All this AND the Farmers Market, too? Gads, it really IS New Albany's turn Saturday to contribute to change.

Yesterday, this:

Wait -- I'm getting a pulse ... The Movement and Say Their Names, coming Saturday to NA.

Then, later in the day, the Hoosier Action poster above. Unfortunately I have little more firm information than what is written on it.

Update: the press release arrived Friday just after lunch: "We encourage our Floyd County members to join us tomorrow from 12 pm-2 pm for Together We Rise: Bridging the Gap Rally in New Albany at 311 Hauss Sq.:

Most of us believe that everyone should be able to live a full and healthy life, no matter what we look like or where we come from. But today, Black Hoosiers are under the dual threat of higher fatality from COVID and from police brutality. Throughout our history, brave Americans have joined together across race and place and taken to the streets risking their lives and their livelihoods. And, throughout our history the powers that be have found ways to divide us by casting doubts or sowing fear about our protests. We are encouraging our members to show up to protest not despite but rather because of COVID. We’re taking every possible precaution even as we understand that coming together means increasing our risks. Because we know that, in this moment, staying apart guarantees unacceptable outcomes for Black people. We are long overdue to rewrite the rules and retake our democracy and it is only by showing that the many are willing to stand up to the money that we have the power in numbers to get the care and respect everyone of us deserves.

Hoosier Action first came to our attention in 2017 when the group became involved with opposing Jeff Gahan's public housing putsch, and helping to organize We Are New Albany as a counterweight to the mayor's avarice-fueled imperialism.

Hoosier Action is a new project focused on building the political power of working families and individuals in the state of Indiana. Hoosier Action emphasizes robust community organizing, where campaigns are built around economic and social issues that impact people and communities across the region. Hoosier Action will work to increase voter participation, lift people out of poverty, and build a new political voice for the residents of Indiana who have been left on the margins.

Click here to view a few relevant posts from the period. Here's one of them.

THIS JUST IN: ‘We Are New Albany,’ a campaign to save the homes of more than 1,700 New Albany residents from planned demolition, will publicly launch on Thursday at 4:00 p.m. at the City-County Building.

I may be inferring a bit much, but it seems I recall reading that Hoosier Action's founder Kate Hess Pace, a native New Albanian, had moved back to town. The organization now has an office at 1015 E. Main, so perhaps I remember correctly.

So, we have not one or two, but three Black Lives Matters (peaceful) protests occurring somewhat within the same window on Saturday.

And one of them involves Hoosier Action, the mere mention of which is guaranteed to induce bunker-down heartburn for Dear Leader.

Taking it a step further, remember always that Louisville's Mayor Greg Fischer is New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan's turgid political idol. Fischer has acquitted himself HORRIBLY throughout the recent Black Lives Matter days. Will his eager apprentice do the same?

With three separate events planned for Saturday, will Gahan remain in the down-low bunker, playing whist with Squire Adam and Warren Naps?

Or, if the getting's good, will he appear with an envelope-armed retinue of HWC Engineering donors and take full credit for the peaceful gatherings?

Well, it's Hoosier Action, and Team Gahan has a very long memory. I predict Gahan will emerge from his lair wearing a mask suitable for the occasion.

It's time right now for City Hall to use our public spaces for COVID recovery.

I'm delighted to learn that Al Knable agrees.

Knable suggested exploring whether the funds could help downtown businesses expand outdoor seating and continue curbside service to reduce lost revenue due to social distancing guidelines.

“Those are lifelines of income for those businesses,” he said.

It's time for Jeff Gahan and the Democrats to seize the initiative, get off the pot, get down to brass tracks, curb their automobile supremacy (see what I did there?) and take a glance at what's working out there in the wider world.

And no we don't need yet another $75,000 HWC Engineering or Clark Dietz or Jacobi Toombs Lanz study to accomplish this. We need to get principled, stop trying to seize properties from widows in Linden Meadows (I see you, Davey) and repurpose public spaces.

Reopening Main Street

Re-opening Main Street Post-Covid-19 Quarantine

Bringing people back downtown and to shopping streets will require confidence that the health crisis is abating, and a future outbreak will be minimized. States are now starting to re-open retail, and California Governor Gavin Newsom announced this week that California is moving to Phase Two of the State’s re-opening strategy, which includes some retail stores, with restrictions.

A vaccine is perhaps many months (or even years) away, and widespread testing infeasible in the near future. Cities and communities will need to adjust public space to allow customers back in with distancing in mind. Restaurants present an opportunity that already has many indicators of success: repurpose sidewalks, street-side parking, and parking lots into outdoor dining areas.

Alfresco dining offers the community a way to enjoy the outdoors while supporting restaurants. There is evidence Coronavirus does spread while airborne, but it may lose strength with sun and warm weather. Outdoor dining areas could be popular as the warmer summer months approach, and they would provide the area needed for establishments to enact social distancing while maintaining feasible occupancy levels.

Main Streets are critical parts of our cities’ economies and social culture, and they will need support during recovery to bring people back. More outdoor dining will send a signal to consumers that it's safe to go back out, with people being the biggest attractor of people.

As reported by Jon Henley, in the Guardian, Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, has announced plans to turn the city into a vast open-air cafe by giving over much of its public space to the hard-hit bar and restaurant owners so they can put their tables outdoors and still observe physical distancing rules.

Kerry Cavanaugh, Los Angeles Times editorial writer who is focused on housing, transportation, and the environment, advocates that when Los Angeles starts allowing businesses to reopen in the coming weeks and months, the city could take a cue from Lithuania. She writes, “Of course, Lithuania is very different from Los Angeles. But L.A. could take some inspiration from Vilnius’ willingness to experiment with public spaces to help the city return to some safer version of normalcy. How about closing off parking spots or lanes to cars on some neighborhood commercial strips, so restaurants and cafes could place more tables outside? Or perhaps closing some less-traveled streets so people have more space to exercise outdoors while still socially distancing?” ...

Homeless, be gone! It's the GREEN MOUSE with NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW.

The more things change, the more they stay precisely the same. It's not a coincidence, you know.

Delusion, meet narcissism: Jeff Gahan denies the reality of homelessness while proposing to demolish affordable housing options.

We'll get there in a moment. First, be aware that the Green Mouse is fond of the word kakistocracy.

kak·i·sto·cra·cy
/kakəˈstäkrəsē/
noun

Government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.

A state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens.

It's a recipe, or maybe a mathematical formula: Nawbany + kakistocracy = New Gahania.

It's a ruling clique of cronies, most prominently Jeff Gahan, Warren Nash, Adam Dickey, David Duggins and Shane Gibson. Josh Staten suffers a degree of cognitive dissonance because deep down he knows better, but being redevelopment chief implies a foot on the middle rung of the ladder. Todd Bailey, the chief of police? Yes, so long as he remains pliant and allows those streets to remain safe for automobiles.

Bob Caesar believes he's in the clique, although the good old boys just laugh at Bobby behind his back. Jason Applegate desperately wants to be part of the fun; for reasons that have little to do with his qualifications, the clique is willing to use him. That's why Applegate spearheaded Thursday's assault on the homeless (below).

The New Gahanian kakistocracy is all male, all white and all bound up with pay-to play monetization via the mayor's band of campaign donors -- but we already knew that.

A few weeks ago Allen Howie's Idealogy newsletter inadvertently addressed the fundamental problem with the kakistocratic clique's unpreparedness to deal with our new realities.

---

World War Z, the Tenth Man and You

In the 2013 Brad Pitt film, World War Z, a deadly virus washes over the globe unchecked, turning millions into zombies. But one place remains a safe harbor: Jerusalem, which managed to erect high walls around its perimeter before the outbreak reached the city.

Pitt’s character asks one of the city’s top officials how they were able to respond in time. He replies that they overheard communication from a small country about “zombies.” Why would you even pay attention to something so ludicrous, Pitt wonders.

The official then tells him about the tenth man, an idea created in the tragic wake of the Holocaust, the Munich Olympics and the Yom Kippur war — all events his nation’s leaders believed were impossible until they happened.

“If nine of us with the same information arrive at the same conclusion, it’s the duty of the tenth man to disagree,” he said. “No matter how improbable it may seem, the tenth man has to start thinking with the assumption that the other nine are wrong.”

What does all this have to with your company?

When you consider threats or opportunities, it’s often as a group. And what emerges is consensus — you act on the challenges or possibilities everyone can agree on. Outliers get voted off the island.

But a group can be wrong. A lone voice can be right. And in business, the greatest successes go to the contrarians. The early adopters. Those who question the assumptions.

So whether you’re thinking about an updated business model for this new normal, rethinking your marketing and messaging, or revisiting your product and service options, consider designating a tenth man.

Of course, the tenth man may be a woman. They could be (and maybe should be) someone from outside daily operations. Maybe even someone from outside your industry. They need to be someone who can speak freely without repercussions. Someone you’ll listen to. And someone with experience in thinking differently.

You’re as unlikely to have to deal with zombies as you are to hang with Brad Pitt. But every business would be better prepared for a rapidly-changing future if it embraced the idea of the tenth man. Who’s yours?

---

Who's Jeff Gahan's tenth man?

That's the whole point, because there isn't one, and there cannot be.

As we've observed for years, membership in the clique is based primarily on one abiding qualification, that Dear Leader's narcissistic genius is not questioned. It's intellectual inbreeding, and outside blood need not apply.

It's why the crisis of the pandemic is tantamount to Toto pulling back the Wizard's curtain; the coronavirus simply cannot be mollified with a $100,000 HWC Engineering study. COVID's ripple effect will expose municipal government's conceptual nudity, and it won't be a pretty sight.

Our kakistocrats don't know how to do their business if it's not business as usual. Grasping for straws, looking for something or someone to blame, they found an easy target.

Same as it ever was: the homeless.

New Albany turns down $50,000 request for homeless shelter, by Daniel Suddeath (Hanson's Christian Digest)

NEW ALBANY — Despite approving the appropriation unanimously on initial readings in February, the New Albany City Council rejected a $50,000 funding request for Catalyst Rescue Mission on Thursday night.

The vote was 6-3, with council members Al Knable, Scott Blair and Josh Turner supporting the request.

Those opposed to the measure cited their beliefs that not enough funding is going directly to programming for homeless residents after they enter the shelter, and that the New Albany Trustee's office is already providing many of the services that Catalyst offers.

Councilman Jason Applegate said that in reviewing the financial information provided by Catalyst Executive Director Jim Moon, only about $2,700 of the $50,000 would have gone to programming and food.

"I couldn't get over where it was such a small percent of this money that goes to the programs that help people," he said.

Can we be honest, just for a moment?

A garden-variety space alien beamed down to observe politics in Nawbany would require no more than ten minutes to grok this situation.

First, our DemoDisneyDixiecrats HAVE ALWAYS been hostile to funding requests pertaining to the homeless.

Second, Republicans were in favor of the Catalyst funding (well, except the perpetually befuddled David Aebersold), thus dooming it, given a pliant, boot-licking DemoDisneyDixiecratic majority.

I suppose we’ll see an editorial in Extol Magazine spinning the vote.

Seattle's "Stay Healthy Streets": You can't even IMAGINE any of this ever occurring to Jeff Gahan, can you?

No, it can't even be imagined.

Consider this: Gahan's belated embrace of public art for the parking garage has resulted in a three-story-high Freudian anchor seal and gigantic paintings of automobiles. 

There are, and always have been, people near Gahan who actually do "get it." But in Nawbany, you can't keep it (your job) without ditching any practical urban aptitude that runs contrary to campaign finance's pay-to-play circle of remuneration.

Too bad. Some of them might have amounted to something. All they have to look forward to now is a lifetime of employment as bootlicking functionaries, maintaining Dear Leader's automobile supremacy until retirement.

Seattle to bar traffic from 20 miles of streets so residents can exercise, bike, by Kaelan Deese (The Hill)

Seattle to bar traffic from 20 miles of streets so residents can exercise, bike

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan (D) announced Thursday that the city plans to permanently bar 20 miles of roads from car traffic to leave room for people to use bikes and walk.

According to a city spokesperson, the streets would be closed for thru-traffic only, allowing residents to still access their homes using vehicles and delivery companies to continue services.

The measure is part of a larger initiative that began in April called Stay Healthy Streets, a temporary relief program providing more space for residents to leave their houses while practicing social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a press release.

"Safe and Healthy Streets are an important tool for families in our neighborhoods to get outside, get some exercise and enjoy the nice weather," Durkan said.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) said that areas chosen to be closed from car traffic include places with routes that connect foot traffic with essential services and food stops, as well as streets with low car ownership, according to a release.

"We've witnessed a 57% drop in vehicle traffic volumes accessing downtown Seattle during Governor Inslee's Stay Healthy, Stay Home order," SDOT said. "Finding new and creative ways, like Stay Healthy Streets, to maintain some of these traffic reductions as we return to our new normal is good for the planet, but is also good for our long-term fight against COVID-19."

Part of the initiative includes building better bike infrastructure such as bike lanes to improve mobility around the city and help reduce pollution in the process.

The Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board strongly supported the measures Durkan announced Thursday.

"All these actions together will help Seattle come back as a safer, healthier, and more climate friendly city," the board said in the release.

Can the city afford NOT to demonize the homeless? It's the GREEN MOUSE with NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW.

On Monday our city council met remotely by means of Zoom, and once the body's president Tiberius Severus Octavian Elagabalus Septimius Augustus Claudius Hadrian Gluteus Maximus Caesar -- Protector of Fitting and Proper Scribnerian Values, Deliverer of all Downtown Datedness, Master of the Ex-Mercantile, and Guardian of the Gates -- also known as Bobby Bicentennial -- was convinced to surrender the tin cans and string, things went fairly smoothly.

Hanson's newspaper seems to be in transition as it approaches a date with room temperature, and our coverage comes courtesy of Noah, Diane and others who commented on Facebook.

As is its ancient, hallowed custom of indifference to the most vulnerable in our community, the Democratic Party-controlled council is opting to interminably delay any consideration of the annual outsourcing of homeless assistance funding to agencies in Clark County.

Recall that the city of New Albany's contribution to homeless assistance generally takes the form of demonizing them and bulldozing their tents. Why? Because the homeless induce gastrointestinal distress in Mayor Gahan and fellow (purely partisan) social architects like Squire Adam and David Duggins.

How can we be an All-Gahanian City when poor people keep embarrassing the purported left-wing "leadership"?

On Monday there was a vote to consider a vote to provide money to Catalyst Rescue Mission Homeless Shelter (the topic first was broached in February).

On Gahan's perennial instructions (he was socially distant long before it was cool), pretend-Democrats Collier, Caesar, Phipps, McLaughlin and Applegate poo-pooed the idea. Republican David Aebersold gave his internal consistency wheel a spin and joined the Democrats, leaving Republicans Knable and Turner, and the Independent Blair, to vote in favor.

I asked Mr. Phipps to explain his vote, coming at a time when unemployment and homelessness are up, and societal health and well being down, and he returned this dry, bureaucratic verdict.

We need to have a public hearing and find out more about how the large grant money they received will be used.

But at some point, isn't pinching more than a few pennies going to be necessary? Homeless funding might be put to better use polishing the rotors at River Run, at least when the Gahan's most wasteful achievement is allowed to reopen.

That's because the most fascinating aspect of Gahan's deeper-than-ever bunker residency during our COVID lockdown has been the ostensible continuance of "business of financial profligacy as usual" at the same time as virtually every other municipal entity in America is preparing for extreme pain.

From Houston to New York, America’s Muni Finances Are in Tatters, by Amanda Albright, Danielle Moran and Fola Akinnibi (Bloomberg)

In Dayton, Ohio, Mayor Nan Whaley has furloughed a quarter of the city’s workforce and is warning that more cuts may follow. In Baltimore, which has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, Mayor Bernard Young is negotiating layoffs with the police union. And in Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner is deferring all five police cadet classes.

New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, may have only been referring to his state when he declared on national television in March that “we are broke,” but he was, in a broader sense, speaking for the vast bulk of city and county and state governments in America.

Never before have U.S. municipalities been hit so hard or so quickly or in so many different ways as they are right now by the coronavirus pandemic.

Maybe HWC Engineering will bail us out for a change.

Forget the ugly sweaters, because here's the winner of the NA Confidential Ugly Christmas Greeting Banner Contest for 2019.

So VERY corporate of Dear Leader.

These last two Gahan campaign mailers are ridiculous.

Free furnaces? Airbag bullying? Just two more outrageous Gahan mailers, one a promise and the other a threat, and ...

What was that?

Oh, right.

Well, he DOES pretend to be Santa Claus and he probably WISHES his hand could come out of the dashboard and wag a finger at us.

Or maybe it's the same graphics company doing ALL the mailers.

Gahan's toxic Colonial Manor farce is reason enough to vote against him.

It's endlessly fascinating to watch peak, self-interested Gahanism in action.

Gahanism is about power, money and control; all ideas must emanate from the same centralized source deep inside the Genius of the Floodplain's cranium, although it bears repeating (again and again) that if absolute power really does corrupt absolutely, you'd have to go to Belarus or Pyongyang to find a better example of it than right here in Anchored Down City.

Collated instances of our municipal #CultureOfCorruption would fill a War and Peace-sized volume, but there's no better example than this year's Colonial Manor episode.

ON THE AVENUES: Amid Deaf Gahan's "victory" over grassroots activists at Colonial Manor, the toxic paranoia is no less rancid.

Suffice to say that in 2019, when Team #MyNA Gahan belatedly learned there was a grassroots neighborhood initiative underway, the ruling clique reacted to this thoughtful, well-conceived and firmly non-partisan effort by sending Warren Nash in riot gear running through inhumanely heated and cooled City Hall corridors screaming "EBOLA! We're all gonna DIE!"

And so the Redevelopment Commission's upper echelon of fixers went into late-night hyperspace. Boilerplate plans from a campaign donor firm quickly were cobbled together, a public comment session with no public comment allowed was held, the battered TIF piggy bank was shaken down to its hooves, and voila -- here's the official plan, straight from the unprecedented mind of Dear Leader, ready to be rubber-stamped just in time for the primary election.

City council wasn't buying the offal.

Council rejects Gahan's, Redevelopment's Colonial Manor tax increment financing lollapalooza by a 5-4 vote. Alterations to come?

Given that the Redevelopment Commission is regarded by Jeff Gahan as his personal plaything, and the Colonial Manor purchase with the TIF One Platinum card plainly was intended as a rushed feather in Dear Leader's re-election bonnet, things now get interesting.

It was yet another example of a phenomenon described with typical clarity by NAC's junior editor, Jeff Gillenwater.

Gahan isn’t remotely interested in input. His personal insecurity, control issues, and need to generate campaign kickbacks from the contractors involved keep any sort of real input from ever happening. Citizens get expensive, poorly conceived and executed projects and Gahan gets a flood of tax dollars into his campaign coffers. It’s a worst case scenario, repeated frequently enough to be the hallmark of his tenure as mayor. New Albanians two generations from now will still be paying for his ego trip.

If you haven't yet exercised your right to vote, then I suggest you vote against Jeff Gahan by voting for Mark Seabrook. New Albany needs a break from the cartoonish buffoonery of Big Daddy G's megalomania. Let's just let Gahan haul away his $100k in leftover special interest campaign finance donations (but not without first paying taxes on it, mind you), exit the down-low bunker and accept his next powder-puff position as a political consultant -- or would HWC even consider hiring an ex-provider?

Three reminders:

Election 2019: The buying and selling of a city, or our updated master list of 73 Gahan wheel-greasers, a veritable pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

Yep, Mr. Zevon, the local DemoDisneyDixiecrats have some effed-up shizz. It explains their silence in the face of Slick Jeffie's ethical shambles.

The late, great Warren Zevon (2000).

I have a question for my Democratic friends.

In your own personal world -- your life, not the lives of others -- do you believe the end justifies the means?

Do you believe it doesn't matter if people and principles are trampled, so long as you get what you want?

Do the rights and wrongs of the procurement process matter, or is to have and to hold the exciting bright and shiny object enough for you?

How's it working out for you to become accustomed to cringing and looking the other way?

This fall many of my friends will have cast their ballots for Gahan, a mayor who has consistently fudged, bullied and self-monetized his means in justification of his ends.

Friends having done so remain friends all the same, at least on my end. But I harbor the strong suspicion that many of these same voters don't sanction those means embodied by Gahan's political behavior when they pertain to the ends in their own private worlds.

I suppose they tolerate it from Gahan because the daily rationalizations borne of Democratic Party affiliation are all too easy: the "nice" things they choose to see look so good; all politicians are corrupt but he's on OUR team; we can always pay the bills some other time; or least convincing of all, "the Republicans are worse."

This entire year I've been asking the following questions of Democrats. I'd ask them of Gahan himself, although as we know transparency and accessibility are the very least of his considerations -- and he routinely refuses to debate political opponents.

• So tell me, why does Gahan get a pass from you when he can't tell the truth about budgets, rate increases, taxes and TIF debt?
• Is saying that "things look good" satisfactory without asking how they got that way, and who's paying the bills?
• Have you noticed that every street grid "improvement" hailed as a victory for walkability actually enhances car-centrism?
• Why does one man need almost $700,000 in career campaign donations, or to spend more than $200,000 of it in one year?
• Does it bother you that these out-of-town special interest donors receive no-bid contracts and sinecures, just like magic?
• What is there in the Democratic Party platform that encourages "luxury" development to the exclusion of public/affordable housing occupants?
• Is it a healthy civic trend for mayors to bully and harass city employees whose only offense is to opt out from worship of him?
• Isn't the "silo" approach of all decision-making, emanating from a tiny clique at the top of a pyramid, ultimately injurious to our city's success?
• Isn't Gahan's personality cult akin to self-deification, and can this ever be a sign of stable mental health?

The only substantive comment I've received in return all year long came from an Independent/Libertarian, which of course I appreciate. It would be nice to hear a die-hard Democrat answer the preceding questions.

Although the fact of their persistent refusal tells us quite a lot about cognitive dissonance, doesn't it?

---

ON THE AVENUES: Socialists for Seabrook, because we desperately need a new beginning in New Albany.

---

Election 2019: The buying and selling of a city, or our updated master list of 73 Gahan wheel-greasers, a veritable pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

Gahan can't even tell the truth about Warro the K-9 dog's tenure. Seems a desperate Slick Jeffie will say ANYTHING to get re-elected.

When you see the mailer, you're supposed to think that our tireless leader Deaf Gahan has just now hit the road, scoured the nation's kennels, and personally enticed Warro to New Albany to battle crime -- not that we have crime, mind you, but just in case a pre-election photo-op is needed.

But what we're really seeing is a bit of last-second desperation. To date in this year's mayoral race, Gahan has ducked and covered on neighborhood crime, but somehow, neighbors keep talking about it.

Consequently, it's time for Team Gahan to convert a few thousand more in Indy special interest campaign finance donations to doing the impossible and inventing a time machine to take us all the way back to April 7, 2016, and this feverish canine bromide at the City Hall propaganda commissariat's web site.

Gahan's handlers must think we're too stupid to do a Google search. Even Warro knows that dog won't hunt.

After all, inferior leadership isn't the K-9 officer's fault.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: An October opioid settlement surprise -- and howzabout Dan Coffey as drug czar? Well, we're all on SOMETHING.

The Green Mouse has a crazed and wacky composite rumor to report, and at first glance it appears nutzoid, but then again we inhabit The Veneer Peddler's Republic of New Gahania, otherwise known as the Open Air Museum of Ignorance, Superstition and Backwardness.

As background, recall that Slick Jeffie Gahan couldn't ever bring himself to say the word "opioid" aloud for attribution until late August, when a typically self-serving press release trumpeted the city's participation in a class action lawsuit against opioid distributors, giving the Gahanite propaganda secretariat a nice pre-election trial balloon to loft in the general direction of those sub-human Republicans in Floyd County government: Mayor Gahan Shares Information About Opioid Crisis.

Note the header: Gee thanks, Dear Leader, as though the rest of humanity hadn't previously known about opioids, reminding us that campaign finance accumulation is why Team Gahan is here, not good writing. 

Here is the main passage, in which Gahan uses a revealing vocab word he'd just been taught by the band Fairmont Break Room (in the key of G, of course).

This is a county crisis and a national epidemic, brought on by reckless distribution of opioids which possess properties that bring addiction to some of our most vulnerable family members and friends. To help bring attention to this issue, our Board of Works has approved 2 awareness walks - one in September, and one in November.

That's right: vulnerable, like the residents of public housing Gahan has been targeting with eviction ever since 2017. Funny, he never made the connection between vulnerability and public housing. It must be a DemoDisneyDemocratic thing.

Thus, Rumor Mill Part One: the city's cut from this opioid class action lawsuit settlement will be Gahan's "October surprise" announcement later this week, to be followed by the revelation that 1/3 of the money paid to the city as a result of the settlement actually will be used for opioid treatment.

The other 2/3? It will be shifted into another honey pot to buy whatever other votes are necessary for the re-enthronement. 

As a corollary of the first rumor, Gahan would set out to appoint a symbolic drug czar to posture at press conferences and seek faith-based solutions to addiction.

The identity of this drug czar is Rumor Mill Number Two.

Gahan's choice for drug czar will be none other than Dan Coffey, who will suspend his mayoral campaign and ask his supporters to shift their allegiance to the Genius of the Flood Plain. 

Whoa, boy. This surely is the best composite rumor in recent memory, but is there any chance of it being true?

Granted, not much time remains in the fall campaign, and yet as an indicator that Gahan is flush with money and 100% paranoid, he's still lobbing half-pints of Kessler at Fairview Cemetery voters. Consider also that his groveling sycophants haven't stopped erecting billboard-sized yard signs in the heart of Kool Aid Country (i.e., the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association, which following the election is to be renamed the Rice Krispies Treats Neighborhood Association).

Would Coffey do such a thing?

In all seriousness, I don't think so.

I might be the only person in town who believes Coffey is being sincere in his run for mayor. At the same time, during 15 years of stunned observance, we've seen Coffey on every side of every issue at least once. He's the ultimate survivor, and the most adept player of political angles in the city's modern history.

I'd rate this rumor as highly unlikely -- and just as sadly possible. Such are the depths to which we've plunged with Deaf Gahan as mayor.

Oops, almost forgot the Indy lawyer's bizarre donation to Coffey's account. Who know how we can link $2,500 to the conspiracy theory?

Mayoral aspirant Dan Coffey says, "Hey, I can get $2,500 from an out-of-town lawyer, too."

In a brazen pre-election ploy, Gahan commits city to $1,000,000 in additional fire department salaries by the year 2023.

Hmm. Does it say anywhere how we go about paying the added firefighters and first responders once the grant is used instead to beautify a street in front of an appointed board member’s business?

"It does make clear that we have to pick up 25% of the first year and then a higher percentage each of the next three, at which point we will have obligated ourselves to about a million dollars a year for additional firefighters. But that's for the next mayor to worry about," wrote the Bookseller in reply.

"November 31st is the last day to apply, according to the Gahan team,"he then added.

"Bodes well for a third term and is indicative of the team's always-keen attention to detail." 🤥

New Albany to hire additional firefighters with $2.5 million grant, by Brooke McAfee (Tom May's Cabin)

NEW ALBANY — With the help of a federal safety grant, the City of New Albany will soon have more firefighters and first responders available to serve the community.

The city recently received a $2.5 million “Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response" (SAFER) grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that will help the New Albany Fire Department to increase its staff through direct funding. New Albany is one of about 300 communities across the U.S. to receive the grant ...

As Gahan carpet-bombs Seabrook with HWC's cash, there is no discussion about real issues. Hmm, do you think that's intentional?

As I've been saying for years, Big Daddy Gahan has never experienced genuine electoral competition, and when at long last he would feel a breath on his neck, the gift-showering avuncular Oz the Great and Powerful pretense would be dropped faster than a snake sheds his skin, and Gahan would go full-tilt Mitch-McConnell-slimeball using all that money showered upon him by pay-to-play special interests.

This we have seen, voluminously (sorry, Shane; look it up).

I received another poison pen mailer yesterday, with another denunciation of Mark Seabrook's conniving county Floyd County government -- in effect, another in a series of diversionary tactics by Gahan and the DemoDisneyDixiecrats ... assembled by a hired assassin company in San Francisco (see links below).

Apart from the characteristically (intentionally) ineffectual League of Women Voters/News and Tribune "forum" at the Silver Street Homerdome in early September, Gahan's seemingly limitless fat cat donor cash has been strategically deployed to eliminate any opportunity to discuss substantive issues.

Nary a word during the campaign has been said about poverty or the homeless (assuredly Gahan's bulldozers remain idling unless a poor person dares interrupt the harmony of his coronation).

We've not heard an exchange of ideas about opioid use, drug addiction or their corollaries of neighborhood crime. 

There has been nothing said about the city's stagnant population growth ("business of residency" apparently has been discarded as insufficiently photogenic), and of course topics like Gahan's public housing putsch, indifference to his own Human Rights Commission "landmark", botched "walkable" street grid implementations or sewer rate INCREASE have been kept safely out of view.

Gahan seemingly has nothing to declare save for his own brilliance, as well as a knack for shaking down political patronage supplicants so that no beak is left unwetted as the Genius of the Floodplain finances another selfless gift to you -- using YOUR credit card and billing YOUR grandchildren for the privilege.

I was hoping Gahan might attend the ribbon re-attachment ceremonies at several downtown businesses which haven't survived his glorious acumen, but he's never seen once the closing padlock snaps, is he?

Sadly, the compromised newspaper's silence is deafening.

And so it's all about the dastardly county Republicans, and it's all about Gahan's money, and my "progressive" neighbors are staying stone-silent about these many other subjects which should be of interest to them; obviously this is all hunky dory if you're Don Gahan and Sancho Dickey.

Get a grip, because you're being duped -- and you know, it might actually be that Gahan and his special interest lubricators want it that way.

Election 2019: The buying and selling of a city, or our updated master list of 73 Gahan wheel-greasers, a veritable pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

Slick Jeffie says we have two options for mayor. Here's my choice, photographically.

But hearty thanks to Terris Barnes & Walters of San Francisco, California for generating such a nice collection of landfill cloggers.

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

I'm voting for Mark Seabrook, and encourage you to do the same.

ON THE AVENUES: Socialists for Seabrook, because we desperately need a new beginning in New Albany.