Part 4 of 4.
NA Confidential believes that CM Dan Coffey, while indisputably eligible for the post of city council president by virtue of a measurable pulse, is fundamentally unsuited for this position of visibility and responsibility, owing to what Thomas Jefferson once referred to as a “long train of abuses and usurpations,” ones that we have assiduously documented throughout 2005.
We propose to emulate Jefferson’s method of presentation by listing these examples of unsuitability, organized quarterly and in chronological order, as we have reported them here.
The viewpoints expressed in this series are entirely ours, and all quoted passages in the series were written by The New Albanian, unless otherwise attributed.
Unfortunately, many hyperlinks to local media sources have become broken during the months since the original publication dates, and while this is infuriating from an archivist's perspective -- the Courier-Journal's inconsistent articles-for-pay policy and the Tribune's web site revamp are to blame -- it simply can’t be helped.
As always, and subject to NA Confidential's procedures, reader comments are welcomed.
October 4: Just vote "no" to the 3rd District's ongoing city council embarrassment.
Back now to the rental property owner in question, CM Price. How many times has he voted "no," or abstained, when called upon to represent the views of his 3rd District constituents?
We're not sure, either, but when there's time for diggin', the minutes of city council meetings are available on-line, and there's still a whole year and a half for us to begin compiling the evidence that will illustrate in abundant clarity why Mr. Price needs to return to the private sector.
Of course, there's always a chance that our folksy half of the Siamese Councilmen will come to his senses, reach down deep for a previously untapped reserve of sense and sensibility, and stage a comeback.
October 6: Overt anti-intellectualism? Well, that would explain CM Price's votes against the interests of his own district.
In political terms, New Albany’s most renowned practitioners of the anti-intellectual craft are registered as Democrats, although it remains difficult to imagine most of them voting for John Kerry in 2004 – or, more accurately, it is difficult to imagine them voting against George W. Bush’s convoluted grammar, Karl Rove’s simplistic, kindergarten slogans, and the GOP’s Orwellian fables of the deconstruction.
Beyond the collateral damage incurred by other Democrats, why does this matter?
To paraphrase (Eric L.) McKitrick’s reading of (Richard) Hofstadter, “the relation between the way politicians like Dan Coffey and Steve Price behave, in politics and other realms of effort, and the use they make of their minds,” is of central importance for the future of New Albany.
Speaking only for myself, CM Coffey can remain the ward-heeling emperor of his tiny West End electoral district – one ripe for immediate and unforgiving redistricting if not for the desire of most involved with local politics to see him remain in relative isolation – for as long as his supporters are content to endure their ongoing impoverishment, but the 3rd District is a different story entirely, if for no other reason than it being my district of residence.
The only plausible explanation for 3rd District CM Price’s abysmal voting record, one that grows more bizarrely predictable each month, is a strident and growing anti-intellectualism.
October 11: Read all about it at Volunteer Hoosier.
By Randy Smith of Volunteer Hoosier).
“ ... No thing is clearer than that a cabal of venal, self-interested politicians (ward-heelers) and hangers-on (you know who you are) are intent on creating a miasma of discontent in New Albany. Relying on their experiences from the past, they believe that Rove-ian propaganda can ensure that, come election time, all of that discontent will be poured out indiscriminately toward whoever is the incumbent mayor. After all, isn't that the norm. Don't try to improve things, just blame whoever's in there at at the top of the ticket?”
October 12: Councilman Cappuccino fights for the right to be small, laments plague of book learning that has descended on the city.
At the same time, a city resident, evidently confusing economic development and revitalization with the huge portions of Honey Baked Scrapple available during the recently concluded Harvest Homecoming, accused the city of “biting off more than we can chew.”
Of course, for some of our city's veteran obstructionists, attempting to turn the pages of the calendar forward to 1975 is biting off more than they can chew.
Councilman Dan Cappuccino, he of the postage-stamp sized principality of West Endia, immediately joined the aforementioned citizen in condemning the Scribner Place project and everyone it stands for, noting that many of the impoverished residents of his own fiefdom – people he has failed to enrich in any measurable way during decades of grating self-aggrandizement on the political stage – wouldn’t be able to afford membership in a YMCA, and for this reason, the remainder of the city should immediately be pulled down to the councilman’s level.
Councilman Cappuccino then proposed a voter referendum on whether snooty educated people who insist on accomplishing better things should be allowed to ruin the barbecued bologna for the rest of us.
October 21: Social chaos fetishists swoon at Thursday night's City Council meeting.
When does the image in the magnifying glass cease to be that of the sum of a column of numbers, and becomes instead a ready made, self-referenced ethical system, complete with dry arcana of sewer audits magically transformed into decrees fit for publication on stone tablets, conspiratorial decade-old meeting minutes blossomed into manna suitable for roasting over a burning bush, and colorless accountants converted into matinee idol Moses clones?
Obviously, a mass movement is one thing, and a bowel movement something else entirely.
Speaking of last evening's performance by Trog Sham and the Brambleberries, here's today's media coverage.
October 22: Trogs or progs? Local Democrats face the future.
After all, it hasn’t been Mark Seabrook, the city council’s lone Republican, who has staged a continuous, anti-intellectual, ill-tempered insurrection against literacy, decency and progress – it has been the council’s obstructionist Gang of Four, councilmen Coffey, Price, Kochert and Schmidt, registered Democrats to a man, ones seemingly determined to imprison an entire 21st-century city within their own reactionary 19th-century hues, and in order to so, seeking succor from terminally disaffected, only nominally Democratic voters who in the harsh light of day might as well be Republicans, such is the weight of the regressive tendencies implicit in their conspiratorial, thuggish, Luddite view of the world.
Let’s be perfectly clear about the nature of this mean-spirited, rear-guard action.
During the most recent chapter in the political history of New Albany, when it has come to base instincts triumphing over noble ideals … when it has come to the frantic race to pander to the worst angels of our natures … when it has come to a tragic, self-defeating advocacy of fear … when it has come to consistently providing the most irredeemably wrong message to the city’s next generation, those for whom we must provide reasons for moving forward by staying here and assisting us in making New Albany and Floyd County better places to live, to work, and to achieve – when it has come to these flagrantly unsuitable indicators of mediocrity, the poster children for societal regress have all been Democrats, and while there may be Republicans capable of far worse (given that most currently are employed by the illegitimate national regime), they’ve not unwisely held their tongues and permitted the far lesser lights of the Democratic Party to wreak havoc on themselves.
October 28: Local Democrats toast FDR, celebrate party principles while Gang of Four dines on cold barbecued bologna.
On what philosophical basis will the Democratic Party contest the 2006 elections on the local level?
Will it be on the basis of core party principles, properly retained but sagely updated to reflect 21st-century realities?
Or will it be on the basis of the increasingly discredited and shamefully incestuous ward heeling, pandering and self-serving demagoguery typified by the city council’s obstructionist Gang of Four? Progress or regress? How conservative can a Democrat be before a Democrat ceases to be?
October 29: "A growing network of people and institutions that openly and enthusiastically invite positive change and progress to our city."
(A comment by Jeff "bluegill" Gillenwater).
“The days of feigning happiness and forcing smiles when a Dan Coffey or Larry Kochert wins an election, purely out of a sense of loyalty to the party, are coming to a distasteful but inevitable end. As their public lives haven't afforded much respect for or understanding of the concepts of grace or dignity, neither should their political deaths be expected to engender such traits. Dead, however, is dead.
According to almost all the longtime party members with whom I spoke last night, the dinner was a success not only because of the notable and not-so-notable absences but also because the speakers enjoyed a view that included so many new faces.”
November 1: A year later, there's steady forward progress.
You’d simply not expect to begin changing a municipality’s lifetime of underachievement all at once, although some citizens take longer to reach than others.
With his own goal line coming ever closer into view to the immediate rear, Councilman Cappuccino has become even more ill-tempered than usual, snapping to the C-J’s reporter that he “resents” being pushed into doing the homework necessary to unravel the complexities of the impact fees, a task that might include reading, a hobby he has publicly disavowed on more than one occasion.
November 8: Just like the 3rd District misses being represented.
Some things never change, so during a city council meeting that lasted only thirty (30) minutes from opening to closing gavels, the eternally mellifluous Councilman Cappuccino spoke too many words and said far too little, but of course nothing can compare to the malapropian twang of the 3rd District's Uncouncilman Price, who described the insurance plan of city employees as "pretty daggone good," and added that he "misses it," giggling spacily while the sparse crowd counted ceiling tiles and remembered lost episodes of Andy Griffith prior to Price's unfathomable abstention ("because it's the first reading.")
November 23: Props to VAB for an excellent Greenway forum.
That’s when I thought of the five elderly Germans on their bicycles.
I thought of them again when Councilman Dan Coffey spoke about the need of making it easier for people to get across the levee from downtown to the river, noting that Scribner Place’s original design included a long ramp that would have eliminated the stairs currently required to gain a view of the river at the Trinkle Dome – and how hard it is to make that climb.
November 30: UPDATED: Say it ain't so, (Dan, Bill, Steve, Larry) ... you've given Trog Sham(an) a pain in the Rumpke.
Small wonder the outside world laughs at us, and we're not talking giggles, folks. It's sustained, hearty laughter.
December 6: An empty chair's better than an empty suit -- or why Frankfort Avenue is bad for an Uncouncilman's stunted imagination.
Meanwhile, in his clearest and most unambiguous statement to date on the topic of New Albany’s revitalization, 3rd District Uncouncilman Steve Price said last night that we should not “pack people in like sardines,” as is the case over at Louisville’s Frankfort Avenue, where presumably the numerous niche shoppers, gallery viewers, satisfied diners, all-hours coffee drinkers, job holders, taxpayers and residents of highly valued properties would pose a conspiratorial threat if they were to be somehow transported to New Albany and permitted to spend money here.
Price, a rental property owner, spent the evening enthusiastically playing to the obstructionist Luddites in attendance by joining fellow Siamese Councilman Dan Coffey in affectionately stroking the sizeable, green-tinted chip that rests at all times on Coffey’s shoulder -- the one that manifests itself in unbridled and self-destructive disdain for any human being in a position of authority who has made the mistake of being educated ... as Coffey has not.
Consequently, not content merely to oppose efforts to amend a new sewer tap-in fee ordinance to allow community housing organizations like Habitat for Humanity to receive waivers, or at the very least discounts, so as to assist these organizations in keeping the price of starter and low-income housing low, and encouraging in-fill development in blighted areas, both Coffey and Price seized every opportunity to smirk and to scoff at any and all progress in human affairs, leading inevitably to the single most preposterous utterance of Price’s bumbling, embarrassment-filled tenure in the 3rd District council chair.
December 8: NAC responds to a Tribune letter to the editor ... in more than two hundred words.
Unfortunately, the Scribner Place project continues to be the whipping boy preferred by those among us, like 1st District Councilman Dan Coffey and his Siamese Councilman, 3rd District CM Steve Price, who are innately suspicious of an evolving world that seems foreign and incomprehensible to them, one populated by odd people with strange preferences like exercise, reading, sushi and espresso, and who, to them, symbolize detached affluence and practiced disdain for the working classes and the underprivileged.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and both Mr. Coffey and Mr. Price probably know it, but grandstanding and ward heeling become second nature when you’ve been at it for so long.
December 9: The council member's Rumpke bid lie: It is an ethical lapse, and it does matter.
Some council members looked surprised during CM Kochert's comments, while others issued immediate, albeit mumbled, statements of disinterest in the topic of council integrity; CM Price lamented that “rumors are rampant” on blogs, while CM Coffey reminded listeners yet again that he hadn’t read a blog for months, although he thankfully did not choose the occasion to denounce reading and the insidious book learning that derives from it, as he has during past digressions.
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