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 Occupy the Colossus of Gahan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Occupy the Colossus of Gahan. Show all posts
There Gahan goes again, taking credit for restaurants and stores. Is he planning Grand Closing ribbon-cuttings ...
... for the ones that don't make it? If Gahan birthed them, shouldn't he bury them, too?
Or is this too much to ask of Wile E. Gahan, Genius?
I've no idea how many taxpayer dollars are required to purchase ads like this in the increasingly irrelevant News and Tribune, although as we've pointed out in the past, they're a fantastic investment for Gahan, who uses YOUR money to buy HIS de facto campaign ads, all the while making boasts he has no intention of proving.
They're also not unlike a form of protection money, in the sense that the newspaper typically treats follow-up questions as a strain of Ebola, refraining from the sort of invasive journalism that might result in an embarrassing question like this:
Mr. Gahan, can you PROVE the assertions in this ad? After all, we make sure Roger's claims in a letter to the editor are utterly factual before printing it -- and shouldn't the same rules apply to everyone, even the mayor?
HA HA HA. Can you even imagine it? Gahan would respond by threatening to pull the taxpayer-financed ads -- and that would be the end of it.
Here's the text of the ad. Note that during the River Run waterpark's four previous years of operation, financials have yet to be released in spite of numerous requests to view them. These would address profit-and-loss realities. Wouldn't YOU like to know how much money the fire department transfers monthly to the parks department as "rent" for its station on Daisy Lane, such to (maybe) balance the books?
THE CITY OF NEW ALBANY, INDIANA
We replaced problems and potholes with pipes, paving, parks and pools.
Like any city, New Albany has had its share of issues. Unlike most cities, New Albany is focused on fixing them. That's why we pour resources into things you may not see. Like reducing the number of sewers that flood when it rains from 90 to zero. Fixing potholes. Updating and enhancing parks. And creating a popular public waterpark that provides family fun and a profit for the city. All this, plus new restaurants, stores and more that add up to a great quality of life. New Albany...it's where you should be!
cityofnewalbany.com
THE CITY OF NEW ALBANY, INDIANA
New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan
But here's the funny part. On-line, the photo and text are followed by this:
Check availability with the advertiser as the information and offers in this ad may be time-sensitive.
And where might we conduct this check?
Nothing, not even Mike Hall.
Crickets chirp, pins drop. Somewhere a dog barks ... and Gahan tells lies.
ON THE AVENUES: Another year older and deeper in debt, so let's doo-doo it all over again.
A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do. -- Ulysses S. Grant
End-of-year compendiums taunt as much as they tempt. While at times an adequate teaching tool, the glibness of 20/20 hindsight usually gets in the way of instruction.
Apart from the planetary scourge known as Homo sapiens, there are no neatly printed numerical calendars, just natural cycles of life and death, recurrence and the dialectic. Nothing ever really ends on December 31, or begins the following day. All of it is a continuum, until the final pervasive darkness overtakes us all. After that, calendar pages no longer turn.
Encouraged yet?
Awesome, so let’s begin the year’s end housekeeping with thoughts pertaining to the life of ON THE AVENUES itself. In short, there’ll need to be a slight adjustment.
That’s because speaking personally, the single biggest story of 2018 was the official debut of Pints&union on August 1, which put an end to three and a half years of my semi-retired underemployment. As the pub's advent followed the long delayed final settlement of my NABC buyout, it became a judiciously considered exclamation mark affixed to what I view as a personal rebirth.
During my hiatus there were ups and downs, births and deaths, frustrations and exhilaration, but in the main it was a gratifyingly productive period. I’ll look back on those years as a cherished time to learn and grow. It was like earning a second undergraduate degree, or perhaps finishing a master’s program in creative synthesis.
Just as in an overall daily sense I’ve no idea where I’d be without my wife Diana, in professional terms this accolade now fully extends to my friend and employer Joe Phillips, to whom I’m grateful for the opportunity to reinvent a career in beer. We’ve had six-months to build a foundation, and in 2019, the beer program’s going to fly high.
It’s about time – and it’s all about time.
My work routine became established fairly quickly, but it has taken me a few months to sort through the scheduling implications for my sidelines of writing and blogging. Since the advent of ON THE AVENUES in 2011 it has been my weekly goal to publish the column on Thursday. However, my work week at Pints&union is front-loaded, falling largely at the beginning of the week (from Monday through Wednesday, and into Thursday).
Perhaps a better course in 2019 would be to publish ON THE AVENUES on Tuesday, giving myself the weekend to prepare -- and what better day to begin than Tuesday, January 1, New Year’s Day?
---
Bernie Sanders tweeted on Friday.
The American people are tired of a president who is a liar, a fraud, a narcissist and a bully. They want leadership which unites us, not divides us. They want policies which work for all, not just the wealthy few.
I hastened to comment on this.
Welcome back to Nawbany, Bernie. We have one of those charlatans, too.
Because New Albany is similarly afflicted, it was another long, strange civic journey in 2018, and it’s going to be twice as annoying in 2019.
Fortunately, unlike the chaotic situation three decades ago in the People’s Republic if Romania, my fellow New Albanians will have the lawful opportunity next year to exercise their power of the ballot and remove our own under-educated, egotistical, image-replicating, cash-in-the-service-of-special-interests, bullying and personality cult curating Nicolae Ceausescu wannabe, along with the bootlicking clique of vapid lackeys drooling in his general vicinity.
We can get to Trump later. He’s minor league by comparison. First, it’s time to pluck the Genius of the Flood Plain from the comfy projected office chair in his palatial Reisz Mahal, and put him back into peddling veneer.
Wait …
Veneer: A thin decorative covering of fine wood applied to a coarser wood or other material.
That’s it: Potemkin veneer. Come to think of it, the ideal epitaph for eight long years of toxic Gahanism.
Bring out your brooms, citizens. Behind the bright shiny Disney images, this place is a mess. Granted, it won’t be easy beating a campaign-finance-engorged narcissist of the 19th-century Tammany Hall model who genuinely believes his face must adorn Kroger shopping carts right next to where consumers toss their Metamucil, condoms and Rice Krispies Treats, but working together, we can do it.
---
Brevity may be the soul of wit, although it isn’t typically my specialty. Today I’ll play against type and keep it relatively short.
Returning to those pesky compendiums, a summary: It’s been a year, and next week there’ll be another one. Throughout the past year, I’ve struggled first to discover, and then maintain a balance between the varying public roles I’ve written for myself. Privately, I’ve confided in some of you why this has been the case.
Paranoia may be the big destroyer, but when you’ve no doubt the threat is real, there’s an obligation to calculate risks. That’s because bullies are cowards, and cowards often are disinclined to target the source of their rancor. Rather, they nibble maliciously at the periphery – family, friends, employers – rather than come straight to the source.
In this specific instance that source is me, and so kindly allow me to close the year by encouraging all those having something to say to me to cut out the middle man and come directly to … that’s right, me.
Mano a mano is the one thing they seem utterly terrified to try, preferring instead various chicaneries from afar to silence dissent rather than engage it through direct dialogue.
Yes, I can be a handful.
Yes: I say what I think, believe in what I say, and fight for what I believe. I care deeply about justice, fairness and equality of opportunity for all, not only those playing their big fish/little pond games. It’s not a switch or spigot capable of being turned on and off, although I’ve tried mightily to do so.
But you see, facts are the end game for me. My "side" has legions of them, and in the coming year, the facts will continue to be enabled to speak for themselves – with the necessary polemical assistance from the likes of me.
After all, that’s why I'm here.
Readers, thanks for another fine trip around the sun.
ON THE AVENUES: Confusion, exile, ignobility and resistance amid various other Chronicles of New Gahania.
A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
I'm feeling really upbeat about today’s encore presentation of a column originally published on November 5, 2015 – just two days after the municipal election, when the Resistance commenced in New Albany a whole year prior to the advent of Trump.
2016 was when the rest of America belatedly awakened to the necessity.
I’m happy because resorting to a column rerun means I’m up to my ears in work pertaining to the arrival of something far more important than either Deaf Gahan or The Donald, this being Pints&union. Gradually the necessary pieces have fallen into place, and we should be ready to debut next week.
Meanwhile, I'm reminded that resistance begins right here at home. What was the original Public House in 1992 if not the local opposition to the nationwide stranglehold of wretched mass-market swill?
Perhaps amazingly, that particular battle was won, and now the world of better beer is overdue for some sprucing up and remodeling, hence the notion of putting a stop to the revolving door of on-premise beer selection.
Quality, reliability and dependability as revolutionary doctrines? Life's a pendulum, folks, and if you wait around long enough, when it finally swings back the effect is not unlike a fastball right down the middle of the plate.
Returning to the local political scene, it is forever instructive to read old commentaries and compare them to now. I was wrong about Trump's accession and Gahan's statewide political ambition (at least in the short term), but much of the remainder stands up nicely.
I'm not sure that anyone foresaw Gahan's acquisition of David Barksdale, flipping a presumed Republican into a sycophantic mayoral piss boy.
Just remember that when it comes to manipulation and money, the mayor can be trusted to exploit the weak and vulnerable by finding and tapping their jugulars. Gahan simultaneously milked Barksdale for a crucial fifth Reisz Mahal vote and neutered a Republican. The historian blithely handed the charlatan power on a silver platter.
Barksdale's abrupt collapse might be sad, except it's all hamartia and hubris to to me: "Hamartia is the (fatal) flaw, hubris is the behavior that does not acknowledge it."
Gotta go order beer now.
---
Confusion, exile, ignobility and resistance (2015).
Recently I overheard a conversation at the coffee shop about the point of no return, the last straw – the time when one decides to jump ship.
In this instance, the precise topic was the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency. Would such a revolting development merit moving to another country?
Self-exile is often depicted as a form of protest by the person that claims it, to avoid persecution or legal matters (such as tax or criminal allegations), an act of shame or repentance, or isolating oneself to be able to devote time to a particular thing.
Granted, Trump’s elevation is unlikely, and any conceivable notion of exile remains problematic in the absence of any substantive tradition of asylum for gravely disillusioned Americans seeking refuge in the civilized world – places like Bamberg, Poperinge or Copenhagen.
Even so, I still believe that a plea for asylum accompanied by a few photos of New Albany's slumlord properties, one-way streets and economic dishevelment cadre just might do the trick. Any self-respecting resident of the Netherlands would be utterly appalled, and offer his spare room.
Interviewers sometimes suggested he might have stayed in America longer. It was ever the land of liberation for him, the place his characters would leave for as soon as the potato crop was in. But he knew that, if he went, homesickness for green Ireland would gnaw away at him as surely as at them. Exile was not the answer. There was a strange dignity in staying but wavering, trying to balance emotions that would not be reconciled. Confusion, he insisted, “is not an ignoble condition”.
Emigration is a recurring motif in Ireland. During the Great Famine, Irish men and women left the island in droves, primarily to avoid starvation. In the decades that followed, and right up until the recent times, consistent patterns of self-exile continued owing to Ireland’s anemic economy and the absence of reasonable prospects for a life at home.
Over time, it’s the sort of reality calculated to produce torment and melancholy in a country’s cultural milieu, to be expressed in art, theater, music and writing. The playwright Friel decided escape was not the answer, and while he explored more universal themes in his work, we can guess that a certain intrinsic stubbornness played a role.
I can relate to that. Of course, there are other reasons for choosing exile, including war, pestilence and political vicissitude. It is the latter that concerns us today.
To be blunt: Does our recently concluded municipal election constitute one of these “jump ship” moments?
---
Or, is this a pertinent juncture for progressives to face the cruel facts about New Albany’s perennial hopelessness, and choose exile in a locale where the “A” students rule?
I don’t think it is, but these are bleak times, indeed. Book readers have almost as much reason to be scared as sheep during a second Jeff Gahan term in office. However, there are a few reasons for optimism amid the gloom, and his looting goons.
First, although you wouldn’t know it in the absence of detailed analysis by any traditional local media source, Gahan’s victory was not a landslide. It’s undeniable that a win is a win, but the incumbent lost 11% of his decisive 2011 mandate. 53% of the voters opted for Gahan, and 47% expressed a preference for his two challengers. It’s bad, but closer than before. Another $50 million in TIF bonds and he's toast.
And we'll be broke.
The Republicans made incremental gains, picking up two seats on the council. Along with independents Scott Blair and Dan Coffey, three Republicans occasionally might be able to throw a spanner into Gahan’s luxury palace construction plans.
Unfortunately, the winner as usual was apathy, with more than 70% of the city’s voters refraining from participating in the election. They’re about to get what they deserve, good and hard. So are the rest of us, especially the dissidents who challenged the re-coronation.
Still, I’m not giving up, primarily because giving up is something I resent having to do. For one thing, "love it or leave it" is a false dichotomy in my contrarian’s cosmos.
There’s a third way, by staying and continue trying to change this bastion of underachievement for the better, in whatever way can be mustered, great or small, if for no other reason than to prove that old white males need not be angry quasi-fascist reactionaries.
They can be angry muckraking leftist malcontents.
It isn’t as though I lack for experience in such endeavors, because however one might describe my clan, it was outnumbered long before the 2015 election took place. I’ve been a dissenting thorn in the side of presumed propriety since the 5th grade, and I’m not finished yet.
(See what I did there?)
Underdog defines my life. Among other things, I’m a humanist, an atheist and a heretic. Hereabouts, roughly nine bad beers are sold for every good one, and so that’s the one I drink. My diet includes more pickled herring than hamburgers. I took the Bernie Sanders test, and got 95%. Pro sports mean more to me than college, and education always trumps athletics. A car is an onerous appendage to be regrettably accepted, not exalted as an extension of one’s tumescent genitalia.
I support local independent business, level playing fields, the rank and file, walking and biking, human rights, diversity and fundamental decency. I oppose cliques, boorishness, time servers, cowards and willful stupidity.
At least simple ignorance is correctable.
---
Make no mistake, taxpayers: Gahan’s going to come out spending, and as before, it’ll be for those otherwise senseless capital project "wants" best calculated to preserve the Democratic Party’s stranglehold on power, and never as intended to alter any fundamental problems in the city. Too many people profit from decay management and pretend-decay-rectification, and Gahan needs his share of their money.
If nothing else, he’s really good at that.
Once the customary flagellations and reprisals take place. Gahan’s insipid cult of personality will be propagated even more heavily in preparation for the next step in his ambition, perhaps a State Senate run in 2018. Gahan’s team of acolytes is in place, its arrogance undoubtedly stoked by victory.
But it’s a machine with numerous holes, more illusion than substance. That’s because Gahan’s only palpable objective is political self-aggrandizement. Like most cults of personality, the aura doesn’t extend past the shadow of the chieftain, and his narcissistic need to be viewed as the fount of all wisdom is so ludicrous that it cannot survive dismemberment.
I shall continue writing the dismantlement manual, and soon enough, the curtain will be parted to reveal the great and mighty Oz, pulling at his levers. Meanwhile, let’s remember that Gahanism itself is no political doctrine.
It is a giant sucking sound of a well-tuned fundraising mechanism that never met a book.
Gahanism is neither defined by concrete ideology, nor illuminated by transparency. Rather, it is measured by crass transactions made in back corridors, rubber-stamped by co-opted functionaries, and executed to produce maximum monetization for candidate and political organization alike. It’s a pyramid scheme, and it might well crash and burn even before Gahan declares for higher office.
His political prospects will return to room temperature soon enough. Meanwhile, I’m not going anywhere, because Gahanism doesn’t frighten me. It is soulless, anti-intellectual, and so much the personification of unalloyed mediocrity that if the mayor did not exist, a reanimated Ayn Rand would have to invent him, so as to be denounced by John Galt over social media.
I can hear the bleating of the dullards now, just as I’ve heard it before: “BLAH BLAH BLAH if you don’t like it here, why don’t you move somewhere else BLAH BLAH BLAH.”
Ah, but you see, jumping ship is the one thing I cannot do, because I’ve got to be myself … and self-exile isn’t me.
Like Friel, I'm staying put. If you agree, start stockpiling paint, sit tight and wait for instructions.
ON THE AVENUES: Confusion, exile, ignobility and resistance.
A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
Recently I overheard a conversation at the coffee shop about the point of no return, the last straw – the time when one decides to jump ship.
In this instance, the precise topic was the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency. Would such a revolting development merit moving to another country?
Self-exile is often depicted as a form of protest by the person that claims it, to avoid persecution or legal matters (such as tax or criminal allegations), an act of shame or repentance, or isolating oneself to be able to devote time to a particular thing.
Granted, Trump’s elevation is unlikely, and any conceivable notion of exile remains problematic in the absence of any substantive tradition of asylum for gravely disillusioned Americans seeking refuge in the civilized world – places like Bamberg, Poperinge or Copenhagen.
Even so, I still believe that a plea for asylum accompanied by a few photos of New Albany's slumlord properties, one-way streets and economic dishevelment cadre just might do the trick. Any self-respecting resident of the Netherlands would be utterly appalled, and offer his spare room.
Interviewers sometimes suggested he might have stayed in America longer. It was ever the land of liberation for him, the place his characters would leave for as soon as the potato crop was in. But he knew that, if he went, homesickness for green Ireland would gnaw away at him as surely as at them. Exile was not the answer. There was a strange dignity in staying but wavering, trying to balance emotions that would not be reconciled. Confusion, he insisted, “is not an ignoble condition”.
Emigration is a recurring motif in Ireland. During the Great Famine, Irish men and women left the island in droves, primarily to avoid starvation. In the decades that followed, and right up until the recent times, consistent patterns of self-exile continued owing to Ireland’s anemic economy and the absence of reasonable prospects for a life at home.
Over time, it’s the sort of reality calculated to produce torment and melancholy in a country’s cultural milieu, to be expressed in art, theater, music and writing. The playwright Friel decided escape was not the answer, and while he explored more universal themes in his work, we can guess that a certain intrinsic stubbornness played a role.
I can relate to that. Of course, there are other reasons for choosing exile, including war, pestilence and political vicissitude. It is the latter that concerns us today.
To be blunt: Does our recently concluded municipal election constitute one of these “jump ship” moments?
---
Or, is this a pertinent juncture for progressives to face the cruel facts about New Albany’s perennial hopelessness, and choose exile in a locale where the “A” students rule?
I don’t think it is, but these are bleak times, indeed. Book readers have almost as much reason to be scared as sheep during a second Jeff Gahan term in office. However, there are a few reasons for optimism amid the gloom, and his looting goons.
First, although you wouldn’t know it in the absence of detailed analysis by any traditional local media source, Gahan’s victory was not a landslide. It’s undeniable that a win is a win, but the incumbent lost 11% of his decisive 2011 mandate. 53% of the voters opted for Gahan, and 47% expressed a preference for his two challengers. It’s bad, but closer than before. Another $50 million in TIF bonds and he's toast.
And we're broke.
The Republicans made incremental gains, picking up two seats on the council. With nominally independent Scott Blair a fiduciary milquetoast and Dan Coffey always eager to flip to the highest bidder for an extra acorn, three Republicans occasionally might be able to throw a spanner into Gahan’s luxury palace construction plans.
Unfortunately, the winner as usual was apathy, with more than 70% of the city’s voters refraining from participating in the election. They’re about to get what they deserve, good and hard. So are the rest of us, especially the dissidents who challenged the coronation.
Still, I’m not giving up, primarily because giving up is something I resent having to do. For one thing, "love it or leave it" is a false dichotomy in my contrarian’s cosmos.
There’s a third way: Stay and continue trying to change this bastion of underachievement for the better, in whatever way can be mustered, great or small, if for no other reason than to prove that old white males need not be angry quasi-fascist reactionaries.
They can be angry muckraking liberal malcontents.
It isn’t as though I lack for experience in such endeavors, because however one might describe my clan, it was outnumbered long before the 2015 election took place. I’ve been a dissenting thorn in the side of presumed propriety since the 5th grade, and I’m not finished yet.
(See what I did there?)
Underdog is my life. Among other things, I’m a humanist, an atheist and a heretic. Hereabouts, roughly nine bad beers are sold for every good one, and so that’s the one I drink. My diet includes more pickled herring than hamburgers. I took the Bernie Sanders test, and got 95%. Pro sports mean more to me than college, and education always trumps athletics. A car is an onerous appendage to be regrettably accepted, not exalted as an extension of one’s tumescent genitalia.
I support local independent business, level playing fields, the rank and file, walking and biking, human rights, diversity and fundamental decency. I oppose cliques, boorishness, time servers, cowards and willful stupidity.
At least simple ignorance is correctable.
---
Make no mistake, taxpayers: Gahan’s going to come out spending, and as before, it’ll be for those otherwise senseless capital project "wants" best calculated to preserve the Democratic Party’s stranglehold on power, and never as intended to alter any fundamental problems in the city. Too many people profit from decay management and pretend-decay-rectification, and Gahan needs his share of their money.
If nothing else, he’s really good at that.
Once the customary flagellations and reprisals take place. Gahan’s insipid cult of personality will be propagated even more heavily in preparation for the next step in his ambition, likely a State Senate run in 2018. Gahan’s team of acolytes is in place, its arrogance undoubtedly stoked by victory.
But it’s a machine with numerous holes, more illusion than substance. That’s because Gahan’s only palpable objective is political self-aggrandizement. Like most cults of personality, the aura doesn’t extend past the shadow of the chieftain, and his narcissistic need to be viewed as the fount of all wisdom is so ludicrous that it cannot survive dismemberment forever.
I shall continue writing the dismantlement manual, and soon enough, the curtain will be parted to reveal the great and mighty Oz, pulling at his levers. Meanwhile, let’s remember that Gahanism itself is no political doctrine.
It is a giant sucking sound of a well-tuned fundraising mechanism that never met a book.
Gahanism is neither defined by concrete ideology, nor illuminated by transparency. Rather, it is measured by crass transactions made in back corridors, rubber-stamped by co-opted functionaries, and executed to produce maximum monetization for candidate and political organization alike. It’s a pyramid scheme, and it might well crash and burn even before Gahan declares for higher office.
His political prospects will return to room temperature soon enough. Meanwhile, I’m not going anywhere, because Gahanism doesn’t frighten me.
It is soulless, anti-intellectual, and so much the personification of unalloyed mediocrity that if the mayor did not exist, a reanimated Ayn Rand would have to invent him, so as to be denounced by John Galt over social media.
I can hear the bleating of the dullards now, just as I’ve heard it before: “BLAHBLAHBLAH if you don’t like it here, why don’t you move somewhere else BLAHBLAHBLAH.”
Ah, but you see, jumping ship is the one thing I cannot do, because I’ve got to be me … and self-exile isn’t me.
Like Friel, I'm staying put. If you agree, start stockpiling paint, sit tight and wait for instructions.
Let's see if I understand recent events here in the Magic Kingdom.
Mayor Jeff Gahan has declared downtown residential construction as his latest short-term election year civic goal, and so we're about to devote $2 million or more of dwindling TIF district clout to incentivizing an out-of-town builder of "upscale" apartments to build some of them on the redundant Coyle acreage.
By doing so, they're making it more likely that the value of the space currently occupied by the farmers market will increase, making it a prime target for residential infill -- and a payday for the city, which owns the lot.
Even if the peak has not been reached, and the farmers market is a magnet worth cultivating, we're ignoring cogent and compelling reasons to move it to other city-owned properties nearby, where at least it might assist in regeneration of another block or two. Instead, we'll lavish a quarter million dollars on improving the current location, thus undermining Gahan's stated goal of maximum residential construction and refurbishment.
See what attenuated attention spans can do? It isn't pretty, but it can be remedied. After all, it is an election year.
Meanwhile, I support a farmers market funded with public money only if the public financial support is proportionate to the potential benefits. Currently, that's simply not the case.
Possible reasons for "peak farmers market" include these:
After more than a decade of explosive growth, sales of local food at U.S. farmers' markets are slowing. A January report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that while more farmers are selling directly to consumers, local food sales at farmers markets, farm stands and through community supported agriculture have lost some momentum.
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