Plaid Friday 1: Speaking of localism, remember when that paving guy launched his boycott of toll opponents?

Last week, an unexpected e-mail landed in my box.

Alas, when I followed the link, the request had disappeared. To be honest, it had been a very long time since I thought about Mr. Coe and his boycott. Let's revisit it. It was July, 2011, and the text of the original posting at NA Confidential appears in its entirety. There was a follow-up with Coe's reply: "If you’re going to argue 'no tolls' be fair and honest."

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At long last, an oligarch's toady who is honest in his vituperation.


All the digging credit goes to Curt Morrison and his Louisville Courant blog for uncovering these delicious gems of wisdom from Spencer Coe, Vice President at Gohmann "We Fought the Guvmint, and the Guvmint Won" Asphalt, which of course stands to reap vast and mind-boggling profits from various components of the bridges boondoggle.

Indiana businesses boycotted by VP of crooked contractor

Spencer B. Coe, the Vice President of Gohmann Asphalt, through comments on a Business First poll on the Bridges Project, has launched a boycott against toll opponents. Specifically, he's named businesses like Buckhead's, Rocky's, Clark County Auto Auction, that he believes he can do without.

Here's a Coe defense of his kneejerk boycott notion, which appeared as a comment at Louisville Courant.

I stand by my position, those who support the ORBP should not support the businesses of those who do not. I can choose where to spend my money and it will not be with businesses that actively oppose investment in the future of our region, I suggest the same for all ORBP supporters.

In the same comment thread, NA Confidential's Jeff Gillenwater answered.

If that's how Coe wants to play, then play.

What that means, of course, is that an overwhelming majority of people in the region would not do business with Gohmann Asphalt, including hundreds of area businesses and all the local governments who have issued statements, signed petitions, and/or passed resolutions against current ORBP plans.

Gohmann competes for local contracts worth hundreds of thousands in New Albany alone. Removing them from the bid list, though, is no problem if that's how their VP wants to handle it.

In an earlier comment at Facebook, Coe widened the geographic scope to include our own charming New Albany.

Please someone tell me how this will adversely affect Southern Indiana? Smooth flowing traffic on I 65 will adversely impact downtown New Albany and Grant Line Road businesses? The inability of some in Southern Indiana to see outside their "back yard" is frightening!

Impact? I'm glad he brought up that word, which has become a favorite of mine. I took a slightly softer approach in answering.

Spencer, what you might do is stand in my shoes for just a moment. As operator of a small independent retail business that does not derive governmental income for massive construction projects, but rather must convince diners/drinkers/shoppers to come to Indiana from Louisville to spend their discretionary income, I know how very hard it is to do just that. They don't have to come here; I must convince them. Charge them a fee to do it, and for many, game over. Until you and other toll proponents truly GET this reality, we'll continue being at odds.

Which reminds me, it is now 205 days since Jerry Finn of the Bridges Authority, in a conversation with me at the Muhammad Ali Center, conceded that no economic impact study on the effects of tolling on Southern Indiana small businesses had been done or even contemplated, but that he would henceforth urge such a study: Tolling Authority "input" session utterly without the redeeming presence of strong liquor.

Has he?

Have they?

Has anyone?

As for Spencer Coe, I'm sure he well understands the potential economic impact on Gohmann Asphalt if the company were to be frozen out of the bidding process for those huge infrastructure projects that constitute its bottom-line bread and butter. Alas, his boycott threat is hollow; Coe suggests "the same for all ORBP supporters," but since statistically, there are a few dozen such supporters at most scattered throughout the metro area, I'm not exactly set aquiver at the prospect of self-immolation on the Public House lawn.

Sadly and predictably, what Coe and other Ohio River Bridges Project proponents cannot seem to fathom, dazzled as they are by Ayn Rand's erotic attraction to steel, concrete, asphalt, and moreover, the velvety feel of crisp green slices paper pressed into one's hand in a One Southern Indiana conference room toilet stall, is that those of us down here in muddy bottom lands, rooting around for stray trickle-backs from the oligarchs, clearly see the economic impact of tolling because we live it, every single day.

We know that an economic impact study would amply illustrate tolling's obvious harm to small business in Southern Indiana, to our working commuters who must travel to Louisville and back, and to those Hoosiers least able to afford tolls, period.

At the same December meeting as my chat with Finn, David Nicklies wagged his finger at me and said that everyone must sacrifice to make possible the saving grace of the ORBP. What I asked him, and what I've continued to ask, is this: Why must residents of Southern Indiana sacrifice far more for less benefit?

It is a question that remains unanswered by Hoosier bridges fetishists, Spencer Coe now prominent among them.