Readers- Over the years I’ve tried to keep my real estate day job and my column writing separate, mostly because I didn’t want newspaper readers to think I was writing my columns to feather my nest. The newspapers wanted it that way, too. But over the last few weeks I’ve been asked by a number of readers to take a current snap shot of Noblesville and Hamilton County housing issues. I suppose people are curious, not just because of the mortgage and real estate industry problems nation wide, but also because of the recent local school funding referendum; an issue many are only now realizing is closely tied to home sales. So here are the basics, with no sales pitch.
In recent years Indiana’s real estate market didn’t look like the national market we heard about in the news. In the mid-2000s, while southern California, Florida, Vegas, New York, and northwest states saw enormous appreciation rates, central Indiana homes grew in value a meager 3-6% a year.
That’s counter intuitive, because Noblesville, Fishers, Westfield and Carmel have all seen dramatic population increases, so demand was clearly there. But we had something that L.A. and Boston didn’t have: lots of undeveloped land next to highways. So while we had lots of demand, we also had ample supply.
Consider new construction numbers. In 2005 and 2006, Noblesville issued building permits for 2,831 living units (houses, apartments & condos). That’s why, if you had an existing home for sale, it didn’t grow in value as much as you might wish. If you weren’t going to moderate your price, well C.P. Morgan, Beazer, or another builder would, or potential buyers might pick one of those reduced-price foreclosures.
Mortgage foreclosures are not a new problem. During the past decade Indiana was routinely number 1 or 2 in the nation in foreclosures. And a study done in Chicago suggested that for each foreclosure, homes within a one-mile radius drop 1% in value. That number seems exaggerated. Noblesville has some neighborhoods with homes built in the past 10 years where as much as 10% of the houses went into foreclosure well before the mortgage industry unraveled. If the Chicago study is correct, then homes should have been worthless in those neighborhoods. Still, they sold. But even if the study overstates reality, it’s clear foreclosures have held down Hamilton County appreciation rates.
So buyers have had elevated power in our market for some time. But, there were enough buyers that the whole thing kept rolling along.
That was then, this is now.
As the mortgage industry contraction has squeezed troubled buyers out of the market, there are fewer buyers chasing more houses. The sellers who succeed are giving buyers more value, either in lower price or more features than competing sellers.
And with fewer buyers, new construction is suffering.
In 2007 and 2008, Noblesville issued building permits for 1,633 houses, condos and apartment units, a 42% drop over the previous 2-year period. As a result, builders like Davis, Dura, KB Homes, and RDJ have disappeared.
Supply and demand are out of wack. There’s too much supply and too little demand. Between 2006 and 2008 home sales in Hamilton County have dropped 21%. This has caused the average home price to drop 4% during the same period. While it’s not what we would want, it’s better than much of the rest of the county.
What do the most recent months suggest for Noblesville? Home sales have begun a positive trend – supply and demand are inching toward one another. Since April of ‘08 when there were 644 homes on the market in Noblesville Township, we’ve seen that supply of homes slowly fall to the approximate 490s in December and January. That’s good. And surprisingly, demand actually rose last month as 53 homes were sold, compared with just 33 in December.
Like all Realtors, I’m hoping that supply continues to inch down while demand inches up. And if supply does inch up, as it usually does in the spring, I’m hoping that demand rises at an even faster rate, narrowing the gap between the two. If we can get those numbers closer together, sellers will gain more power and home values will stop falling.
Are their winners in this down market? You bet. Interest rates are hovering around 5%, FHA loans are available, and home prices have dropped. If you’re a first time buyer with good credit, you are buying in the best buyers market in recent history. Which dictates who the successful sellers are.
The strongest segment of the market right now is entry-level - homes under $150,000. But the higher in price you go the harder it gets. I recently ran statistics for a seller with a home priced over $400,000 and found that only 1 new buyer appeared in the Noblesville Township market in the last half of ’08 in the $400,000-$450,000 range.
If the market improves will we go back to meager annual appreciation rates for our homes? Probably. Even if Noblesville City leaders approve no new subdivisions and allow only the build-out of already approved subdivisions, a conservative estimate is that another 4,000 homes could be built. A number substantially higher than the ’05-’06 boom years. Like low-producing oil wells mothballed when gas prices are low, when the market rebounds, builders will start building again.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Which Businesses Will Survive The Recession? 1/28/09
While drinking a beer and doing the crossword last Friday evening, a friend and regular reader sent me a text message asking if a particular local restaurant was going out of business. I checked around and found that the business was struggling, but hanging on. I like the place so much, it got me worrying about what this recession will do to Noblesville’s small, locally owned businesses.
If we want to protect our community’s economic diversity, it makes sense to shop first at small local businesses and let the chain operations take care of themselves.
A shuttered Starbucks on Fall Creek in Indianapolis has gotten a lot of press lately. Mostly because Starbucks took an admirable gamble when they originally opened an outlet in a transitional neighborhood. I admire their try, but in general don’t weep much for the national chains protecting their deep pockets. That’s because most national chains have entire teams of marketing and legal experts devoted to putting mom and pop competitors out of business.
I root for the underdog, not the playground bully – no matter how big his smile is. It’s just my bias.
When the big chains close a store, it plays to me like military leaders shifting battleships around on a tabletop map. The people calling the shots aren’t fighting for their own family’s mortgage payment, they’re pursuing or protecting market share. It’s very different for small business owners.
A by-product of the growth that’s transformed this county in the past three decades is the handing over of our economic destiny to out of town, out of state, and in some cases out of country conglomerates. This costs us in unexpected ways.
When I was the faculty sponsor of a small town Indiana high school newspaper, the advertisers who supported us were primarily local business owners. When my students solicited ads from the national chains they were given a 1-800 number for the corporate headquarters far away. The numbers led to answering machines that seldom returned the calls. It got worse every year.
That’s just one tiny example of what local businesses do for a community. They care with sincerity.
The local business owner lives in our neighborhood, shops where we shop, worships in local churches, and sends their kids to school with our kids. Their profits buy local houses and supports businesses. They have a vested interest in seeing Noblesville thrive. On the other hand, the CEO of the out of town conglomerate probably couldn’t find Noblesville on a map if they had to.
That’s why, in this struggling economy we need to support our locally owned businesses.
The local business owner doesn’t have a national advertising campaign aimed at messaging our egos and tempting our desires. They don’t have well-honed training manuals meant to make employees in Buffalo, Ames, and Peoria act just like employees in Noblesville. They don’t have the buying power to demand lower prices from suppliers. They don’t have an entire marketing department dedicated to figuring out how to get money out of our billfolds.
All by themselves small business owners are the advertising department, the marketing department, the accountant, the janitor, the trainer and the employee. Our town will be poorer for the ones that go out of business during this economic downturn.
And they’re not just competing against national chains that have located here, they’re competing with the Internet.
Perhaps nothing does more universal damage to local economies than online shopping. When you buy online your money leaves the community.
Here’s all the things our money doesn’t do when we shop online for things that could be bought right here:
1) The profits from our purchases don’t stay in Noblesville, washing through the community as the merchant and his employees spend it and the place where they spend it has more money to spend, and on and on and on.
2) The store we might have shopped in locally won’t need as many employees, so there will be fewer local jobs.
3) The local merchants we avoided while shopping at our desks have fewer dollars to donate to local charities or to sponsor local youth sports.
4) The sales tax dollars from our purchases won’t go into state coffers, helping pay for needs right here in Indiana.
5) There will be fewer reasons for people to open new retail outlets in Noblesville because too often we spend our money elsewhere.
When the economy is booming, none of this seems very important. But it is now. Somewhere in town right now there are small business owners looking out their front windows, looking for us.
If we want to protect our community’s economic diversity, it makes sense to shop first at small local businesses and let the chain operations take care of themselves.
A shuttered Starbucks on Fall Creek in Indianapolis has gotten a lot of press lately. Mostly because Starbucks took an admirable gamble when they originally opened an outlet in a transitional neighborhood. I admire their try, but in general don’t weep much for the national chains protecting their deep pockets. That’s because most national chains have entire teams of marketing and legal experts devoted to putting mom and pop competitors out of business.
I root for the underdog, not the playground bully – no matter how big his smile is. It’s just my bias.
When the big chains close a store, it plays to me like military leaders shifting battleships around on a tabletop map. The people calling the shots aren’t fighting for their own family’s mortgage payment, they’re pursuing or protecting market share. It’s very different for small business owners.
A by-product of the growth that’s transformed this county in the past three decades is the handing over of our economic destiny to out of town, out of state, and in some cases out of country conglomerates. This costs us in unexpected ways.
When I was the faculty sponsor of a small town Indiana high school newspaper, the advertisers who supported us were primarily local business owners. When my students solicited ads from the national chains they were given a 1-800 number for the corporate headquarters far away. The numbers led to answering machines that seldom returned the calls. It got worse every year.
That’s just one tiny example of what local businesses do for a community. They care with sincerity.
The local business owner lives in our neighborhood, shops where we shop, worships in local churches, and sends their kids to school with our kids. Their profits buy local houses and supports businesses. They have a vested interest in seeing Noblesville thrive. On the other hand, the CEO of the out of town conglomerate probably couldn’t find Noblesville on a map if they had to.
That’s why, in this struggling economy we need to support our locally owned businesses.
The local business owner doesn’t have a national advertising campaign aimed at messaging our egos and tempting our desires. They don’t have well-honed training manuals meant to make employees in Buffalo, Ames, and Peoria act just like employees in Noblesville. They don’t have the buying power to demand lower prices from suppliers. They don’t have an entire marketing department dedicated to figuring out how to get money out of our billfolds.
All by themselves small business owners are the advertising department, the marketing department, the accountant, the janitor, the trainer and the employee. Our town will be poorer for the ones that go out of business during this economic downturn.
And they’re not just competing against national chains that have located here, they’re competing with the Internet.
Perhaps nothing does more universal damage to local economies than online shopping. When you buy online your money leaves the community.
Here’s all the things our money doesn’t do when we shop online for things that could be bought right here:
1) The profits from our purchases don’t stay in Noblesville, washing through the community as the merchant and his employees spend it and the place where they spend it has more money to spend, and on and on and on.
2) The store we might have shopped in locally won’t need as many employees, so there will be fewer local jobs.
3) The local merchants we avoided while shopping at our desks have fewer dollars to donate to local charities or to sponsor local youth sports.
4) The sales tax dollars from our purchases won’t go into state coffers, helping pay for needs right here in Indiana.
5) There will be fewer reasons for people to open new retail outlets in Noblesville because too often we spend our money elsewhere.
When the economy is booming, none of this seems very important. But it is now. Somewhere in town right now there are small business owners looking out their front windows, looking for us.
Distance Travelled in 4 Years 1/21/09
Music has been a touchstone in my life. There is always a musical reference point, even with politics.
In the fall of ‘04 my wife and I attended an R.E.M. concert with our kids at The Murat in Indianapolis. At one point R.E.M.’s lead singer, Michael Stipe pulled off a button-up shirt to reveal a John Kerry for President t-shirt beneath. Bush supporters in the crowd tried to shout him off the stage.
That was around the time country stations boycotted the Dixie Chicks after their lead singer made negative comments about President Bush.
At a Steve Earle concert in 2005 in Bloomington with my friend, Charlie, the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the Bluebird nightclub was suffocating. Beneath a low ceiling, amid a shoulder-to-shoulder standing crowd, blanketed in a haze of cigarette smoke we listened to the numbing concussion of guitar chords. In the ear-ringing silence between songs, conservatives in the audience taunted an angry, swaggering Steve Earle for his politically charged lyrics. After, The Revolution Starts Now, a call to arms against Bush administration policies, a heckler yelled at Earle, “Your team lost, Dude. Get over it.” Earle locked eyes with the heckler and launched into the machine-gun opening rat-a-tat of the Beatles’, “Revolution.”
Though it was only 4 years ago, that world might as well be a million years away. With barely one in four Americans approving of Bush, he leaves office the most unpopular president in modern history, less popular even than Jimmy Carter. Standing in the balcony of the Murat four years ago as some in the crowd jeered Michael Stipe, such a reversal of fortune was unimaginable.
And if anyone had told me then that in a few short years Americans would elect a black president with the middle name “Hussein” I would have referred them for mental health counseling. And if they told me he would carry Indiana, I would have driven them to the treatment center myself.
But it did happen.
In October of last year, I sat in the grandstands at the State Fair grounds with two of my kids, waiting for Barack Obama to speak. Sitting in the misty drizzle, searching 38th Street for the Obama entourage, a country version of, Life is a Highway, blared from a bank of speakers suspended from a crane. An expectant crowd swayed and bopped to the music.
Watching my kids eat nachos in the rain, I thought back to the first time I ever sat in those stands. I was 15 years old. It was 1975. Nixon had resigned the previous August and Ford was president. On that warm summer night, the Ferris wheel and tilt-o-whirl spun in the distance while the band, Chicago, played atop scaffolding erected on the dirt racetrack. It was my first concert.
Scanning the racially mixed Obama crowd, I thought how odd it felt. Living in such a conservative community I have so often felt like the odd-man-out, wondering at the preferences of my friends and neighbors. Yet here I was with my kids and a huge crowd of people who felt the same way we did, who wanted the things we wanted.
I suppose color sometimes gets in the way. That day a part of me feared that many Americans wouldn’t vote for him simply because he was black.
A couple years ago while in New York with my family, we took the subway to Harlem and walked to the Apollo Theater, a Mecca for jazz, blues, and R&B fans like me. As we paused on the sidewalk a moment, I saw the unease in my 19-year-old son’s eyes. He was scanning the crowded streets, teeming almost entirely with black faces.
“You feel uncomfortable being a minority for the first time in your life, don’t you?”
He nodded, “Yep.”
“And you feel guilty for feeling uncomfortable, right?”
He smiled, “Yep.”
I looked back at the Apollo, thinking, “We all love that music. How different could we all be?”
Watching Sunday afternoon’s Obama celebration in front of the Lincoln memorial, I saw Betty LeVette and Jon Bon Jovi sing my favorite Sam Cooke song , A Change is Gonna Come. Appropriately, they changed the last line of the song, singing, “It’s been a long time coming, but I know a change has come.”
In the fall of ‘04 my wife and I attended an R.E.M. concert with our kids at The Murat in Indianapolis. At one point R.E.M.’s lead singer, Michael Stipe pulled off a button-up shirt to reveal a John Kerry for President t-shirt beneath. Bush supporters in the crowd tried to shout him off the stage.
That was around the time country stations boycotted the Dixie Chicks after their lead singer made negative comments about President Bush.
At a Steve Earle concert in 2005 in Bloomington with my friend, Charlie, the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the Bluebird nightclub was suffocating. Beneath a low ceiling, amid a shoulder-to-shoulder standing crowd, blanketed in a haze of cigarette smoke we listened to the numbing concussion of guitar chords. In the ear-ringing silence between songs, conservatives in the audience taunted an angry, swaggering Steve Earle for his politically charged lyrics. After, The Revolution Starts Now, a call to arms against Bush administration policies, a heckler yelled at Earle, “Your team lost, Dude. Get over it.” Earle locked eyes with the heckler and launched into the machine-gun opening rat-a-tat of the Beatles’, “Revolution.”
Though it was only 4 years ago, that world might as well be a million years away. With barely one in four Americans approving of Bush, he leaves office the most unpopular president in modern history, less popular even than Jimmy Carter. Standing in the balcony of the Murat four years ago as some in the crowd jeered Michael Stipe, such a reversal of fortune was unimaginable.
And if anyone had told me then that in a few short years Americans would elect a black president with the middle name “Hussein” I would have referred them for mental health counseling. And if they told me he would carry Indiana, I would have driven them to the treatment center myself.
But it did happen.
In October of last year, I sat in the grandstands at the State Fair grounds with two of my kids, waiting for Barack Obama to speak. Sitting in the misty drizzle, searching 38th Street for the Obama entourage, a country version of, Life is a Highway, blared from a bank of speakers suspended from a crane. An expectant crowd swayed and bopped to the music.
Watching my kids eat nachos in the rain, I thought back to the first time I ever sat in those stands. I was 15 years old. It was 1975. Nixon had resigned the previous August and Ford was president. On that warm summer night, the Ferris wheel and tilt-o-whirl spun in the distance while the band, Chicago, played atop scaffolding erected on the dirt racetrack. It was my first concert.
Scanning the racially mixed Obama crowd, I thought how odd it felt. Living in such a conservative community I have so often felt like the odd-man-out, wondering at the preferences of my friends and neighbors. Yet here I was with my kids and a huge crowd of people who felt the same way we did, who wanted the things we wanted.
I suppose color sometimes gets in the way. That day a part of me feared that many Americans wouldn’t vote for him simply because he was black.
A couple years ago while in New York with my family, we took the subway to Harlem and walked to the Apollo Theater, a Mecca for jazz, blues, and R&B fans like me. As we paused on the sidewalk a moment, I saw the unease in my 19-year-old son’s eyes. He was scanning the crowded streets, teeming almost entirely with black faces.
“You feel uncomfortable being a minority for the first time in your life, don’t you?”
He nodded, “Yep.”
“And you feel guilty for feeling uncomfortable, right?”
He smiled, “Yep.”
I looked back at the Apollo, thinking, “We all love that music. How different could we all be?”
Watching Sunday afternoon’s Obama celebration in front of the Lincoln memorial, I saw Betty LeVette and Jon Bon Jovi sing my favorite Sam Cooke song , A Change is Gonna Come. Appropriately, they changed the last line of the song, singing, “It’s been a long time coming, but I know a change has come.”
Referendum Follow-up 1/14/09
Since Noblesville School’s $59.5 million building referendum failed last Friday, area media have presented the no vote as an isolated reaction against taxes. Truth is, the baggage voters brought to the polls on Friday was bigger, broader and deeper than taxpayer exhaustion. From the voters I talked to, mistrust about who pays for growth was also at work.
The referendum’s failure was unfortunate because our school system is a quality organization – one of the best in the State. They need our support.
But if School leaders don’t address this mistrust – if they simply try again as soon as they can with hopes of converting a simple majority, they’ll likely fail again. They need to let go of their Hoosier “hear no evil, see no evil” politeness, and point the finger back at the source of the mistrust: City Hall.
School leaders need a come-to-Jesus moment with City leaders so that voters will have hope that the endless cycles of mega-growth approved by City Hall, followed by a tax increases for new schools to accommodate that growth, won’t continue indefinitely.
Even with the down economy, the people of Noblesville could be counted on to support education.
But with recent national news stories of political and business shenanigans that end up costing the little guy, well, suddenly there’s a lot of mistrust among voters nationwide. Combine that with local mistrust. Voters have watched their city leaders invite unlimited numbers of new residents to town, while they schmoozed, golfed and dined with, and took campaign contributions from the developers that built the new neighborhoods that brought an avalanche of new students to our schools in the Ditslear era. And they’ve watched the same city leaders isolate land in TIF districts that deprive schools of tax dollars. Then they’ve watched city leaders grant tax abatements to their friends, to one another and to campaign contributors who locate in those TIF districts.
And then to be asked to pick up the tab for resulting school growth?
In the past, voters shrugged off this seeming pay-to-play tomfoolery. It was too convoluted to bother judging when the local economy was booming. But perhaps not during an economic downturn.
A couple times over the last several years I’ve asked well-placed School officials if any City leader ever conferred with them before approving new housing, TIF districts, and tax abatements. The answer? No.
That’s shocking.
Between 2005 and 2007 Noblesville issued building permits for over 2,600 single-family homes, and at least 800 condo and apartment units. The average Noblesville home has .6 children. So the growth in just three recent years accounted for a potential increase of nearly 2,100 school children, added mostly to Noblesville schools with a small percentage sent to Hamilton Southeastern.
And what happens when the economy rebounds? Even if City leaders approve no new subdivisions and allow only the build-out of already approved subdivisions, a conservative estimate would tally up to 4,000 more homes. That would add approximately 2,400 additional students, exceeding the ’04-’07 tally. And School leaders apparently were never consulted. Voters have to assume that even if they had approved this referendum, another would follow in approaching years.
Worse yet, over the years, city leaders have placed 9% of Noblesville’s assessed property value within TIF districts. Taxes from growth within these districts temporarily bypass schools and are kept by the city for infrastructure improvements within the TIF district, meant to spur growth. For perspective: Westfield has just 2.46% of their valuation in TIFs and Hamilton Southeastern has less than one percent.
What’s more, City leaders give the businesses locating within these TIF districts tax abatements. This economic activity spurs more residential growth, driving up the number of children coming to Noblesville schools. But because residential taxpayers consume more in services than they pay for in taxes, this residential growth bundled with TIF district growth puts a financial strain on our schools.
The TIF districts should have very positive long-term effects on Noblesville’s tax base, but getting there could be hell for regular taxpayers.
Someday the TIF periods and all the tax abatements will expire and our schools should be flush with money – in ten or 20 years. If last Friday’s referendum is any indication, local voters apparently aren’t willing to pay the difference while we wait for that day.
And unfortunately, School leaders didn’t build any trust with the timing of the vote. Scheduling the vote so soon after a general election, but after retired snow-birds left for Florida, and then on a TGIF, well . . . rightly or wrongly, it felt to many voters like a crafty attempt to tip the vote in favor of approval.
I voted for the referendum. If we’re going to be a first class town we need first class schools. On top of that, we’ve got great schools and great educators who need our support. We pulled the rug out from under them last Friday. But this referendum may not pass until City leaders and School leaders have their come-to-Jesus moment with each other. That may be the only way to build trust among voters about how future growth will be paid for.
The referendum’s failure was unfortunate because our school system is a quality organization – one of the best in the State. They need our support.
But if School leaders don’t address this mistrust – if they simply try again as soon as they can with hopes of converting a simple majority, they’ll likely fail again. They need to let go of their Hoosier “hear no evil, see no evil” politeness, and point the finger back at the source of the mistrust: City Hall.
School leaders need a come-to-Jesus moment with City leaders so that voters will have hope that the endless cycles of mega-growth approved by City Hall, followed by a tax increases for new schools to accommodate that growth, won’t continue indefinitely.
Even with the down economy, the people of Noblesville could be counted on to support education.
But with recent national news stories of political and business shenanigans that end up costing the little guy, well, suddenly there’s a lot of mistrust among voters nationwide. Combine that with local mistrust. Voters have watched their city leaders invite unlimited numbers of new residents to town, while they schmoozed, golfed and dined with, and took campaign contributions from the developers that built the new neighborhoods that brought an avalanche of new students to our schools in the Ditslear era. And they’ve watched the same city leaders isolate land in TIF districts that deprive schools of tax dollars. Then they’ve watched city leaders grant tax abatements to their friends, to one another and to campaign contributors who locate in those TIF districts.
And then to be asked to pick up the tab for resulting school growth?
In the past, voters shrugged off this seeming pay-to-play tomfoolery. It was too convoluted to bother judging when the local economy was booming. But perhaps not during an economic downturn.
A couple times over the last several years I’ve asked well-placed School officials if any City leader ever conferred with them before approving new housing, TIF districts, and tax abatements. The answer? No.
That’s shocking.
Between 2005 and 2007 Noblesville issued building permits for over 2,600 single-family homes, and at least 800 condo and apartment units. The average Noblesville home has .6 children. So the growth in just three recent years accounted for a potential increase of nearly 2,100 school children, added mostly to Noblesville schools with a small percentage sent to Hamilton Southeastern.
And what happens when the economy rebounds? Even if City leaders approve no new subdivisions and allow only the build-out of already approved subdivisions, a conservative estimate would tally up to 4,000 more homes. That would add approximately 2,400 additional students, exceeding the ’04-’07 tally. And School leaders apparently were never consulted. Voters have to assume that even if they had approved this referendum, another would follow in approaching years.
Worse yet, over the years, city leaders have placed 9% of Noblesville’s assessed property value within TIF districts. Taxes from growth within these districts temporarily bypass schools and are kept by the city for infrastructure improvements within the TIF district, meant to spur growth. For perspective: Westfield has just 2.46% of their valuation in TIFs and Hamilton Southeastern has less than one percent.
What’s more, City leaders give the businesses locating within these TIF districts tax abatements. This economic activity spurs more residential growth, driving up the number of children coming to Noblesville schools. But because residential taxpayers consume more in services than they pay for in taxes, this residential growth bundled with TIF district growth puts a financial strain on our schools.
The TIF districts should have very positive long-term effects on Noblesville’s tax base, but getting there could be hell for regular taxpayers.
Someday the TIF periods and all the tax abatements will expire and our schools should be flush with money – in ten or 20 years. If last Friday’s referendum is any indication, local voters apparently aren’t willing to pay the difference while we wait for that day.
And unfortunately, School leaders didn’t build any trust with the timing of the vote. Scheduling the vote so soon after a general election, but after retired snow-birds left for Florida, and then on a TGIF, well . . . rightly or wrongly, it felt to many voters like a crafty attempt to tip the vote in favor of approval.
I voted for the referendum. If we’re going to be a first class town we need first class schools. On top of that, we’ve got great schools and great educators who need our support. We pulled the rug out from under them last Friday. But this referendum may not pass until City leaders and School leaders have their come-to-Jesus moment with each other. That may be the only way to build trust among voters about how future growth will be paid for.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Bias in the Media 1/7/09
At the end of any basketball game I’m usually convinced the referees are cheating my team. Though it’s unlikely referees world-wide have conspired against every high school, college, professional and Olympic team I’ve ever rooted for, at the end of a game, I’m left with that feeling.
Many people perceive the news media the same way. Conservatives have long claimed the media has a liberal bias, while iberals have lambasted the media for their adoring treatment of Ronald Reagan and their unquestioning reporting in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The bias is real, but often isn’t motivated by partisanship. A fundamental truth: TV and print media are primarily about selling advertising to make money. News and information is a secondary concern. They’re main goal is to get you to watch or read, so you’ll see the advertising.
The two most biased news outlets I see on television are FOX News and MSNBC. Both seem to have been designed by the same media consultants pursing consumers at either end of the political spectrum.
FOX, started by one of the world’s most famous conservatives, Rupert Murdoch and run by long-time Republican consultant, Roger Ailes, was a brilliant stroke of marketing. Conservatives have long decried the so-called, “liberal news media.” So Murdock and Ailes created an outlet where conservatives could be comforted hearing news bent toward their beliefs.
It’s target marketing. Just like Teen magazine runs articles aimed at teenage girls, Fox presents stories from a conservative perspective.
From a marketing point of view, that’s all well and good so long as the conservative brand is flying high. But when the brand is floundering, what happens?
MSNBC happens.
The channel, born of a marriage between Microsoft and NBC was for years an under-performer. But as the Republican Party and President Bush’s poll numbers began plummeting early in Bush’s second term, MSNBC morphed into a full-blown liberal version of FOX.
Instead of conservative demagogue hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, with a lightweight liberal thrown in to give the impression of balance, you get smarmy, liberal intellectuals like Keith Oberman and Rachel Maddow with Joe Scarborough thrown in for faux-balance.
I don’t think the corporate boys at FOX or MSNBC did this to grind a political ax. They’re trying to sell laundry soap, cars, washing machines, and erectile dysfunction tablets to identifiable segments of the market. This is further born out by a tendency both cable channels share – an obsessive focus on crime and disaster stories. They actually joke in the news business, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
FOX loves crimes stories, especially those involving missing, young, pretty white girls or small children. It plays into their viewers’ belief that our culture is going to hell in a hand basket (we’ll ignore for the moment that crime in America is at a 30 year low). On the other hand, MSNBC spends entire afternoons and weekends playing murder investigation documentaries for similar reasons; people are titillated by blood.
Where does CNN fall? Somewhere in the middle. They’re not great, but that’s where I often go for a quick shot of TV news. But truth is, I’m a liberal, so when I watch FOX I get irritated and when I watch MSNBC I’m soothed. But I don’t watch the news to have my biases validated. I watch MSNBC barely more than I watch Fox for that very reason. This isn’t a game meant to validate my team, it’s me trying to figure out what’s really happening in the world.
That’s why I watch a little FOX when I’m getting dressed in the morning and listened to NPR on the way to work. I listen to a little BBC news online in my office, and scan my Indianapolis Star each evening, reading both the liberal and conservative columnists. If there’s a Wall Street Journal nearby, I’ll read their conservative editorial page and I’ll also scan the relatively liberal Time Magazine.
But in reality the biggest bias in the media is toward the frivolous. That’s why CNN, FOX, or MSNBC would all gladly interrupt a Senate vote on income taxes to cover a police chase. It’s why stories on the common needs of childhood healthcare are rarely done, but acutely rare incidents of abducted children are covered heavily. It’s why few Americans know why the Israelis and Palestinians are fighting, yet most know the particulars of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s marriage.
And no doubt there are those reading this who see The Contrarian as a referee of sorts and feel I’ve called the game unfairly.
Many people perceive the news media the same way. Conservatives have long claimed the media has a liberal bias, while iberals have lambasted the media for their adoring treatment of Ronald Reagan and their unquestioning reporting in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The bias is real, but often isn’t motivated by partisanship. A fundamental truth: TV and print media are primarily about selling advertising to make money. News and information is a secondary concern. They’re main goal is to get you to watch or read, so you’ll see the advertising.
The two most biased news outlets I see on television are FOX News and MSNBC. Both seem to have been designed by the same media consultants pursing consumers at either end of the political spectrum.
FOX, started by one of the world’s most famous conservatives, Rupert Murdoch and run by long-time Republican consultant, Roger Ailes, was a brilliant stroke of marketing. Conservatives have long decried the so-called, “liberal news media.” So Murdock and Ailes created an outlet where conservatives could be comforted hearing news bent toward their beliefs.
It’s target marketing. Just like Teen magazine runs articles aimed at teenage girls, Fox presents stories from a conservative perspective.
From a marketing point of view, that’s all well and good so long as the conservative brand is flying high. But when the brand is floundering, what happens?
MSNBC happens.
The channel, born of a marriage between Microsoft and NBC was for years an under-performer. But as the Republican Party and President Bush’s poll numbers began plummeting early in Bush’s second term, MSNBC morphed into a full-blown liberal version of FOX.
Instead of conservative demagogue hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, with a lightweight liberal thrown in to give the impression of balance, you get smarmy, liberal intellectuals like Keith Oberman and Rachel Maddow with Joe Scarborough thrown in for faux-balance.
I don’t think the corporate boys at FOX or MSNBC did this to grind a political ax. They’re trying to sell laundry soap, cars, washing machines, and erectile dysfunction tablets to identifiable segments of the market. This is further born out by a tendency both cable channels share – an obsessive focus on crime and disaster stories. They actually joke in the news business, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
FOX loves crimes stories, especially those involving missing, young, pretty white girls or small children. It plays into their viewers’ belief that our culture is going to hell in a hand basket (we’ll ignore for the moment that crime in America is at a 30 year low). On the other hand, MSNBC spends entire afternoons and weekends playing murder investigation documentaries for similar reasons; people are titillated by blood.
Where does CNN fall? Somewhere in the middle. They’re not great, but that’s where I often go for a quick shot of TV news. But truth is, I’m a liberal, so when I watch FOX I get irritated and when I watch MSNBC I’m soothed. But I don’t watch the news to have my biases validated. I watch MSNBC barely more than I watch Fox for that very reason. This isn’t a game meant to validate my team, it’s me trying to figure out what’s really happening in the world.
That’s why I watch a little FOX when I’m getting dressed in the morning and listened to NPR on the way to work. I listen to a little BBC news online in my office, and scan my Indianapolis Star each evening, reading both the liberal and conservative columnists. If there’s a Wall Street Journal nearby, I’ll read their conservative editorial page and I’ll also scan the relatively liberal Time Magazine.
But in reality the biggest bias in the media is toward the frivolous. That’s why CNN, FOX, or MSNBC would all gladly interrupt a Senate vote on income taxes to cover a police chase. It’s why stories on the common needs of childhood healthcare are rarely done, but acutely rare incidents of abducted children are covered heavily. It’s why few Americans know why the Israelis and Palestinians are fighting, yet most know the particulars of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s marriage.
And no doubt there are those reading this who see The Contrarian as a referee of sorts and feel I’ve called the game unfairly.
My Uncle Gene 12/31/08
On the Monday morning before Christmas, with wind chills well below zero, Gene went out in his pajamas and flip-flops to get the newspaper. At the end of the driveway he slipped, hit his head on the ground, and fell unconscious. It would be a half hour before he was found.
In my childhood Gene was a bachelor uncle and a Pied Piper of sorts. When he visited our house my siblings and I often piled in his car and he’d take us to nearby Highland Park in Kokomo, where we’d see the stuffed bull, Big Ben and ride the “curly-slides.”
I have a clear memory of a summer day spent at Clear Lake in northern Indiana with my brother and sisters on Gene’s sale boat. He could see I was bored, knew I wanted to go swimming, so he encouraged me to jump in the water, grab the rudder and just let the boat tow me around the lake. What fun to be pulled through the water by the wind.
When a sharp gust of wind jerked the boat forward, the force swept my swim suite down around my ankles. I can still recall Gene at the tiller, looking back at my bare butt in the water and laughing uncontrollably.
Picking up my sister, Cindy at the airport the day before the funeral, we drove across Indianapolis and reminisced about Uncle Gene.
Cindy had a crush on him when we were kids. Riding in Gene’s car when she was a little girl, Cindy would sit on her knees in the passenger seat to make herself look taller. She hoped people would think she was Gene’s girlfriend.
It is often said that there are givers and takers in this world. Well, Gene was a giver. He listened more than he spoke and was generous to a fault. He rarely talked about himself and would prefer to ask about you. He was a Purdue grad and a mechanical engineer who took his vacations in the winter so he could snow ski out west.
As our childhood wore on Gene spent years helping take care of his father, our grandfather, whose Parkinson’s disease had bound him to a wheelchair.
Drinking a glass of wine with my other sister, Jama the night before the funeral, she recalled how he had noticed and encouraged her athletic ability. When she was a young teenager, Gene bought her a set of golf clubs and a season pass at the local golf course.
Chatting with relatives and strangers at the funeral home on Monday I heard story after story like that.
He finally married in his early forties. Early in his marriage when his daughters were small, his wife would encourage him to sit and relax after dinner, perhaps read the newspaper. But he would not. Instead he cooked and cleaned right along with her, saying, “I’ll stop when you stop.”
Thanks to him and my dad, his brother, I grew up in a family where the line between men's work and woman's work was not so clearly defined. Men did not sit at the table and wait for the women to clear and clean. Everybody did it together.
The life Gene made in that northern Indiana town was built upon service and generosity.
He sat on the school board for 20 years. When a remonstrance was filed against a plan for a new high school, he quietly and methodically organized supporters in the community and the project went forward. As construction began, he gladly and very successfully stepped into the role of project manager though he had no specific experience in the field. He was so involved in the school system and such a supporter of its students and athletes, the high school basketball team came to his funeral.
Remarkable.
When his daughter was nearly killed in a car accident, he spent months caring for her. When his mother weakened in a nursing home because she refused to eat, he went there at meal times and patiently fed her himself.
If he ever complained about any of this, I never heard about it.
He was a rabid Boilermaker fan who bled black and gold. He was a good Methodist. Raised in a man’s world during the depression, he and his wife purposefully raised two smart, thoroughly modern daughters. He was a conservative Republican. He was as hard a worker as you’d ever find and a family man with a quiet determination that is hard to overstate.
When I was growing up and trying, as all young boys do, to figure out what it meant to be a man, along with my father, Gene was an irreplaceable role model.
In my childhood Gene was a bachelor uncle and a Pied Piper of sorts. When he visited our house my siblings and I often piled in his car and he’d take us to nearby Highland Park in Kokomo, where we’d see the stuffed bull, Big Ben and ride the “curly-slides.”
I have a clear memory of a summer day spent at Clear Lake in northern Indiana with my brother and sisters on Gene’s sale boat. He could see I was bored, knew I wanted to go swimming, so he encouraged me to jump in the water, grab the rudder and just let the boat tow me around the lake. What fun to be pulled through the water by the wind.
When a sharp gust of wind jerked the boat forward, the force swept my swim suite down around my ankles. I can still recall Gene at the tiller, looking back at my bare butt in the water and laughing uncontrollably.
Picking up my sister, Cindy at the airport the day before the funeral, we drove across Indianapolis and reminisced about Uncle Gene.
Cindy had a crush on him when we were kids. Riding in Gene’s car when she was a little girl, Cindy would sit on her knees in the passenger seat to make herself look taller. She hoped people would think she was Gene’s girlfriend.
It is often said that there are givers and takers in this world. Well, Gene was a giver. He listened more than he spoke and was generous to a fault. He rarely talked about himself and would prefer to ask about you. He was a Purdue grad and a mechanical engineer who took his vacations in the winter so he could snow ski out west.
As our childhood wore on Gene spent years helping take care of his father, our grandfather, whose Parkinson’s disease had bound him to a wheelchair.
Drinking a glass of wine with my other sister, Jama the night before the funeral, she recalled how he had noticed and encouraged her athletic ability. When she was a young teenager, Gene bought her a set of golf clubs and a season pass at the local golf course.
Chatting with relatives and strangers at the funeral home on Monday I heard story after story like that.
He finally married in his early forties. Early in his marriage when his daughters were small, his wife would encourage him to sit and relax after dinner, perhaps read the newspaper. But he would not. Instead he cooked and cleaned right along with her, saying, “I’ll stop when you stop.”
Thanks to him and my dad, his brother, I grew up in a family where the line between men's work and woman's work was not so clearly defined. Men did not sit at the table and wait for the women to clear and clean. Everybody did it together.
The life Gene made in that northern Indiana town was built upon service and generosity.
He sat on the school board for 20 years. When a remonstrance was filed against a plan for a new high school, he quietly and methodically organized supporters in the community and the project went forward. As construction began, he gladly and very successfully stepped into the role of project manager though he had no specific experience in the field. He was so involved in the school system and such a supporter of its students and athletes, the high school basketball team came to his funeral.
Remarkable.
When his daughter was nearly killed in a car accident, he spent months caring for her. When his mother weakened in a nursing home because she refused to eat, he went there at meal times and patiently fed her himself.
If he ever complained about any of this, I never heard about it.
He was a rabid Boilermaker fan who bled black and gold. He was a good Methodist. Raised in a man’s world during the depression, he and his wife purposefully raised two smart, thoroughly modern daughters. He was a conservative Republican. He was as hard a worker as you’d ever find and a family man with a quiet determination that is hard to overstate.
When I was growing up and trying, as all young boys do, to figure out what it meant to be a man, along with my father, Gene was an irreplaceable role model.
Generosity in a Time of Need 12/24/08
This will be an anxious Christmas for many people.
In the run-up to the holidays I’ve been preoccupied with the plight of a family member fallen on hard times. Our family has tried to figure out how to help.
We’re not unique. I spoke to an older friend recently who teared-up while telling me a similar story. His son and daughter-in-law have both recently lost their jobs. He is helping them out financially and stressing over it as any parent would.
The morning paper and evening news shout that layoffs are as common this season as Christmas cards, foreclosures are on the rise, and in the back hallway of my office, we’re slowly filling photocopier paper boxes with canned goods, cereal boxes, diapers and jugs of apple juice collected for local food banks.
My immediate family has been blessed and is financially secure, for now.
When I think about the needs of others, my mind often falls back to my brief college stay in London. At first, the homeless on the streets of that big city got a lot of my spare change. On Queensway, halfway between two Underground stations, a wiry old man in threadbare clothes danced a jig for passersby while another elderly man crouched beside him playing a harmonica. I passed them every morning and tossed money in the hat.
But slowly I became like locals, avoiding eye contact with the man who slept in a sleeping bag along an alley opening or moralizing about the punk-rocker kids calling out at street corners for “spare change.”
My excuse: “If I gave spare change to everyone who asked for it, I’d be broke before I got home each day.” But in truth I was tired of being bothered and tired of the moral dilemma of wondering whether I was funding much needed food or enabling a substance abuser.
Being callous is so much easier than caring.
After Katrina hit a few years ago, we pondered how our family might help the victims. A 5-gallon antique bottle sits beside my dresser, into which I empty the change from my pockets each evening. Over a year or more it had grown half full and we resolved to send its contents to the Red Cross. My teenage son, Cal took the mountain of change – a couple hundred bucks, I figured, to the grocery store change machine. The plan: he would bring the money home and we’d send out a check.
But it turned out the change machine display screen had an option allowing him to automatically donate our change to Katrina victims. Cal pressed the, “yes” button and proudly brought home the receipt for tax purposes. I looked at it and my heart jumped. The change bottle didn’t hold a couple hundred bucks, it held over $600.
“You gave away $600?” I gasped. “I wanted to be generous, but not THAT generous!”
Cal shrugged, “What were you going to do with that money? You didn’t even know how much you had. Those people need it a lot more than we do.”
I wanted to lecture him about giving away my money so easily – wanted to tell him what my father always told me when complaining about government spending, “It’s always easier to spend someone else’s money,” but I didn’t.
The televised images of people standing on roofs waving to helicopters for rescue, sweating it out in the Superdome, and entire neighborhoods obliterated by flooding had all had an effect on Cal. He hadn’t simply been careless with my money, he’d given it away quickly so I couldn’t second guess and retrench and keep some of it for something frivolous like dinner out at a restaurant or a handful of music CDs.
There are a lot of people these days waving for rescue. From regular folks to big corporations, people are hurting and media pundits are moralizing over who deserves help and who doesn’t.
Sometimes when we insist on “tough love,” perhaps we focus too much on the “tough” and not enough on the “love.” I’ve been guilty of that.
In this Christmas season, those of us who are blessed might best represent the season by erring on the side of humility and generosity. As the hymn says, “Let there be peace on earth, and it begin with me.”
In the run-up to the holidays I’ve been preoccupied with the plight of a family member fallen on hard times. Our family has tried to figure out how to help.
We’re not unique. I spoke to an older friend recently who teared-up while telling me a similar story. His son and daughter-in-law have both recently lost their jobs. He is helping them out financially and stressing over it as any parent would.
The morning paper and evening news shout that layoffs are as common this season as Christmas cards, foreclosures are on the rise, and in the back hallway of my office, we’re slowly filling photocopier paper boxes with canned goods, cereal boxes, diapers and jugs of apple juice collected for local food banks.
My immediate family has been blessed and is financially secure, for now.
When I think about the needs of others, my mind often falls back to my brief college stay in London. At first, the homeless on the streets of that big city got a lot of my spare change. On Queensway, halfway between two Underground stations, a wiry old man in threadbare clothes danced a jig for passersby while another elderly man crouched beside him playing a harmonica. I passed them every morning and tossed money in the hat.
But slowly I became like locals, avoiding eye contact with the man who slept in a sleeping bag along an alley opening or moralizing about the punk-rocker kids calling out at street corners for “spare change.”
My excuse: “If I gave spare change to everyone who asked for it, I’d be broke before I got home each day.” But in truth I was tired of being bothered and tired of the moral dilemma of wondering whether I was funding much needed food or enabling a substance abuser.
Being callous is so much easier than caring.
After Katrina hit a few years ago, we pondered how our family might help the victims. A 5-gallon antique bottle sits beside my dresser, into which I empty the change from my pockets each evening. Over a year or more it had grown half full and we resolved to send its contents to the Red Cross. My teenage son, Cal took the mountain of change – a couple hundred bucks, I figured, to the grocery store change machine. The plan: he would bring the money home and we’d send out a check.
But it turned out the change machine display screen had an option allowing him to automatically donate our change to Katrina victims. Cal pressed the, “yes” button and proudly brought home the receipt for tax purposes. I looked at it and my heart jumped. The change bottle didn’t hold a couple hundred bucks, it held over $600.
“You gave away $600?” I gasped. “I wanted to be generous, but not THAT generous!”
Cal shrugged, “What were you going to do with that money? You didn’t even know how much you had. Those people need it a lot more than we do.”
I wanted to lecture him about giving away my money so easily – wanted to tell him what my father always told me when complaining about government spending, “It’s always easier to spend someone else’s money,” but I didn’t.
The televised images of people standing on roofs waving to helicopters for rescue, sweating it out in the Superdome, and entire neighborhoods obliterated by flooding had all had an effect on Cal. He hadn’t simply been careless with my money, he’d given it away quickly so I couldn’t second guess and retrench and keep some of it for something frivolous like dinner out at a restaurant or a handful of music CDs.
There are a lot of people these days waving for rescue. From regular folks to big corporations, people are hurting and media pundits are moralizing over who deserves help and who doesn’t.
Sometimes when we insist on “tough love,” perhaps we focus too much on the “tough” and not enough on the “love.” I’ve been guilty of that.
In this Christmas season, those of us who are blessed might best represent the season by erring on the side of humility and generosity. As the hymn says, “Let there be peace on earth, and it begin with me.”
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