Terre Haute's newspaper on Mitch Daniels, as reprinted by our newspaper.

I suppose it's mildly interesting that the News and Tribune consistently reprints editorials from elsewhere, but every time another one appears, don't you find yourself wondering why the paper itself can't seem to do more on the editorial front?

In the following reprint, the newspaper in Terre Haute pretty much rests the case against former Indiana kingpin Their Man Mitch's attacks on academic freedom while governor. Hell, we knew all about it already; it's just nice that a newspaper somewhere in the state can say it out loud, even if ours can't or won't.

I wonder what publisher-of-the-year Bill Hanson thinks about this?

Come to think of it, I don't.

---

Hoosiers can expect more from a former governor

Purdue University President Mitch Daniels is indignant over an Associated Press report this week that revealed provocative emails from his days as governor that suggest he sought to eliminate what he considered liberal “propaganda” at Indiana’s public universities.

The AP obtained the internal emails through a public records request. Some of the messages showed that Daniels requested that historian and anti-war activist Howard Zinn’s writings be banned from classrooms and asked for a “cleanup” of college courses. In others, he talked about cutting funding for a program run by a local university professor who was one of his sharpest critics.

We’re willing to take at face value the former governor’s explanation that he was not trying to censor opinions or quash academic freedom, although it’s understandable to question him about that given that he’s now the leader of a major public institution of higher learning. He claimed he was only trying to prevent what he viewed as false or widely discredited versions of history from being taught in the state’s K-12 classrooms.

Mitch Daniels, after all, is a conservative with strong conservative credentials. It should come as no surprise that he espouses the oft-repeated conservative view that higher education is a bastion of elitist liberals who haven’t done a very good job of preparing its students for the real world.

Rather, our primary concern is Daniels’ reaction and response to the AP report. In its aftermath, he doesn’t just clarify the intent of his emails or explain his motivation for sending them. Instead, he attacked the article, which we published at the top of Page 1 on Wednesday, as “unfair and erroneous” in interviews with reporters at Purdue.

Unfair and erroneous. Serious charges, to be sure. What in the article was incorrect? What did Daniels view as unfair?

Would he care to elaborate? Apparently not. He now refuses to talk to the AP or answer those questions.

Having no specifics from Daniels to consider, we’re all left to judge the matter on our own.

And here’s how we see it. The Associated Press report is newsworthy, thorough, fair, well-researched and well-written. The story is told largely through Daniels’ own words via the emails obtained and contains a variety of comments from appropriate parties.

Without further explanation and discussion from Daniels, we find his response to the AP report to be weak and defensive.

None of this, of course, may matter much. His job is undoubtedly secure at Purdue, where he became the university’s president in January after being unanimously selected by the board of trustees, most of whose members he appointed while governor. As the AP reported, the trustees reaffirmed their support for him on Wednesday.

“President Daniels has stated and demonstrated his complete commitment to freedom of inquiry and has been an emphatic voice for that freedom,” the board said in a statement.

It should also be noted that the Purdue board followed Daniels’ lead in attacking the AP report.

“The board rejects as totally misleading the original article and reaffirms its unanimous and complete support of President Daniels,” its statement reads.

Totally misleading? Would Purdue trustees care to elaborate on that claim? Apparently not. That’s where the statement ends.

Daniels answers only to his board now. The people of Indiana have little direct influence over him. But, in terms of his reactions and responses to newsworthy items pertaining to him and his tenure as their governor, Hoosiers have a right to expect better.

— Tribune-Star, Terre Haute

Public Art Scene Grand 1Si Conscription (with bonus grim reality).

Yesterday as I was standing outside of Quills talking on the phone, the 1Si recruitment gala broke up, and a woman with a name tag remarked to me that she wanted to induce me to change my mind about One Southern Indiana and rejoin the fold.

I smiled and grinned: No, we won't get fooled again, sorry. When most of what an organization espouses runs counter to my self-interest as a small, independent business, then it's hard to square such circles without the use of hallucinogenic chemicals -- and I drink enough alcohol already, thank you.

The following was a "Beer Money in the 'Bune" column published on September 30, 2010, back when the newspaper still barely mattered. The editor-at-the-time didn't get it; three years later, that particular symptom might have passed, but the fundamental malady remains intact, and that's too bad.

---

BEER MONEY: “Life in OSi a grim reality.”

By GORDY GANT
Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter

(New Albany, OSI) -- November 15th, 2065, is the 50th ISindependence Day in One Southern Indiana, the impoverished, stubbornly paternalistic enclave that broke away from Indiana after the state’s favorite son, Mitch Daniels, suffered a landslide loss to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race.

While living memories of that time have faded, the impact of events continues to influence daily life.

Depressed and shattered by his loss, the former governor fled to a hiding place near Birdseye and declared a state of Major Insurgency Moves. Concurrently, a band of tightly-knit oligarcho-theocrats at the economic development agency called One Southern Indiana (1Si) staged a series of cynical bait-and-switch ploys, culminating in a bloodless coup in 2015 that wrested civil authority from legally elected local governments.

After undergoing treatment, Daniels subsequently renounced his failed political revolt and took up religion, becoming an evangelist and the leading American proponent of wealth accumulation at his Your Tax Abatement is Jesus ministry prior to his death in 2019.

Meanwhile, the former chamber of commerce gradually undertook to improve the quality of life for its top tier of major business investment partners.

---

Today, amid persistent shortages, the mood in 1Si is one of weary resignation. 1Sindependence Day will feature lengthy speeches and exaltations of economic progress, as broadcast over the 1Si-approved Clere Channel network, which Grooms bright Young future Stemlers for leadership in the community.

Most people merely will parrot the platitudes, resuming their search for firewood in the remnants of wooded areas, most long since clear-cut to build subdivisions with names like No Oak Glen and Elm Infested Acres.

1Si’s numerous manual laborers will get half-days off to drink non-alcoholic Victory Juice and parade past the descendents of the founders, seated atop the Tomb of the Unknown Exurbanite, jowly in their golf wear, drinking expensive, imported Corona Lights, and extolling the virtues of a non-union workforce.

Since the Great Oil Out of 2035, the parade has been non-motorized, and just a few miles away from the mausoleum are the massive unfinished hulks of the Ohio River Bridges Project, made redundant by the depletion of petroleum.

In vast, smoldering areas of a city formerly known as Jeffersonville, squatters now live in grimy tents, reduced to commuting by ox cart to mow grass at the homes of 1Si’s upper echelon at the Quarry Bluff gated compound, or forced to walk long miles to beg for alms at the Shrine of St. Daniels, owned and operated by Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana.

---

ROCK was formally established as the moral and cultural arbiter of 1Si by the late Commandante Stemler shortly after the Glorious Revolutionary Economic Progress Capital Campaign was concluded. ROCK vowed to purify minds stained with Democratic liberalism, declaring in 2022 that all pornography had been eradicated (along with most books and all competing political parties).

ROCK’s slogan can be seen on every desktop: “Free speech is the devil’s workshop. Work for 1Si, instead.”

---

Residents are not willing to speak openly to the few outside journalists permitted to enter 1Si. Their reticence is understandable. During the past two decades, as 1Si’s public policy council outlawed small retail businesses and began paying workers in Yum! Brands gift cards, it has become all too easy to lose one’s tacos, nachos and beanie weenies.

Miraculously, dissent has not been fully suppressed.

Thomas N., from Sellersburg, remembers the day when the One Southern Indiana operatives came to his street with their laptops.

“They were nicely dressed and friendly, but serious,” says the retired software analyst. “As a Democrat, I was worried when they started promulgating the 5 O’Clock Network Fundamental Purity Laws, but they were handing out free thumb drives to the kids. It seemed okay.”

“We were told that we’d have jobs, education and fiscal restraint, and we believed it,” he adds. “By the time things started getting bad, it was too late.”

A far younger man calling himself Koba expresses bitterness at the toll on modernity of 1Si’s iron-fisted rule.

“I live in a rental property owned by a Sodrelite, and it’s a piece of ****,” spits Koba, “but one day I was down in the crawl space, and I found these old books about green strategies and sustainability. It was like an epiphany, because I didn’t know there was any other way except consuming irreplaceable resources for 1Si’s enrichment.”

“I can’t let anyone see me reading these books,” he continues, “because if the 1SBlock Watch hears about it, I’ll lose my Yum! Card and be exposed as a Girly Man. And yet sometimes, late at night, I risk hacking through the firewalls of the 1Sinternet, and see how communities in other places operate.”

“It’s incredible. Did you know they actually have free elections in other parts of the country?”

---

Amy C. provides the official version of life in 1Si. She works as free enterprise re-education specialist in the Michael Dalby Institute of Public-Private Partnerships. As great-granddaughter of a Bi-State Authority member, she enjoyed a privileged upbringing and attended the prestigious One Southern Indiana University Southeast Christian Academy of ROCK.

“Although my spiritual guide, the Reverend Wickens IV, teaches us that we must be humble and self-effacing, I agree with all the central tenets of Stemlerism,” she begins. “We are building the perfect, economically developed society.”

“People who are not too stubborn to accept St. Daniels as their guide and fiscal savior know how to be respectful and constructive,” she concludes. “Given that we’re traveling the correct historical path, why tolerate people whose questions are no more than vicious personal agendas?”

Roger A. Baylor’s blog, NA Confidential, endorses any political candidate opposed to 1Si’s recent political endorsements. Read more at www.cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com

REWIND: “Life in OSi a grim reality.”

Writing this morning about Matt and Ed and Erika and yard signs the size of Connecticut somehow made me recall this newspaper column, which was published on September 30, 2010. It garnered some of my most glowing reader comments ever: Nutjob, hypocrite, drivel, asinine and senseless were among the terms used by outraged readers who feared the thesaurus. Here is the column in its entirety.  

---

“Life in OSi a grim reality.”

By GORDY GANT
Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter

(New Albany, OSI) -- November 15th, 2065, is the 50th ISindependence Day in One Southern Indiana, the impoverished, stubbornly paternalistic enclave that broke away from Indiana after the state’s favorite son, Mitch Daniels, suffered a landslide loss to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race.

While living memories of that time have faded, the impact of events continues to influence daily life.

Depressed and shattered by his loss, the former governor fled to a hiding place near Birdseye and declared a state of Major Insurgency Moves. Concurrently, a band of tightly-knit oligarcho-theocrats at the economic development agency called One Southern Indiana (1Si) staged a series of cynical bait-and-switch ploys, culminating in a bloodless coup in 2015 that wrested civil authority from legally elected local governments.

After undergoing treatment, Daniels subsequently renounced his failed political revolt and took up religion, becoming an evangelist and the leading American proponent of wealth accumulation at his Your Tax Abatement is Jesus ministry prior to his death in 2019.

Meanwhile, the former chamber of commerce gradually undertook to improve the quality of life for its top tier of major business investment partners.

---

Today, amid persistent shortages, the mood in 1Si is one of weary resignation. 1Sindependence Day will feature lengthy speeches and exaltations of economic progress, as broadcast over the 1Si-approved Clere Channel network, which Grooms bright Young future Stemlers for leadership in the community.

Most people merely will parrot the platitudes, resuming their search for firewood in the remnants of wooded areas, most long since clear-cut to build subdivisions with names like No Oak Glen and Elm Infested Acres.

1Si’s numerous manual laborers will get half-days off to drink non-alcoholic Victory Juice and parade past the descendents of the founders, seated atop the Tomb of the Unknown Exurbanite, jowly in their golf wear, drinking expensive, imported Corona Lights, and extolling the virtues of a non-union workforce.

Since the Great Oil Out of 2035, the parade has been non-motorized, and just a few miles away from the mausoleum are the massive unfinished hulks of the Ohio River Bridges Project, made redundant by the depletion of petroleum.

In vast, smoldering areas of a city formerly known as Jeffersonville, squatters now live in grimy tents, reduced to commuting by ox cart to mow grass at the homes of 1Si’s upper echelon at the Quarry Bluff gated compound, or forced to walk long miles to beg for alms at the Shrine of St. Daniels, owned and operated by Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana.

---

ROCK was formally established as the moral and cultural arbiter of 1Si by the late Commandante Stemler shortly after the Glorious Revolutionary Economic Progress Capital Campaign was concluded. ROCK vowed to purify minds stained with Democratic liberalism, declaring in 2022 that all pornography had been eradicated (along with most books and all competing political parties).

ROCK’s slogan can be seen on every desktop: “Free speech is the devil’s workshop. Work for 1Si, instead.”

---

Residents are not willing to speak openly to the few outside journalists permitted to enter 1Si. Their reticence is understandable. During the past two decades, as 1Si’s public policy council outlawed small retail businesses and began paying workers in Yum! Brands gift cards, it has become all too easy to lose one’s tacos, nachos and beanie weenies.

Miraculously, dissent has not been fully suppressed.

Thomas N., from Sellersburg, remembers the day when the One Southern Indiana operatives came to his street with their laptops.

“They were nicely dressed and friendly, but serious,” says the retired software analyst. “As a Democrat, I was worried when they started promulgating the 5 O’Clock Network Fundamental Purity Laws, but they were handing out free thumb drives to the kids. It seemed okay.”

“We were told that we’d have jobs, education and fiscal restraint, and we believed it,” he adds. “By the time things started getting bad, it was too late.”

A far younger man calling himself Koba expresses bitterness at the toll on modernity of 1Si’s iron-fisted rule.

“I live in a rental property owned by a Sodrelite, and it’s a piece of ****,” spits Koba, “but one day I was down in the crawl space, and I found these old books about green strategies and sustainability. It was like an epiphany, because I didn’t know there was any other way except consuming irreplaceable resources for 1Si’s enrichment.”

“I can’t let anyone see me reading these books,” he continues, “because if the 1SBlock Watch hears about it, I’ll lose my Yum! Card and be exposed as a Girly Man. And yet sometimes, late at night, I risk hacking through the firewalls of the 1Sinternet, and see how communities in other places operate.”

“It’s incredible. Did you know they actually have free elections in other parts of the country?”

---

Amy C. provides the official version of life in 1Si. She works as free enterprise re-education specialist in the Michael Dalby Institute of Public-Private Partnerships. As great-granddaughter of a Bi-State Authority member, she enjoyed a privileged upbringing and attended the prestigious One Southern Indiana University Southeast Christian Academy of ROCK.

“Although my spiritual guide, the Reverend Wickens IV, teaches us that we must be humble and self-effacing, I agree with all the central tenets of Stemlerism,” she begins. “We are building the perfect, economically developed society.”

“People who are not too stubborn to accept St. Daniels as their guide and fiscal savior know how to be respectful and constructive,” she concludes. “Given that we’re traveling the correct historical path, why tolerate people whose questions are no more than vicious personal agendas?”

How sweet it is: Sour grapes and fluffery from St. Daniels.

I never doubted that Barack Obama would win, but at no time did I ever foresee the sheer entertainment value afforded us during the weeks since.

Tony Bennett had wheelbarrows of out-of-state cash, and yet lost his re-election bid to an under-funded opponent whose advisors evidently read "Moneyball" and profited from the lessons therein.

Thus, these crazed sour grapes from the departing Colossus of the Prairie, uttered at a circle jerk of a symposium devoted to Republicans giving screw-the-people awards to each other. Attendees listened as Mitch Daniels began babbling about reaction, never realizing he was looking in the mirror of the men's room, reminding us that when it comes to fluffing, it's all about location, location, location.

Bennett lost neither because teachers used school time to undermine him, nor owing to voters suddenly becoming dispassionate analysts of impenetrable school "reform" information. He lost because of his day in, day out demeanor. Bennett cannot read a lawnmower instruction manual aloud without coming across as pompous, arrogant and a good deal snarky, rather in the fashion of his fellow GOP loser, Richard Mourdock, although Mourdock always seemed less arrogant than entirely detached from daily reality, like that guy at the end of the bar who's off his prescriptions but firmly on the gin.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels claims teachers used illegal tactics in election (Courier-Journal)

“Despite the great progress that's been made in states like ours, the forces of reaction never quit,” Daniels said. “The last twitch of the dinosaur's tail can still kill you and that's what happened.”

ORBP: "Indiana’s worst transportation finance decision since the 1830s epic canal fiasco that bankrupted the state."

Silence remains somewhat other than golden, but let's not drag folks like Diane Benedetti, Kerry Stemler and Ed Clere into a discussion of how Hoosiers are being "thrown under the bus" by St. Daniels.

Wouldn't want them to have to think, or anything uppity like that.

Hey, you on the Bridges Authority ... could you pass the Kool-Aid, please?

Media Finally Wakes Up to Louisville Tunnel Boondoggle, But Misses the Bigger Picture, by Aaron Renn (Urbanophile)

The Indianapolis Star finally did a report this weekend covering the ridiculousness of Indiana taxpayers and motorists paying for a $255 million “tunnel under the trees” in Kentucky as part of the Ohio River bridges project.

Their article is a good one, and reveals that Kentucky officials deliberately listed the property as historic to drive up the cost of the bridge project as a poison pill attempt. Though the headline should better have been phrased as a question: “Why Exactly Is Indiana Paying $255 to Tunnel Under Kentucky’s Trees?” The only answer seems to be because Mitch Daniels wants to ...

... It’s stunning to me that, to burnish his legacy by getting a bridge project done that had eluded both states for 40 years, Mitch Daniels is willing to throw Hoosier taxpayers and motorists under the bus like this. This is a deal that will live in infamy as Indiana’s worst transportation finance decision since the 1830s epic canal fiasco that bankrupted the state. I cannot think of another governor in modern times who so clearly acted contrary to his own constituents’ financial interests in a transportation project.

The Boss's ode to Mitch Daniels upon his impending departure.

At The Urbanophile: "Indiana's Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 1: A Financial Fiasco."

Me thinks this series by Aaron M. Renn in The Urbanophile will be required reading these next few days.

Indiana's Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 1: A Financial Fiasco

- Indiana gives away $1.7 billion to Kentucky -

- Indiana’s costs up by $200 million while total project costs decline by $1.5 billion -

- $432 million diverted from other projects to close funding gap recreated by Indiana’s botched negotiators -

- Tolling likely to mean Indiana pays well over half the project –

- Indiana potentially exposed to major risk by agreeing to build a tunnel in Kentucky through Louisville’s most affluent suburb that the state has no expertise to construct -

New surge of toll-o-philia grips and debilitates ORBP backers.

This comment on Facebook sums it up.

Here's my prediction... Indiana will complete the east end bridge before Kentucky even thinks about the new downtown bridge and interstate re-working. At that point Kentucky will realize the east end bridge fixed the downtown bridge situation and, the downtown bridge will never be built!

For me, it is simple. I can no longer trust any public official or Bridges Authority member, ever again. That's why I fully expect them to cynically reverse field and toll the bandaged Sherman Minton Bridge, because after all, they've continually altered what was said to be inalterable. Up until the first coin hits the slot, I will continue to oppose the tolling of any bridge, and the construction of a downtown bridge.

The next Bridges Authority meeting is January 5, 2012, 10 a.m., at the Kentucky International Convention Center (221 S. 4th St., Louisville, KY). Anyone know where bulk cream pies might be purchased?

States reach deal on bridges, from wire service reports at OSIN

... Indiana would be responsible for constructing a new bridge across the river at Utica and Prospect, Ky., a new highway linking the Lee Hamilton Expressway and Gene Snyder Freeway, and a tunnel in eastern Jefferson County.

Kentucky would be responsible for building a new Interstate 65 bridge, refurbishing the Kennedy Bridge, modernizing the Kennedy Interchange and expanding the I-65 approach in Indiana.

Tolls would help to cover the cost of construction.

The moment we've all been waiting (and drinking) for ...

Ironically, with our weekly Bank Street Brewhouse team meeting set for 10:00 a.m., and the fire station conveniently situated along the
route downtown via the Spring Street bike lane, I might be able to flash my "These Machines Kill Fascists" shirt at St. Daniels and then still have time left over to open BSB early so as to deny entry to him when he asks for a belt o'bourbon before mounting his chopper to ride into one of those Major Move rathole cracks on the Sherman Minton Bridge

Sighhh ... a boy can dream.

Officials plan to provide time and cost of fixing bridge, by the C-J's Marcus Green.

The governors of Kentucky and Indiana plan Friday to deliver the news that thousands of people in their states have waited three weeks to hear — how long it will take to fix the Sherman Minton Bridge, and what it will cost.

While several government officials said the timeline for repairs could range between approximately three to six months, they stressed that the ultimate decision rests with Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear. Beyond announcing the news conference, their offices declined to comment.

Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez is expected to join Beshear and Daniels at 9:30 a.m. at New Albany Fire headquarters.

NA-FC School Corp makes the Times...thanks to the dimwitted decision making of Daniels, Clere, Gardenour, et al.

Back before State Representative Ed Clere had proven his unshakable bona fides as a conniving Chamber of Commerce fille de joie, I used to bother asking him really complicated, esoteric questions like, "How will [insert latest GOP wealthy appeasement plan] help improve the quality of life for your constituents?"

He never had an answer. He and the rest of the accomplices still don't. Unrepentant ideologues simply aren't concerned with such practical matters, instead choosing to govern by fiat both on paper and, in columnist Ed's case, in the paper.

The Indiana Exception? Yes, but..., by Michael Powell and Monica Davey, The New York Times.

In southern Indiana, the New Albany-Floyd school system has closed schools, consolidated classes, pared administrators and imposed a pay freeze on teachers. That is still not enough. Next year will bring layoffs.

Many state officials, and even some local board members, are unsympathetic. Rebecca Gardenour, who serves as vice president of the school board, voted for the property caps, without regrets. She regrets only that she voted to build two big new schools a few years back.

Right on: Columnist Nash calls a truce on calling truces.

Matt nails it, but he'd better be careful. As soon as the half-dozen Clere Channel fluffers read this, those anonymous Kitchen Linoleum attacks will resume. You'd think retired, discredited former council members and aspiring female mayoral candidates would have better things to do, but after all, this is Nawbany -- land of the Liteweight, home of the hooded.

NASH: Are we headed in the right direction?

... It is not yet clear what our governor’s decision will be about his future political aspirations. It is clear that he is pandering to the extreme right wing of his party in order to make an impression in Iowa and New Hampshire. Hoosier voters, who helped to send Barack Obama to the White House in 2008, have been blind sided by this sharp turn to the right. Yes it is true that elections have consequences, I just hope that the situation can be rectified before further damage is done.

News and Tribune editorial opinion: "Daniels’ Planned Parenthood call does us wrong."

The opinion is not signed, so I'm assuming it is the product of the News and Tribune editorial board. All I can say is this:

Bravo.

OUR OPINION: Daniels’ Planned Parenthood call does us wrong

So much for calling a truce. Instead, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels decided last week instead to approve an assault on social issues by drawing his sword and thrusting it into the gut of every Hoosier who values any shred of personal freedom they have.

Have Rep. Ed Clere and Sen. Ron Grooms, whose propaganda machines typically cloak all legislative business under the all-purpose mantra of "jobs," even tried to offer a public rationale for their votes on this and other reactionary, theocratic measures?

Shouldn't the newspaper ask them to do so?

"Education. Schools. Children. Vouchers. Which word doesn't fit?"

My pen pal D(NM), a native New Albanian now residing elsewhere, sent this note the other day. Shortly after reading it, I saw St. Daniels's self-serving account of vouchers, and it occurred to me that whenever I hear Mitch Daniels say the words "social justice", I reach for my Irony Sickness Bag.

The governor who famously (facetiously?) referred to a "truce" in the culture wars now spends his days signing legislation dedicated to social engineering on a scale seldom glimpsed since the halcyon days of 20th-century "isms", then sells the souvenir pens on Ebay to finance his White House run.

Like my friend D's reaction, it makes me sick. Waiter: One of those irony bags, please. Extra large if you've got it.

Well Roger, whatareyougoingtodoaboutthismess?

Sorry ‘bout that; words spoken in anger tend to rush out without sufficient pause between. Oops, I’m beginning to sound like Yoda.

How can those idiots face their constituents, how can they face their G-d, when they pull off a stunt like “School Vouchers”? Of course, they are fully aware of the damage they’re going to do to the Indiana Public School system. What can they be thinking? If thinking is what they pretend to do?

The unthinking cruelty of these clowns; it goes to prove time after time that they are amoral to the ‘nth degree. I’m done with Indiana. I’ll never return; however this decision of mine won’t amount to a hill of beans in the long run. But, it will give my anger a focus.

I have to ask, where in Indiana is the one person who’ll stand up and speak out to remind their fellow Hoosiers that this is wrong? This is nothing but a sop to the ugliest of the radical right’s ambitions, and that is to reverse the civil rights movement in this country. To take us back to that imagined time in this country when white was right and those who weren’t were outta sight.

When I was in the sixth grade, attending the State Street Elementary School , the principal was Lillian Emery (of hated memory). She had declared, early on when the subject of integration of New Albany’s schools was discussed, that the only way a black child would walk into State Street School was over her dead body. We all, or at least a lot of us, held our collective breath and hoped that soon a new student would appear and grant our most fervent wishes.

So, one day, during recess I spotted that one black child, alone, away from the other students, crying, afraid, scared to death. I think he was a second grader, one little kid; and at that point the cruelty of the New Albany power merchants was out there for all to see. Unfortunately Miss Emery remained, fully ensconced on her throne. They even named the school after her, for a while; at least until her ugly story became public knowledge.

I tried to befriend and reassure that kid, but he was so miserable and afraid, he was literally inconsolable. I don’t remember if he was at school the next day, I don’t remember seeing him again. The school year ended and I was on to New Albany Junior High, on Spring Street, where integration was a reality. Not that everything was peaches and cream, but it worked, for the most part.

Now, the moral descendants of Lillian Emery are out to reverse the wheels of progress. Indiana’s most welcome to them. You’ll need to keep a weather eye out; I hear that Carrie Nation is reforming the W.C.T.U. for a second go around.

Be very watchful!

Today's Tribune column: "Pop art in one-party Hoosierstan."

It doesn't end the way it begins, and that's purely intentional.

BAYLOR: Pop art in one-party Hoosierstan

Once upon a time, I met John Warhola. He died on Christmas Eve.

In 1991, only recently arrived in Kosice, Czechoslovakia, to assume short-term duties teaching conversational English to staff members at the city’s University Hospital, I was asked by Dr. Robert Roland — the hospital’s first post-Communist administrator, who had hired me — if I’d like to accompany him to a Saturday afternoon museum opening in Medzilaborce.

Educating the reformers, redux.

Given the zeal with which Saint Daniels and his minions intend to careen us down a highly ideological yet largely ineffectual educational path, this may become a semi-regular feature around here for a while.

For now, just kindly note that while there's currently a lot of language coming out of Indy about teachers, accountability, and transferring public money to private (including religious) schools, no one thus far has much to say about what's actually being taught, tested, and measured. In direct terms, that's because they don't have a clue themselves. When one takes a broader view, it's easy to see as an extension of the usual Daniels M.O. in which paper-based accounting methodology takes precedence over any real results in our towns and cities.

Thankfully, others are actually thinking about and working on reframing the education debate rather than relying on "reform" as a meaningless, catch-all term to talk about the only thing that really matters to them: money. If, as Daniels is wont to say, money isn't the answer to our educational problems, then why is it at the center of nearly every Daniels-led discussion on the topic? Shouldn't we figure out what we want to accomplish before deciding how much funding is needed? Only if one's goals involve actual pedagogical improvement, I suppose, rather than a bourgeois takedown of the public commons.

Though I'm not terribly fond of the insinuations that pleasing corporate CEOs has much to do with the success of our educational system, Dr. Tony Wagner, co-director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group, here presents what he believes are essential skills for students moving forward. I'd suggest they belong in the governor's office as well.

Thanks to KW for sharing.

More such heresy entirely necessary where St. Daniels is concerned.

Something said by city council member John Gonder was buried a few paragraphs down, but is sufficiently prescient to see the light of day.

FLOYD COUNTY: New Albany police chief, sheriff have different views on combining police protection; Mills supports a merger of departments, by Daniel Suddeath (Tribune)

... But the state push — primarily from Gov. Mitch Daniels — to consolidate public services is the reason New Albany City Council President John Gonder said his “knee-jerk” reaction to a merger is opposition.

“I don’t want to be led around by what [Daniels] thinks local government should be,” Gonder said.

Hoosier ink blot test: The color of money.

Lucas Oil Stadium

Ronald McDonald House

Goldman Sachs Governor

Someone get the muzzle: Roger's spreading myths about bridge tolls again. Get him some of that Kool-Aid, fast.

(I write today as a private citizen, blogger and business owner, perhaps not in that order, but decidedly not as a community organizer or a member of the Brewers of Indiana Guild. I wouldn’t want to get in trouble or anything, like back in elementary school when you just knew one of them was going to snitch on you, but you didn’t know which one would do it. Note that a version of this essay likely will be submitted as next week’s Tribune column, although I can’t decide whether to edit the facts or the vitriol for readers who won’t be able to tell the difference between them.)

I’ll begin with an earnest confession.

In all seriousness, I’m neither the best nor the worst small business owner on the planet.

I have my moments, but overall, my ranking probably falls somewhere in the middle, and justifiably so. Teaching, selling and living good beer are the aspects of my work that I love the most, and other “minor” details sometimes elude me. So be it. The NABC ownership troika tends to work because in most cases, each of us has a particular strength that balances weaknesses in the others.

After just shy of two decades spent in my current line of work, it is my observation that few matters are black and white. However, one periodically experiences pristine clarity, and I can state with certainty that the following propositions surely are applicable.

1. While never foregoing an opportunity to market and to educate consumers in our own Southern Indiana backyards, NABC’s intended mandate as a small, niche-oriented destination business always has implied a sharp focus on marketing to the huge numbers of potential customers living in Kentucky.

2. Basic demographics justify this approach. For reasons that extend beyond price, better beer is a “higher end” product. Based on population alone, more members of the target demographic – higher income, better education, more extensive travel and life experience – live in Kentucky than Indiana. These people live in Indiana, too. It’s just that greater numbers of them live in Kentucky. In larger or smaller measure, it is reasonable to posit that the same is true for other small businesses in Southern Indiana.

3. Marketing to the Kentucky demographic has never been very easy, not because these nearby consumers misunderstand the message, but primarily owing to ancestral assumptions and clannish prejudices of the sort that people who don’t live along liquid borders cannot ever truly understand. Those who are not engaged on a daily basis in bricks and mortar retailing might dismiss these intangibles as merely apocryphal, but they’re far from imaginary to those who actually occupy the retailing trenches on a day to day basis.

4. Consequently, and precisely because I’ve been doing my job for as long as I have, I believe I’ve compiled sufficient accumulated knowledge about NABC’s consumer base to know that much of it comes from Kentucky. I am vindicated by this knowledge. It is gratifying to know that a plan of action patiently pursued over a long period of years has been proven worthy, and has come to fruition in such a fashion.

5. Whether proposed tolls on existing Ohio River bridges amount to a quarter or $3 each way, the amount absolutely will constitute an increase in the price of Hoosier goods and services for Kentuckians who must drive across toll bridges to the Indiana side. Unlike Hoosiers crossing the river to Kentucky to work, who’ll have no choice except to pay, this increase on the price of goods and services will be entirely discretionary, in the sense that Kentuckians can choose to forego the trip, refrain from crossing the bridge, stay at home, and spend their discretionary income in Kentucky.

6. Because of my experience as a small business owner and operator, as carefully explained in the preceding, I can see quite clearly that tolling existing bridges is going hurt my business, and dearly. Furthermore, it is reasonable to posit that the mere mention of tolling as an option will have a measurable influence on consumer behavior, one also detrimental to my business. Moreover, it is reasonable to posit that if it hurts my business, it will hurt others in my approximate market position just as badly.

7. If all this weren’t serious, it would be hilarious.

I’ve done exactly what the experts at organizations like 1Si demand a businessman do, gathering information, planning strategies, and over time, seeing these strategies succeed.

Now, with a stock of relevant information, knowledge and experience that is pertinent to an important matter in the public interest, there has arisen a segment of the community intent either to ignore me outright, or to insist loud and long that what I’ve learned isn’t true – that the public always should trust business persons to know what’s good for them, but only until Roger opens his big mouth, at which point we can scoff at him for hidden agendas and Communist leanings, and delete him if necessary.

To put it mildly, it strikes me as ironic that ever since I began raising these objections about how tolls will impact small retail businesses in Southern Indiana, people who are not in bricks and mortar retail sales … people who have not spent two decades marketing their businesses as destinations for a customer base living in Kentucky … people who are not in small retail business at all, and never have been … roll their eyes and look at the clouds whenever I suggest that maybe, just maybe, small business owners in Southern Indiana might actually know what’s good and bad for them in terms of bridge tolls, and because these owners and operators know the score, they can see that there can be no good for small businesses to come from tolling existing bridges.

People just like Jerry Finn, Horseshoe Foundation head and Bridges Authority member, an otherwise nice and jovial fellow, who two days ago implied that my viewpoint about tolling is a myth and needs to be debunked.

That brand of Bridges Authority Kool-Aid is powerful stuff, indeed.

In other words, a man who has no idea what it’s like to run my business, and who is in no way responsible for attracting a pre-chosen demographic to come and spend money at his retail establishment, since he does not have one, is bizarrely compelled to shrug, to posture, and to dismiss my concerns about the impact of tolling on the discretionary spending habits of Kentuckians, observations gathered over a period of twenty years, these twenty years spent accumulating evidence of consumer behavior gleaned every single day when the “open” sign went on.

That’s doubly laughable because in 2009, when NABC became the first local company to avail itself of the $50,000 Horseshoe Foundation revolving loan, we were approved by the Foundation’s dubious partner in outsourcing applications, no doubt in part because of our inspiring history as a company, this successful application seeming to indicate approval and tacit endorsement of our business savvy. But nowadays, Roger suddenly has no idea what he’s saying, and worse, he’s spreading incantations and myth throughout the community.

Woe is us. Best muzzle the dude, and fast.

And yet: Throughout Finn’s theatrics, and amid the ham-fisted diversionary tactics of his colleagues, has the Bridges Authority or anyone else connected with them (hint: One Southern Indiana) even once produced an economic impact statement purporting to study in detail an unsavory phenomenon that my small business and others might well be forced to endure sooner rather than later, namely, the imposition by an unelected governmental appendage of a toll which indisputably acts in pure daily reality as a tax, one that absolutely and undeniably will have the practical effect of raising the cost of goods and services to my clientele across the river?

Surely this well-dressed, well-financed, well-bred committee, a veritable cross-section of purely unelected community respectability (does it contain a single small business owner?), has commissioned such a study.

Surely this study proves me wrong, because why else would the Authority be so quick and smug in brushing aside concerns of those like me who actually are working, running a business, right here on the ground and in the trenches?

Because, gee whiz, there’s just no way the Authority would proceed with its blithe, facile reassurances that a post-tolling metro area will be peaches and cream for me and mine without some sort of hard evidence to fall back on, right?

That’s crazily unimaginable, isn’t it?

Unless, of course, the Bridges Authority, 1Si and all the various ambitious politicians hitching their Conestogas to St. Daniels’ future electoral champagne supernova have known from the start that tolls actually are going to hurt their fellow Hoosiers, both working commuters and small business owners.

Unless they’ve always known and don’t care, having convinced themselves that the evangelical zeal of the bridges project trumps every other human concern, and expect that Hoosiers will be good little pliable creatures to be patted on the head, happily willing to appease their betters, and taking the economic hit for the greater good of Kerry Stemler’s financial empire.

If so, and if Southern Indiana small businesses will be asked to serve as sacrificial pawns in what amounts to a form of eminent domain removal, that’s just fine with me as long as St. Daniels buys me the (expletive deleted) out.

Isn’t that what government does during eminent domain proceedings?

They buy you the (expletive deleted) out, and get you out of the way, right?

Cool beans. I am soooooo there.

Once I’ve been bought out, I finally will have ample free time to advise Jerry Finn on how to run his foundation – not that I’ve ever done it, or know anything about it, but hey, it’s a free country, right? I can know just by looking … after a healthy draught of Kool-Aid.

(It’s a free country, except when you’re crossing a bridge that was paid off thirty years ago.)

Me? I’m more than eager to play my role, and I know when to fold up and cash out. I’m willing to shut the (expletive deleted) up, and to gratefully attend the show trial press conference, admitting tearfully that I know nothing at all about my business, never did, not once cared about the greater good, and in my stubborn refusal to release my soul from its shackles, was unwilling to accept Rep. Clere’s kind, selfless offer of conversion to the gospel of St. Daniels, thus assisting in his angling for a better job further up the ladder once a Hoosier is installed in the White House.

What was I thinking? The shame! Yes, I deserve the public humiliation. Twenty years of work, and I learned nothing about business, nothing at all, not even whose butt to kiss and when to kiss it.

Just add a couple million to the bridges price tag, guys, and I’m the (expletive deleted) outta here.

I'll be voting accordingly.

Our children is learning alright. It's what Bennett is teaching that's the problem.

As NAC and Morton Marcus pointed out earlier in the week, much of the state level "reform" being foisted on Hoosiers by officials in Indianapolis is nothing more than a centralized power grab by those who implausibly claim to support reduced government intrusion.

That's certainly true in the realm of education. As the Tribune reports, Indiana Public School Superintendent Tony Bennett is traveling the state stumping for Republican candidates in order to gain control of the Indiana House hoping that same-party representatives will just roll when he and Saint Daniels make their pitch, the details of which they refuse to reveal until after the elections.

When Bennett was superintendent of Greater Clark Schools and not busy campaigning for higher office, he negotiated a contract for himself at over $130K per year, championed a $99 million building project, and assured parents that each part of the project would go on even in the face of cost overruns. All the while, the school system for which he was responsible failed to make adequate yearly progress according to standardized tests.

Since the source of his paycheck has changed, Bennett now says that public school employees have too much negotiating power, we spend too much on school buildings, and that administrative salaries should be tied to yearly progress benchmarks.

If Bennett is the type of hypocritical nitwit you want making decisions for schools in New Albany and statewide, then send Ed Clere back to the state house so he can help them get it done.