Time at the IMAX at the State Museum.
10. Take a few days and do the “giant triangle”  road trip with the Lovely Mrs. Shabazz and go visit friends and family in Illinois and Missouri.

You may look at this list and say “so what”, but what’s important is that none of this has anything to do with politics.  There’s been enough of that for a while and I don’t think it would hurt to take a step or two back and focus on some other things for a while.

We’re not taking our eyes off the ball, because there are a lot of important issues to focus on.  We’re just recapturing some perspective to focus on those personal things that are just as important, if not more so; especially number 10.

I suggest you do the same.

As politically incorrect as I can be when it comes to talking about race, there’s nothing more offensive than when someone tries to play the race card and deals from the bottom of the deck.  Allow me to elaborate.

Following the snub, the grievance class, led and inspired by the Indiana Democratic Party, started kicking things into high gear.   The “Concerned” Clergy, Indy City-County Council member Stephen Clay (who led a failed attempt earlier this year to overthrow Maggie Lewis as President) the local NAACP (which opposes school choice and thinks African-American kids should be stuck in failing schools) all went after Holcomb as if he were Bull Connor in 1960 Alabama.

Gregg’s polling with African-Americans in Marion County isn’t all that great so somebody has to do something to get the natives all worked up so they will go to the polls and vote.  (Yes, I went there.)   I’ve seen this movie before.  The same Jackson-Sharpton crowd tried this with former Mayor Greg Ballard in 2011 and it failed miserably.

Instead of promoting Gregg’s agenda and showing how it would benefit African-Americans, these guys have decided that following Michelle Obama’s advice of taking the high road just isn’t good enough.   If you want to argue policy, that’s fine and fair. If you want to highlight competing visions for Indiana’s future, great.   But if you’re going to play the race card over what basically amounted to scheduling conflicts to start a riot, give me a break. This doesn’t help the dialogue and it discourages some folks from reaching out to Black voters if they are going to do is end up getting called racists.

And for the record, it’s nonsense like this why some folks don’t think Black lives matter.

There are some things that I honestly think I will never understand, the Dr. Phil Show, people who like brussel sprouts and how investigating possible voter registration fraud is the equivalent of racially based disenfranchisement.

As you may have heard Indiana State Police is investigating the possibility that thousands of recent voter registrations may have been forged or fraudulently altered.  The group at the center of the investigation is the Indiana Voter Project (IVP), an arm of Patriot Majority USA, a super PAC that reportedly has ties to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

Earlier this summer word started to creep out that thousands of voter registration forms had been altered across Indiana.  Word got to the Secretary of State from County Clerks and Connie Lawson referred the matter to State Police.  A raid was launched and the matter is under review.    IVP accused State Police of Gestapo like tactics and said the state, under the direction of Mike Pence, was trying to disenfranchise African-American voters.

If I may be so bold as to use a term that is not uncommon in the African-American community, “Negro Please!!!”

First of all, nowhere on the State of Indiana Voter Registration form does it ask for your race.  It asks for gender, but not race.  So how could the state disenfranchise black voters if the form doesn’t ask if you’re black?   I asked IVP that question and have yet to get an answer.   Last week the group to the Associated Press it reached that conclusion based on the fact they had registered predominantly black voters.  But once again, how would law enforcement know that unless they’re told?  I guess you could try and do this by the names, but it might be difficult to tell if Jonathan Wallace or Jacqueline Price were black or white people as opposed to Leroy Washington or Raineesha Williams.

Secondly, if anyone has been disenfranchised it’s the person whose voter registration was changed and they now have to cast a provisional ballot and go jump through hoops in order to exercise their constitutional rights because of either malfeasance or misfeasance.   And to make matters more interesting, while Voter ID can help prevent most fraud, ID is not needed if someone is going to vote absentee and a fraudulent registration can lead to a fraudulent ballot being cast.  And while this could all be a giant exercise in incompetence, my spidey-sense tells me there’s something more here.

No matter how you slice, if the folks at the IVP want to blame someone for being disenfranchised instead of pointing the finger at Mike Pence, Connie Lawson or State Police Chief Doug Carter and Indiana State Police, I suggest they get a mirror and find out who the true culprits are.

As someone who frequently covers school choice-related issues in Indiana, I find it interesting and ironic when opponents of reform and vouchers make better arguments for healthy competition than I do.

A friend of mine (we’ll call him Ben) is a teacher in a traditional public school. He is a good guy and has the best interests of his students at heart, like any good teacher.    Unfortunately, like a lot of anti-charter crowd, whenever a new school pops ups,  he goes crazy.

Ben will tweet that approving a new  charter school is a bad idea because there are too many of them and not enough oversight. But the argument that got my attention was when he said he would gladly match up the programs at his school against any charter school. And that ladies and gentlemen, was the best point anyone could make for choice and competition.

Allow me to elaborate.

I told Ben that I have no doubt that there are programs at his school parents would like, just like there are programs at charters, private, virtual and even home-school settings that parents would enjoy. They should just have the choice to make that decision. And all charters and choice do is give parents more options to find the best education for their kids. And who wouldn’t want that?

Ben then went on to complain about charters “taking” money from traditional schools. I remind him that would be like McDonald’s complaining about Burger King taking their customers.  No one owns anything. And instead of whining about choice, schools like Ben’s should spend more time looking at why people are seeking other options and rectify that problem.

I told Ben if the programs at his school are that good, I have no doubt it can compete with all the other alternatives out there. Now this doesn’t mean we can’t have a conversation about more oversight and measuring of student performance. I regularly remind my friends in the school-choice community that we should be just as happy when a charter fails as when they succeed. The point of choice and accountability is that failing schools go out of business as soon as possible and children be moved into a school that works.

And if schools like Ben’s have programs that can compete and perform better than charters or private schools then I say “here, here!” If I were a traditional public school administrator I would welcome the challenge. Actually the competitive streak in me would actively try to recruit students from the charter schools. Because if I’ve got amazing programs that will educate kids and make parents happy, then I am all over that.

And that’s what choice is all about, giving parents options so they can choose the best schools and their kids can get the best education.

Thanks, Ben. I could not have said this better myself.

Let me start this by saying John Gregg is a pretty smart guy.  You don’t become Speaker of the House, work for major Fortune 500 companies and become the interim President of a University without knowing what you’re doing.   This is why I was surprised at his major gaffe at last night’s gubernatorial debate.

It was on the subject of RFRA and LGBT rights.  Gregg stated that the legislature passed a law that prohibited local governments from passing their own human rights ordinances.*

Not true.

There was a bill introduced by Sen. Travis Holdman that would have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, but not gender identity.  And as part of the original legislation all local HROs would have been superseded by the state law. But there was an uproar and it was later changed to allow existing HROs to stay in place but prohibit any new ones.  That bill never got to a vote because the two sides could not agree.

The local HROs are still in effect and Gregg should have known that.   In fact, there is no reason why Gregg should not have know that.

As a former Speaker of the House, he of all people should know this process works.  As someone who has been running on the LGBT rights issue, he should have known that.  And as a candidate who knows that people like me write about people like him, he should have known that.

Now will this derail Gregg’s campaign, not really.  But I think it does undermine his credibility somewhat on this issue which has been a foundation for Gregg.  And in a close race, little things like this can take on a life of their own.

*I got word that Gregg realized he made a mistake regarding the local HROS and corrected himself in the media availability shortly after the debate.

If you’re a Donald Trump supporter I have good news and bad news for you.

The bad news is that I think Hillary Clinton won the first debate.   The good news is that you have two more debates to go.

I think Clinton showed she could master a lot of facts and more importantly she managed to get under his skin.

Although I disagree with Trump on trade, I thought he did a good early on of putting Clinton in the defensive, however he lost that momentum.

I think Clinton scored some major hits on taxes and more importantly the birthed question.

But like I said, this is round one.  In previous Presidential debates, I recall Barack Obama in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004, neither did all that great.  However, they both went on to do well in subsequent debates and to win their respective races.

If I were on the Trump campaign, I would spend my debate prep time pulling a Clinton familiarizing my candidate with the facts and being able to put them in the proper context as to why he would be a better President than Clinton.

Trump scores points on being more passionate and being able to make that emotional connection with his supporters, but he doesn’t have enough supporters to win.   If he makes some adjustments in time for the next debates, that might change.

But right now, this first round goes to the lady.

As a child of parents who grew up in the segregated south in the 1940s and 50s, I got more annoyed than usual when I read Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz blamed school choice and vouchers as a contributing factor for increased segregation in Indiana schools.

In an interview with Chalkbeat Indiana, Ritz said vouchers were to blame for a rise in segregated schools….

Ritz acknowledged the importance of diversity in Marion County, and she, too, brought up school choice and vouchers in particular. She said her effort to pause the expansion of the state’s voucher program could perhaps play a role in decreasing segregated schools, although she didn’t elaborate.  

The problem with Ritz’s claim is that not only is it wrong, but the data tends to show otherwise; that vouchers and choice actually increase integration.

An analysis of voucher use by Chalkbeat showed that while 71 percent of Indiana’s K-12 student population is white, only 60 percent of the vouchers users are white.  And a majority of them qualify for free and reduced lunch.

Secondly, in Indianapolis Public Schools, prior to the voucher program the district’s white population was 20.9 percent, that most recent number was 20.4 percent, virtually unchanged.

And third, and perhaps most telling, Chalkbeat looked at two Indianapolis Catholic high schools that participate in the voucher program.  Both schools had more integrated populations as a result of school vouchers.

Now there is a question as to whether charter schools add to segregation in some areas, however I would argue any segregation as a result of charter schools is more de facto than de jure (purposeful) because charter schools in Indiana tend to pop up in highly urban areas, which is where a majority of their population originates.

So for the Superintendent of Public Instruction to say vouchers and choice are partially to blame for an increase in segregated schools is factually inaccurate. Maybe the next time Ritz wants to talk about segregation, she should have a conversation with my parents.  They could probably teach her a lesson or two, or three, or four.

The greatest thing about America is that we are free to speak our minds.

I bring this up because of recent controversies regarding athletes who chose to protest unjustified police action shootings of unarmed black men by either kneeling during the national anthem before sporting events or raising the “black power” fist as symbolized in the 1968 Olympics by  Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their medal ceremony.

Some folks call it disrespectful and say they shouldn’t protest.   I call it exercising your rights.

If someone has a problem with something this country is doing, they have every right to peacefully protest.  Remember the Tea Party rallies back in 2010?   And to get mad when someone peacefully protests and exercises their first amendment rights seems a little misguided.  And dare I say, almost anti-American?   They have the right to speak out, just like you have the right to speak out against them.

Now with that said, while I do think these athletes, just like anyone else, have the right to protest, I think they should also be mindful of exactly what they’re protesting.  I have no problem with the protests of what someone thinks is an unjustified police action shooting, but how about we also protest the fact that African-Americans are disproportionately a  majority of the the murder victims in this country.

Have you seen the local news lately?  And my hometown of Chicago has been in a murder free-for-all, and I can assure you the bulk of those murders weren’t done by someone wearing a police officer’s uniform.   I think those types of incidents deserve as much attention from the protesting crowd as unjustified police action shootings.

But at the end of the day, we all have the right to speak out and protest what we think is a societal injustice.  And you yes, have the right to peacefully protest them.  And then someone has the right to protest you.  And someone has the right to protest them.  And so on. And so on.

America is an awesome place.