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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, an honest mailer from the Gahan campaign.

Them paranoid Gahanites are getting testier by the day. They need to rediscover the tranquil joys, as described in this book review in The Economist (from which the Getty Image in the meme above was copied).

Debts to pleasure: The key to a good life is avoiding pain

And finding tranquil joys. Or so Epicurus thought. Is he right?

How to be an Epicurean, by Catherine Wilson

In Catherine Wilson’s manual on “the ancient art of living well”, her guide is the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who advocated a calm life of modest pleasure. By explaining how the world was, he thought philosophy could show people how to live. Ms Wilson, an Epicurus specialist, agrees. Her intelligent and readable book lies, she says, somewhere between technical philosophy and “advice columns”.

Click the link to read more of the review.

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

There are many available spaces in the six-acre shopping center we all know as Colonial Manor. It was built in 1965, and its absentee owners are asking $4 - $6 per square foot. Leasing rates in a strip center near the hospital are twice this cost, as they are in the Elsby Building downtown.

Several weeks back, neighborhood stakeholder frustration with Colonial Manor's long decline led to the emergence of that rarest of New Albanian beasts: A well-organized, focused and potentially sustainable group of grassroots activists calling itself Colonial Manor Redevelopment Visioning.

The group will have a listening session on April 24.

Colonial Manor Redevelopment Visioning explains itself.

The purpose of this citizen-organized, grassroots, non-partisan Facebook Group is to envision possibilities and positive ideas for the potential redevelopment of the Colonial Manor center area on Charlestown Road in New Albany. It is designed to collect ideas, primarily from those living in or doing business within a one-mile radius of Colonial Manor.

Governmental thoughts about Colonial Manor's future have been bubbling tepidly on the back burner for so long that a balanced context is difficult, although as long ago as 2009, former council person John Gonder's discussion of a different kind of redevelopment for sites like Colonial Manor was falling on Deaf ears (Gahan was council president at the time).

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

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

City one step closer to purchasing Colonial Manor Shopping Center, by Chris Morris (Religion Today Newspaper)

New Albany City Council must approve purchase

... The New Albany Redevelopment Commission unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday to purchase the property for $2.6 million. The city council will also have to sign off on the purchase before the lot is put on the market. The commission will then take proposals from developers on not only a purchase price, but what vision they may have for the property.

"If we don't do something there I am pretty sure whoever owns the property is not going to do anything with it," said Irving Joshua, redevelopment commission president. "At this point for us to move forward we have got to go get this."

The money to purchase the property would come out of the Charlestown Road Tax Increment Financing fund.

Then, down at the housing authority where he works at a job given to him by the Democratic Party's power brokers, councilman Matt Nash received a text from Adam "Tricky" Dickey informing Nash that the Colonial Manor TIF Plan was his, to be used wisely in an uphill re-election campaign.

Okay, this is satire. But is satire still satire when it's true?

Meanwhile the surgeon general (or maybe it was Dr. Tom) has advised rational, fact-based onlookers in New Albany to stop shaking their heads so often, lest spinal damage result. After all, TIF can do anything, but can it pay for community chiropractic?

It's endlessly fascinating to watch Gahanism in action. It's about power, money and control; all ideas must emanate from the same centralized "genius" source, although it bears repeating that if absolute power corrupts absolutely, you'd have to go to Belarus or Pyongyang to find a better example of it than right here in Anchor City.

ON THE AVENUES: Gahan's hoarding of power and money is a threat to New Albany's future.

Gahan's pursuit of power has been relentless, marked by an insatiable thirst for money and a fetish for silence and secrecy, as opposed to discussion and openness.

Gahan's primary objective has been the accumulation of as much unrestrained political power as can be gained by a big fish in this otherwise small pond; to raise as much money as he possibly can through pay-to-play campaign finance patronage; and to deploy his concentration of power and money to limit decision-making to an inner circle of cliquish elites.

And yet with the monkeys uncaged and the circus clowns manning the wheel of the paranoid Good Ship Gahan-plop, the Colonial Manor Redevelopment Visioning effort marches forward, oblivious to the murmurings and innuendo from City Hall, which cannot imagine that anyone would differ with its narrative of goodness and perfection -- and those who do, well, whose payroll are THEY on, anyway?

Have something you want your New Albany City Council members to hear about Colonial Manor, the importance of citizen input and oversight, and your concerns about the process so far and into the future? The council will act this Thursday, 7 p.m., in the 3rd Floor assembly room, on the recommendation for the city's purchase of the six-acre tract of land that is presently Colonial Manor and propose a process for how decision making will proceed from here. Yes, it is Holy Week and a lot of us are busy with that but this is very important, too. Please come if you can to speak your thoughts or just to cheer some of your neighbors and friends on, as we continue to work so tirelessly to build accountability and transparency into the Colonial Manor decision-making process. Can't attend? Contact your city council representative in advance to voice your thoughts and ideas. If you need to know who your council representative is and how to contact them, PM or post up here and one of our team will help you. For all you continue to do for our New Albany neighborhoods, thank you! #colonialmanorrising

Let's wish those amazing Colonial Manor neighborhood stakeholders the best. I'll be live-tweeting from the council chambers this Thursday evening.

Who knows? The 5th district councilman might actually speak this time.

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Recent columns:

April 9: ON THE AVENUES: It's time for a change, and David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing.


April 2: ON THE AVENUES: Donnie Blevins tells his story.

March 26: ON THE AVENUES: Gahan's hoarding of power and money is a threat to New Albany's future.

March 19: ON THE AVENUES: In 1989, six months of traveling fabulously in Europe.

“To say that Lyndon (LaRouche) was slightly paranoid would be like saying the Titanic had a bit of a leak.”

The conclusion is inevitable.

The Utterly Bizarre Life of Lyndon LaRouche, by Paul Heideman (Jacobite)

American politics produces no small number of eccentrics. From the grotesque currently inhabiting the White House to Ross Perot to recently announced Democratic primary candidate Marianne Williamson (formerly Oprah’s “spiritual advisor”), the American political scene seems uniquely suited to creating and elevating very strange people. Among connoisseurs of crankery, however, one name has always stood above the rest: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr, who died yesterday, age ninety-six.

Originating on the far left, in the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, LaRouche would eventually forge what is easily the strangest path from left to right in twentieth-century America. His cult, forged in street fights with the Communist Party in the late 1960s, now spends most of its time propagandizing on behalf of both Donald Trump and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In between, LaRouche was, at various points, a drug warrior, a Reaganite “Star Wars” backer, a dedicated foe of figures from Queen Elizabeth (“a genocidal drug runner”) to Walter Mondale, a federal prisoner, an advocate for Glass-Steagall, and, of course, a psychoanalyst. Only in America!

Let's not forget the pivotal role of British intelligence.

By the mid 1980s, LaRouche had established a formidable international presence as well, with numerous supporters in West Germany and Italy. In the latter country, his followers managed to advance a particular hobby horse of his, the proper tuning of musical instruments, into debate in the parliament. LaRouche had long been concerned with the effects of music on psychology, writing in 1980 that “Rock was not an accidental thing. This was done by people who set out in a deliberate way to subvert the United States. It was done by British intelligence,” and that the Beatles were “a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division specifications.” The brainwashing of John, Paul, and company could be resisted, however, through proper tuning. (LaRouche and his followers favored A4 tuned to 432 Hz). The legislation in Italy failed, but not before attracting the support of figures including Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti.

Things were looking good for LaRouche until 1986, when the federal government launched a series of cases against his organization that eventually resulted in prison time for the cult leader and several of his associates. The case, which was led by none other than a federal prosecutor named Robert Mueller, revolved around various sorts of fraud, from unlicensed credit card transactions to soliciting loans from his followers. LaRouche, of course, saw the mark of conspiracy on his prosecution, alleging that everyone from the KGB to Oliver North was behind his incarceration. While in prison, he shared a cell with disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, who later wrote of LaRouche that “To say that Lyndon was slightly paranoid would be like saying the Titanic had a bit of a leak.” (Bakker was, however, impressed by his cellmate’s knowledge of the Bible).

That's right. LaRouche shared a jail cell with Jim Bakker. We'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

In his nineties at this point, his writings became ever more untethered. Embracing the digital age despite his senescence, LaRouche began conducting a number of fireside chats via YouTube, from which he would dispense wisdom such as the following:

We are about to do a job on the study of China, with the idea of the development of the back of the Moon. What is the secret behind the back of the Moon? Now, the back of the Moon is not just some fantasy. The back of the Moon is a very specific kind of physical principle. That principle, when properly understood, will change the history of mankind.

A few years ago, some defectors from the cult released a series of internal minutes, which were full of bizarre challenges LaRouche issued to his followers, such as, “Prove to me that Ireland’s going to continue to exist — {then} we’ll discuss Ireland, if you can give a plausible case for its existence!”

His group, meanwhile, continued its bizarrely confrontational antics which had marked it since the 1970s, with one particularly memorable example taking place at a New York Barnes & Noble a few years ago, when a few LaRouchies confronted chess champion Garry Kasparov as a NATO pawn, and assailed him with “Sieg Heils” and “Heil Hitlers” before a crowd of bewildered Manhattanites.

The inevitable conclusion ...

As the last few years have reminded us forcefully, the pathologies of American society and politics will continue to throw up cranks like LaRouche, even if he reached heights few others could attain. Looking at the America of 2019, it seems LaRouche may have been closer to the mainsprings of American politics than we would like to imagine.

True story: "How Facebook is melting the minds of our elders."

What once resembled an online high school reunion now feels now like the 5 p.m. bitch session at the Peoria Applebee’s.

Boy, does this piece hit the nail on the head. As an elder/uncle/old white male who has retained most of his marbles, I see this all the time from old friends and former (even current) customers. Now they're foaming at the mouth.

Me? I reserve that sort of thing for Dear Leader.

Twilight of the Racist Uncles, by Ed Burmila (The Baffler)

How Facebook is melting the minds of our elders

THERE IS A FAMILY FRIEND, a man I’ve known for decades. A highly educated man with total financial security in his recent retirement. A man who always had a good story to tell or an interesting side of a conversation to hold up. Then, a few years ago, he got on Facebook. Reading his timeline became an exercise in watching a man’s descent into madness. Over the summer I was surprised to learn that he had purchased three very expensive AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. When I asked why, he said, “For the race war that’s coming” in a tone that suggested no further explanation would be necessary.

If you are under the age of fifty, the odds are that you have at least one older person in your life who has gone down this road in the last few years. If you are white, I am certain of it. Lamenting our older relatives’ journey down the rabbit hole of right-wing paranoia and vituperation feels, at times, like my generation’s version of having the big talk about putting Nana in a nursing home. “Losing a parent” has dual meanings for us after 2016. We’re dealing with the loss of people who are very much alive—but who have become such chaotic stews of anger, persecution complexes, racism, and half-assed conspiracy theories that they can no longer hold a normal conversation.

Intergenerational tension is hardly new; it dates roughly back to mankind’s mastery of fire. In this case, though, more than a typical generation gap separates us, thanks to a nearly irresistible system designed to draw in old white people and get them hooked on an outrage fix they end up needing every bit as much as their Lipitor.

Though Fox News binging is typically blamed for this phenomenon, viewership data doesn’t support the argument. Fox News tops cable news ratings, but cable news is a small, declining market compared to, say, televised sports, Netflix streaming, or anodyne sitcoms. The number of people sitting saucer-eyed in front of the TV all day watching News Corp render the arts of satire and parody moot is significant in Nielsen terms but quite meager compared to the audience of Monday Night Football.

What has truly fueled the Boomers’ transition from “means well, but sometimes frustrating” to Trumpian insanity is Facebook. There the fix is constant. There all of their worst impulses are collectively reinforced, constantly rewarded, and ceaselessly amplified.

The last generation of Americans who will enjoy anything approaching financial security in old age could spend the Golden Years we’ll never have golfing, going on cruises, driving RVs, or watching The Price is Right. They could choose to be happy, having lived their entire lives in a system from which they extracted every benefit and which they subsequently dismantled at the altar of lower taxes.

Instead, they’re spending their days on a speedball of right-wing propaganda and a platform that gives them an audience of . . . well, everyone. And it turns out that 24-7 access to reinforcement and an unceasing stream of conspiratorial thinking is pushing some of them over the edge ...

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Let's help Demolition Commissar Duggins with his quotation marks. Or not.

My, my ... Team Gahan has been testy of late.

Governing from 30,000 feet on an anchor-festooned magic carpet adorned with electronic press releases and disembodied remote-control utterances, the functionaries have found it hard to adapt in situations where their intended dupes have the temerity to talk back.

Meanwhile, the minions have a 100% effectiveness rate dealing with doomed trees, which have no voice and succumb readily to the mayor's Husqvarna libido.

Former city council president Pat McLaughlin is the latest New Albany public official to embrace wild-eyed paranoia over the community's growing grassroots refusal to swallow Dear Leader's Kool-Aid as it pertains to the hostile public housing takeover.

McLaughlin was quoted in the Jeffersonville newspaper:

"Negative talk (is) circulating about the plan ... I definitely believe some entities have gotten involved and some residents have been misled."

Way to be specific, Pat. Speaking of being misled, perhaps the most entertaining outburst of befuddled sycophantic flatulence to date comes from interim NAHA demolition director David Duggins, who apparently fears the loss of Team Gahan's monopoly of the spigot.

The Board felt it to be even more important that they formally take a stance against the “false” rumors that have been spread in the community and here on our housing campuses.

We can't be sure what Duggins is trying to convey, but he keeps using quotation marks with the word "false" (see what we did there?) when quotation marks are NOT a highlighting technique.

They ARE intended to tag verbatim quotes (if so, then Duggins is quoting himself, which seems odd, if characteristically masturbatory), and they CAN be used to communicate sarcasm and irony -- but as with most participants in the ruling cabal, Duggins is utterly allergic to irony.

My vote goes to his intended use of "false" quotation marks as the persistent highlighting of a personal fetish, which just goes to prove that power trips are the ultimate kink -- talk inaccurately to me, baby.

It's fascinating to watch as local Democrats fall over themselves to maintain fealty to this favorite son's exaltation of the lowest common ethical denominator.

The Floyd County Democratic Party is terminally ill. That's why its members are praising Gahan's Goons and the ongoing attack on the city's vulnerable public housing residents.

Gahan and his posturing bootlickers cannot imagine public housing residents being capable of defending themselves and standing up for their own interests. It's a patronizing attitude that speaks volumes to the ethical rot within the Down Low Bunker, because the response thus far has been the condescension and suppression we'd expect from thugs.

But hey, as the mayor himself now insists, again and again: "That's why I'm here."

Warren's bored, hysterical and useless -- or, "Oops – NA BoW Messes Up."

Meretricious?

Why yes, Shane, but ... more like incredulity.

incredulity

[in-kri-doo-li-tee, -dyoo-]

noun

1. the quality or state of being incredulous; inability or unwillingness to believe.

The scandal-plagued Gahan administration has suffered another own goal -- another foot shooting, another faux pas. How often must the citizenry be embarrassed this way, Adam?

Democratic Party stalwart Warren Nash: Heck, this board hasn't ever approved social research study requests. Besides, we already have a captive sociologist.

On Tuesday morning, Board of Works gatekeeper Warren Nash told a representative of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) that the city of New Albany couldn't risk allowing academic research to be conducted.

How very local Democratic Party of us. Just a bit about the ISR ...

Our History

Established in 1949, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world’s largest and oldest academic survey research organizations, and a leader in the development and application of social science methods and education.

With researchers from a broad range of academic disciplines, ISR serves as a national laboratory for the social sciences, advancing public understanding of human behavior through empirical research of extraordinary depth and breadth.

The Bookseller has obtained the same Institute of Social Research background materials viewed by BOW. You'll want to click through and read the entire piece, but here's an introduction.

Oops – NA BoW Messes Up (NewAlbanist)

Karen Rice had no idea what she was walking into Tuesday because she represents a professional organization.

Ms. Rice hand-delivered a “To Whom It May Concern” letter from her organization, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. As written, it is a courtesy letter informing those concerned that some people in our geographical area will be surveyed and that ISR representatives may be in the area over the coming months conducting important survey research.

Then Ms. Rice met the Hon. Warren Nash, who currently serves as chairman of the New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety. He and his two colleagues said “no way.”

To be certain, U of M was not asking for permission as the type of work they do wouldn’t require the permission of a municipality. However, they do understand that in an age of scam artists, citizens might become concerned when they receive a letter and a subsequent visitor asking questions. Who would one call if they suspected something fishy? The police or the mayor’s office, of course.

To allay those concerns, the ISR politely informed a public meeting of city officials that their scientific work would be carried out here.

I’m grateful that our local newspaper managed to find the space to report on what should have been innocuous news. But Mr. Nash turned it into something else ...

Maybe Nash misunderstood, though the materials certainly aren't ambiguous, or in a blind panic, reasoned that social research is dangerous in a place where the mayor has seized public housing and Democrats make war on the poor.

He might have scanned the Gahan for Mayor for Life donor list and not seen the ISR's friendly tithe -- and of course, if they aren't "for" the mayor via their wallet, they're surely "against him.

The rampant City Hall paranoia is especially thick this summer, isn't it? It makes sense if you remember that Nash's role on BOW has less to do with public safety than representing Gahan's political fingers in every conceivable pie, because what good are geniuses of the flood plain if they're not erecting plaques to themselves?

Neither steroids nor proverbs for the Board of Zoning Appeals.

I've been wondering if the News and 'Bune's renewed emphasis on religious hokum, as with columnist Tom May recently increased appearances in print, reflects the otherwise silent publisher's Bible verse-infused Twitter feed.

Perhaps these twin irrelevancies are purely coincidental.

Meanwhile, the Courier-Journal's Grace Schneider somehow manages to avoid sports references as she provides dispassionate, factual coverage of the New Albany Board of Zoning Appeals, including new use for the Pepin House on Main Street and board member Bledsoe's fear of proliferating child care services, which are not unlike meth labs, at least when too many appear on one's own private one-way street, which utterly lacks the golf course necessary to provide proper instruction to repressed urban children.

Yes, and perennial ReDestruction lawyer Krafty John is preparing a lawsuit to defend clients ignorant of the PUD law, but this occurs at every meeting, doesn't it?

Zoning panel OKs B&B on Mansion Row in New Albany; Mansion Row site could host events

... Scott Wood, the plan commission director, told the zoning board that while Main Street has gradually shifted from single-family homes to apartments and a few bed and breakfasts, the upside to Smith’s plan is that a significant historical structure has been preserved ...

ON THE AVENUES: A multiplicity of toxicity.

ON THE AVENUES: A multiplicity of toxicity.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

It’s been almost exactly one year since the infamous Clere Channel Facebook Massacre, and it appears the statute of insinuations has at long last expired, because on August 21, in a comment posted at One Southern Indiana Newspaper’s web site, a public explanation for the X-ACTO brand stiletto attack finally was offered by State Representative Ed Clere’s wife, Amy Clere.

But first, here’s a brief reprise from my News & Tribune column last year:

In the aftermath of the New Albany city council's wondrous resolution condemning tolls on existing bridges, I decided to canvass local politicians to learn their views on tolling, and to publish these at the NA Confidential blog. Of prime importance are those candidates on the November ballot, whose position on tolls obviously is important for informed voter choice.

Consequently, I was delighted to see that Chuck Freiberger and Ron Grooms (candidates for State Senate, District 46) and Shane Gibson and Ed Clere (candidates for State Representative, District 72) all have campaign pages on Facebook.

Social media sites represent immediacy and two-way communications, something especially valued when it comes to politicians. Once you are a “friend,” or in certain cases “like” a Facebook page, you may post comments and interact. I followed social media protocol, and posted my question at three of the four candidate pages, omitting Gibson, who'd already taken an anti-toll position in his Tribune guest column.

"Can you explain your position on tolls for the Ohio River Bridges Project? Thanks."

Only now, twelve months later, can I offer eager readers the reasoning for the deletion of my question and the expunging of my “like.”

Here is some information for the record.

Ed has never written any comment on the News and Tribune website and certainly not on his own column. As someone who sees how very busy Ed is, I can attest that he has little time to even look at his column online, much less post comments. In addition, Ed is a former newsman who would only write on this or any other newspaper site using his own name.

If you look back at Ed's columns online, you will see that comments come from a wide array of individuals. As far as we can tell, most of these are people with whom neither Ed nor I are acquainted. Ed appreciates all constructive comments on this site whether or not they are complimentary. The same is true of Ed’s Facebook page.I am the administrator of the State Representative Ed Clere Facebook page. I set up the page so that people could get information, link to Ed's columns or write comments. In order to write comments, you must first 'like' the page. This language suggests that FB intends that this be a positive medium. Again, Ed welcomes constructive comments.

On only one occasion have I deleted any comment from Ed's FB page.

It occurred late one weeknight. One individual posted a comment intended to politically undermine Ed and to engage him in an argument that this individual and his cohorts were working hard to create. A couple of other people copied and pasted the same comment and posted it on Ed’s FB page. Over the course of several minutes, additional identical comments lined the “wall” of the page, some written by outside agitators who do not live in Ed’s district or even in Indiana. Before 24 hours was finished, I fully expected to see additional disingenuous comments lining the page.

Like Ed, I have precious little time to mind a FB page and cannot log on at the school where I teach. Therefore, I took immediate action. I deleted the copied and pasted comments and denied some individuals access to the page. I did the deleting, and Ed has never deleted anything on his FB page.Bullying Ed or any other public official is not a productive way to communicate. Ed appreciates constructive conversation and provides easy ways to reach him.

Amy Clere … August 21, 2011, 11:21 PM

Apparently, when you’re the hardest working, most selfless power couple in two centuries of local politics, there’s just no time for any activity requiring the subtlety and discernment necessary to sense the fundamental difference in asking a question and “politically undermin(ing)” someone whose job description as legislator includes tasks like answering questions.

The doo doo’s gotten deeper and deeper during the intervening year, as the layers of Rep. Clere’s expedient centrist deceptions have been peeled away to reveal the ideological right-wing extremist behind the mask, and the reason NAC stays in the crosshairs of the smitten is that we remain among the only coherent voices of opposition in town where business-as-usual is terrified to point openly to the emperor’s terminal nudity -- politically speaking, of course.

---

But, dearest reader, please know that cults of personality are no mystery to me, for they are just as useful to publicans as politicians. Consequently, the fact that Rep. Clere is electronically trailed by a loving band of adulatory groupies, long since identified as fluffers in the finest traditions of the urban dictionary, comes as no surprise, but we must strip away their superfluous praise and the choreographed, regimented hosannas borrowed from the playbook of Kim Il Sung to burrow into the very diseased heart of the matter – clerely, paranoia of a breathtaking and locally unprecedented intensity.

---

From the first moment last August when NAC and others began publicly questioning Rep. Clere about tolling and the attendant idiocies of the Bridges Project, his reaction has been consistently and aggressively Nixonian – the immediate circling of wagons, the vilification and censorship of honest questioners, the unfounded suspicion that a vast oppositionist conspiracy has been arrayed against him, and the sheer, pervasive, unnecessary “they’re all out to get me” bile of it all.

It is very important to note that I intentionally use “his reaction” to describe the phenomenon, rather than “her” or “their.” That’s because as an elected official, the buck in such matters stops with Ed Clere himself, and as such, onlookers are advised to look past the “good cop, bad cop” black comedy routine, wherein Mrs. Clere defines and redefines what her husband knows and does not know, about what is said or not said.

Rather, it’s time to understand that he damn well knows the score, because if he’s as bright as we’re told, then he’s too bright not to know it, and anything less than perpetual brilliance would be more than a disappointment: It would be utterly divorced from the marketing program for the ascendant cult of personality, as was the case with Richard Nixon, as well.

As deities go, you simply cannot be all-knowing without being all-knowing, or else you’re not all-knowing ... and the genie leaps back into the bottle.

---

Meanwhile, the questions that have been peremptorily shunned, sneeringly dismissed and excised outright remain just as valid as when they were first asked.

Haven’t we every bit as much a right as other voters and taxpayers to ask legitimate questions about the legislative agenda an elected official pursues?

Haven’t we the right to offer evidence in rebuttal, and to explain our position to others in the community?

How does the mere act of asking questions – of articulating our disagreement – qualify us as disrespectful, conniving enemies of the true gospel?

Yes, we find the legislative positions espoused by Rep. Clere repugnant and at odds with our core system of beliefs, and so we articulate and perpetuate lawful opposition to them. At root, that’s what the Clere Channel detests the most: That we refuse to be obedient, when disobedience represents not only our civil and governmental philosophies, but embrace personal, ethical imperative.

What infuriates Rep. Clere, and what has succeeded in exposing the nannying, hectoring bully lurking just beneath the “aw, shucks” public façade, is that we dare to openly occupy roles as oppositionists at a time when subservience is being mandated by the ruling junta as a means of squelching dissent.

Moreover, we insist on being true to our core system of beliefs at the expense of new age patriotism, Indiana-style, defined as saluting via auto-tumescence in the presence of icons like Mitch Daniels, Tony Bennett, Ron Grooms, Ed Clere, Kerry Stemler, One Southern Indiana and all the other architects of theocratic, reactionary, class-war-encouraging Hoosierstan, circa 2011.

During the run-up to last year’s election, the Clere Channel Network’s genetic paranoia was manifested in identifying any question as an overt threat, invariably linked with the incumbent’s opponent, Shane Gibson, as though it was unimaginable that principled dissent in matters of tolling, teaching and taxpaying might exist apart from partisan electoral prerequisites.

And yet it does, and speaking for myself, muzzles qualify as neither viable alternatives nor fashionable accessories.

I'll content myself with truth-telling.

---

One final point, to which I’ll return in greater depth another time: When it comes to purely partisan attitudinal “bullying,” perhaps it takes one to know one, seeing as Rep. Clere is not above practicing this delightful art himself whenever the paranoiac mood seizes him.

Evidence? Let’s just say that I know of which I speak, and so does he, and because such tactics have been directed against me, I suspect that our harried hero comprehends far more of what is uttered in cyberspace than either he, she or their Clere Channel operatives let on.

Then again, maybe it’s just the toxicity in me. You know how we dissidents can be, so is it time for Tiananmen Square NA?

Things to do today.

1. Get my two business entities the hell out of One Southern Indiana, as fast as humanly possible, and take as many other business entities with us as we can manage. Regime change now; divest and disinvest.

(Check - letter sent to Dalby … will he delete it? Or was that the other guy?)

2. Find that photo from back in 2007, when 1Si welcomed the worst president in US history to New Albany in what amounted to a Republican Party fundraiser.

3. Resist the temptation to say: We at NAC told you so, and have been telling you so for a long time.

(Might not get around to that one. Being right is too much fun)

4. Try to figure out why self-congratulatory politicians like Rep. Ed Clere incessantly remind us that their stance on taxes is crucial, yet when we ask about bridge tolls - a tax, pure and simple - they scurry like mice and hide. I call that disingenuous. 1Si calls it an endorsement.

(At least it puts paid to the 70K -- hopefully Michael Dalby doesn't need NA's blood money to make payroll)

5. Begin preparations for the coming Saturday’s annual NA Confidential parade party at the 1117 E Spring Street Neighborhood Association: Let's protest tolls, heckle 1Si, and drink beer at NAC's 6th annual Harvest Homecoming Parade Gala at 1117 ESSNA -- this Saturday, Oct. 2.

(There's going to be wicked theater, folks. I live for times like these)

6. Get to work on Fringe Fest publicity: Fringe Fest 2010 at Bank Street Brewhouse begins Oct. 7.

(Fringe Fest is a non-tolling venue)

7. Squeeze in another 125 biking kilometers this week to meet my September goal of 800.

(Depends on the weather and available time)

8. Write the coming week’s Tribune column. There is so little to say, although one possibility is trying to understand why my questions constitute strident partisanship, while 1Si’s endorsements do not. Maybe someone’s God was involved with that one.

(Look: I tossed him a softball, and in return, he clubbed me in the head with the bat. Why didn't he knock an easy pitch out of the park? But I suppose we got the answer to that one when the 1Si endorsements came out. The fix was in, all along, wasn't it?)

9. Start thinking about my next beer course, which begins on Wednesday, October 6: Continuing beer education: "Here's to Beer" non-credit IUS course returns in October.

(Learning is good)

10. Ask Mayor England where he stands on tolling.

(He really needs to make a definitive statement, don’t you think?)

Today's selected Kinks lyric: "Destroyer."

Met a girl called lola and I took her back to my place
Feelin guilty, feelin scared, hidden cameras everywhere
Stop! hold on. stay in control

Girl, I want you here with me
But Im really not as cool as Id like to be
cause theres a red, under my bed
And theres a little yellow man in my head
And theres a true blue inside of me
That keeps stoppin me, touchin ya, watchin ya, lovin ya

Paranoia, the destroyer.
Paranoia, the destroyer.

Well I fell asleep, then I woke feelin kinda queer
Lola looked at me and said, ooh you look so weird.
She said, man, theres really something wrong with you.
One day youre gonna self-destruct.
Youre up, youre down, I cant work you out
You get a good thing goin then you blow yourself out.

Silly boy ya self-destroyer. silly boy ya self-destroyer

Silly boy you got so much to live for
So much to aim for, so much to try for
You blowing it all with paranoia
Youre so insecure you self-destroyer

(and it goes like this, here it goes)
Paranoia, the destroyer
(here it goes again)
Paranoia, the destroyer

Dr. dr. help me please, I know youll understand
Theres a time device inside of me, Im a self-destructin man
Theres a red, under my bed
And theres a little green man in my head
And he said, youre not goin crazy, youre just a bit sad
cause theres a man in ya, knawin ya, tearin ya into two.

Silly boy ya self-destroyer.
Paranoia, the destroyer

Self-destroyer, wreck your health
Destroy friends, destroy yourself
The time device of self-destruction
Light the fuse and start eruption

(yea, it goes like this, here it goes)
Paranoia, the destroyer
(heres to paranoia)
Paranoia, the destroyer
(hey hey, here it goes)
Paranoia, the destroyer
(and it goes like this)

Paranoia, the destroyer
(and it goes like this.)

(Substitute female perspective for male, and see: New Albany activist's arrest, drug charges surprise many, by the C-J's Dick Kaukas)