CM Steve Price auditions for Geico commercial, dismisses education and economic development as "feel good projects."

(For more, visit the Highwayman: "And the Price Is.......!!" )

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Our power-blogging, one-chord councilman -- or is that power-chording, one-blog councilman -- is back, and he’s more confused than ever about the fundamental meaning of words, with results far more revealing than he intends.

Need vs. Want Basic Economics

CM Steve Price begins by defining his terms ... sort of, as his definition of “need” is incorrect in the context used, even if a “lack of subsistence” inadvertently summarizes the prevailing paucity of ideas at his Dewey Heights compound.

In my opinion, I would say addressing the increasing need of 15th street to prevent a major catastrophe is a need. Giving $25 thousand to Montessori,or $92 thousand for Southern Indiana One to further the economic development of our city is a want. (Isn’t that what we pay Paul Wheatley for?) $117 thousand requested from Riverboat money so far this year.

Our councilman presumably was seated at a computer and linked to the Internet, so it isn’t too much to expect that he might search One Southern Indiana and render its name properly.

Sadly, but not at all unexpectedly, this lies entirely beyond his abilities, as does the correct pronunciation of the names of people with whom he disagrees (ask John Rosenbarger about that some time). In fact, this is a frequent Price stratagem: A bumbling, halting mispronunciation designed to entice titters from human laugh tracks like Professor Erika.

It's embarrassing.

Just as naturally, it wouldn’t be a vintage Steve Price yokel’s yodel without a disparaging cheap shot lobbed at someone like Paul Wheatley, complete with an ungrammatical sentence fragment about Riverboat money. Verily, writing requires different muscles than speaking, and can cause severe strains if the ones that have atrophied from lack of use are strained without proper stretching and preparation.

What about our NEEDS projects.

For example: the need to address 15th street, the need to address the deficient with our ambulance and street departments, the need to address our police and fire budgets, the need to address the issue of accountability and responsibility. $117 thousand could help in addressing these NEEDS.

To be honest, the “deficient” is something I worry about, too, seeing as he’s running for re-election on a head-in-the-sand-with-Dave Ramsey-tome platform of “no progress at any Price,” so perhaps someone will defeat him in the forthcoming election, thus correcting the “deficiency,” because if there’s any “deficiency” – any “need” -- that we must address, it lies in the 3rd district’s current mode of “deficient leadership,” which CM Price blithely expects us to believe is as easy as arbitrarily selecting a monetary figure, using it in conjunction with random citations of a half-dozen obvious problems of which we’re all aware (but not the only half-dozen), and using the predictable absence of a simplistic solution fit for a Sesame Street skit as the precise reason why all gears of the city must come to a complete halt, at least until a councilman who hasn’t managed to articulate a future-oriented strategy in three long years can catch up with a planet that refuses to stop spinning, evolving, and racing beyond his comprehension.

But here’s the bar-none, best part of CM Price’s plaintive paean to primitivism:

Where are our priorities? Funding feel good projects or attending to absolute necessities?

Check it out, New Albany. Read that paragraph very carefully, and remember it come election time. NAC most assuredly will.

In Steve Price’s mind, education is a “feel good” project.

In Steve Price’s mind, economic development of the sort pursued on a regional basis by One Southern Indiana is another “feel good” project.

Neither of these two necessary pillars of human civilization -- in the sense of things we "need" -- are "absolute necessities" to better the under-educated and the under-employed whom Steve Price is forever eager to help ... but in the end, to help do nothing except muddle through their lives while he selectively pursues shortsighted, futile policies of congenital limitation that are guaranteed to keep our pies – and our hopes, and our dreams – as small as his own narrow horizons.

This, my friends, is what the dreaded New Albany Syndrome can do for you.

Precious little.

CM Price's expressions of no-can-do are derived from the envy and resentment, the concurrent failures of the stunted small-timer to perceive politics as the art of the possible, and the cycle of miserable dysfunction that feeds on itself and perpetuates despair.

Price is a councilman, for heaven's sake. He's already confessed in print that he's done all he can do -- but my cats accomplished far more in the litter box today.

Don't you think we "need" something different in 2007?