Sunday, March 01, 2009

It's been building, for sure.

It's great to be sitting in a quiet room, away from the bedlam of the past two days. I'll begin the Sunday morning Tribune wrap with the newspaper's letters to the editor.

LETTERS: March 1, 2009

— Reader thanks city council for proposed adult ordinance

— Reader has something to say to landlords

The first reader is Vince Garmon, a member of Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana (ROCK), who thanks the New Albany City Council for being so very diligent in tackling the grievous threat to our community posed by adult entertainment, even as the same council congenitally refrains from tackling any of the other dozen (two dozen?) threats that don’t conveniently fall beneath the hot-button umbrella of evangelical preoccupation with sex to the exclusion of interest in all those “other” mundane threats, which after all, don't really affect life in the non-blighted exurb where the real church-goers live -- right, Gary?

Coincidentally, today's front page headline informs us: Adult ordinance faces changes with New Albany City Council.

The minute adjustments include extending the hours of operation and changing the no-contact distance between customers and dancers.

Sorry, but it's venting time for the Publican.

Perhaps well intentioned councilman Bob Caesar, who is quoted in the article, would do well to consider Terry Stalwar’s recent column about unintended consequences.

Bob, you’re permitting the Christian Right to frame the rules of the game, and you do so at the peril of us all. You are risking a slippery slope that will be greased when these (currently) one trick ponies declare victory over the current imaginary peril and change focus to another just as ephemeral, but as "defined" by a specifically religious outlook that jibes not one solitary jot with the secular legal tradition that we ostensibly observe in this country.

Their object is a theocracy, Bob.

Also, recall that every word currently devoted to depicting the damage inflicted by adult entertainment was once deployed to explain the need for the enforced sobriety of Prohibition. It's bad enough that so few of the newly elected council persons ever bothered to study the body and function of that which they wanted to become a member. It's even more depressing to conclude that none of them have read history, either.

The second letter comes from our own Highwayman:

However, don’t walk in the door with fairytales about how being a landlord is not being a business person.

Lloyd is referring to the latest instance of landlord gibberish, as reported by the Tribune last week:

“It’s just another tax. You cannot convince me that it’s anything other than that,” (Haeseley) said. “My biggest concern is that they’ve already established that we’re a business, and I disagree with that.”

He buys it and he resells it for a profit, making use of all available legal quantifications while doing so, and yet in the past, Brian Haeseley has referred to his rental properties as “products,” and echoed the current propaganda that he so freely rehashes that his chosen vocation should not be described as a business.

What is it, Brian? A xylophone? Girl Scout cookie? Cumulo-nimbus cloud?

That rumbling sound you hear is George Orwell doing somersaults six feet under, but perhaps Goebbels was right: The bigger the lie, the more likely that a benumbed public will swallow it.

Stray note to Pat Harrison: The preceding is an historically accurate reference to history in the context of the Gestapo.

Finally, something encouraging to balance the idiocy: New Albany on the Levee?, in which it is suggested that the experience of Newport, Kentucky, might have relevance to our own.

A jolt, to be sure. Believe it or not, there are people living in the city of New Albany who are capable of gazing upon a similar-sized river city less than two hours away and learning something.

I know, I know ... learning probably is illegal, and if so, it'd be the only ordinance we ever bother to enforce, but the point is that these people want to bring someone to New Albany for all of us to learn something.

That's positively subversive for the Open Air Museum.

Freedom to Screech almost certainly is against it, and the concerned troglodytes are preparing to self-immolate on the courthouse steps in protest of the government taking a penny more of their Wal-Mart shopping money -- you know, the cash that keeps Chinese sweat shops ticking.

I'd like to finish this essay, but there's a semi-trailer caught in a pothole outside my door. Gotta go hitch up the team of Dalmatians and go pull him out. Wish me luck. And if anyone finds one of the those anonymous letters circulating to the effect that I lack sufficient moral character to be permitted to do business here (alas, B, that's what I persist in calling it), please forward it to me.

Now more than ever, I could use a good laugh.

12 comments:

  1. Don't sell yourself short. It's not just that you lack moral character. It's that anyone who associates with you lacks it.

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  2. Is Brian Haeseley the guy that spoke up at the neighborhood forum a couple of weeks ago and said (I'm paraphrasing here) that rentals are better for New Albany than home ownership because it means more revenue for the city? And said it like he really believed it?

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  3. Yep.

    Haeseley has spoken at every meeting regarding rental property that I've attended over the course of the past year or so. He's enjoyed the same opportunities to speak as anyone else and has used them.

    It's not a lack of voice that characterizes his problem.

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  4. Pat Harrison's group "Interested Citizens" will be holding their monthly meeting at the Southern Indiana Board of Realtors building in Clarksville on Wednesday, March 4th at 6:30 pm. Greg P., Mark S., and myself, members of the ESNA, have attended of several of these meetings and have been the only homeowners in the group. These meetings let landlords voice how they are being mistreated with taxes. If you are interested is cleaning up New Albany or interested in code enforcement, you need to attend this meeting. You need to voice your opinions as homeowners!

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  5. Homeowners are welcome and these landlords say that they want to work with neighborhood associations, but they are totally against rental registration and inspections!

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  6. Of course they're against reasonable regulation of their businesses ... whoops, I mean their products or their auras or whatever else they're calling them today.

    They've had a free ride for decades. Things like that lead to s sense of entitlement, don't they?

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  7. But here's one thing that all readers can take to the bank. The rental property owners will be organized even if coherence eludes them. Quite likely, the neighborhood associations will continue to flail separately. Guess which one will have more clout politically?

    Some day, the lesson finally will sink in.

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  8. Should we have a organizational meeting with all the neighborhood associations? Should we establish what goal(s) we all need to work for as a group and more forward as one unity group? Didn't we try this before?

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  9. Should be an organizational meeting not a organizational meeting. Sorry about the error!

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  10. You can bet that while the landlords won't be willing to pay a red cent toward what they view as the "unfair" regulation of what are indisputably "businesses", they will spend what money they will to prevent regulation from happening.

    Not only do the neighborhoods need to be organized, but they also had best be prepared to spend money and do the things necessary to win. So far, they have not.

    One thing we might do right now is hire a lobbyist. I'm not kidding. There are people right here doing that sort of work already. We should combine resources and pay one of them.

    By doing so, someone could be doing the slogging organizational work that must occur for us to translate the clout we have into action.

    I have someone in mind.

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  11. One clarification:

    The New Albany on the Levee idea was 100% Ted Fulmore and Ted has done all of the work to organize the event. My sole contribution was that I told Ted that I thought he had a really, really good idea. I'm very much looking forward to the event.

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