Do Black Lives Matter? Team Gahan won't answer, but thankfully others aren't afraid to lead.

Say Their Names: Chalk the Sidewalks is coming to New Albany on June 13.

SoIN is taking a stand by saying the names of those violently killed by systemic oppression and racism. We will be meeting in the downtown areas of both New Albany and Jeffersonville to write the names of those killed as a reminder that we must not be silent and we must say their names. If you are unable to join us for the group event, please participate at your own home as you can. Chalk your sidewalks or driveways with their names.

We will not and must not be silent any longer.

For the New Albany location, we will meet at the corner of Spring and Pearl near the Bicentennial Park.

For the Jeffersonville location, we will meet at the base of the Big Four Bridge.

Good. It's about time for an awakening.

I think it's impressive and commendable that four of the five members of New Albany's Human Rights Commission (HRC)* are displaying admirable social conscience during these potentially transformational times.

Calle Janson (an organizer of Say Their Names), Paul Kiger, Jennifer Ortiz and Ken Brooks all can be viewed on their Facebook pages referencing Black Lives Matter and advocating ... well, for HUMAN RIGHTS. After all, it's why the commission is there, right?

The fifth member of the HRC is Warren Nash, whose public utterances recently have been confined to the usual semi-comprehensible partisan political sycophancy -- for the Democratic Party as well as the municipal administration for which he specializes in backroom fixes, envelope shuttling and the occasion snarl directed against modernity.

Sadly, it's easy to imagine Nash bringing the sidewalk chalking to the Board of Works and Safety for approval and deep editing.

Louisville's ever-shrinking Greg Fischer needs to resign. Nash desperately needs to retire. He is Miss Trixie to Jeff Gahan's Gus Levy (look it up).

The party itself has had almost nothing to say about events in America for the past two weeks. Neither has Gahan, nor any of the mayor's team. I cannot locate an example of an elected Democratic Party office holder in New Albany making a public utterance about social justice, BLM or any other topic that has dominated the national discourse recently.

They just dig deeper and deeper into the Down Low Bunker.

You'd think maybe councilman Greg Phipps would show signs of a pulse, given that he fancies himself the enabler of the HRC -- which has been crippled and hamstrung since its inception (and two re-inceptions) by the very same Democratic Party that enjoys taking credit for the commission just as long as it isn't visible.

To repeat: The Democratic Party controls New Albany. It is a profoundly propaganda-tainted conservative institution -- as I refer to it without a shred of satiric exaggeration as the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party -- albeit with a good number of progressive-leaning individuals residing inside the party's ideological tent, who for whatever reason constantly defer to the Gahan/Nash elder regressive faction that amply keeps the pay-to-play wheels greased, but possess all the social conscience of a lump of clay.

Consequently, Black Lives Matter probably will come to Birdseye before it arrives at Hauss Square. Local Democrats are absolutely terrified of BLM -- not because of what IT is, but who THEY are ... and aren't.

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The HRC's last available minutes are dated July 16, 2019

Reader differs with Team Gahan: "They're disrespectful of other peoples' time, dismissive, arrogant and secretive."

Posted at Facebook by my friend Diane. Short, sweet ... deadly accurate. Consider looking behind the bright, shiny facades to what's really happening.

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"Here's a fun fact: For a couple of years I worked with the Gahan administration as a freelancer handling the social media for the City. I got to see how they made the sausage, and my opinions of Gahan's administration are based upon those years of watching how they do things and how they treat people - even people who are trying to work with them to make them look good. Due solely to how difficult they made it to work with them, I fired them as a client. 

"I have nothing against Jeff or his family, personally. I graduated with Susie - and she's a sweetheart. I also did positive stories on their kids when I handled the social media for NAFCS. I just don't like how Gahan and his team deal with people. They're disrespectful of other peoples' time, dismissive, arrogant and secretive.

"I also don't like how they deal with taxpayer money, now that I live in town and have become a stakeholder. I have a background in construction so I know all about TIF funds. We're being railroaded there, but of course, our "budget is balanced". Uh-huh. 

"I've also worked with other city administrations as a freelancer and it's easy to compare how others do it with TRANSPARENCY, versus how the Gahan team goes about things. We don't have the benefit of TRANSPARENCY, FAIRNESS, or RESPECT in our current administration, and I think we deserve better. 

"So - I'm saying so in any forum that will have me, up to and including speaking with neighbors, friends, and this FB group. My only agenda is to have a Mayor we can trust with our money, who doesn't rely on no-bid contracts with out-of-town contractors who work with the city, who doesn't hire unqualified relatives for city positions, who doesn't fire city employees who have his opponents signs in their yards, who doesn't spend taxpayer money plastering his mug on grocery cart signs, and who can hold his own when confronted with tough questions from citizens, rather than instruct them to send them to him ‘in an email’. I'm ready for a change." 

-- D. Williamson

The Gahan Maw, and other "institutional inbreeding" deformities.

This notion of "academic inbreeding" makes me think about the current state of New Albany city governance.

Academic inbreeding is a socially charged phrase, with its etymological origins in the biological sciences. It may be argued that the naming of the phenomenon is unfortunate; nonetheless it is how this institutional practice is recognised around the globe, although in some places it is also known as institutional inbreeding. It is perceived as damaging to academia.

Yet its definition has been often misunderstood. Academic inbreeding can be seen as having narrower or broader definitions, but all are grounded in the principle of institutional immobility.

Seeing as there's nothing at all academic about Team Gahan, our ruling clique more aptly reflects a state of "institutional inbreeding."

Taking as an example the years-long struggle to revert our street grid, Jeff Speck was commissioned to do a study, little of which was grasped by the closed circle of Jeff Gahan's family members, groveling sycophants and Democratic Party advisers. The Speck Study was promptly neutralized via the business-as-usual sausage grinder, then presented to HWC Engineering, which held a mirror to the mess and rendered its own street grid plan in Wile E. Gahan's image.

Hence Diamond Jim Rice's historic utterance: "We kept the trucks moving."

If the same half-dozen self-interested bootlickers are the source of project input every single time, there simply cannot be fresh thinking or new ideas, only the same garish suburban outlet mall tripe.

There CAN be money, and plenty of it; obviously, cash is the pro forma of the quid pro quo, but there's nothing creative about that, is there?

#FireGahan2019

The Habsburg Jaw and Other Royal Inbreeding Deformities, by G.H. Price (Owlcation)

The Longterm Effects of Incest and Inbreeding

In some places in the United States, folks make jokes about inbreeding. My own mother was from West Virginia, and some of her friends would often make “pumpkin head” jokes about the inbred folks where she came from. (It is true that her parents, my grandparents, were second cousins; however, both my mother and her brother were adopted.)

For a long time, the dangers of inbreeding or having children with a close relative weren't completely understood. The biggest problem with inbreeding is that when close relatives choose to mate, it results in homozygosity, which can increase their offspring's chances of being affected by deleterious recessive traits for all kinds of physical and cognitive disabilities, including ailments like hemophilia and cystic fibrosis as well as deformities like the Habsburg jaw. These incestual pairings also run a greater risk of...

Reduced fertility (both for the related parents and in their offspring)
Lower birth rate and higher infant mortality
Congenital birth defects (including facial asymmetry)
Certain kinds of cancer
Suppressed immune systems
Smaller adult size (pedigree collapse)
These days, we have genetic testing and other valuable research tools to help us determine what may happen if we have kids with someone who is biologically related to us. But up until just a few centuries ago, it was common practice for people to marry their cousins and even their brothers and sisters (and in many remote rural regions, the practice continues today).

Historically, family line relations were often formed in royal houses to secure political alliances, strengthen the lines of succession, and ensure the noble purity of the bloodline. This practice caused a host of ailments and deformities that can still plague descendants of these royal houses to this day ...

BREAKING: See the subtle and innovative design of Team Gahan's new Royal Guard uniforms.

Let's break it down.

Freedonia, Sylvania, New Gahania ... at times, it's hard to distinguish between them.

Read about Duck Soup here.

Read about the Knights of Malta here.

The Tree Board is not on-line -- does that surprise anyone? But the grand finale is here: "Find the Popes in the Pizza."