By Jenny Labalme
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – There are some faces you never forget.

Not long after Frazier Glenn Cross, according to police, brazenly shot and killed three individuals in Overland Park, Kan., I was reading an online story about him. There was an Associated Press photo of him taken about 30 years ago. I said to my husband, “I know that face and I think I photographed him when I worked as a photographer years ago in North Carolina.”

Commentary button in JPG – no shadowI trudged down to our basement. In a file box wedged in a corner, I found a folder of old photos. Sure enough, there was the black and white photo of him at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Raleigh, N.C. I can’t find the exact date I took this, but it was in the mid-1980s. I remember the assignment well.

I was a young, just-out-of college photojournalist, working for The Independent, a Durham, N.C.-based weekly newsmagazine. I was following an editor’s directive to photograph the event in North Carolina’s state capitol. Some of my photos of the rally ended up on the front page of The Boston Globe. At that time, Cross went by the name Frazier Glenn Miller. He was the grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The rhetoric spewed at the rally was filthy and disgusting.

In my two decades as a photographer and journalist, I don’t think I’ve ever been more uncomfortable and unsettled covering a news event. Most of the Klansmen were dressed in paramilitary outfits as they marched. I still remember the sounds as their combat boots slapped the hard pavement and the Confederate flags flapped in a stiff wind. A few of the Klansmen were dressed in white robes with pointed white hoods, including a man I photographed whose stare down my telephoto lens was so evil. As I look at this photo today, I can still see the hate emanating in the black and white and gray tones of the photo I took close to 30 years ago.

Frazier Glenn Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, has been charged in connection with the shootings of three people in Kansas. He’s shown here at a white supremacist rally in North Carolina in the 1980s. Photo by Jenny Labalme.
Frazier Glenn Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, has been charged in connection with the shootings of three people in Kansas. He’s shown here at a white supremacist rally in North Carolina in the 1980s. Photo by Jenny Labalme.
While North Carolina and many states are more diverse now than they were three decades ago, I remember being stunned and puzzled that people could be so misguided and filled with such negative thoughts. After photographing the event, I remember wanting to drive as far away as I could from these people.

It’s not easy, though, to escape hate.

Part of the reason I could recall, 30 years later, that I had photographed Frazier Glenn Miller was that I remembered his face not because of his features, but because of the rage and animosity his face revealed.

That look haunted me then.

It haunts me still.

Jenny Labalme is the executive director of the Indianapolis Press Club Foundation and a freelance journalist.

Downtown Evansville has long been hoping for an upscale grocery store to supplement the entertainment related entities that have gotten incentives to locate there.  The two stores most desirable have in the past been deemed to be Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.  With stringent criteria on population withing drive time, education of populace, and high visibility the prospects of one of these stores choosing downtown Evansville is very remote.  Quite frankly Evansville was closer to meeting the criteria in 1960 than it is today.

Lexington, Kentucky that was smaller and demographically similar to Evansville in 1960 recently saw a Trader Joe’s open.  Of course Lexington during the last 50 years has grown from 60,000 people to roughly 300,000 and it’s percentage of educated people in the population has grown continuously to a current level of 39.3%.  Vanderburgh County according to the census department is now at 21.9% with the City of Evansville having only a 17.9% rate of residents with bachelor’s degrees.

It is to be noted that the location of the new Trader Joe’s in Lexington is not in downtown Lexington that has cast its lot with Rupp Arena, hotels, and bars but is within walking distance of the UK campus.

Perhaps something can be learned from Lexington’s growth during the last 50 years.

Republished from Kentucky.com article in June 2012

After years of hopes followed by months of anticipation, Trader Joe’s will open a Lexington store at 8 a.m. Friday.

The gourmet grocery, on the former site of Joe’s Crab Shack at 2326 Nicholasville Road, is expected to be wildly popular, and those unfamiliar are in for a unique shopping trip, industry observers say.

“Walking into a Trader Joe’s is an experience, … because you don’t know what you’re going to come across,” said Mark Mallinger, a Pepperdine University professor who has followed the privately held company for years. “New products come and go.

“They’re just unique.”

Many Lexington residents hoped the chain would arrive years and years ago. Mallinger said the Monrovia, Calif.-based company, which has more than 370 stores nationwide, is “very cautious about the locations they select.”

Before Friday, the closest Trader Joe’s stores were in Cincinnati and Louisville.

Trader Joe’s spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki declined to disclose the selection process, saying only “that Lexington is filled with foodies and seems a great fit for us.”

“We consider ourselves the neighborhood grocery store and feel the Lexington location is a great fit,” she said.

Mallinger said his tracking of the company reveals three criteria for site selection:

Dense population: Trader Joe’s puts stores in areas with large surrounding populations. With its many nearby neighborhoods, Nicholasville Road was a good fit for that criteria, said Lexington commercial real estate broker Tim Haymaker of Haymaker/Bean Commercial Real Estate. Its location closer to downtown rather than near Man o’ War Boulevard is “a win for the city,” said Chris King, director of planning for Lexington city government, because it helps redevelop an existing corridor.

Highly educated population: “What they’ve discovered is those who are more educated tend to travel more, and those who travel more tend to be more adventuresome in their food and drink choices,” Mallinger said. As the home of the University of Kentucky, Transylvania University and several other colleges, Lexington has a high percentage of residents with college and graduate-level educations.

Easy distribution: Mallinger said Trader Joe’s differs from major supermarkets that have their own distribution warehouses and trucking operations.

“They are strictly a retail grocery store,” he said. Suppliers send the merchandise directly to the stores.

Overall, the Trader Joe’s business model is unique, Mallinger said.

“Compared to a supermarket that has maybe 35,000 items, they have maybe 2,500,” he said.

They’re also small by comparison. Lexington’s Trader Joe’s grocery will be 12,000 square feet with an adjacent wine shop that is 3,000 square feet. By comparison, the Kroger on Tates Creek Road is 59,000 square feet and is being expanded to 92,000 square feet.

“Trader Joe’s is a national chain of neighborhood specialty grocery stores,” Mallinger said. “If you really deeply understand that one sentence, you understand Trader Joe’s.

“They want to be a national chain of mom-and-pops. That’s what it’s saying.”

That’s why, he said, you won’t empty your own cart when you chat with the cashier, who unloads it for you.

It’s also why you won’t see advertisements for them in publications; Trader Joe’s mails newsletters, called The Fearless Flyer, describing products.

What else is unique?

There aren’t sales, and products tend to change quickly.

Since “we introduce 10 to 15 new products a week, we have to eliminate 10 to 15 items in order to give our newest items a fair chance,” the company says on its Web site.

Employees often wear Hawaiian shirts to emphasize that they’re “traders on the culinary seas,” according to the site.

So will the company’s success in Lexington be as wild as its employees’ dress?

Observers say yes.

“It will do phenomenally well in Lexington,” said Burt Flickinger III, managing director of retail consulting firm Strategic Resource Group in New York. “It will really rock the market.”

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/06/28/2241801/lexingtons-trader-joes-opens-friday.html#storylink=cpy

Dave Stafford,  www.theindianalawyer.com

Did a former state utility regulator’s behavior that got him fired rise to official misconduct if he committed no crime? An Indiana Court of Appeals panel grappled with that question, as well as which version of the law applies, during oral arguments March 31.

The state is appealing the dismissal last August of four Class D felony official misconduct counts against David Lott Hardy in Marion Superior Court in a case with sharply differing arguments as to what constitutes a crime.

Hardy

Hardy was fired as chairman of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission by former Gov. Mitch Daniels after he was accused of allowing ex-IURC administrative law judge and general counsel Scott Storms to work on a number of Duke Energy cases pending before the commission at the same time Storms was trying to land a job with Duke. The basis of the four official misconduct charges include accusations that Hardy lobbied Duke officials on Storms’ behalf behind the scenes, and that Hardy received improper ex parte communications.

Hardy’s lawyer said the fact that his client lost his job was the ultimate punishment, because while his conduct violated state ethics rules, he broke no laws. An attorney for the state countered that laws don’t have to be broken for someone in a position of public trust to be charged with official misconduct.

Presiding Judge Paul Mathias and Judges Cale Bradford and Rudy R. Pyle III quizzed lawyers over whether the law in place at the time Hardy was charged should apply or whether the statute as amended governs. Judges also questioned whether the statute in place at the time Hardy was charged was unconstitutionally vague.

Ellen Meilaender of the attorney general’s office argued that the charges against Hardy should be reinstated. She said the trial court rejected arguments that the former official misconduct statute, I.C. 35-44-1-2, was unconstitutionally vague. Official misconduct requires a nexus, she said – “it had to be something done in connection with official duties.” Meilaender said that could include a violation of administrative rules or policies short of a crime.

Attorney David J. Hensel urged the panel to affirm dismissal of the charges against Hardy on the basis of statutory vagueness. He argued that the Legislature acted quickly to amend the statute as I.C. 35-44.1-1-1 after Hardy was charged. The amended law defines official misconduct as a Class D felony when a public servant “commits an offense in the performance of the public servant’s official duties.”

The Legislature intended the amendment to be retroactive, Hensel argued, based on “the speed at which the Legislature responded to notification of a defect in the law” in a report from the inspector general. Lawmakers acted within five months, Hensel explained.

Cynthia Baker, Indiana University McKinney School of Law director of the Program on Law and State Government, said the Legislature didn’t specify that its 2012 amendment was retroactive, so she doubts it would be applied remedially.

“The General Assembly does not recognize official legislative history, so the law is the words that the Legislature puts in the statute,” she said.

Even with the amended language, though, Baker believes the applicability of the law is open to interpretation, and she calls the statute “very aspirational.”

“In our hearts, we don’t want our public officials to do bad things,” she said. “In a court of law, for a prosecution, you have to have specific acts to demonstrate they committed a particular crime.”

Still, Baker said the revised statute leaves unsettled the question of whether someone may be charged with official misconduct for acts that are not crimes. She noted the statute’s language doesn’t specify a criminal offense.

During oral arguments, though, Pyle challenged the notion that someone could be charged with official misconduct as a result of acts like policy violations that are less than a crime. He asked Meilaender to cite such a case that had been upheld on appeal, and she could not.

Nevertheless, judges at times appeared to be looking for a middle ground.

Assuming the accusations against Hardy are true, Bradford said, “He’s not going to be nominated for public servant of the year anytime soon. … What’s the public to do?”

Hensel replied that Hardy has already been sanctioned as the law allows by being fired, and he said three of the counts against him are based on communication that was brought to him but he didn’t initiate. “I don’t think the Legislature ever meant this to be a crime,” Hensel said. He also said no criminal offenses may be based on violation of administrative rules.

Baker said issues in State v. Hardy, 49A02-1309-CR-756, seem to mirror a 2008 public intoxication case that wound up being decided by the Indiana Supreme Court in 2011, Brenda Moore v. State. Moore was convicted of public intoxication for being in the back seat of a parked car. While she unsuccessfully argued that the state had a public policy interest in encouraging intoxicated people not to drive, the Legislature revised the public intoxication statute shortly after her case was affirmed.

“That’s an example of a law that served us well for a while, and when (lawmakers) saw it in a particular light, they changed the law,” Baker said. “It didn’t change the outcome for Brenda Moore, but it changed the outcome going forward.”

Attorney General Greg Zoeller in a statement after oral arguments said the charges against Hardy should be reinstated and remanded to Marion Superior Court.

“For the public to have confidence in our laws there must be public accountability; and individuals who hold positions of public trust ought to be held to a very high standard.  My office, working with (Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry), maintains that the official misconduct statute that was on the books in 2010 should be enforced against this defendant, since the Legislature when it changed the law in 2012 did not make the change retroactive,” Zoeller said.•

The following guest column is a column Speaker Bosma wrote that appeared in multiple news outlets across the state. To view the Speaker’s column in its entirety, click here.
When the General Assembly began its work last November, as Speaker I pledged a session driven by five main issues: increased road funding, enhanced job training, early childhood education, fair business taxation and cutting government red tape. With the 118th General Assembly behind us, it is clear Republicans accomplished each of these priorities, and much more.

Due to conservative Republican budgeting principles, Indiana is in one of the best fiscal positions of any state in the nation. This fiscal strength gave us the ability in a nonbudget year to allocate up to $400 million to new major highway construction projects. These state funds could leverage an additional federal funding to bring new construction to bear on major interstate highway choke points, creating thousand of Hoosier construction jobs and greatly improving the safety and economic benefit of our self-styled Crossroads of America and our growing logistics sector.
And while our unemployment rate as a state is the lowest since 2008, we still must continue to attack the “skills gap” between the training Hoosiers are currently receiving and the 21st century jobs available to Hoosier workers. This session, we successfully championed new incentives for employers who partner with schools and universities to encourage on-the-job training internships that result in high wage, high demand employment, especially in the high tech manufacturing sector.

Our three-year effort to provide high-quality preschool opportunities to low-income Hoosier families was successful this year with the adoption of a pilot program combining $15 million in state and private sector funding to provide thousands of low income students with an early education opportunity they would not otherwise receive, preparing them for success when they begin kindergarten. This common sense program aimed at Indiana’s poorest children has the potential to reap great benefits for the future.

An additional short session goal was to continue making Indiana’s tax climate one of the best in the nation for job creation and new business investment. We cut individual and inheritance taxes in 2013 and this year further reduced financial institution and corporate taxes to give Hoosier businesses the second lowest corporate tax in the nation when fully phased in by 2022.

We also gave new tools to local government to exempt employers from business personal property taxes on an optional basis beginning next year. This will grant cities, towns and counties the opportunity to spur new investment and employment throughout the state.

Detractors no doubt will claim this year’s session was dominated by social issues, or that little of substance was accomplished. Privately, however, even our Democrat colleagues have stated their appreciation for the bipartisan tone of this session and the exceptional work accomplished in a short 10 weeks.

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The City County Observer is pleased to announce that County Councilman Pete Swaim has decided to accept our second invitation to appear on Tri-State Voices TV show during the last week of this month. Tri-State Voices host Mike Woods said, “We are extremely pleased that Pete has reconsidered appearing on our show and knows he has concerns about governmental issues that face us in the next 4 years. He will provide us with ways he will address them if he is elected to serve on the County Council”.

This program is hosted by a well-known local attorney Mike Woods of Woods and Woods law firm. Tri-State Voices show was created by the City County Observer and produced ME TV, Evansville. ME TV airs the Tri-State Voices show on Sunday morning and the City County Observer post this program each Monday.

For this week show please go to our video section on the upper right hand corner to view an extremely professionally produced and informative interview with our popular Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nick Hermann.

Our next show will feature an informative and in-depth interview with 8th District Congressional Republican primary candidate Andrew Mc Neil.