Friday, August 15, 2014

Stemler on road-pounding trucks: “A (truck) carrying 20 tons of asphalt or crushed stone – we're taxing (the Clark Memorial Bridge) an awful lot."


Yesterday: One Southern Indiana's hypocrisy is absolutely reprehensible.

To Kerry Stemler, hypocrisy is an art form.

He is a soul-crushing oligarchic corporate criminal suitable for tarring and feathering, or worse.

And these "road-pounding" trucks ... the many trucks belonging to Stemler's own businesses and those of his fellow regional wealth extractors?

Naturally, they need to be kept off the toll rolls, and also off the Clark Memorial Bridge, but are just fine and dandy when speedily rerouted through residential streets in New Albany ... which like the bridge, were not constructed for the use of such vehicles, which is why their presence preferably comes with the full cooperation of New Albany's OWN ELECTED GOVERNMENT, which is happy (or sufficiently clueless) to oblige with nary a peep.

Louisville chamber chair backs commercial truck ban on Clark Memorial Bridge, by Marcus Green (WDRB)

... Besides his GLI position, Stemler sits on the boards of the Finance Authority and a six-person panel in charge of the bridges project's toll policy. In an interview, he said he plans to use his influence to push for several other ideas included in Dant Chesser's letter.

Specifically, Stemler said he also favors reclassifying certain heavy vehicles to avoid the toll rates charged to tractor trailers and exempting Transit Authority of River City buses from tolls.

Notice the deft public transit touch. Fortunately, we have plenty of old masonry walls hereabouts ready to be pressed into service following the show trial.

Bluegill provides the coda, as posted yesterday:

Today is street sweeping day in front of our house-- you know, spend hour after hour writing tickets penalizing residents for minute, non-moving infractions while thousands of cars and large trucks whiz through their neighborhood at 45 mph day. As such, residents crammed all their cars onto the side street to avoid the harassment. With said cars parked on both sides, the folks profiting from the Main Street Bicycle Denial Project placed their barricade right in the middle of the street so no one could get out without backing up down half the street and turning into the glass strewn alley where the street sweeper might actually be useful but never goes. I moved the barricade. Will again tomorrow. It's come to that.

Yes, it has come to that -- with New Albany's streets, and on Kerry Stemler's pet bridges, and the best strategies for coping with both have narrowed to calculated, principled civil disobedience. It may be the best single mayoral campaign idea for 2015.

But wait ... what was that?

You can't see how it is possible for a government sworn to uphold law to instead express disobedience?

Come now.

It hasn't been that long since Doug England publicly announced that he wouldn't enforce his own parking regulations. England didn't strike them, but merely renounced their enforcement. The ordinances remain on the books, and the city continues to ignore its own laws.

As we speak, I suspect those same heavy trucks that inspire throbbing erections on the part of the likes of Kerry Stemler are being exempted from speeding enforcement in New Albany, and I'll continue to believe it until someone within our close-mouthed City Hall proves to me otherwise. If the local chain newspaper can't or won't ask the questions, I will.  

Isn't it an act of willful civil disobedience for a sitting mayor not to enforce the city's own ordinances? If not, then what exactly is it?

Consequently, to campaign for the office of mayor on an explicit platform of civic disobedience as it pertains to matters like one-way streets and Stemler's auto-erotic tolling project strikes me as the most ethical choice available to a candidate.

Apart from drinking beer, that is. I vow to achieve that, too.

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