It all started last year when properties in Indiana got reassessed for property tax purposes. Some families saw their bills go up more than 200 percent in one year. Neighbors turned against neighbors, angry and confused as to why one's bill went up by triple digits and the person across the street was paying the same as years passed.

There were riots, there were protests, and there were petitions. People lashed out against the government and each other. Many politicians touted the property tax "crisis" as one off their main campaign agendas, including current Mayor Greg Ballard who beat out a long-time incumbent for his position.

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Tuesday, March 11, 2008 will be a special day for Indiana. Democrat
Andre Carson, Libertarian Sean Shepard and Republican Jon Elrod seem to
think so, anyway. These three political hopefuls have spent significant time

and money trying to tie up a position that will essentially last only a little
more than a few months.

On Nov. 25, 2007 Julia Carson, who had represented Indiana's 7th
District in the House of Representatives for over 10 years, announced
that she had terminal lung cancer. Two days later she announced that she
would not be seeking a seventh term. She passed away on December 15,
2007 - leaving her seat open for the taking.

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A few months back some collegues and I were meeting in an upstairs room of a house in Indianapolis discussing the Indiana news of late. The big topic of discussion that night was property taxes - something that had spun out of control in our great state. A new reassessment system had been ordered, and some people's taxes had went up over 300 percent.

As we spoke about the issues, we debated, we argued, we agreed, and we came up with an idea - The Indiana View. We would discuss local issues and put it on the internet. Why hadn't someone come up with this at the national level? Oh wait ...

As many great ideas sometimes become bigger in our imagination than our bodies are willing to carry out, this idea got tucked into the back closet of my mind, and now I'm ready to make it reality. I've spent a lot of time preparing this, and think I've finally grouped together the perfect mix of four personalities.

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With the primary election not until the first week of May in my state, apathy has washed out voter turnout in years past. However, if the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama stays as close as it has been, Indiana may matter come May.

Every single delegate is counting more and more these days as Clinton and Obama battle it out for a nomination that even the experts will not predict. That sounded good, didn't it? But wait ... what does it mean? What are delegates, and how do candidates win them?

In my state, there is the potential to win 84 delegates. There are two groups: superdelegates and pledged delegates. Indiana has 11 super delegates, who can vote for whichever candidate they want — easy enough.

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According to The Internet Society (www.isoc.org), in 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, the first earth satellite, and the United States needed a response. Within the next year, the United States formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) as a sector of the Department of Defense to take the lead in technology that was applicable to the military. In the late 1960s, a group of scientists from ARPA launched ARPANET to share their research and technology. By 1973, the first international connections to this “network” were being made. By 1984, there were 1,000 hosts on the “network.” Less than ten years later in 1992, the term “surfing the ‘net” is coined and there are more than one million hosts.

It happened that fast.

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If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

For my second week on Street Team '08, I had the perfect video planned out. It was not too heavy, but very informative and hopefully helpful to everyone. I shot the video, I edited the video, I got ready to turn in the video, and then I heard about this:

2 face murder charges in deaths

A crushing story that, unfortunately, seems to be happening more and more in my "safe" city. It is an issue that is so important, that needs so much attention, that calls for such an extreme change, that I felt like it was worth blogging about.

And I can't complain that I will now be one week ahead on my video when I submit the one I have done for next week.

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On Jan. 7, 2008, 51 citizen journalists trickled into New York City. There was one from each state, and the 51st came from Washington D.C. They came from all corners of the country, and from a suburb in Indiana, came me.

Six months earlier I had stumbled across a diamond in the rough in the land of freelance work on Craig’s List (www.craigslist.com) – an ad from MTV! The television network was looking for one citizen journalist from each s...