One of my favorite quotes comes from C.S. Lewis.   It reads as follows…

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

I bring this up because of efforts by Indianapolis City-County Councilmember Leroy Robinson to create a “Homeless Bill of Rights” (HBR).  For the record, Robinson was also the Councilor that introduced and ordinance that would have effectively mandated landlords take Section 8 tenants.

Under the HBR, the homeless would have the right to “move freely in public places”, the right to emergency medical care, equal treatment by city agencies and a “reasonable expectation of privacy” with their personal property.   In other words, rights many of them have right now.  But here is the kicker; it would also compel the city to help anyone it displaces from public property.  Remember the Davidson Street homeless camp?

Robinson’s logic, according to the Indy Star, is to prevent the “criminalization and demoralization” of the homeless.

Where do I start with this one?

First, homeless people have the same rights as the rest of us, no more no less.  You can be homeless, you just can’t infringe on others in the process.  Secondly, instead of creating new rules and a new government program, it would likely be better if the city just worked closer with agencies that deal with the homeless to get them the services that they need.   I suggest Outreach, Inc. which helps homeless teens and young adults.

In addition, these are same people who don’t want to do anything about the downtown panhandling problem which, in my opinion, is much worse than the homeless problem.

This HBR will do nothing at the end of the day to solve the homeless problem.  In fact, if it’s like a lot of other government programs of this type, we’ll just end up with more homeless people.

When you love cigars and have a wife who speaks Spanish, there’s no better news than the President moving forward to normalize relations with Cuba.

He made the announcement last week.

Now granted, we won’t be flying down anytime soon, and there is that matter of that little matter of the embargo, but I can’t wait to use Expedia to book my flight to Havana.  I have never understood why the embargo is still in place, when it sure hasn’t worked.

The embargo has been in place since 1959.  And what have we gotten for it?  The Castros are still in power, in fact, they’ve managed to outlast eight American Presidents and no other country cares.

And please spare me the human rights arguments.   I love it when people posted how wrong I was about the embargo on my Facebook pages using their iPhones that were made in China.  Not to mention the relations we have with Vietnam, which killed 55,000 Americans.  And don’t even get me started on Saudi Arabia.  Heck, even Saddam Hussein was our “ally” during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s so it seems a little hypocritical to get worked up over Cuba when we’ve been in bed with some of the worst actors on the planet.

I believe that if you want people to appreciate freedom and liberty, you have to engage them.  And what better way to engage them by going to where they are and letting them see that freedom face-to-face.

And what better way to engage the Cuban people with a good cigar, mojito and conversation?

Hey Cuban Pete, call me!

Although I don’t celebrate Christmas, I did get an early present this year.

A couple years ago my mother was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  My siblings and I had noticed earlier that she was getting a little more forgetful, but we all just attributed that to getting older.  However, things were getting to the point where her behavior was getting a little too worrisome, so my Dad and I took her to the doctor.

It turns out that she had Alzheimer’s and that it had probably started in 2009. (That date will be important later).

Since then it has been a tough road which I usually don’t discuss publicly. What I’ve learned in this ordeal is that Alzheimer’s patients usually don’t know they have it which is why it is more difficult on the family than them. I also learned that my mother doesn’t like to sit still, nor does she like to be told what to do. (Imagine that!)

We are fortunate enough that there have been enough of us to look after her, but unfortunately things are at the point where a facility that can look after her 24/7 is going to be in order.   This is something I’ve been working on for a while and I can assure you it is no fun.

However, during our trip to Chicago this past weekend to mark my mother’s 72^nd birthday, we found her  in great spirits and while she didn’t recognize everyone her cheerful demeanor and pleasant smile was the perfect gift. I’m also fortunate enough to have a wife that cares for my mother as much as I do. Which is why I think it’s ironic I was married the same year my mother’s condition began.

The future will not be easy, but the memories I have of the most kind, yet firm, woman I will ever know will be with me always. And each day I get to spend with the woman who told me that if I was going to run my mouth to go get paid for it, is a gift that will last forever.

State Senator Karen Tallian and I don’t agree on a lot, but I think she is definitely right when it comes to legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.

According to the Associated Press, she plans to introduce a bill this session that would allow for pot to be used for medical purposes now that the Justice Department is prohibited from using your tax dollars to put cancer, AIDS and glaucoma patients and their suppliers in prison if they are following their state’s laws on medicinal marijuana usage. I think that if marijuana can be used in a responsible way to help ease another person’s pain and suffering, why not?

To be honest, I’ve never understood why marijuana is illegal anyway? And for the record, I tried marijuana once in my 20s, it did nothing for me but dull my cynicism and overall hatred of humanity so I gave it up.

And apparently I’m not alone, according to some quick research I did about 70 million other Americans have also tried marijuana and prior to legalization efforts in a few states, about 17 million of us are using it on a daily basis.

Here are some other fun facts about pot…

• It’s believed the original drafts of our founding documents were written on hemp.
• We spend between $7.5 billion-$10 billion annually to arrest, arraign and prosecute folks for pot possession.
• In the first six months of this year, Colorado collected nearly $45 million in tax revenue from legalized pot sales.
• When it comes to the “addictive” affects of marijuana, the National Institute on Drug Abuse says about 9% of the people who use pot will become addicted over the long term, that number is nearly double for alcohol usage.
• Even the American Public Health Association acknowledges that if marijuana is decriminalized; we should adjust our public health rules accordingly, which I have no problem with.

But Abdul isn’t marijuana bad for you? So can watching any reality TV show with a Khardashian, but that’s not illegal, albeit maybe it should be.  Go green!!!

recently read an article in the New York Times about how the middle class was on its last leg and America was turning into something out of the film Elysium.

The author talked about how U.S. productivity has grown, but the typical family household income has not.  He says workers are twice as productive as they were in 1989, but get  less of the economic pie.  And he tops everything off with that in 81 percent of America’s counties the median income is lower than it was 15 years ago.

Although it would be tempting to use the phrase ”figures lie and liars figure” I will try to keep this blog post at a higher level and simply say it’s not the middle class that has changed, it’s what makes you middle class has changed.

In the 1950s if you had a strong work ethic coupled with a strong back, you probably did pretty well.  Fast forward to the early 21st Century, you need a strong mind to go with that strong work ethic and you need to throw in some shrewdness for good measure.

Allow me to explain, I went to the State of Indiana’s job website and did a search of jobs within 10 miles of downtown Indianapolis.  There were 146 positions open.  The highest paid was a professor in the School of Medicine which topped out at $300,000.  The lowest paid job was a part-time package handler for UPS at $170.00 a week.

In other words, knowledge-based performance has replaced task-based performance.  By the way there are more than 7,000 jobs listed which pay $14-$16 an hour if you have some post-secondary education.  And don’t get me started on the skills gap which we all know exists.

As a good friend of mine noted, anyone who expects to perform the same tasks in the same time for the same rate for the same career is  living is the 1950s. They have chosen to ignore the signs of change in workplace relationships as computers evolved from office sized behemoths into desktop (or, now, pocket-sized) information sources. The person who designs the next big smartphone app has the potential to become a billionaire because of the knowledge they posses.

And that is how you save the middle class; use your head because knowledge is not only power, it helps make for a decent livelihood as well.

Whenever I get asked if I have ever been the target of “racial” profiling, I jokingly reply “when you look this good, you don’t mind getting profiled, just make sure they get both sides.”

But seriously,  due to recent events in Ferguson,  I thought it was an appropriate question.

My answer, maybe.  Allow me to explain.

I did much of my undergraduate work at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL, located 65 miles west of Chicago.  DeKalb was like any other college town, small, part suburban/part rural and mostly white, except for the minority students who went to school there.

I was walking back to my apartment after a late night at my favorite bar (big shocker, I know) when I noticed I was being followed by a City of DeKalb police officer; growing up in Chicago you learn to pay attention to your surroundings so my gut instinct told me someone was watching me.

I stopped walking, turned around and flag downed the officer.   He asked me if there was a problem.  I told him no, I just wanted to let him know that I noticed he had been following me for a couple of blocks and I wanted to thank him for being vigilant and looking out for my personal safety to make sure I got back to my place safe and sound.  I also asked him for his name and badge number so I could inform the police chief the next day about what a great job his department was doing and write a column about him in the college newspaper.

Was I actually being “profiled” or did the officer have a legitimate reason to follow me?   I don’t know.   I could easily see both scenarios.

I also could easily see how something like that under the wrong circumstances could escalate so I kept a very respectful tone, pleasant demeanor and smiled.  My Dad always said when it comes to dealing with law enforcement “don’t handle your business in the street” and don’t start something with someone who has the legal authority to detain, arrest and under certain circumstances, shoot you.

I made sure that if there was going to be a problem, I was not going to be the catalyst. Everything turned out fine in the end and the officer and I went on our respective ways.  The moral of the story being how you interact with law enforcement can have a big impact on the outcome.

And if someone had given Michael Brown the advice my Dad gave me, he might still be alive today.

Some people just have way too much time on their hands.

The City of Indianapolis is looking at revamping its zoning laws to allow for digital billboards.  However, opponents say this is the first sign (pardon the pun) of the apocalypse.

They present a laundry list of reasons why digital billboards are bad, but allow me to present you some facts.

• The digital billboards can’t go up in a residential or protected area (schools, churches, parks).  Historic districts are off limits too.
• If a company puts up one, they can only do it if they replace one of similar size. (approximately 600 square feet) and they have to take down an equal number of other signs based on square footage, so if I put up 600 square foot billboard I have to take down two 300 square foot billboards. So at the end of the day, it’s a net reduction of billboards.
• There are technical rules on brightness, very similar to INDOT and USDOT rules, and motion is not allowed in the billboard.
• There can’t be more than six ads per billboard or 8-10 seconds for each image.
• The billboards can also be used for Amber alerts and to warn residents of severe weather.
• And no more than 25 billboards can be converted a year.

So with these safeguards, and I’m sure more can be added, I still don’t see what the big deal is.  Now if we were talking about turning Indy into Las Vegas or signs changing so quickly that it would cause epileptic seizures, that would be a different story.

But since  we’re not, I have more important things to worry about, maybe they should too.

In this week’s debate over immigration the President played the GOP opposition like a Stradivarius violin, which is surprising following the recent mid-term election results.

In a nutshell, the President’s plan gives legal status (not citizenship nor permanent residence) to about 5 million undocumented immigrants.  They have to have kids who are American citizens and have been here for at least five years.

Republicans are up in arms over this.  They are gnashing teeth, threatening lawsuits, promising to withhold funding and missing what just really happened.  The President just scored a major victory with the children of those impacted by the law.

You see those kids are already citizens, it’s their parents who are undocumented.  And guess what, since they’re citizens they will be able to vote in a few years.   According to the research about seven percent of our K-12 student population has an undocumented parent.   And not only will those kids will be voting in a few years but the demographics show they are growing fastest in a lot of places that went really red a few Tuesdays ago.

Do you see what’s happening here?  Even if the GOP manages to stop the President’s plan, which I doubt they legally can, Obama still looks like the hero to these kids and Democrats will get the benefit of their vote.

If Republicans are smart they will offer up their own alternative  plan real fast real quick.   Otherwise, they’ll get played again, again and again.

And like we say in my old neighborhood, instead of focusing on the player, pay attention to the game.

I am not a big fan of the Indianapolis chapter of the NAACP.    In the past I found them to be outdated and particularly ineffective.

For example their “education” platform is really just a page out the out of any teachers union playbook.   And when it came to responding to Charlotte Lucas’ rant about minorities , whereas a lot of civil rights groups responded immediately, it took the local branch 20 days to put out a statement (there is a bad joke about “CP” time in there if you look hard enough).

So if those antics weren’t enough, we can add hypocrisy to the list.

You see the Indy NAACP had its elections for officers this past weekend over at the Julia Carson Center.  There was a contested race for President between two individuals, Chrystal Ratcliffe who is wrong on almost every issue and Denise Abdul-Rahman whose only redeeming quality is that she has “Abdul” in her name.

However, before the 400 or so people who I am told could vote, they had to show ID.  Yup, they had to show ID.  The same organization that talks about how voter ID disenfranchises minorities, the poor and the elderly made its members show ID before they could vote in this past weekend’s election.

I am told a number of members told the group to pound sand and that they’re weren’t going to show any ID since they were dues paying members in good standing.  I can’t make this stuff up.

Ratcliffe ended up winning by the way.  But until the NAACP gets a new mission statement and makes itself relevant, it doesn’t look like she won much.

I am no longer disappointed that my good friend Greg Ballard isn’t running for a third term, because Democrat Joe Hogsett is doing it for him.

As I listened to the speech that Hogsett gave Wednesday at the Kennedy-King Memorial at 17th and Broadway, everything he spelled out that he wanted to do Ballard has already done, so truth be told, all he would do is continue the soon to be former Mayor’s policies.

Here are some examples to back me up…

Crime

• Hogsett wants to put more police on the street and return to “community policing”.
• Ballard’s plan will put 280 new officer on the street by 2018 and thanks to efficiencies in public safety more officers have been moved from behind a desk to back on patrol.

Neighborhoods

• Hogsett wants to invest in neighborhoods as well as the downtown area.
• Ballard has not only invested hundreds of millions in streets and sidewalks with Rebuild Indy, but also mitigated millions in wastewater and sewer fees with the EPA.  Also projects like 16 Tech, transforming the Avondale-Meadows area, the redevelopment of MLK Drive, revamping the Keystone towers and investing $40 million in parks have all gone a long way to bring life back into a lot of areas outside of downtown.

Job Creation

• Hogsett said he will work to create jobs that can support working and middle class families.
• Under the Ballard administration, the city has attracted commitments for more than 31,000 new jobs and $3.5 billion in capital investment.  The average new job commitment pays $21 an hour and in 2014 the US Bureau of Economic Analysis ranked Indy 7th in the nation for economic growth.  And this was all with the worst economy since the Great Depression in the middle of everything.

Education

• Hogsett says he wants to increase education opportunities for citizens and also address the chronic dropout rate with respect to black youth.
• Ballard not only tripled the number of students taking advantage of school choice, but he closed underperforming charter schools, maintained local control of IPS turnaround academies,  he was the architect of of a pre-K program that will serve hundreds of at risk kids when fully funded.  And led the charge with “Your Life Matters” to address, long-term, the serious issues facing urban youth, particularly the dropout rate.

I could probably go on (mass transit, sustainability, code enforcement), but the more I went down the list of things that Hogsett wants to do, the more I discovered Ballard has already done it.  So while I may not have gotten a third term of Greg Ballard, there’s nothing I’ve seen or heard Joe Hogsett say to make me think his first term  wouldn’t be more of the same.

Now where can I find a “Hogsett for Mayor” sign?