Monbiot on neoliberalism: "The freedom we were promised turns out to be freedom for capital, gained at the expense of human liberty."

I'm happy that Monbiot made it through his illness. His frequent contributions toward the excoriation of neoliberalism are much appreciated as well as being valuable reminders that both Democrats and Republicans have worked together to foist this idiocy on America.

Neoliberalism promised freedom – instead it delivers stifling control, by George Monbiot (The Guardian)

Creeping privatisation is rolling back the state to create a new, absolutist bureaucracy that destroys efficiency

My life was saved last year by the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, through a skillful procedure to remove a cancer from my body. Now I will need another operation, to remove my jaw from the floor. I’ve just learned what was happening at the hospital while I was being treated. On the surface, it ran smoothly. Underneath, unknown to me, was fury and tumult. Many of the staff had objected to a decision by the National Health Service to privatise the hospital’s cancer scanning. They complained that the scanners the private company was offering were less sensitive than the hospital’s own machines. Privatisation, they said, would put patients at risk. In response, as the Guardian revealed last week, NHS England threatened to sue the hospital for libel if its staff continued to criticise the decision.

(snip)

The dominant system of political thought in this country, which produced both the creeping privatisation of public health services and this astonishing attempt to stifle free speech, promised to save us from dehumanising bureaucracy. By rolling back the state, neoliberalism was supposed to have allowed autonomy and creativity to flourish. Instead, it has delivered a semi-privatised authoritarianism more oppressive than the system it replaced.

Workers find themselves enmeshed in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, centrally controlled and micromanaged. Organisations that depend on a cooperative ethic – such as schools and hospitals – are stripped down, hectored and forced to conform to suffocating diktats. The introduction of private capital into public services – that would herald a glorious new age of choice and openness – is brutally enforced. The doctrine promises diversity and freedom but demands conformity and silence.

(snip)

 ... The bureaucratic quantification of public administration goes far beyond an attempt at discerning efficacy. It has become an end in itself.

Its perversities afflict all public services. Schools teach to the test, depriving children of a rounded and useful education. Hospitals manipulate waiting times, shuffling patients from one list to another. Police forces ignore some crimes, reclassify others, and persuade suspects to admit to extra offences to improve their statistics. Universities urge their researchers to write quick and superficial papers, instead of deep monographs, to maximise their scores under the research excellence framework.

As a result, public services become highly inefficient for an obvious reason: the destruction of staff morale. Skilled people, including surgeons whose training costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, resign or retire early because of the stress and misery the system causes. The leakage of talent is a far greater waste than any inefficiencies this quantomania claims to address.

And we arrive at the overarching point.

The freedom we were promised turns out to be freedom for capital, gained at the expense of human liberty. The system neoliberalism has created is a bureaucracy that tends towards absolutism, produced in the public services by managers mimicking corporate executives, imposing inappropriate and self-defeating efficiency measures, and in the private sector by subjection to faceless technologies that can brook no argument or complaint.

---

Democratic mayoral candidate David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing, and NA Confidential advocates just such a deep civic cleansing. 

After eight years on the job, Mayor Jeff Gahan's list of stunning "achievements" is long, indeed: tax increases, budgetary hide 'n' seek, self-deification, daily hypocrisy, public housing takeover, non-transparency, pay-to-play for no-bid contracts, bullying city residents and bullying city employees. Eight years is enough. It's time to drain Gahan's swamp, flush his ruling clique and take this city back from Gahan's Indy-based special interest donors. 

NA Confidential supports David White for Mayor in the Democratic Party primary, with voting now through May 7. 

REWIND: A look back to 2015, when all I wanted to do was walk like a human being in the Harvest Homecoming parade.

A year later, and very little of what follows has changed. I'm told that some light "no blockage" concessions have been made to the Underground Station merchants, and also, there appear to be no plans for a renewal of Biers on Parade at the farmers market. 

Apart from these two caveats, I stand by words published on October 1, 2016.

---

A look back to 2015, when all I wanted to do was walk like a human being in the Harvest Homecoming parade.

Because after five decades, what's the use of perpetuating a bureaucracy unless it is utterly inflexible? The shopkeepers at Underground Station are learning this lesson in 2016 ...

Trumple-down carny economics: The needs of Fiesta Rides outweighs the needs of bricks and mortar indie businesses at Underground Station.

... just as I did last year, when all I wanted to do was walk in the parade.

Me? I just want to walk the parade route tomorrow ... (October 2, 2015)

Me?

I just want to walk the parade route tomorrow, because that’s what walkability is all about.

It's about walking.

As of Friday morning, walking the parade route is an option being denied me. I hope this changes.

Of course, it didn't change. Inflexibility, you know. Central casting expects this from 800-lb gorillas.

Parade? What parade? ... October 3, 2015

And if I'm to be arrested, I prefer it occur as an act of principled civil disobedience in support of a cause slightly more important than a parade. One picks certain battles, retains a share of dry powder, and goes to the mattresses only when necessary.

A final note was appended here.

ON THE AVENUES: There’s an indie twist to this curmudgeon’s annual Harvest Homecoming column ... October 8, 2015

This year, I couldn’t bend the parade committee to the notion of common sense, which to me implies an acceptance of walking as the simplest, most basic form of human transportation.

I hope the weather cooperates, both for the sake of the parade and the restaurant association's pop-up at the farmers market, and I continue to earnestly believe that the parade really can become interesting again, perhaps if tied more closely to what New Albany actually is in the real world, rather than an idealized vision of what it isn't.

Can someone pass this note to the HH bureaucracy?

A look back to 2015, when all I wanted to do was walk like a human being in the Harvest Homecoming parade.

Because after five decades, what's the use of perpetuating a bureaucracy unless it is utterly inflexible? The shopkeepers at Underground Station are learning this lesson in 2016 ...

Trumple-down carny economics: The needs of Fiesta Rides outweighs the needs of bricks and mortar indie businesses at Underground Station.

... just as I did last year, when all I wanted to do was walk in the parade.

Me? I just want to walk the parade route tomorrow ... (October 2, 2015)

Me?

I just want to walk the parade route tomorrow, because that’s what walkability is all about.

It's about walking.

As of Friday morning, walking the parade route is an option being denied me. I hope this changes.

Of course, it didn't change. Inflexibility, you know. Central casting expects this from 800-lb gorillas.

Parade? What parade? ... October 3, 2015

And if I'm to be arrested, I prefer it occur as an act of principled civil disobedience in support of a cause slightly more important than a parade. One picks certain battles, retains a share of dry powder, and goes to the mattresses only when necessary.

A final note was appended here.

ON THE AVENUES: There’s an indie twist to this curmudgeon’s annual Harvest Homecoming column ... October 8, 2015

This year, I couldn’t bend the parade committee to the notion of common sense, which to me implies an acceptance of walking as the simplest, most basic form of human transportation.

I hope the weather cooperates today, both for the sake of the parade and the restaurant association's pop-up at the farmers market, and I continue to earnestly believe that the parade really can become interesting again, perhaps if tied more closely to what New Albany actually is in the real world, rather than an idealized vision of what it isn't.

Can someone pass this note to the HH bureaucracy?

ASK THE BORED: One year ago, the New Albany Street Piano was utterly perplexing Team Gahan's artistic sensibility.

An omen is an event regarded as a portent of good or evil, and sometimes both.

This morning it dawned on me that I have failed to receive the weekly e-mail agenda of the Board of Public Works and Safety's Tuesday meeting.

No doubt this is a providential omen, freeing me from the crushing burden of observing the bureaucracy of local infrastructure, and suggesting that I make better different use of my time this morning.

Keep the questions coming. Meanwhile, let's take a fond look back to last year, and the Bored's bumbling performance in the legendary case of the New Albany Street Piano.

The following three posts include most of the other links to this most enduring and hilarious of stories.

As a refresher, here is Bluegill's summary.

First, there was a request to place a piano on a public sidewalk in New Albany; a fun, harmless, and completely normal happening around the world. Then there were months of city officials sidestepping and ignoring that request. Then there were additional weeks and multiple meetings of artificially constructed and wholly irrelevant hurdles put in place. Then there was media attention and, by New Albany standards, an expression of public support for the piano and exasperation with the City sizable enough to embarrass the officials involved. And then there was finally approval, with an almost equally embarrassing rearguard attempt to claim officials had supported it all along. I wish any of that was out of the ordinary but it's a near perfect example of what ordinary is here, even and especially when the stakes are much higher. Playing a new tune couldn't be any more welcome.

And the links ...

Bored of Works no more: Today at 4:00 p.m., the New Albany Street Piano becomes a reality.

Fundamentally delayed: The New Albany Street Piano "Grand Opening" is Saturday, September 5.

Celebrate the New Albany Street Piano, while remembering Team Gahan's dismal reaction to it.

Selling New Albany by the pound? Hey, I'm a bureaucrat, and "I'm only doing my job!"

Something to think about from Steve Turgoose, and as the 1960s rock group once advised, "we have all been here before."

From 2010: "Weights, measures, short pours, long odds and Little Big Pints."

NABC’s Pizzeria & Public House was twice visited last week by Floyd County’s recently installed local weights and measures inspector. His stated reason for knocking on our door was a complaint he had received to the effect that we were not offering full pours of beer.

Consequently, in order to comply with the letter of the law in a place that seldom enforces any of them, we shall continue pouring draft beer as we always have, while recalibrating the way we’ve spoken about our draft business for 18 complaint-free years, as we learn new ways to describe what we're pouring by speaking in vague shades of linguistic, liquid content.

Not only have I been there, but apparently it's where I reside; at least once a year, like clockwork, taking time away from managing a small business to grapple with soulless, turf-hugging bureaucrats. It's enough to make a guy into a Tea Partier, though so far I've been able to avoid the siren's call.

These ruminations are occasioned by the experience of the Bookseller, who lately has been offering books by the pound. What might a few stray ounces constitute between friends and customers? And is the "letter" of the law really applicable to what is, in reality, a marketing ploy?

Must be payback time. Our cute little gimmick of selling a few of our surplus books "by the pound" motivated a 2-man inspection team to come out and harass me for selling books at 25 cents an ounce. City's worried someone might get cheated out of a quarter. Once I realized it wasn't a prank, I got mad. And, as with every regulator this city has thrown at us, we passed. Ridiculous overreach of jurisdiction. And yes, I said do your job and gtfo.

What new line of defense will be contrived by the Bored of Works to contain the street piano contagion?

Here's the view from the Bored Room:

New Albany: Wonderfully and delightfully us ... so visit Free the New Albany Street Piano at Facebook and join the fun, because we're not laughing WITH them.

Anyone seen the mayor?

Life is like a street piano. What the Bored of Works gets out of it depends on how they "nay" it.

Previously at NAC:

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 95: It's the return of 18-wheeler pinup porn and utter Bored of Works indifference.

Seattle alleys, New Albany street pianos and the overdue purging of bureaucrats.

The same people guarding the public participation gates on behalf of those other people who blithely toss millions of dollars at lifeguards and Indy property developers are flustered by a street piano -- again.

What is this, anyway? "Mayor Jeff Gahan Presents Groundhog Day?"

New Albany continues to review street piano request, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

Months after initially bringing the request to the Board of Public Works and Safety, local resident Hannegan Roseberry was told Tuesday that she will likely need a Certificate of Appropriateness, or COA, from the New Albany Historic Preservation Commission to proceed with installing the street piano.

Roseberry is seeking approval to have the piano placed under the awning of Jimmy’s Music Center from Labor Day through the Harvest Homecoming celebration in early October as part of a public arts project ...

 ... However, Warren Nash, president of the board of works, said a COA will be needed because the installation would be located in an historic preservation commission.

There are several tables, signs and other items placed on sidewalks throughout downtown, Roseberry said. She questioned whether those businesses were also required to obtain a COA.

Nash said he was “not sure” if all had.

“It’s not easy to enforce that or police it either,” Nash said.

Nash & Co. have had more than a month to think about it -- and the very best they can do is fabricate hooey about a Certificate of Appropriateness from the New Albany Historic Preservation Commission.

Because ...

Roseberry said later Tuesday that after speaking with a representative of the preservation commission, she was informed the body had never required a COA for an art installation.

Is there anyone on Planet Earth surprised by the preservation commission's befuddlement?

Is there anyone surprised by the Bored of Works all-purpose bewilderment?

Does the piano itself have poisonous tentacles?

Are the boarders themselves tone deaf?

Must public art in New Albany ALWAYS begin AND end with dogs playing poker?

Does the down-low Gahan team even begin to grasp how petty and vindictive it is beginning (?) to look?

David Karem tells big greasy whoppers about the Big Four Bridge.

David Karem must think we aren't very bright.

Pedestrian bridge will close rather than salt or shovel snow and ice, by Gordon Boyd (WAVE-3)

"This is a bridge that is not part of the Kentucky highway transportation system," Karem said. "It's an amenity now. So when it comes to maintenance and repairs, we're on our own."

JeffG reminds us of the arrangement v.v. the Ohio River Bridges Project.

Bamboozled again. This bridge is primary transportation infrastructure, not an amenity. Can you imagine them saying they wouldn't clean the Kennedy Bridge? Remember when removing non-automobile options from the new bridge was justified by opening this one for that traffic?

You can feel the gears grinding in their heads: "How can it be 'primary' if it doesn't involve a car?"

Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, beginning on November 25.

Not only that, but I even washed my hands before pressing "send."

For the first time ever, the Floyd County Health Department has required Trash Force to obtain a letter of permission from NABC to store its apple cider in the walk-in for use during Harvest Homecoming.

I was happy to promptly and courteously oblige these tireless and law abiding civil servants.

John Rosenbarger: Yes, it's a design flaw, and yes, we know who designed it. Why can't we do anything about that?

Today's drive to Indianapolis shouldn't be much different than a daily jaunt down Spring Street, so let's pop the tabs on a six-pack of Rosenbarger Light.

Main Street Deforestation Project: If John Rosenbarger's lips are moving, chances are he's lying about traffic diversion. Here's why.

In other words, Main Street should be the officially designated through route bisecting downtown from east to west. It should be signposted as the One True Through Route. In particular, through trucks should be compelled to use it.

Of course, it's a design flaw. Guess who designed it?

Jeff Speck on John Rosenbarger's 12-ft wide Spring Street traffic lanes: “A 12-foot lane is a 70 mph lane."

England and Rosenbarger claimed victory, by changing absolutely nothing. They built two unbuffered bike lanes next to 70 mph traffic lanes. They did nothing else, and they want you to believe that what they did was heroic and innovative, primarily so one of them can run for office again while the other keeps his job -- again.

Until the reign of error is over, citizens are treated to recurring rounds of double dealing.

ON THE AVENUES: Bridge envy in a time of 18-wheelers.

Trust me on this one: When I’m elected mayor, Rosenbarger will become the highest paid cigarette butt remover this city has ever seen, leaving him free to mutter like a plucked peacock about the eternal stupidity of his political bosses, and the boundless depravity of the general public, but deprived of his ability to punish us any further with Gail Wynand-style “improvements” to the street grid.

Even his greatest achievements must eventually give way to the cold, hard logic of t he intersection.

Rosenbarger giveth and He taketh away; thus shall autos be glorified at the Beechwood intersection with Charlestown Road.

Recalling that John Rosenbarger regularly has hailed this situation as proof of his urban design prowess, read on as Chris Morris gives us the LOL punch line.

The city did not have to buy right-of-way to expand the intersection. Rosenbarger said the bike lanes through the intersection will be absorbed for the road expansion.

But as the photos show, there are no bike lanes through the intersection.

We'd need a matchbook cover to list the achievements.

Answer the question, John Rosenbarger: Can Jeff Speck's ideas work here, or not?

Rosenbarger's appearance at the FAN Fair followed much the same script, including open public doubt as to whether what he is paid to do, can ever actually be done in this city.

It begs a rather obvious question:

Then why pay you at all?

Ever since he decided to use the FAN Fair as a forum to explore the dimensions of his own under-achievement, I've decided to call his bluff. I'm not going to swallow the duplicity any longer. You shouldn't, either.

Ranting on John Rosenbarger's fundamental contradictions in the aftermath of an atrocious day in the neighborhood.

Rosenbarger spend quite a lot of his time yesterday mumbling about the unacceptable costs of congestion, which pretty much proves something I've been saying for a while about inbred political cowardice, and although I'll have more to write about this with time, what I think about this, I phrased in the form of a tweet to Jeff Speck yesterday afternoon:

@JeffSpeckAICP When your city planner outlines complete street options by parsing 50 shades of traffic congestion, you grasp political fear.

He retweeted it, and that makes me feel very good.

Then again, Speck's never seen anything like it, either. Verily, New Albany remains the place where brains go to atrophy. Here's the bonus: Jeff Speck in New Albany: “I’ve never seen anything like that in America."

Yo, Floyd County Health Department, your invoice is ready. Cash only, please. I'm not sure I trust your checks.

In some ways, it's too bad the health department opted out last night at the Carnegie Center. We'd taken the time to prepare an invoice for them (above).

It had been decreed yesterday afternoon that in order to ensure the department's absence from an event it shouldn't be monitoring in the first place (Carnegie is a 501c3, and the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission regulates alcoholic beverages -- not Doctah Tom), we'd have to certify beer, liquor and wine pourers as being volunteers. I invite readers to peruse the enabling ordinances for this ad hoc definition. It eluded me, but maybe you'll have more luck.

Thus relieved of the obligation to obtain a control mechanism that the department has no legal right to demand, I was able to devise one of my own making. After all, what does it matter? The penalty for not having a permit is 50% of the permit's cost, and the permit's cost is zilch (for beer-as-food vendors, as opposed to food-as-food vendors).

See you in the funny papers, Tommy Boy.

Let's see if a formal complaint will do the trick.

In the time elapsed (less than two hours) since my posting earlier this morning, here is what has happened:

• The Indiana Public Access counselor has answered my e-mail.
• I have filed a formal complaint against the Floyd County Health Department with Public Access, noting that the department has not provided a five year history of temporary permit citations, as I requested one month ago, and has not provided an explanation to me. 
• Given the hearing date tomorrow, I've asked for priority status.
• As of 9:10 a.m., the Public Access office is processing my complaint. 

To reiterate: All this has occurred in less than two hours, while in the 40 days since the first citation was written on June 14, the health department has been unable to issue me a formal notification of the hearing date (as stipulated by its own enabling ordinance), or to honor an Indiana Public Access request.

At this point, I'm not much interested in what Dr. Tom's political bosses in county government think about this. I'm curious whether they think at all.

Update: as of 11:00 a.m., Dr. Harris has been served his papers by the state.

Where bureaucrats are bureaucrats ... and yeast are scared.

When I heard the news that brewers yeast had been chosen by the state of Oregon as its official state microbe, my initial impulse was to cheer – but not too loudly, lest the Floyd County Health Department hear all the shouting and conclude it must henceforth regard all microbes as human pathogens – because of course all human pathogens are microbes — and accordingly, brewers yeast must be outlawed in Floyd County … or barring the ban, subject at the very least to a special handling fee each time it is pitched in the brewhouse.

Not that any of the department's reasoning exists in tangible statute.

Where do I pay?

Meanwhile ...

Oregon Designates Official State Microbe (Lowering the Bar)

... Oregon's official microbe is now Saccharomyces cerevisia, also known as "brewer's yeast." As one witness at the committee hearing put it, "[t]his great little microbe is probably responsible for the civilization of mankind," given that there is some evidence that grain was first domesticated (and fermented with yeast) so humans could get drunk, not so they could feed themselves.

Concert tonight, but the PourGate saga continues as we prepare to vend Progressive Pints under protest.

Tonight will be the fourth installment of the city's summer concert series at Bicentennial Park in downtown New Albany.

The band is Quiet Hollers, and the format is precisely as before: 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. For the third consecutive Friday, NABC and its sub-caterers will be serving adult libations under explicit protest, pending an appeal of the Floyd County Health Department's decision to enhance its revenue by harassing drinks dispensers who already possess all necessary temporary permits from the Indiana Alcohol & Tobacco Commission.

The most recent development came yesterday, with a prompt e-mail reply to me from the state's Public Access Counselor. So far, the health department is complying with the requisite deadlines for disclosure, according to the process for providing the information I've requested (a five-year history of temporary food service permit citations).

Earlier in the week ...

On Monday morning, I provided readers with a complete update from the front: Updating the Floyd County Health Department's "Beer Pour War" of 2013.

Not unsurprisingly, it turns out that searching the Floyd County Health Department's web site for the word "beer" yields zero results: Isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?

Ground Control "reached out" to Doctor Tom: "In an effort to facilitate seemingly scant communication," my e-mail to Dr. Harris.

He didn't reply, but a subordinate did, informing me that NABC's request would serve as a brilliant example of county government's habitual in-breeding: Health Department refers public access request to same attorney who advises commissioners -- making a full circle.

Having received valuable advice from an unlikely source, it was time to notify the state's ombudsman -- just to preclude stonewalling: My note to the Indiana Public Access Counselor, informing the office of my request of the Floyd County Health Department.

That's where we stand as another week concludes, and I'll venture only one further observation: Public opinion overwhelmingly is registering disdain for the health department's usurpation in this instance.

Strangers have been stopping me on the street to chat about the situation, and in spite of the impetus for this non-food based harassment landing squarely on one side of the county's political aisle, what I'm hearing is firmly bi-partisan annoyance with the department's excesses ... at all levels.

Significantly, public opinion mirrors my own, in the sense of support for the health department's mandated surveillance of food and food preparation, but exasperation as to its frequent over-reaching and meddling in areas outside its statutory authority.

That's what this is about. The state ATC regulates drinks; health departments regulate food. It's as simple as that. No other health department in the state is laying claim to what Dr. Harris sees as is his department's sudden obligation to control temporary draft beer pours. It seems that the opinion of his fellow bureaucrats is against the FCHD, too. Shouldn't that tell you something?

Updating the Floyd County Health Department's "Beer Pour War" of 2013.

As for frequently asked questions, no, I've received no official communication from the health junta as to the hearing date of our appeal, or even if I'll be allowed to attend it. It has been suggested to me by a knowledgeable party that in such appeal cases, a health department board committee screens complaints privately before adding them to the docket. We'll have to wait and see.

As for me, I've plenty of work to do this week as pertaining to running the day-to-day business. Surely bureaucracies routinely count on the workload of small business people to discourage them from participating in the process of disputing bureaucratic directives, and while I'm unwavering in the sense of exercising my right to question a bureaucratic dictate I view as unjustified and without precedent,  I cannot allow the health department's calculated new policy of beer server harassment to detract from my fundamental obligation, as a beer business, to pour more (and better) beer.

It may seem that business in a general sense returns to usual, and it may appear that nothing's happening, but trust me: I won't let go, even if it takes a very long time, and ends by being decided at the state level.

Valuable principles must be defended from vandals, bureaucrats and second-raters, don't you think?

Here's a recap.

---

The summary of events as of Friday morning, June 21: Jeeebus, what a week. Here's a review.

... Let's slow down this game for just a moment. In the short term, we will comply with the health department's demands for tribute, however specious, and pay $20 each time we pour pre-packaged alcoholic beverages into plastic cups. We will do so under specific written protest, each and every time. In these instances, we will comply in such a manner as to fulfill ATC regulations, which we regard as pre-eminent, and that we always seek to implement.

One way to verify the health department's claims is to look at the record, and so I broached the topic of Indiana Public Access: Roger has issued a Indiana Public Access request to the Floyd County Health Department.

... the Health Department's food/beer temporary permit citation history needs to be examined for rampant doublespeak, and so yesterday I hand delivered the following letter to the Health Department. Notice how I identified the actual statute, rather than refer to it in the abstract sense preferred by Dr. Harris. That's because it's our information, isn't it?

It never rained downtown last Friday during the Ballroom Blitz show, but the anticipated Tom-foolery unfolded exactly as predicted: Bureaucrats, potato chips and the need for a city health department.

Public health was heroically protected when we were told to remove a bag of potato chips from the railing where the beers are poured. Thus, the only item approximating food could not be present where a food permit (now, newly, for the first time in the history of Floyd County habitation) is required to operate. This is how Dr. Tom Harris sublimates ambulance envy.

Bureaucrats, potato chips and the need for a city health department.

Last evening, with food being served throughout Floyd County, we were inspected prior to the musical performance. Public health was heroically protected when we were told to remove a bag of potato chips from the railing where the beers are poured. Thus, the only item approximating food could not be present where a food permit (now, newly, for the first time in the history of Floyd County habitation) is required to operate.

This is how Dr. Tom Harris sublimates ambulance envy.

There is no more statutory support in Indiana for temporary food service permits being demanded of beer pourers than there is for psychiatric exams mandated of whimsical, autonomous bureaucrats. But those shoes ... they sometimes fit, and in a pinch, are capable of housing potato chip bags.

For the rest of the story: Jeeebus, what a week. Here's a review.

Kevin Gibson has a solid take on the imbroglio here: NABC vs. Floyd County Health Department.

Thanks to K for the photo.

Jeeebus, what a week. Here's a review.

It's dress down day at the health department,
and Dr. Harris is dining at Chick fil-A.

(Sat., June 22 update: Kevin Gibson has a solid take on the imbroglio here: NABC vs. Floyd County Health Department)

---

Let's review the past week, beginning with tonight, when there'll be a concert at Bicentennial Park featuring local favorites Ballroom Blitz.

Because these days New Albany periodically functions almost as an urban area should, it is achieving a modicum of pleasurable results.

WAVE-3: 'New' New Albany attracting visitors and dollars.

People like it, and this is an utterly alarming development for Floyd County's perpetually reactionary and non-creative political ruling class. About the best idea these second-raters can come up with is to harass those who actually are "doing" something, by means of petty bureaucratic racketeering.

Another day, another Floyd County Health Department power grab.

The beer and wine sellers are being told they are entitled -- privileged, even -- to be regulated and cited according to statutes as yet unrevealed, ones apparently unknown outside Floyd County, while being held weirdly responsible for certain known food handling regulations (for pre-packaged liquids) that specifically exempt us from learning procedures we’ll subsequently be cited for not knowing, while we have one simple question: Exactly how is it that a local health department trumps our own beer and wine business’s regulatory authority, the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission?

Food handling, panhandling and regulatory free-basing.

But amid the tortuously Orwellian world of Dr. Tom Harris's health department, it's just another $20 slapped down to fund programs his county political bosses won’t. Others in New Albany might be interested in the implications, assuming they're finished with the party intended to congratulate themselves for … for … er, I guess for holding congratulatory parties.

Health Department's revenue enhancement + Develop New Albany's event calendar = ?

Whilst swatting at the torpid newfound regulatory mosquitoes, NABC prepared to contest the citation issued last Friday.

Preview: NABC's appeal to the Floyd County Health Department.

The full appeal then was published, as full transparency always matters, both to NABC and NAC.

ON THE AVENUES: The long train of usurpations adds a caboose.

The News and Tribune picked up the story, offering Dr. Harris the opportunity to inform a breathless world that NABC’s appeal would be overturned, before ever being heard, thus rendering the concept of “due process” into the sort of thin, worm-ridden gruel last seen being eaten by peasants in a Dostoevsky novel.

On the song and dance routine of Dr. Tom Harris.

Perhaps the leftovers can be fed to the inmates at the county jail?

It is now 8:00 a.m. on Friday, and there's a show to cater tonight. Deadlines approach. As NABC awaits an appeal, a procedure already publicly compromised by the health department's chieftain's detached smugness, we have an obligation to proceed judiciously. Let's slow down this game for just a moment.

In the short term, we will comply with the health department's demands for tribute, however specious, and pay $20 each time we pour pre-packaged alcoholic beverages into plastic cups. We will do so under specific written protest, each and every time. In these instances, we will comply in such a manner as to fulfill ATC regulations, which we regard as pre-eminent, and that we always seek to implement.

In short, the master event caterer (NABC) to whom the ATC permit is issued will indeed possess a temporary food service permit.

County government can rest at ease, safe in the knowledge that further taxation of recalcitrant tea-baggers in the Woods of Lafayette need not be considered, after all.

Kudos to those who have been reading the past week's dispatches here at NAC. The hit counter has been spinning furiously. You are urged to speak with or write your local elected representatives with input on these and other matters. As for this particular issue, the short-term has concluded. Mid- and long-term strategies begin today. Thank you.

Preview: NABC's appeal to the Floyd County Health Department.

We are required to transmit such an appeal via certified mail or hand delivery. Oddly, carrier pigeon is excluded as an option. I'll be submitting it after lunch today. Following is the beginning of the appeal. The last six points of contention are omitted; I want to be as transparent as possible with this case, but obviously, I'm no lawyer. Know merely that a game strategy is evolving, and it might take a while to implement. In the meantime, I'm a veritable Abe Lincoln: Malice toward none, charity for all, and quite happy to go about my ATC-regulated drinks business absent the entirely correctable missteps of last week.

Like I've always said, "Olive branches -- not Olive Gardens."

June 19, 2013

The New Albanian Bank Street Brewhouse wishes to notify the Floyd County Health Department of our request for an appeal, as outlined in Chapter 115, subsection 115.41 of the New Albany IN Code of Ordinances, as pertains to a citation issued on June 14, 2013, by Matt Myers, at the location of Bicentennial Park in downtown New Albany, for the offense of having failed to procure a temporary food service permit to pour draft beer.

As operators, we are “aggrieved” by this order, believing it to be misplaced for the following reasons:

1. We can find no coherent precedent, either in the Health Department’s own 22-year history, or in the entirety of the State of Indiana, for abruptly grafting the theory of a temporary food service permit to the benign reality of pouring beer from a keg into a disposable plastic cup by a business already fully licensed by the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission of the State of Indiana (ATC) to do precisely that.

No Tricentennial for DNA in wartime, unfortunately.

Okay. So much for that idea.

Develop New Albany’s off the hook. I thought things were arranged so that there could be beer vending at the Exclusively New Albany event on Thursday, but sometimes the best laid plans go the way of 108K consulting gigs at the NSP. Our "in" didn't materialize, and so it goes.

Besides that, as of Friday, there are bigger bureaucratic fish to fry, and so I welcome DNA to join New Albany’s beer community in condemning the county health department for its out-of-the-blue decision to require temporary food permits of ATC-licensed entities to pour beer from a keg into a plastic cup.

Speaking of which, did you know that a combined city-county health department dates only from 1991?

The department’s shaky justification for this new fee imposition probably dates from ambiguous language in original enabling legislation from Year Three of George HW Bush’s presidency.

Meaning that it has taken the local health department 22 long years to find the right words to implement revenue enhancement harassment.

Those food-borne pathogens that don’t even exist in draft beer?

They really must be shaking in their boots.

Food handling, panhandling and regulatory free-basing.

If beer is exempt in terms of food handling guidelines, then how can beer suddenly become non-exempt when poured from a keg into a plastic cup?

Answer: When it's time for revenue enhancement and protection racket expansion, as described here: Another day, another Floyd County Health Department power grab.

As written yesterday, I call "bullshit."

Time to let the lawyers have their fun, and begin taping together $30 worth of pennies, just in case.

Indiana Food Handler Certification 410 IAC 7 -22

Exempt Food Items (include) "Any non-potentially hazardous beverages (i.e., “slushies”, wine, beer, soft drinks)"