New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Showing posts with label Human Rights Commission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Rights Commission. Show all posts
SoIN is taking a stand by saying the names of those violently killed by systemic oppression and racism. We will be meeting in the downtown areas of both New Albany and Jeffersonville to write the names of those killed as a reminder that we must not be silent and we must say their names. If you are unable to join us for the group event, please participate at your own home as you can. Chalk your sidewalks or driveways with their names.
We will not and must not be silent any longer.
For the New Albany location, we will meet at the corner of Spring and Pearl near the Bicentennial Park.
For the Jeffersonville location, we will meet at the base of the Big Four Bridge.
Good. It's about time for an awakening.
I think it's impressive and commendable that four of the five members of New Albany's Human Rights Commission (HRC)* are displaying admirable social conscience during these potentially transformational times.
Calle Janson (an organizer of Say Their Names), Paul Kiger, Jennifer Ortiz and Ken Brooks all can be viewed on their Facebook pages referencing Black Lives Matter and advocating ... well, for HUMAN RIGHTS. After all, it's why the commission is there, right?
The fifth member of the HRC is Warren Nash, whose public utterances recently have been confined to the usual semi-comprehensible partisan political sycophancy -- for the Democratic Party as well as the municipal administration for which he specializes in backroom fixes, envelope shuttling and the occasion snarl directed against modernity.
Sadly, it's easy to imagine Nash bringing the sidewalk chalking to the Board of Works and Safety for approval and deep editing.
Louisville's ever-shrinking Greg Fischer needs to resign. Nash desperately needs to retire. He is Miss Trixie to Jeff Gahan's Gus Levy (look it up).
The party itself has had almost nothing to say about events in America for the past two weeks. Neither has Gahan, nor any of the mayor's team. I cannot locate an example of an elected Democratic Party office holder in New Albany making a public utterance about social justice, BLM or any other topic that has dominated the national discourse recently.
They just dig deeper and deeper into the Down Low Bunker.
You'd think maybe councilman Greg Phipps would show signs of a pulse, given that he fancies himself the enabler of the HRC -- which has been crippled and hamstrung since its inception (and two re-inceptions) by the very same Democratic Party that enjoys taking credit for the commission just as long as it isn't visible.
To repeat: The Democratic Party controls New Albany. It is a profoundly propaganda-tainted conservative institution -- as I refer to it without a shred of satiric exaggeration as the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party -- albeit with a good number of progressive-leaning individuals residing inside the party's ideological tent, who for whatever reason constantly defer to the Gahan/Nash elder regressive faction that amply keeps the pay-to-play wheels greased, but possess all the social conscience of a lump of clay.
Consequently, Black Lives Matter probably will come to Birdseye before it arrives at Hauss Square. Local Democrats are absolutely terrified of BLM -- not because of what IT is, but who THEY are ... and aren't.
Sunday's rally for an inclusive hate crimes bill took place at Bicentennial Park in the heart of New Albany. We had to scoot home a few minutes before the conclusion, but I can safely say the event was impeccably organized by Indiana Forward and Southern Indiana Pride.
The roster of speakers was balanced in every way one might imagine, and comments were kept brief and incisive. The one-week weather delay may have slowed momentum in terms of the rally's overall turnout, but my guess is all those choosing to be involved deemed it a great success. I agree.
In the aftermath of the rally there have been several comments made about the spirit of bipartisanship on display. Broadly speaking, this seemed to be the case, although with a sprinkling of nuance. In New Gahania, things aren’t always what they seem, and when everyone's carrying a hammer, nuance has all the appearance of a nail.
Progressives will disagree, but in New Albany it cannot be denied that Republicans have taken the initiative on an inclusive hate crimes bill and similar issues such as the refurbishment of New Albany's Human Rights Commission. Bravo to them.
Ranking Floyd County Republicans in attendance on Sunday included Ed Clere, Al Knable, Mark Seabrook and Scott Stewart. Other city council members in attendance apart from Knable were David Barksdale (R-Inanimate Objects), Bob Caesar (D-2nd) and Matt Nash (D-5th). Municipal candidates from both parties were there, too.
Interestingly, while local Republicans turned out their best and brightest, the Floyd Democratic Party's upper echelons were noteworthy only by their glaring absence. This should come as no surprise. Jeff Gahan, Adam Dickey, Warren Nash, $hane Gibson – well, these aren't the sort of conniving backroom functionaries who play well with others.
After all, the clique abides.
I searched the crowd in vain for those reliable yearly Gahan campaign finance donors, for whom checkbook calculations truly must be a lonely, anti-social, narcissistic endeavor. Alas, no Dowell, no Ginkins, no Neace. Couldn't they at least pretend it isn't all about the money?
The galling reality about Sunday is that had the egotistical local Democratic hierarchy attended, they'd have been compelled to share the limelight with Republicans, who in the main have been more progressive than the local Democratic drain trust as it pertains to matters like human rights and freedoms.
As I’ve been pointing out since the Pleistocene, the behavior of local Democrats in an institutional sense reflects an unofficial but very real tactic of “bait and switch.”
"Bait and switch is a sales tactic that tricks consumers into buying something other than an advertised item."
Gahan, Dickey, Nash, Gibson and their chief operatives cultivate a crafted image of heartfelt concern for victims of discrimination and the downtrodden, as though to make common cause with the sort of social justice issues commonly identified with the Democratic Party nationally. They even pay occasional bored lip service to the classic Democratic Party platform’s support for workers and advocacy for the economically disadvantaged.
It’s what they say, but not what they do.
The purely Clintonite party chairman Dickey, who has seldom glimpsed a larger World removed from Disney, only mouths platitudes and mimics the national party’s eagerness to tenderly stroke the very same oligarchic economic concentration that has kept America’s downtrodden perpetually disadvantaged.
In return for talking a good game about social justice and the empowerment of a better local economy, our Floyd County Democratic Party is thus freed to enthusiastically buttress its own New Albany-based pay-to-play political patronage system.
(Albeit only within city limits, seeing as the remainder of Floyd County lying outside New Gahania has been lost to the “other” side, and now functions in the role George Orwell reserved for Eurasia and Eastasia. In short, GOP control outside the city is the “enemy” justifying vigilance and periodic ProMedia propaganda attacks … at taxpayer expense.)
Given that veneer is “a thin decorative covering of fine wood applied to a coarser wood or other material,” it turns out that Gahan’s only real political skill is an ability to suck wads of bulky cash through a garden hose, hoovering money from individuals and companies doing business with the city, and wetting his beak from the millions of tax dollars required to erect bright shiny objects we don’t really need, all the while making them look as uniformly dull as those Formica countertops HWC Engineering grew up idolizing.
Small wonder Ed Jolliffe has funneled so much cash to Gahan. Evidently they bonded over Bud Light Mang-O-Rita and a shared fondness for suburban plastic shrubbery clustered around Ikea tumescence.
I’m digressing a wee bit, so let’s return to the point.
Each day between now and the November election we’ll be seeing Gahan’s face on something. For quite some time it has been seen on Kroger shopping carts.
Every last piece of taxpayer-funded city advertising in magazines and newspapers bears Gahan’s airbrushed cherubic image, usually ludicrously outdated. It amounts to branding the city of New Albany with one man’s face.
Personality cults rely for nourishment on a repetitive insistence that nothing of value or substance can happen without a blessed great leader’s intuitive impetus and inspired guidance. Gahan has grasped this and harnessed it to the full weight of taxpayer-funded public interest announcements, with the prerequisite that all such blurbs credit him.
As such, it’s meaningless propaganda, although in the present era of fake facts, there is a patina of normality -- the more exaggerated, the better.
Obviously when it comes to self-aggrandizement Gahan’s gone full frontal Ceausescu – but he couldn’t be bothered to attend Sunday’s rally for an inclusive hate crimes bill, and neither could the cream of his stunted political crop.
To repeat, this wasn’t unexpected.
It’s the same Gahan who enabled a Human Rights Commission for maximum propaganda value, drowned it in a vat of Kool-Aid, smothered it with a souvenir Visit Rock City pillow, and put it completely out of his mind.
Did human rights make a donation this year, Warren? They’d best get on it if they expect a ribbon cutting.
Then one day as Gahan was endorsing huge campaign contributions from Clark Dietz PAC, Faegre Baker Daniels and Beam, Longest & Neff, he became vaguely aware that Knable, a detested Republican, was taking the lead to restore the HRC.
Damn these people with principles!
Caught with his trousers down and unable to squirm out of making two appointments to an entity Gahan had euthanized, now being resuscitated by a deadly political foe, Hizzoner showed THEM, all right: he selected two old white guys, giggled, and returned to his bank vault for quality time alone with his money.
Me being the kind of guy who wants to believe the best in people, at Sunday’s rally I took two postcards for mailing to Indianapolis in support of meaningful hate crimes legislation. On one of them I used our home address. On the other I inscribed Gahan’s, as copied from his most recent CFA-4 campaign finance form.
There is no known record of Jeff Gahan commenting publicly about this. Then, as the Courier-Journal notes ...
In August 2018, authorities reported multiple cases of swastika-related vandalism on a New Albany-Floyd County school bus and in front of the Azalea Hills retirement community. Police did not investigate the incidents as a hate crime.
More recently the social media discussion of swastika stickers dates to around late October of 2018.
Gahan remained silent throughout. Now it's different, and suddenly Our Shining Eminence needs to be seen as a leader.
That's because it's an election year: "Mayor urges Indiana hate-crimes bill after swastikas, stickers appear." Seems that Gahan has spent the past 24 months building up a full head of steam to boldly and heroically ... contradict the testimony of citizens attending the Human Rights Commission meeting two nights ago?
The New Albany Human Rights Commission addressed the issue Tuesday evening after reportedly "hundreds" of hate speech stickers were seen throughout the city over the last couple of months.
Mayor Jeff Gahan said police have seen much fewer than "hundreds." "To date, two incidences have been reported to police dealing with approximately 8 stickers and those matters were investigated immediately," Gahan said.
Of course, there's the recent non-history of the Human Rights Commission itself. Gahan beams with a play-actor's pride at his creation, leaving out the important part where he kneecapped it into oblivion several years back rather than allow the first sign of autonomy to challenge the tumescence of his own widening personality cult.
During the appointments phase of this evening's city council meeting, President Pat McLaughlin (4th District) asked Greg Phipps (3rd District) about the council appointments status of the Human Rights Commission.
According to the ordinance, council and mayor each appoint members to the HRC, and then the four pick the fifth.
Phipps waved him off, briefly indicating that the HRC seems dead, with no meetings for the past 18 months and no apparent interest. McLaughlin was more than happy to move to the next commission, and that's all we know. It isn't much.
In 2018, with the municipal election season looming and Republicans taking the initiative on the HRC's re-enablement, it was time to start pretending again.
In the final analysis, the overarching point has nothing to do with any of the HRC appointees, save for (Warren) Nash's inexcusable presence, because Gahan's and (Adam) Dickey's objectives with their mismanagement of the HRC has not been to represent the community’s diversity.
It has been to assure their continued control of a “human rights” product in pre-packaged, controllable form.
Welcome to Jeff and Adam's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test -- hypocrisy-flavored, please.
Progressives, pay heed. The HRC's comeback needn't have occurred, because it shouldn't have neglected, and once it became necessary, your own party's leadership has politicized it again; if Dickey and Gahan don't get what they want from the HRC, they'll smother it a second time.
What you permit, you promote. What you allow, you encourage. What you condone, you own.
Don't let Dickey and Gahan speak for you. They may be "Democratic" in the sense of a two-party duopoly, but they're by no means "democratic" in any meaningful way.
In closing, this observation from a Facebook friend.
NAPD (Chief Bailey) is full of it, because many concerned people in New Albany tried reporting these stickers every time, and they told us to stop calling them! They weren't concerned about it until it made them look bad for not having already acted once the story was finally picked up by the local mainstream media.
Alt media has been talking about this issue for 6+ months. No one cared! The human rights commission didn't even get involved until late 2018, when the stickering had been near-CONSTANT for months at that point. At least they finally did something, but they also got a nice pat on the back for solving BUPKIS.
This isn't over. This hasn't changed. Why did that feel like the last we hear of it? This city's officials can do better. The local media can do better.
The people of this town deserve better than this.
Is this enough for you? I mean... honestly.
Is it?
Let's be realistic. Gahan, Dickey, Bailey, Nash -- they're not going to stop pretending. They're incapable of viewing this issue apart from their own "big fish, little pond" political considerations, and we need to stop pretending they'll even try.
It's top-down control for them -- always has been and will continue to be -- and grassroots activists opposed to these tangible manifestations of white supremacy have little choice; they must push back simultaneously against the swastika bearers and the public officials who seek primarily to neutralize testimony differing with their Disney-fried civic facades.
Tell us YOUR experiences. This space always is available to those wishing to speak about whatever our pillars are reluctant to hear.
The New Albany Human Rights Commission's Jennifer Ortiz shared the following at her Facebook page following the HRC meeting earlier this evening.
New Albany Residents: Today, the Human Rights Commission held a public forum to discuss the recent string of Nazi Stickers in our town. Based on discussions at this meeting, the Chief of Police and the HRC ask that anyone who sees Nazi stickers around town please take the following steps: 1. Do not remove the stickers as the Chief stated we need to preserve evidence. These stickers are considered vandalism. 2. Contact NAPD at 812-944-6411 (not 911) and report the incident and location to law enforcement. The police will document the incident and remove the stickers. 3. If you are unable or unwilling to contact police, please take photos and email them to the New Albany Human Rights Commission at humanrights@cityofnewalbany.com. Please note the date of the incident and the location. 4. You may also email Chief Bailey directly at cbailey@napdin.net Feel free to share this post widely.
I didn't attend and cannot elaborate, but this seems sensible.
It's a "movement" of sorts -- each morning after breakfast.
It's good to see a Human Rights Commission in New Albany being pro-active about anything; the first iteration of the revised HRC a few years back was gracelessly knee-capped by Jeff Gahan and Shane Gibson, and the suppression was abetted by Greg Phipps for reasons as yet unknown.
NEW ALBANY — On multiple occasions in past months, residents noticed the appearance of swastika stickers in downtown New Albany and other areas of the city. Although she didn't see the stickers herself, resident Jennifer Ortiz said she stopped running with headphones because she no longer felt safe as a person of color.
"I don't know who this person is. I don't know if they actually believe those ideologies, whether they are trying to scare us or whether they're just trying to make a scene," she said. "I don't know what their intent is. I know I've changed my behavior. I can assume that various people from various groups might have changed their behavior, and they might not feel comfortable in this town anymore."
The New Albany Human Rights Commission is presenting a special forum at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the third floor conference room of the City-County Building to allow residents to voice their concerns regarding the pro-Nazi stickers, which were first noticed in downtown New Albany in September.
Very soon Ortiz likely will learn the follicle-deep "depth" of Gahan's and Gibson's commitment to human rights. They'll tolerate the HRC's advocacy during an election year in order to demonstrate to self-styled "progressives" that something's being done, when we all know nothing will come of it, because the mayor himself cannot acknowledge swastikas, drug addiction or homeless people without contradicting the laughable aura of infallibility he's cloaked himself in (see "New Clothes, Emperor's for more information).
Meanwhile the experienced and sensible Southern Poverty Law Center has a pamphlet expressly designed for the college and university experience, but it's not difficult to see how the advice applies to everyday life in the city.
Substitute "citizen" for "student", "City Hall" for "college leadership", and so on. I don't know the exact answer when it comes to dealing with white supremacists, but there are numerous starting points therein (following is a condensed version).
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The Alt-Right and Extremism on Campus An old and familiar poison is being spread on college campuses these days: the idea that America should be a country for white people. Under the banner of the Alternative Right – or “alt-right” – extremist speakers are touring colleges and universities across the country to recruit students to their brand of bigotry, often igniting protests and making national headlines. Their appearances have inspired a fierce debate over free speech and the direction of the country. Behind the provocative, youthful and sometimes entertaining facade of the alt-right is a scrum of white nationalists and white supremacists – mostly young men – who hate diversity and scorn democratic ideals. They claim that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization. Characterized by heavy use of social media and memes, they eschew establishment conservatism and promote the goal of a white ethnostate, or homeland. As student activists, you can counter this movement. In this brochure, the Southern Poverty Law Center examines the alt-right, profiles its key figures and exposes its underlying ideologies. We also recommend ways to deconstruct and counter its propaganda, mount peaceful protests, and create alternative events and forums when alt-right speakers are invited or come to your campus. --- WHAT TO SAY, WHAT TO DO When an alt-right personality is scheduled to speak on campus, the most effective course of action is to deprive the speaker of the thing he or she wants most – a spectacle. Alt-right personalities know their cause is helped by news footage of large jeering crowds, heated confrontations and outright violence at their events. It allows them to play the victim and gives them a larger platform for their racist message. Denying an alt-right speaker of such a spectacle is the worst insult they can endure. While there’s nothing wrong with peaceful student protests against a hateful ideology, it’s best to draw attention to hope instead. Hold an alternative event – away from the alt-right event – to highlight your campus’ commitment to inclusion and our nation’s democratic values. What’s more, take action to inoculate the campus against such extremism before these speakers appear on campus. The following steps can help prevent your college or university from being exploited by the alt-right. THE TIME TO DEAL WITH THE ALT-RIGHT IS BEFORE IT ARRIVES ON CAMPUS. RESEARCH THE ALT-RIGHT’S HISTORY AND VIEWS. MEET WITH CAMPUS GROUPS TARGETED BY THE ALT-RIGHT. ENLIST THEIR SUPPORT. APPROACH THE HOST GROUP INVITING AN ALT-RIGHT SPEAKER TO CAMPUS. CULTIVATE A COMMUNITY OPPOSED TO BIGOTRY. ASK THAT THE COLLEGE LEADERSHIP DENOUNCE THE APPEARANCE. MAKE A YOUTUBE VIDEO – OR TWO – ABOUT THE ALT-RIGHT. IF THE ALT-RIGHT APPEARS ON CAMPUS, ORGANIZE A JOYFUL PROTEST AWAY FROM ITS EVENT. ABOVE ALL, AVOID CONFRONTATION WITH THE ALT-RIGHT SPEAKER AND SUPPORTERS. The alt-right thrives on hostility, and hate feeds on crowds. Video footage of an altercation will only provide cover for the speaker, who can claim to be a victim. As hard as it may be to resist yelling at alt-right speakers, do not confront them. Do not debate them. Do not resort to violence, in speech or deed. As this publication makes clear, there are many other ways to challenge the beliefs of this movement.
To begin with a reprise from last year, thanks to a regular reader for this pithy introduction to an important topic.
"After listening to the dismissive remarks Mayor Gahan made earlier this month concerning public housing and Mount Tabor Road residents, I think what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said is very fitting. 'Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.' The mayor is a kakistocrat and a poor excuse for a leader and human being."
MLK Day typically brings out the political posturers and panderers, which in New Albany reveals a bedraggled procession of DemoDixieDisneycrats mounting their seldom-used soap boxes to praise someone who doesn't even remotely figure into their daily lives the other 364 days a year.
As such, it's an ideal time to re-read my column from October 18, 2018. In it, we see the local Democratic Party at its bottom-feeding finest, mangling a Human Rights Commission reconstituted by Republicans, and in short, maintaining the party's hypocritical stance that speechifying about minority advancement and human rights is peachy keen, but actually doing something about it is tantamount to heresy.
Consider Jeff Gahan's seven-year record as mayor of advancing New Albany's African-American community into municipal leadership.
That's right: there is no record, because there has been no advancement, but then again this level of non-achievement is fully in keeping with the Democratic Party's longtime strategy of cynical political patronage, wherein the African-American community is asked to be content with selective hiring of the rank and file just so long as it doesn't expect leadership positions to be among the spoils.
Gahan, Dickey and their minions will be spouting platitudes today. Dear reader, if you can locate any known instances of actions matching their words, please forward to the editor. The next such citation will be the first.
Now, let's reprise the Great Human Rights Commission Debacle of 2018, with this side note: Dr. Staten is said to have stepped aside from the board owing to his impending retirement, leaving one mayoral appointment to be made along with the two new seats created by city council.
This should be interesting and entertaining. Can Gahan and the self-abased Democrats get it right this time?
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ON THE AVENUES: As long as the Democratic hierarchy keeps the Human Rights Commission under its thumb, it's hard to be optimistic.
A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
A proposed enlargement of the New Albany Human Rights Commission (HRC) from five board members to seven comes to this week's city council meeting on Thursday night.
That's tonight, for those of you able to attend.
The ordinance is likely to be approved, and stands to generate little in the way of pros or cons. That’s too bad, because the latest HRC saga symbolizes most of the abject failings of the Democratic Party’s flailing leadership cadres – all blow, no show, perpetually diversionary, and power hungry to the very last dollop of campaign finance.
Hilariously, the same Floyd County Democratic Party absently snoozing through four long years of HRC interruptus now feels compelled to gloriously affirm a commission enlargement made relevant by absolutely nothing the party itself has done.
The party's response has been clumsy, to say the least. The GOP's central role in recently re-animating a commission that both Democrats and their mayor, Jeff Gahan, had shown zero interest in maintaining meant Democrats had to do something; forced to respond to council president Al Knable's HRC resuscitation efforts, Gahan's "dependable-functionaries-first" prioritization led to the appointment of two over-60, white, straight but utterly reliable men.
In turn, Gahan's oafishness resulted in the exclusion of African-American candidates, including ideal appointee Nicole Yates, the latter owing to the mayor's and party chairman's fundamental distrust of human rights. The embarrassment aroused by the preceding game-playing disturbed a handful of quasi-progressives, who'd be needed for the coming election even if they fail to grasp the mayor's and party chairman's spoils-driven hypocrisy
Dickey’s typically overcooked blandishments reinforce a fact long grasped by New Albanians with a the faintest of pulses: if you want to know when Dickey is torturing the truth, just look to see if his lips are moving.
Party Chair supports growth of City Commission; urges creation of County HRC
New Albany, October 18, 2018 – In response to a proposed ordinance expanding the New Albany Human Rights Commission sponsored by City Council Members Greg Phipps and Pat McLaughlin, Floyd County Democratic Party Chair Adam Dickey issued the following statement:
"As Democrats, we believe our government works best when it reflects the many faces of our community and is informed through civic engagement. Councilman Phipps’ and McLaughlin’s ordinance to expand the City of New Albany’s Human Rights Commission offers a unique opportunity to not only add strong representation, but to grow the diverse community voices present on this important body. To that end, we support the city’s efforts through this new ordinance."
"In recent weeks, our community has continued to see incidents of hate and bigotry through the vandalism of public property and places. It has long been my sincere hope that Floyd County would adopt a similar Human Rights Commission ordinance to that approved by the City of New Albany under Mayor Gahan’s leadership in 2012. Alas, our Commissioners, led by Republican Mark Seabrook, have failed to act and no such body protects our citizens in the county. With the city’s leadership to once again renew its commitment to the HRC, I hope a new effort to pass a similar ordinance protecting Floyd County residents can be implemented. Together, our community can make a strong value statement against discrimination and ensure that everyone, regardless of one’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or economic background, is welcome to be part of our community."
As recently as last year, original HRC mover Greg Phipps publicly stated that he'd washed his hands of the commission, such was his own party's indifference. Meekly, he's skulking back into the tent, forever unwilling to publicly differ with the party's most powerful.
And with elections impending, it's important for the party to do some content-free political posturing (read: play-acting). Note the inclusion in Dickey's broadside of a potshot aimed against presumptive Republican mayoral contestant Mark Seabrook.
Dickey, whose Democrats have done nothing at all about hate crimes -- whose mayor won't acknowledge homelessness or the opioid crisis -- in effect accuses Seabrook of doing as little as his own organization has.
That's principled in a dust-mite-like way, wouldn't you say?
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It's extremely important for onlookers to remember that after the long moribund New Albany Human Rights Commission first was revived six years ago amid much hope, it promptly was allowed wither on the vine by the same City Hall team eager to publicly take credit for its existence.
The general idea was for local Democrats to be seen as upholding human rights, as opposed to actually doing anything about human rights. Of course, it's true that certain local Democrats genuinely believe in the HRC's concept and its mission.
However, as it pertains to the Democratic Party's power-brokering elders (Gahan, Dickey and commission appointee Warren Nash, among others), there is no refuting their determination to restrict the HRC to public relations alone; if the commission actually were to be autonomous with real teeth, the elders might not be able to exercise control over it.
Just as obviously, matters like the mayor's hostile takeover of public housing and his consistent, self-aggrandizing diminution of his nominal party's traditional base (the community's most vulnerable) then would become precisely the sort of human rights violations suitable for examination by a truly independent body.
The impetus for the current re-re-animation of the HRC is Republican councilman and council president Al Knable, whose appointments to the commission (Paul Kiger and Calle Janson) reflected a clear understanding of exactly what such a body should be.
In short: Knable acted decisively to bring life to the HRC when Gahan wouldn't, which was savvy both politically and conceptually. Strangely (at least to Democratic ideologues), some local Republicans are invested in human rights, too.
Hence the predictable response of Gahan, Dickey, Nash and other Democrats devoted first and foremost to the principle of preserving party power patronage; placed on the defensive, their first instinct has been to ensure the HRC remains (a) under their control, and (b) non-functional, while reserving the right to claim any public relations benefits down the road.
This is how your Democratic "leadership" operates, progressives.
Accordingly, and as previously noted, Gahan appointed two white, straight, male Democratic Party stalwarts: Warren Nash (82) and Cliff Staten (64). University professor Staten, whose son Josh recently was hired as head of redevelopment, served on the HRC previously.
As an academic and previous member, Staten's appointment to the HRC is justifiable. But Nash, whose son is Matt -- a city councilman recently hired by the New Albany Housing Authority, an entity annexed by Gahan in 2017 -- is a purely political appointment.
His presence is a dreadful, sad joke, and when it came to the four appointed members picking the fifth, it immediately became evident that the vote wouldn't be easy.
Two of the four members, Paul Kiger and Calle Janson, wanted to vote for the fifth member following the interviews Thursday, but Cliff Staten and Warren Nash preferred waiting a few days in order to review the resumes.
The best candidate to take the commission’s fifth seat was Nicole Yates, who is president of the NAACP; while a strong Democrat, she also has valuable experience working outside the narrow confines of New Albany, for both Greg Fischer and John Yarmuth.
Consequently, she has shown more independence and is less beholden to Dickey, the local party chairman, and that’s why Dickey and Gahan, who fear Yates in much the same way as inferior white men always react to strong, independent and intelligent women, duly conspired to assure the election of Jennifer Ortiz.
The New Albany Human Rights Commission now has a fifth member.
Jennifer Ortiz, a professor at IU Southeast, was elected 3-1 to the commission Tuesday. Nicole Yates was also nominated but failed to get a second.
Last week five New Albany residents were interviewed by the four sitting commission members. Besides Ortiz and Yates, Ken Brooks and Sarah Ring were both considered. Lane Stumler interviewed but withdrew from the process, saying the board needed to add more diversity.
Make no mistake: Ortiz is qualified for a seat, period.
However, she also works with Staten at IU Southeast, which must be mentioned in the context of City Hall's eternally nepotistic tendencies. Undoubtedly Dickey and Gahan believe she's a vote they can count on.
In the final analysis, the overarching point has nothing to do with any of the HRC appointees, save for Nash's inexcusable presence, because Gahan's and Dickey's objectives with their mismanagement of the HRC has not been to represent the community’s diversity.
It has been to assure their continued control of a “human rights” product in pre-packaged, controllable form.
Prof. Jennifer Ortiz appears to be a wonderful addition to the Floyd County Human Rights Commission. As an academic with a background in criminal justice she should lend an intellectual rigor to the Commission and an authoritative perspective on issues that are often at the center of concerns over racial injustice.
However, the failure to directly represent the legitimate and unique experiences of African-Americans on a Human Rights Commission that will likely confront issues of racial discrimination is a remarkable feat of negligence on the part of the City Council and the Mayor’s Office, which were responsible for the other appointments. The issue isn’t about quotas and it’s certainly not a knock against the qualifications and commitment to service of the other distinguished members of the Commission.
The mandate of the Commission requires an authentic representation of the full range of perspectives from members of our community. It is encouraging that Commission Chair Paul Kiger is open to correcting the imbalance.
— Frank Z. Riely Jr., Floyds Knobs
Good, but I'd have Frank be aware that the city council did just fine with its share of the mandate. Dickey and Gahan are the ones who squandered the mandate for purely political considerations, and so city council will enlarge a board which has been suppressed by none other than Dickey and Gahan.
Not one aspect of the HRC board's size matters if City Hall and the Democratic Party continue to regard the HRC as a non-functional, symbolic set piece, not as a tool meant to be used.
Progressives, pay heed. The HRC's comeback needn't have occurred, because it shouldn't have neglected, and once it became necessary, your own party's leadership has politicized it again; if Dickey and Gahan don't get what they want from the HRC, they'll smother it a second time.
What you permit, you promote. What you allow, you encourage. What you condone, you own.
Don't let Dickey and Gahan speak for you. They may be "Democratic" in the sense of a two-party duopoly, but they're by no means "democratic" in any meaningful way.
Make no mistake: Appointee Jennifer Ortiz has the right ideas in terms of the Human Rights Commission's potential outreach, and it's to be hoped she succeeds in implementing them.
At the same time, she'll be receiving zero assistance from the local Democratic hierarchy, which fears an HRC it can't control and is fully aware of its own myriad failures when it comes to human rights.
The public housing takeover springs immediately to mind, and the bullying of city employees, and ... campaign finance donor rights matter, too.
Here's a fun fact, to which previous Human Rights Commission appointees will attest, because when the HRC was re-animated a few years back and began discussing ways to publicize and promote its activities, Mayor Jeff Gahan's team let it be known in no uncertain terms that human rights were to be seen, not heard.
It's also ironic that IU Southeast generally is ignored as a community asset, but now has two faculty members on a (currently) five-member board (40%), with another having returned from the gloaming of self-exile to yet again take credit for a commission which only a year ago he'd loudly and publicly "washed his hands" of responsibility.
Has anything substantive changed in a year, apart from the mid-term election drawing closer?
We live in strange, theatrical times.
Having discarded the Human Rights Commission like a used prophylactic, local ruling Democrats fell in love with it all over again when Republicans began the HRC's overdue resuscitation.
Mayor and party chairman can't have THAT, can they? The blue squad wants to be seen wielding human rights like a savage club, one to be waved menacingly at Republicans, only to be made of foam rubber and generally shoved under the couch for safe keeping.
Good luck, Professor Ortiz. You're going to need it.
... In her new role, Ortiz intends to help the HRC become more well known.
“Although the commission was created to respond to complaints of discrimination, I think it is equally important to educate people about the variety of cultures that exist in New Albany,” Ortiz said.
To that end, she is developing ideas for events to commemorate and celebrate various diversity holidays and remembrance days.
This effort also has a practical application that speaks to the commission’s more focused intent.
“Because many people don’t know that the commission exists, it is possible that there are incidents that go unreported,” Ortiz said. “If we don’t know what the problems are, we can’t address them” ...
ON THE AVENUES: As long as the Democratic hierarchy keeps the Human Rights Commission under its thumb, it's hard to be optimistic.
A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
A proposed enlargement of the New Albany Human Rights Commission (HRC) from five board members to seven comes to this week's city council meeting on Thursday night.
That's tonight, for those of you able to attend.
The ordinance is likely to be approved, and stands to generate little in the way of pros or cons. That’s too bad, because the latest HRC saga symbolizes most of the abject failings of the Democratic Party’s flailing leadership cadres – all blow, no show, perpetually diversionary, and power hungry to the very last dollop of campaign finance.
Hilariously, the same Floyd County Democratic Party absently snoozing through four long years of HRC interruptus now feels compelled to gloriously affirm a commission enlargement made relevant by absolutely nothing the party itself has done.
The party's response has been clumsy, to say the least. The GOP's central role in recently re-animating a commission that both Democrats and their mayor, Jeff Gahan, had shown zero interest in maintaining meant Democrats had to do something; forced to respond to council president Al Knable's HRC resuscitation efforts, Gahan's "dependable-functionaries-first" prioritization led to the appointment of two over-60, white, straight but utterly reliable men.
In turn, Gahan's oafishness resulted in the exclusion of African-American candidates, including ideal appointee Nicole Yates, the latter owing to the mayor's and party chairman's fundamental distrust of human rights. The embarrassment aroused by the preceding game-playing disturbed a handful of quasi-progressives, who'd be needed for the coming election even if they fail to grasp the mayor's and party chairman's spoils-driven hypocrisy
Dickey’s typically overcooked blandishments reinforce a fact long grasped by New Albanians with a the faintest of pulses: if you want to know when Dickey is torturing the truth, just look to see if his lips are moving.
Party Chair supports growth of City Commission; urges creation of County HRC
New Albany, October 18, 2018 – In response to a proposed ordinance expanding the New Albany Human Rights Commission sponsored by City Council Members Greg Phipps and Pat McLaughlin, Floyd County Democratic Party Chair Adam Dickey issued the following statement:
"As Democrats, we believe our government works best when it reflects the many faces of our community and is informed through civic engagement. Councilman Phipps’ and McLaughlin’s ordinance to expand the City of New Albany’s Human Rights Commission offers a unique opportunity to not only add strong representation, but to grow the diverse community voices present on this important body. To that end, we support the city’s efforts through this new ordinance."
"In recent weeks, our community has continued to see incidents of hate and bigotry through the vandalism of public property and places. It has long been my sincere hope that Floyd County would adopt a similar Human Rights Commission ordinance to that approved by the City of New Albany under Mayor Gahan’s leadership in 2012. Alas, our Commissioners, led by Republican Mark Seabrook, have failed to act and no such body protects our citizens in the county. With the city’s leadership to once again renew its commitment to the HRC, I hope a new effort to pass a similar ordinance protecting Floyd County residents can be implemented. Together, our community can make a strong value statement against discrimination and ensure that everyone, regardless of one’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or economic background, is welcome to be part of our community."
As recently as last year, original HRC mover Greg Phipps publicly stated that he'd washed his hands of the commission, such was his own party's indifference. Meekly, he's skulking back into the tent, forever unwilling to publicly differ with the party's most powerful.
And with elections impending, it's important for the party to do some content-free political posturing (read: play-acting). Note the inclusion in Dickey's broadside of a potshot aimed against presumptive Republican mayoral contestant Mark Seabrook.
Dickey, whose Democrats have done nothing at all about hate crimes -- whose mayor won't acknowledge homelessness or the opioid crisis -- in effect accuses Seabrook of doing as little as his own organization has.
That's principled in a dust-mite-like way, wouldn't you say?
---
It's extremely important for onlookers to remember that after the long moribund New Albany Human Rights Commission first was revived six years ago amid much hope, it promptly was allowed wither on the vine by the same City Hall team eager to publicly take credit for its existence.
The general idea was for local Democrats to be seen as upholding human rights, as opposed to actually doing anything about human rights. Of course, it's true that certain local Democrats genuinely believe in the HRC's concept and its mission.
However, as it pertains to the Democratic Party's power-brokering elders (Gahan, Dickey and commission appointee Warren Nash, among others), there is no refuting their determination to restrict the HRC to public relations alone; if the commission actually were to be autonomous with real teeth, the elders might not be able to exercise control over it.
Just as obviously, matters like the mayor's hostile takeover of public housing and his consistent, self-aggrandizing diminution of his nominal party's traditional base (the community's most vulnerable) then would become precisely the sort of human rights violations suitable for examination by a truly independent body.
The impetus for the current re-re-animation of the HRC is Republican councilman and council president Al Knable, whose appointments to the commission (Paul Kiger and Calle Janson) reflected a clear understanding of exactly what such a body should be.
In short: Knable acted decisively to bring life to the HRC when Gahan wouldn't, which was savvy both politically and conceptually. Strangely (at least to Democratic ideologues), some local Republicans are invested in human rights, too.
Hence the predictable response of Gahan, Dickey, Nash and other Democrats devoted first and foremost to the principle of preserving party power patronage; placed on the defensive, their first instinct has been to ensure the HRC remains (a) under their control, and (b) non-functional, while reserving the right to claim any public relations benefits down the road.
This is how your Democratic "leadership" operates, progressives..
Accordingly, and as previously noted, Gahan appointed two white, straight, male Democratic Party stalwarts: Warren Nash (82) and Cliff Staten (64). University professor Staten, whose son Josh recently was hired as head of redevelopment, served on the HRC previously.
As an academic and previous member, Staten's appointment to the HRC probably is justifiable. But Nash, whose son is Matt -- a city councilman recently hired by the New Albany Housing Authority, an entity annexed by Gahan in 2017 -- is a purely political appointment.
His presence is a dreadful, sad joke, and when it came to the four appointed members picking the fifth, it immediately became evident that the vote wouldn't be easy.
Two of the four members, Paul Kiger and Calle Janson, wanted to vote for the fifth member following the interviews Thursday, but Cliff Staten and Warren Nash preferred waiting a few days in order to review the resumes.
The best candidate to take the commission’s fifth seat was Nicole Yates, who is president of the NAACP; while a strong Democrat, she also has valuable experience working outside the narrow confines of New Albany, for both Greg Fischer and John Yarmuth.
Consequently, she has shown more independence and is less beholden to Dickey, the local party chairman, and that’s why Dickey and Gahan, who fear Yates in much the same way as inferior white men always react to strong, independent and intelligent women, duly conspired to assure the election of Jennifer Ortiz.
The New Albany Human Rights Commission now has a fifth member.
Jennifer Ortiz, a professor at IU Southeast, was elected 3-1 to the commission Tuesday. Nicole Yates was also nominated but failed to get a second.
Last week five New Albany residents were interviewed by the four sitting commission members. Besides Ortiz and Yates, Ken Brooks and Sarah Ring were both considered. Lane Stumler interviewed but withdrew from the process, saying the board needed to add more diversity.
Make no mistake: Ortiz is qualified for a seat, period.
However, she also works with Staten at IU Southeast, which must be mentioned in the context of City Hall's eternally nepotistic tendencies. Undoubtedly Dickey and Gahan believe she's a vote they can count on.
In the final analysis, the overarching point has nothing to do with any of the HRC appointees, save for Nash's inexcusable presence, because Gahan's and Dickey's objectives with their mismanagement of the HRC has not been to represent the community’s diversity.
It has been to assure their continued control of a “human rights” product in pre-packaged, controllable form.
Prof. Jennifer Ortiz appears to be a wonderful addition to the Floyd County Human Rights Commission. As an academic with a background in criminal justice she should lend an intellectual rigor to the Commission and an authoritative perspective on issues that are often at the center of concerns over racial injustice.
However, the failure to directly represent the legitimate and unique experiences of African-Americans on a Human Rights Commission that will likely confront issues of racial discrimination is a remarkable feat of negligence on the part of the City Council and the Mayor’s Office, which were responsible for the other appointments. The issue isn’t about quotas and it’s certainly not a knock against the qualifications and commitment to service of the other distinguished members of the Commission.
The mandate of the Commission requires an authentic representation of the full range of perspectives from members of our community. It is encouraging that Commission Chair Paul Kiger is open to correcting the imbalance.
— Frank Z. Riely Jr., Floyds Knobs
Good, but I'd have Frank be aware that the city council did just fine with its share of the mandate. Dickey and Gahan are the ones who squandered the mandate for purely political considerations, and so city council will enlarge a board which has been suppressed by none other than Dickey and Gahan.
Not one aspect of the HRC board's size matters if City Hall and the Democratic Party continue to regard the HRC as a non-functional, symbolic set piece, not as a tool meant to be used.
Progressives, pay heed. The HRC's comeback needn't have occurred, because it shouldn't have neglected, and once it became necessary, your own party's leadership has politicized it again; if Dickey and Gahan don't get what they want from the HRC, they'll smother it a second time.
What you permit, you promote. What you allow, you encourage. What you condone, you own.
Don't let Dickey and Gahan speak for you. They may be "Democratic" in the sense of a two-party duopoly, but they're by no means "democratic" in any meaningful way.
Back on August 10, I marveled at the sheer moral turpitude of Mayor Jeff Gahan's appointment of Democratic Party power broker Warren Nash to a slot aboard a revived Human Rights Commission.
In my eagerness to shine a spotlight on this crass insult to human rights campaigners everywhere on the planet, I managed instead to imply that Nash's fellow appointee Cliff Staten was tantamount to Idi Amin, and this was not my intention, so both an apology and a correction are due.
I thought the surreal sarcasm was obvious, and the original headline would be understood as, "If you're going to appoint Warren Nash to handle human rights, you might as well appoint Idi Amin."
But no excuses. This isn't how it read, and writers are supposed to be better than that.
Apologies to Cliff Staten. He is neither Warren Nash NOR Idi Amin.
I did not intend to compare Staten to Idi Amin, and I feel badly that this was the impression given. It also was mistaken of me to lump him into the same category with Nash. Staten served on the HRC previously; he's plainly well-meaning and otherwise purely peripheral to the local Democratic Party's perennial "fix is in" system of patronage.
Know that I'm not backing away one inch from the overarching points of the mayor's two HRC appointments reflecting (a) Gahan's pathological need for control; (b) his predilection for nepotism; and (c) an enduring tone deafness in the sense of the mayor being insensitive to the critical need for women, LGBTQ, minorities and the disabled (in no particular order) to serve on boards like this which are charged with redressing fundamental human rights injustices.
I believe these three points are both true and crucial, but approaching them from the standpoint of polemical anger only weakens the argument.
Meanwhile, as a longtime university professor, Cliff Staten himself understands the importance of diverse representation, and certainly he has shown in the past that he is very sensitive to it. Nash, not so much -- but this is all the more reason for me to refrain from cheap-shot shortcuts by incorrectly tarring Staten with the same brush.
To repeat: My bad, Cliff. I erred, and I pledge to be better.
"I felt like the city was being maligned back then and I thought this would be a vehicle to stop that criticism. The complaints against the city were all unfounded."
-- Warren Nash
Chris Morris has done us a great service by capturing this breathtaking quote, which reveals the politically-motivated, self-serving conniving that has characterized Warren Nash's whole career as a self-appointed mover/shaker in New Albany.
Plainly, the human rights commission means nothing to Nash in any sense of furthering the cause of human rights.
Rather, it's just a vehicle -- a purely cynical propaganda jalopy -- to thwart criticism, which at the time of Nash's single term as mayor almost 50 years ago (he was mercilessly crushed seeking a second term and never won another race) was criticism directed against Nash's own incompetence as the worst mayor this city has ever endured ... until Jeff Gahan, Nash's eager pupil, who subverted the current human rights commission and now has doubled down on the damage by appointing his unspeakably dull Svengali to serve on it, so as to perpetuate the do-nothing fix for a new generation, one that deserves far better than either Nash or Gahan allowed anywhere close to a decision-making post.
But it's plenty good for Gahan's campaign war chest, isn't it? In New Gahania, money has more rights than humans. Maybe we need a Campaign Finance Rights Commission.
Thanks, Chris.
The city needed to see exactly what Warren Nash is, and how he operates. In 2019, we can retire Nash by firing Gahan, and in the process, free ourselves from the reign of vendor cash and the stifling yoke of the C-Minus Clique.
This post was edited on September 7 to correct an unfair bias against HRC appointee Cliff Staten. For the explanation, go here.
Mayor Jeff Gahan has released the winning entry in his Human Rights Commission Mayoral Art Project, which posed the question: Can you take this strange idea ...
... and make it palatable to Democratic Party voters?
Predictably paranoiac and suitably suspicious, and unable to find any symbolic minorities to co-opt with Human Rights Commission seats, Gahan appointed two old straight white males tied to the local Democratic hierarchy, so no, he's not exactly artistic, our Jeffrey.
The bunker-bound mayor seeks only to control the HRC, and we need to understand that assigning political cronies like Nash to an HRC kept inert on blocks by Gahan himself over a period of YEARS reflects absolutely no commitment to human rights.
Gahan barely understands the concept, much less cares to pursue it. Rather, it's about appointing loyal Democratic sycophants to keep CONTROL over the apparatus -- in short, to try to ensure the HRC remains dormant.
The last thing Gahan wants is an autonomous, principled and active HRC, because the first order of business for an autonomous, principled and active HRC would be investigating Gahan's record in office.
The good news? It's a malfunction that we can repair, very soon.
Welcome to the increasingly rocky reign of Crooked Jeffrey.
Even Donald Trump had a better week than our increasingly out of touch, cash-obsessed and graft-ridden Ceausescu fetishist. I hear Joseph Kabila is a free agent; maybe with a bit of added TIF funding, Gahan can outbid LeBron's resurgent Lakers and put the idle Congolese strongman in charge of Fairview Cemetery.
Take it away, Mr. Gillenwater.
More tales from Corruption Junction. As Roger previously noted about NA’s blatant nepotism as normalcy, “If you believe that Warren Nash on the Human Rights Commission somehow differs from Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA, please drop me a line. You'll be entered into a drawing, and the lucky winner gets to serve with Gahan's brother-in-law on the City-County Building Authority, or with the mayor's son-in-law on Flood Control, or with his daughters at their summer jobs at the Aquatic Center -- or maybe I'm thinking about former redevelopment director Duggins' sister married to consultant Wheatley who gets all the posh the redevelopment gigs, or the HWC Engineering connection with Dugout ...” Occasionally, you might be tempted to think they’ve bottomed out, that it can’t get any worse. You’d be wrong, not least because you’re likely forgetting the pride expressed by the Gahan administration in finding novel ways of circumventing public bidding laws so that donors are rewarded with lucrative city contracts much more directly. If you support or profit from this ongoing Democratic boondoggle here at home, you’re cordially invited to STFU about Trump and corruption elsewhere.
Yes, Dear Leader is your cross to bear, local Democrats. Even by Jeff Gahan's subterranean standards of casual fraudulence and wagon-circling paranoia, it was a memorable week, one filled to the brim with reasons to #FireGahan2019.
On Monday, a skateboarder was killed by a driver on Spring Street. Predictably the driver won't be charged, and City Hall's first and only reaction has been to loudly deny responsibility for its own high-speed, pass-through street grid, followed immediately by the pitter-patter of tiny bureaucratic feet scampering into the safety of the down-low bunker.
After dragging his feet for years, and lately feeling the heat from local activists who look to Jeffersonville's Republican mayor Mike Moore as an area leader in fairness, a petulant Gahan finally got around to making his appointments to New Albany's moribund Human Rights Commission, which Gahan's crack team of bootlickers previously had engineered to be impotent-by-design.
Surveying a diverse rainbow-accented landscape, Gahan predictably opted for two old, straight, white males with the requisite ironclad DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party credentials: Warren Nash and Cliff Staten. They'll be expected to maintain control, because a truly autonomous Human Rights Commission would be working overtime just investigating Team Gahan.
Gahan's hostile takeover of the New Albany Housing Authority came back to bite the colonial overlord, as the mayor's handpicked team of clueless but servile lackeys heaved, flailed and looked like a motley crew of rejects at the Keystone Kops audition in reaction to the failure of the electrical system at Riverview Towers. The community's eyebrows arched as Gahan's dimmer-than-ever bulbs, previously billed as managerial geniuses, frantically blamed others for their own failure to be pro-active.
Speaking of the housing authority, sitting councilman Matt Nash, son of Warren the Party Fixer, whose sworn duty as an elected official is to scrutinize matters precisely like the mayor's NAHA annexation, has accepted a paying job there, and now answers to grape-stuffed satrap David Duggins, whom the councilman should be pursuing for gross incompetence. Failed Tom Hagen wannabe Shane Gibson has merely waved his arms and dismissed the obvious conflict of interest.
And, the grandiosely titled Mt. Tabor Road Restoration and Pedestrian Safety Project -- known colloquially as Gahan's Folly -- hit the rocks yet again as residents began firing back in court over the issue of eminent domain. Pliable lickspittles were trotted out to speak indecipherable platitudes, and Gahan remained shielded from view, suckling a Bud Light Lime and calculating campaign finance proceeds.
This post was edited on September 7 to remove a reference that cast Cliff Staten in an unflattering light. An explanation and apology can be found here.
Council minutes of Monday, August 6
Cliff Staten (father of the current redevelopment director) will be joining Nash (current Board of Public Works and Safety president, spectacularly failed mayor and the father of a sitting council member) as Gahan's long delayed appointments to Dear Leader's intentionally moribund Human Rights Commission, coincidentally enabling the HRC's sudden resurrection just as the heat is starting to come down on Squire Adam's unresponsive Donnelly Democrats for not giving a tinker's damn about human rights.
If you believe that Warren Nash on the Human Rights Commission somehow differs from Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA, please drop me a line. You'll be entered into a drawing, and the lucky winner gets to serve with Gahan's brother-in-law on the City-County Building Authority, or with the mayor's son-in-law on Flood Control, or with his daughters at their summer jobs at the Aquatic Center -- or maybe I'm thinking about former redevelopment director Duggins' sister married to consultant Wheatley who gets all the posh the redevelopment gigs, or the HWC Engineering connection with Dugout ...
Anyway, second prize is all of them at once in the rubber room of your choice.
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