ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business (2016).

The notion to repeat these thoughts from the Pre-Trump Pleistocene (okay, 2016) came when yet another News and Tribune staffer recently departed for greener fields at Louisville Business First, the latter having become an admitted source of information for me during the course of writing web site posts for Food & Dining Magazine. 

Let's turn back the clock.

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June 23, 2016: ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business.

“I used to say I practiced clinical medicine, now I say I practice political medicine, because it’s the mother of all illnesses. And we have to fix this one if we’re going to fix the things that are literally killing us.”
-- Dr. Jill Stein

I’ll return to politics in a moment, because naturally business must come first. Note that my contempt for the breathless contents of business-oriented publications is boundless. It is eternal. It is the stuff of inebriated, chortling legend.

Talk numbers to me, baby.

Um, no. Rather not.

Business porn is where good writing goes to die, condemned to sadistic asphyxiation in the service of coded buzz-speak and greasy greenback envy of the sort that only a One Southern Indiana oligarchy fetishist truly can appreciate when curled up in pajamas by the stock market ticker app, with an ice-cold Bud Light Lime and a box of handy tissues – doused in aloe, of course.

However, every now and then a stray provocation slips through my cordon sanitaire, as here:

How to survive political hostility when trying to run a business, by Terry Brock, Contributing Writer, Louisville Business First

Whoa! Have you sensed the level of political rivalry in this year’s election?

This seems to be much more intense this year. Notice the attacks on Trump supporters and the attacks by Trump supporters on opposition attendees at Trump rallies.

Yes, the American political scene has been known to be particularly venomous throughout history ...

… Yet, this election seems even more vicious, at least by 20th and 21st century standards. I’m wondering how it affects relationship marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs like you and me.

Here are some ideas …

Venomous and vicious – which is to say, potentially important. This election may influence everyday business reality for generations to come. It may engender revolution, ignite reaction, or reinforce an uneasy status quo.

In short, the 2016 election truly matters for small business persons and entrepreneurs, and consequently, the consultant Brock’s bullet points counsel complete and utter detachment from the election (for their maddening details, kindly fluff Louisville Business First by visiting its web site).

• Political sharing idea #1 — Politics shouldn’t mix with business
• Political sharing idea #2 — You’ve got more important things to do — like focus on business!
• Political sharing idea #3 — If you must share politics, do it in the right place
• Political sharing idea #4 — You can lose customers
• Political sharing idea #5 — Avoid politics in public

And who’s this guy again?

Terry Brock gives real-world, practical tips on how to generate revenue and increase productivity.

Not that 1Si's self-interested cadres care one jot, but my practical advice differs markedly. I generally advise small business persons and entrepreneurs to make an earnest effort to understand politics and elections, particularly at the local level, where it impacts them the most, and to actively participate in these exercises.

Concurrently, is there any valid excuse for squandering potentially productive work time by reading business-oriented publications?

Business writing should not ever be mixed with actual business. Don’t these business people have more important things to do than read -- you know, like focusing on their businesses?

---

In mid-rant, I was reminded of a passage in Dylon Jones’ remarkable profile of “The Independent” (that’s me) in the June, 2016 edition of Louisville Magazine.

The profile  -- as of 2019 it isn't accessible on-line, but Dylon told me he'll fix that -- is required reading for the likes of Terry Brock, Wendy Dant Chesser and Adam Dickey – but I digress all too readily.

Jones writes:

I have a conversation with someone at the (Bank Street Brewhouse) who threatens to hunt me down if I identify them. I could, but won’t. I don’t believe in “off the record,” especially not retroactively. But I do believe in letting certain wounds – whatever they may be – heal beyond public gaze.

“Did you get the part about how Roger destroyed his business?” they said. “No one from city hall comes here.”

Then: “Don’t quote me.”

“Well, who could I talk to about that?” I asked.

“Anyone on the street,” they said.

As Elton John once observed, it’s a sad, sad situation – and it’s getting more and more absurd. After all, if it’s true that "city hall" stopped coming to Bank Street Brewhouse, then I managed to achieve a cherished goal of Americans from coast to coast, for it means I personally saw to it that GOVERNMENT GOT OUT OF OUR LIVES.

You’d think I’d be paid handsomely for this, not basely insulted. If only I could bottle this government-free formula, and hastily sell it to AB-InBev; that’d get my face on the cover of a business publication, for sure.

---

It’s an unspeakably dreary landscape. There’s the professional business consulting class, recommending that entrepreneurs accustomed to taking fabulous risks – who’d never have gone into small business in the first place without standing tall for something – adopt generic, beige Pablum as a staple of their professional diets.

Then there’s the shrill claim that political extremism destroyed my own business, and that’s odd, because when I behaved exactly the same way for more than 15 years while standing atop a soap box situated behind the bar at Rich O’s, my behavior was edifying, entertaining and educational; probably an alcoholic Commie, though few seemed to mind.

Brock would be so proud of me: I helped generate revenue and increased productivity. We have medals for that, right?

And plaques?

However, there is a difference in scope between eras, and it is genuinely instructive. During the period of my nightly barside preaching at the Public House, subject matter typically pertained to national and international affairs.

There were opinions aplenty, but they were safe, in the sense that it’s a breeze to pontificate when lubricated, and there is no way to directly influence the outcome.

Because denouncing the Iranians from a barstool is easy. Repeating these words on a downtown Tehran street corner to their faces – well, that’s hard. Distance and liquidity enhance vehemence and courage.

And yet, if my university political science professor was right, and politics is all about the allocation of power … and if Tip O’Neill was right, and all politics is local … then for a local business, the allocation of local power is a critically important local variable, isn’t it?

Local political power structures play a huge role in determining business conditions and influencing business decisions, every day, throughout the year – don’t they?

And these local political power brokers live right here among us, right?

Theoretically, their proximity is as sweaty and direct as democracy gets. The grassroots can be no closer to you than the councilman residing two doors down. If a two-way street would lift your business, and yet it still runs in only one direction, then political power is being arrayed against you.

How does one hope to rectify the imbalance and fix the street without becoming part of the solution?

But no one from city hall comes here …

Perhaps their absence is a reflection on the prejudices of city hall, not the business or the proprietor, and their negligence is an abuse of political power, not its proper exercise.

Perhaps my political involvement has been grassroots-up, in reply to their top-down, because contrary to American default assumptions, self-defense still can exist apart from firearms.

Perhaps we can cure the mother of all illnesses right here at home, where it’s as close as it will ever be, but administering the needed medicine requires involvement and engagement, not cowering from a distance, head stuck in a business publication, pants around ankles.

1Si espouses unity on behalf of The Man, but I prefer unity in defiance of the Man. As citizen Franklin said, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

He was a good businessman, that Benny.

---

The preceding prompted a follow-up the very next day.

---

June 24, 2016: Business publications, and why I should know better than to tangle with an Over 50 Marketing Thought Leader. 

Yesterday my weekly column made reference to an Insider Louisville piece by Terry Brock, hastily assuming he was a local writer, but this is mistaken. He actually lives in Florida, and appears to be quite renowned.

I appreciate that Brock took the time to post a comment about my column, and of course I'd love to have a beer with him if he comes through town while on tour.

Terry Brock has left a new comment on your post:

ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business.

Brilliant piece, Roger! I love every word of it. Yes, I believe we need a separation of business and politics and businesses should focus on their business.

You raise some excellent points about local issues. That is important. For many of us, "local" is Planet Earth. We focus on issues that affect many and are tied together based more on values and aspirations than a defined piece of dirt where we happen to live currently.

Hey, I would *LOVE* to talk with you more about this. Sounds like these types of discussions would be best over some of that good craft beer you have up there in New Albany! For doing such an outstanding job on this piece, I owe you a nice beer, or other beverage of your choice!

Thanx for writing this. Simply brilliant, Roger! Keep up the good work!

Terry Brock - TerryBrock.com

Here's my most renowned contribution to business marketing. It's rather politicized, though only because I fully intended it to be that way.

---

Terry Brock and I never got together, unfortunately. My former business finally disgorged me in February of 2018, and City Hall currently is engaged in a great struggle to renew its pay and privileges for another four years. When Dylon posts the profile text, I'll link readers to it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have several "business publications" to ignore ... and adult beverages to consume.

---

Recent columns:

September 5: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to traditional Danish lunch in Copenhagen, September 1989.

August 29: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to "Pagan Life," a weekly column devoted to heathens, infidels, idolaters, atheists, non-theists, irreligious people, agnostics, skeptics, heretics and apostates.

August 22: ON THE AVENUES: The 32 most influential books in my life.

August 15: ON THE AVENUES: Breakfast is better with those gorgeous little herrings.

ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business.

ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business -- and it's none of your business.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

---

“I used to say I practiced clinical medicine, now I say I practice political medicine, because it’s the mother of all illnesses. And we have to fix this one if we’re going to fix the things that are literally killing us.”
-- Dr. Jill Stein (Green Party presidential candidate)

I’ll return to politics in a moment, because naturally business must come first.

Note that my contempt for the breathless contents of business-oriented publications is boundless.

It is eternal.

It is the stuff of inebriated, chortling legend.

Talk numbers to me, baby.

Business porn is where good writing goes to die, condemned to sadistic asphyxiation in the service of coded buzz-speak and greasy greenback envy of the sort that only a One Southern Indiana oligarchy fetishist truly can appreciate when curled up in pajamas by the stock market ticker, with an ice-cold Bud Light Lime and a box of handy tissues – doused in aloe, of course.

However, every now and then a stray provocation slips through my cordon sanitaire, as here:

How to survive political hostility when trying to run a business, by Terry Brock, Contributing Writer, Louisville Business First

Whoa! Have you sensed the level of political rivalry in this year’s election?

This seems to be much more intense this year. Notice the attacks on Trump supporters and the attacks by Trump supporters on opposition attendees at Trump rallies.

Yes, the American political scene has been known to be particularly venomous throughout history ...

… Yet, this election seems even more vicious, at least by 20th and 21st century standards. I’m wondering how it affects relationship marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs like you and me.

Here are some ideas …

Venomous and vicious – which is to say, potentially important. This election may influence everyday business reality for generations to come. It may engender revolution, ignite reaction, or reinforce an uneasy status quo.

In short, the 2016 election truly matters for small business persons and entrepreneurs, and consequently, the consultant Brock’s bullet points counsel complete and utter detachment from the election (for their maddening details, kindly fluff Louisville Business First by visiting its web site).

• Political sharing idea #1 — Politics shouldn’t mix with business
• Political sharing idea #2 — You’ve got more important things to do — like focus on business!
• Political sharing idea #3 — If you must share politics, do it in the right place
• Political sharing idea #4 — You can lose customers
• Political sharing idea #5 — Avoid politics in public

And who’s this guy again?

Terry Brock gives real-world, practical tips on how to generate revenue and increase productivity.

Not that 1Si's self-interested cadres care one jot, but my practical advice differs markedly.

I generally advise small business persons and entrepreneurs to make an earnest effort to understand politics and elections, particularly at the local level, where it impacts them the most, and to actively participate in these exercises.

Concurrently, is there any valid excuse for squandering potentially productive work time by reading business-oriented publications?

Business writing should not ever be mixed with actual business. Don’t these business people have more important things to do than read -- you know, like focusing on their businesses?

---

In mid-rant, I was reminded of a passage in Dylon Jones’ remarkable profile of “The Independent” (that’s me) in the June edition of Louisville Magazine. The profile is required reading for the likes of Terry Brock, Irv Stumler, Wendy Dant Chesser and Adam Dickey – but I digress all too readily.

Jones writes:

I have a conversation with someone at the (Bank Street Brewhouse) who threatens to hunt me down if I identify them. I could, but won’t. I don’t believe in “off the record,” especially not retroactively. But I do believe in letting certain wounds – whatever they may be – heal beyond public gaze.

“Did you get the part about how Roger destroyed his business?” they said. “No one from city hall comes here.”

Then: “Don’t quote me.”

“Well, who could I talk to about that?” I asked.

“Anyone on the street,” they said.

As Elton John once observed, it’s a sad, sad situation – and it’s getting more and more absurd. After all, if it’s true that city hall stopped coming to Bank Street Brewhouse, then I managed to achieve a cherished goal of Americans from coast to coast, for it means I personally GOT GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES.

You’d think I’d be paid handsomely for this, not basely insulted. If only I could bottle this government-free formula, and hastily sell it to AB-InBev; that’d get my face on the cover of a business publication, for sure.

---

It’s an unspeakably dreary landscape.

There’s the professional business consulting class, recommending that entrepreneurs accustomed to taking fabulous risks – who’d never have gone into small business in the first place without standing tall for something – adopt generic, beige Pablum as a staple of their professional diets.

Then there’s the shrill claim that political extremism destroyed my own business, and that’s odd, because when I behaved exactly the same way for more than 15 years while standing atop a soap box situated behind the bar at Rich O’s, my behavior was edifying, entertaining and educational; probably an alcoholic Commie, though few seemed to mind.

Brock would be so proud of me: I helped generate revenue and increased productivity. We have medals for that, right?

And plaques?

However, there is a difference in scope between eras, and it is genuinely instructive. During the period of my nightly barside preaching at the Public House, subject matter typically pertained to national and international affairs.

There were opinions aplenty, but they were safe, in the sense that it’s a breeze to pontificate when lubricated, and there is no way to directly influence the outcome.

Because: Denouncing the Iranians from a barstool is easy. Repeating these words on a downtown Tehran street corner to their faces – well, that’s hard. Distance and liquidity enhance vehemence and courage.

And yet: If my university political science professor was right, and politics is all about the allocation of power … and if Tip O’Neill was right, and all politics is local … then for a local business, the allocation of local power is a critically important local variable, isn’t it?

Local political power structures play a huge role in determining business conditions and influencing business decisions, every day, throughout the year – don’t they?

And these local political power brokers live right here among us, right?

Theoretically, their proximity is as sweaty and direct as democracy gets. The grassroots can be no closer to you than the councilman residing two doors down. If a two-way street would lift your business, and yet it still runs in only one direction, then political power is being arrayed against you.

How does one hope to rectify the imbalance and fix the street without becoming part of the solution?

But no one from city hall comes here …

Perhaps their absence is a reflection on city hall, not the business or the proprietor, and their negligence an abuse of political power, not its proper exercise.

Perhaps my political involvement has been bottoms-up, in reply to their top-down, because contrary to American default assumptions, self-defense can exist apart from firearms.

Perhaps we can cure the mother of all illnesses right here at home, where it’s as close as it will ever be, but administering the needed medicine requires involvement and engagement, not cowering from a distance, head stuck in a business publication, pants around ankles.

1Si espouses unity on behalf of The Man, but I prefer unity in defiance of the Man. As citizen Franklin said, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

He was a good businessman, that Benny.

---

June 16: ON THE AVENUES: When the engineer uttered that scandalous word aloud, it was like Christmas in June.

June 9: ON THE AVENUES: High atop Summit Springs with friends (and relatives) in low places.

June 2: ON THE AVENUES: A few beers at Vladimir’s local in Ostrava in June, 1989.

May 26: ON THE AVENUES: On the crass exploitation and politicization of tragedy.

May 19: ON THE AVENUES: Requiem for the bored.

ON THE AVENUES REPRISE: Die hard the Hunter, or the political "impossibility" of rental property registration in New Albany (2015).

Earlier this morning: Pat Harrison's Enduring Gestapo Fetish in Six (6) Easy Pieces.

My column (below) was published on March 12, 2015, just shy of one year ago. It ties up a few loose ends with regard to Harrison's Slumlord Uprising of 2008, but far more than, with the issue about to come bubbling to the surface yet again, this  morning's posts reinforce the salient point of New Albany's record of rental property registration and code enforcement since 2007:

Nine years passed, NOTHING achieved.  

You're forgiven for questioning how New Albany's political caste, comprised primarily of politicians identifying themselves as Democrats, manages the feat of sleeping at night.

But you see, vampires -- they're both dead and undead, right?

Conscience doesn't factor into it ... does it?

---

ON THE AVENUES: Die Hard the Hunter, or the political "impossibility" of rental property registration in New Albany.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Rental Property Registration is an essential tool for creating a code enforcement system that effectively identifies problem properties and, through random inspections, deters landlords from engaging in deferred maintenance and lax property management. A strongly‐enforced rental registration program “lets the owner understand that he is known to the municipality and accountable for his actions with respect to the property.”
-- "An Analysis of Rental Property Registration in Austin"

The calendar reads 2015, and as we meander yet again down the weed-choked, trash-strewn garden path of pervasive legislative impotence in New Albany as it pertains to building codes -- an exercise sure to be made even more flaccid by the imperative to waffle and pander during an election cycle -- it’s fairly clear that this ongoing abdication of responsibility over a period of decades constitutes the single biggest failing of this city's purported "leadership" caste.

Today we turn back the clock to 2008, a full seven years ago, and a series of NAC posts referencing what surely was among the city’s most theatrical of rental property registration failure.

Read them and weep, because nothing has been achieved, and cannot be for so long as value extraction and decay management remain the dominant motifs of our ever-helpful duopoly of major political parties.

---

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2008
Boss Hogg and the meaning of life
Roger A. Baylor

While we may have been on opposite sides recently, at-large councilman John Gonder is intelligent, well intentioned and conscientious. Saturday morning, he’ll be convening a meeting. As explained at his blog:

The committee formed to address the issue of rental registration and code enforcement will hold its first meeting this Saturday morning, August 23, at 10:00 A.M. in the Elsa Strassweg Auditorium in the Library.

This meeting is expected to be brief. It is intended to simply outline where the committee is headed.

Those interested are welcome, and encouraged to attend.

Of course, Gonder played a prominent role in the (perhaps) concluded smoking ban saga, which turned on a “yea” swing vote by none other than Dan Coffey. The extent to which Gonder cultivated this amazing turnabout is unknown, although it’s fair to surmise that all the council’s quasi-progressives were forced to grudgingly raid their comic book collections to achieve the elimination of workplace smoking through Coffey’s surreal ballot.

The reason I muse aloud about these topics has much to do with my personal feelings about rental property registration, inspection, reform, and whatever other action is necessary to establish three simple facts.

Owning a rental property is a business.

Rental housing is a matter of public health.

Such a business is indeed the city’s business.

I made several predictions with respect to the smoking ordinance, and the majority proved correct. Last evening Coffey was overheard commenting that the council was about to establish a strong rental property registration package, and in honor of this, I’ll make another prognostication (and hope I’m wrong).

When push comes to shove, Coffey will unceremoniously kneecap any meaningful rental property reform, and while doing so, he’ll laugh at – not with – Gonder.

Like I said, I hope I’m mistaken. But color me skeptical. I see the miraculous smoking conversion as a one-off, the true price of which we’ll never know. Now we’re going to get the real Cappuccino, once again … and to the detriment of all.

---

MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2008
Steve Price on rental registration and code enforcement: "This is a bunch of (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted)."
Roger A. Baylor

Before we document the 3rd district uncouncilman’s revealingly ill-tempered sex-act-and-defecation outburst at the library on Saturday -- that's right, within whispering distance of the kiddie section -- let’s look back at a bit of pertinent information posted here last week.

Owning a rental property is more than an investment — it's a business. You have to be willing and able to commit the time and resources necessary to run your business successfully.
--GMAC Mortgage website

Did you know that to search the Internet for “rental property” + business is to generate more than 3,000,000 hits?

Yesterday, my colleague Bluegill documented the scene following Saturday’s first rental registration and code enforcement committee meeting. In the comments section, Gina Coyle asked if Price really lost it, and Jeff replied:

Yes, G, (Price) said it, apparently right after he told Lloyd Wimp that he'd do whatever he could to fight it (rental registrations).

He played most of his in-meeting comments to the landlords in the crowd, bemoaning what a tough business rental property is, which I'm sure you saw.

It's paraphrased but here's the gist:

After the meeting, an already angry Steve interrupted my conversation with another committee member.

"You're wrong. Rental property ain't a business", he said.

I told him that it is and asked what he did for a living.

He then went into a semi-intelligible tirade about how it wasn't. I asked him what he did for a living.

He told me my house (which serves as a family residence only) was a business. I asked him what he did for a living.

He hollered that he didn't want to pay any more taxes. I asked what taxes he was talking about since there hadn't been any additional taxes discussed. And then I asked him what he did for a living.

When he started to say something else unrelated, I told him to answer the question about what he did for a living.

"I'm barely breaking even", he said. "I'm living off my council salary."

"Just because your business is struggling," I said, "it doesn't mean it's not a business."

With that he turned for the door, repeated some of the stuff he'd said earlier about people wanting guys with clipboards running around, and then finally pronounced "This is all a bunch of fucking bullshit" as he headed out.

The funniest part to me is Price's unintentionally candid (and ever elastic) definition of "business": It's a business if you're making money, but not if times are hard. Price isn't making any money off his rental properties, therefore, they no longer constitute a business.

Right.

It hasn't stopped him from incorporating a business entity, has it?

I'm guessing Price's state of affairs has more to do with business expertise and the normal cycle of business than the nature of business itself, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding him. That's an easy thing to do. Listening to Price speak publicly is rather like trying to read a goat path map of Tibet -- upside down.

But those priceless expletives … well, the meaning is clear. Ironically, taken together, they also aptly describe the quality of the “work” Price has done during his tenure as councilman.

The same general attitude also helps encapsulate our eternal gratitude that council president Gahan has appointed the transparently biased Price to the rental committee. Before this, Gahan gifted the Urban Enterprise Association board with precisely the same befuddled personage (attendance record: 3 "present" and 5 "absent" so far this year).

Thanks, Jeff.

Actually, "fucking bullshit" describes Gahan's recent attitude toward the community in general just as pithily as it does Price's historically cavalier disregard for his 3rd district neighbors.

Perhaps, then, we should file this under "be careful what you wish for," because having asked for consistency, Gahan's now giving it to us.

Good and hard.

---

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
Dude -- you guys live over in that product over there?
Roger A. Baylor

Tonight at the rental property inspection committee meeting, Mr. Haesley, the owner of Property Solutions, made these assertions.

(a) His business is located at (insert Floyds Knobs address here).

(b) All the many houses this business owns, from which the business derives income (dare we imagine … makes a profit?) by charging people a fee (that’d be “rent”) to live there, actually are not properties. They are products.

(c) Does a department store have to register each and every one of the products it sells?

I’ll leave it to Bluegill (who filmed the meeting) and others – was local media present? – to provide the in-depth coverage of the evening.

All I can say is this.

(a) Okay. I have an address, too. It isn’t a post office box, either.

(b) The beers I sell aren’t products, mind you. They’re dreams. How can we tax/register/license a dream?

(c) Pick an item in any store. Every step of the way, licensing is involved. Even if it comes from an unregulated Chinese sweat shop, the product is subject to some manner of importation licensing. What of the truck that delivered it? A licensed driver, of course. I'm sure we could follow this further. Why bother?

A product, huh?

Earlier in the session, Councilman John Gonder took a poll of the people in attendance, asking whether they were for or against a simple rental property registration program without registration fees. The vote predictably split along landlord/activist lines. Gonder did not permit stronger views to be enumerated.

Count me among the latter, though. So long as rental property owners insult my intelligence with arguments as weak as Mr. Haesley’s, then I advocate licenses for every rental unit in town.

Am I am extremist? Maybe. All I know is that my business is in fact a business, it is regulated to the hilt by multiple governmental agencies, and I accept regulation as the cost of doing business.

Business is business … right?

---

See also the late, lamented Lloyd's account of a chat with Haesley, here.

---

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2008
The next video should be instructional.
Jeff Gillenwater

A video feed of the second rental registration and code enforcement meeting will be posted as soon as I can get it done. The process takes hours and, seeing as how I'm trying to do the traditional media's job with a 12-year-old video camera I bought off eBay nine years ago, patience is appreciated. I think I'll leave the rig at home next time and just smoke a cigarette in the meeting room. Then you can watch it on the 11:00 news.

One needn't view the video in it's entirety, however, to grasp the essence of the situation. Amidst the embroidery of humorously bad arguments, irrelevant anecdotes, and sanitation fantasies, at least one thing is plain:

No one knows the law.

Over and over again, the questions arose: What legal obligation does the city have to notify property owners of code violations and what can legally be done if they don't respond? For that matter, what enforcement and collection options, according to the state, does the city have if they do respond? Every time, the answer was "I don't know".

Given the number of times the building commissioner has expressed exasperation with those unknowns, you'd think finding them out would be the crux of his efforts. If thinking was the hallmark of New Albany's past couple of decades, though, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

As much credit as I give John Gonder for displaying the fortitude so lacking in previous councils, there's not much sense in continuing the foray into chaos until those legal questions are answered. Otherwise, we'll be seeking to build an enforcement mechanism based on faulty remembrances rather than contemporary understanding.

And with all the superfluous talk throughout this conversation of how great things used to be, another myth is the last thing we need.

---

Time passes. Pins drop, and crickets chirp. Somewhere in the night, a dog barks.

---

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2008
The ordinance against "no-brainers" is subject to multiple interpretations.
Roger A. Baylor

There's good coverage of common sense in the morning newspaper, with our own Bluegill in an advisory capacity.

A code of safety: Some feel crime and code enforcement are linked in New Albany, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

Lax code enforcement welcomes a criminal element into New Albany, according to Jeff Gillenwater.

Gillenwater, a New Albany resident who has lobbied for tougher rules through his work with several neighborhood associations, said deteriorating houses and rentals impact more than merely property values.

“Make it look like nobody cares and potential residents will believe you, including relocating criminals,” he said.

Mayor Doug England promised to lay out his code enforcement plan to the City Council when he returns from back surgery and rehabilitation, which will likely be the first week of January.

Alas, another year has passed during which New Albany's city council has acted boldly on trivial pursuits, such as the currently unenforced (duh) ban on novelty lighters, but proposed nothing of substance to curb the city's empowerment of slumlords, a situation that derives not from ordinance, but from generations of outright political cowardice.

To be sure, there have been fact-finding meetings, and CM John Gonder waxes optimistic, telling the Tribune's Suddeath, "I am very hopeful. I have no reason to think that they will pull out a toothless tiger."

Gonder gets it, and yet toothlessness is such a part of New Albany's heritage of unresponsiveness that it surely must be written into the city's genetic code. According to our political DNA, measures to combat the unchecked reign of the slumlord are DOA. It's going to take more than words. Think: Deeds ... irrespective of the political fallout.

Uncouncilman Steve Price, who by his own testimony yearns to be regarded as a "hobbyist" rental property owner who makes nothing from it (and they call me a socialist), said it best back in August after the initial rental property registration committee meeting: "This is all a bunch of fucking bullshit."

It is, but as usual, not in the way that Price unimagines.

None of us currently know the dimension of the mayor's plan to address the reality of New Albany's default state of non-enforcement. I remain hopeful, although we are well advised to refrain from holding our breaths.

---

Postscript: Doug England did nothing through the end of his term, after which Gahan (seeking re-election this year) has done nothing since the beginning of his. 

Gahan’s 2015 primary opponent, David White, has had nothing to say on the matter, while the GOP’s rental-property-owning mayoral nominee, Kevin Zurschmiede, has led the current effort to reform building codes – without a rental property registration component. 

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Walkability = economic boost. Time to get walking, isn' it?

If walkability positively impacts knowledge-based businesses, and we continue to drag our feet in doing what's necessary to make downtown walkable, then city government is hampering economic development, not helping it.

Couple this with an absence of attention to communications capability (read: fiber optic), and you'll see two more reasons why there needs to be a change at the top.

How treating pedestrians better will boost the economy, Matt Wade (Sydney Morning Herald)

Retail is only one reason for making CBDs (central business districts) more pedestrian-friendly. Economic change, especially the growing importance of knowledge-based firms, has made the walkability of business centres all the more important. The exchange of ideas and information is crucial for the productivity of knowledge industries. That's one reason why knowledge-intensive businesses – like finance, insurance, IT and professional services – tend to cluster together in CBDs. Much of the sharing of ideas and knowledge takes place face-to-face. And those face-to-face encounters are very often the result of a walking trip. It might sound old school but walking is vital to our premier business hubs.

"A flexible workforce needs an expanded management bureaucracy to oversee it."

Word lovers: Welcome to the "precariat."

In sociology and economics, the precariat is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare as well as being a member of a proletariat class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labour to live. Specifically, it is applied to the condition of lack of job security, in other words intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence. The emergence of this class has been ascribed to the entrenchment of neoliberal capitalism.

Referencing the USSR, eh?

The era of cheap labour is over, by Paul Mason (The Guardian)

 ... The assertion that job security kills innovation is etched deep into the free-market mindset. The pursuit of flexible labour markets has, for the past 30 years, made it easy for bosses to hire and fire; and harder for workers to demand both higher wages and the higher security that comes with them. The zero-hours contract has become the symbol of this culture, but there is worse. Unions trying to organise precarious workers report many businesses where there is no contract at all. Temporary work, part-time work, contracts that guarantee just four hours work a week are all common in the low-pay sector.

The result is the precariat. A broad layer numbering in some countries 25% of the workforce, whose contracts are either temporary or informal, or who arrive via employment agencies.

Now, an influential study by economists at Delft University has concluded what many of us suspected. A flexible workforce needs an expanded management bureaucracy to oversee it. Because precarity damages trust, loyalty and commitment, say the Delft researchers, it demands more management and control. An entire generation of free-market workers has begun to act according to the factory adage of the old Soviet Union: “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us” ...

 ... In Britain, three basic things would lay the groundwork for a more controlled shift of pricing power towards the workforce and away from employers: the right to a written contract; the obligation to publish salary bands for specific job titles in private-sector firms; and limiting temporary contracts to genuinely temporary or seasonal tasks.

Amazingly, on RFRA, the farcical pharmacist Ron Grooms has voted against Indiana's best business and economic interests.

When old white guys live in cultural bubbles, this is what happens.

Hoosier business boosters battle boycott from 'religious freedom' bill ahead of Final Four, by Maureen Hayden (CHNI)

... (Chris) Gahl, along with a small army of Indianapolis boosters, is now scrambling to mitigate the public relations damage done by the controversy with this message: “No matter what a signed piece of paper says, it doesn’t kill Hoosier Hospitality.”

ON THE AVENUES: Die Hard the Hunter, or the political "impossibility" of rental property registration in New Albany.

ON THE AVENUES: Die Hard the Hunter, or the political "impossibility" of rental property registration in New Albany.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Rental Property Registration is an essential tool for creating a code enforcement system that effectively identifies problem properties and, through random inspections, deters landlords from engaging in deferred maintenance and lax property management. A strongly‐enforced rental registration program “lets the owner understand that he is known to the municipality and accountable for his actions with respect to the property.”
-- "An Analysis of Rental Property Registration in Austin"

The calendar reads 2015, and as we meander yet again down the weed-choked, trash-strewn garden path of pervasive legislative impotence in New Albany as it pertains to building codes -- an exercise sure to be made even more flaccid by the imperative to waffle and pander during an election cycle -- it’s fairly clear that this ongoing abdication of responsibility over a period of decades constitutes the single biggest failing of this city's purported "leadership" caste.

Today we turn back the clock to 2008, a full seven years ago, and a series of NAC posts referencing what surely was among the city’s most theatrical of rental property registration failure.

Read them and weep, because nothing has been achieved, and cannot be for so long as value extraction and decay management remain the dominant motifs of our ever-helpful duopoly of major political parties.

---

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2008
Boss Hogg and the meaning of life
Roger A. Baylor

While we may have been on opposite sides recently, at-large councilman John Gonder is intelligent, well intentioned and conscientious. Saturday morning, he’ll be convening a meeting. As explained at his blog:

The committee formed to address the issue of rental registration and code enforcement will hold its first meeting this Saturday morning, August 23, at 10:00 A.M. in the Elsa Strassweg Auditorium in the Library.

This meeting is expected to be brief. It is intended to simply outline where the committee is headed.

Those interested are welcome, and encouraged to attend.

Of course, Gonder played a prominent role in the (perhaps) concluded smoking ban saga, which turned on a “yea” swing vote by none other than Dan Coffey. The extent to which Gonder cultivated this amazing turnabout is unknown, although it’s fair to surmise that all the council’s quasi-progressives were forced to grudgingly raid their comic book collections to achieve the elimination of workplace smoking through Coffey’s surreal ballot.

The reason I muse aloud about these topics has much to do with my personal feelings about rental property registration, inspection, reform, and whatever other action is necessary to establish three simple facts.

Owning a rental property is a business.

Rental housing is a matter of public health.

Such a business is indeed the city’s business.

I made several predictions with respect to the smoking ordinance, and the majority proved correct. Last evening Coffey was overheard commenting that the council was about to establish a strong rental property registration package, and in honor of this, I’ll make another prognostication (and hope I’m wrong).

When push comes to shove, Coffey will unceremoniously kneecap any meaningful rental property reform, and while doing so, he’ll laugh at – not with – Gonder.

Like I said, I hope I’m mistaken. But color me skeptical. I see the miraculous smoking conversion as a one-off, the true price of which we’ll never know. Now we’re going to get the real Cappuccino, once again … and to the detriment of all.

---

MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2008
Steve Price on rental registration and code enforcement: "This is a bunch of (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted)."
Roger A. Baylor

Before we document the 3rd district uncouncilman’s revealingly ill-tempered sex-act-and-defecation outburst at the library on Saturday -- that's right, within whispering distance of the kiddie section -- let’s look back at a bit of pertinent information posted here last week.

Owning a rental property is more than an investment — it's a business. You have to be willing and able to commit the time and resources necessary to run your business successfully.
--GMAC Mortgage website

Did you know that to search the Internet for “rental property” + business is to generate more than 3,000,000 hits?

Yesterday, my colleague Bluegill documented the scene following Saturday’s first rental registration and code enforcement committee meeting. In the comments section, Gina Coyle asked if Price really lost it, and Jeff replied:

Yes, G, (Price) said it, apparently right after he told Lloyd Wimp that he'd do whatever he could to fight it (rental registrations).

He played most of his in-meeting comments to the landlords in the crowd, bemoaning what a tough business rental property is, which I'm sure you saw.

It's paraphrased but here's the gist:

After the meeting, an already angry Steve interrupted my conversation with another committee member.

"You're wrong. Rental property ain't a business", he said.

I told him that it is and asked what he did for a living.

He then went into a semi-intelligible tirade about how it wasn't. I asked him what he did for a living.

He told me my house (which serves as a family residence only) was a business. I asked him what he did for a living.

He hollered that he didn't want to pay any more taxes. I asked what taxes he was talking about since there hadn't been any additional taxes discussed. And then I asked him what he did for a living.

When he started to say something else unrelated, I told him to answer the question about what he did for a living.

"I'm barely breaking even", he said. "I'm living off my council salary."

"Just because your business is struggling," I said, "it doesn't mean it's not a business."

With that he turned for the door, repeated some of the stuff he'd said earlier about people wanting guys with clipboards running around, and then finally pronounced "This is all a bunch of fucking bullshit" as he headed out.

The funniest part to me is Price's unintentionally candid (and ever elastic) definition of "business": It's a business if you're making money, but not if times are hard. Price isn't making any money off his rental properties, therefore, they no longer constitute a business.

Right.

It hasn't stopped him from incorporating a business entity, has it?

I'm guessing Price's state of affairs has more to do with business expertise and the normal cycle of business than the nature of business itself, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding him. That's an easy thing to do. Listening to Price speak publicly is rather like trying to read a goat path map of Tibet -- upside down.

But those priceless expletives … well, the meaning is clear. Ironically, taken together, they also aptly describe the quality of the “work” Price has done during his tenure as councilman.

The same general attitude also helps encapsulate our eternal gratitude that council president Gahan has appointed the transparently biased Price to the rental committee. Before this, Gahan gifted the Urban Enterprise Association board with precisely the same befuddled personage (attendance record: 3 "present" and 5 "absent" so far this year).

Thanks, Jeff.

Actually, "fucking bullshit" describes Gahan's recent attitude toward the community in general just as pithily as it does Price's historically cavalier disregard for his 3rd district neighbors.

Perhaps, then, we should file this under "be careful what you wish for," because having asked for consistency, Gahan's now giving it to us.

Good and hard.

---

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
Dude -- you guys live over in that product over there?
Roger A. Baylor

Tonight at the rental property inspection committee meeting, Mr. Haesley, the owner of Property Solutions, made these assertions.

(a) His business is located at (insert Floyds Knobs address here).

(b) All the many houses this business owns, from which the business derives income (dare we imagine … makes a profit?) by charging people a fee (that’d be “rent”) to live there, actually are not properties. They are products.

(c) Does a department store have to register each and every one of the products it sells?

I’ll leave it to Bluegill (who filmed the meeting) and others – was local media present? – to provide the in-depth coverage of the evening.

All I can say is this.

(a) Okay. I have an address, too. It isn’t a post office box, either.

(b) The beers I sell aren’t products, mind you. They’re dreams. How can we tax/register/license a dream?

(c) Pick an item in any store. Every step of the way, licensing is involved. Even if it comes from an unregulated Chinese sweat shop, the product is subject to some manner of importation licensing. What of the truck that delivered it? A licensed driver, of course. I'm sure we could follow this further. Why bother?

A product, huh?

Earlier in the session, Councilman John Gonder took a poll of the people in attendance, asking whether they were for or against a simple rental property registration program without registration fees. The vote predictably split along landlord/activist lines. Gonder did not permit stronger views to be enumerated.

Count me among the latter, though. So long as rental property owners insult my intelligence with arguments as weak as Mr. Haesley’s, then I advocate licenses for every rental unit in town.

Am I am extremist? Maybe. All I know is that my business is in fact a business, it is regulated to the hilt by multiple governmental agencies, and I accept regulation as the cost of doing business.

Business is business … right?

---

See also the late, lamented Lloyd's account of a chat with Haesley, here.

---

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2008
The next video should be instructional.
Jeff Gillenwater

A video feed of the second rental registration and code enforcement meeting will be posted as soon as I can get it done. The process takes hours and, seeing as how I'm trying to do the traditional media's job with a 12-year-old video camera I bought off eBay nine years ago, patience is appreciated. I think I'll leave the rig at home next time and just smoke a cigarette in the meeting room. Then you can watch it on the 11:00 news.

One needn't view the video in it's entirety, however, to grasp the essence of the situation. Amidst the embroidery of humorously bad arguments, irrelevant anecdotes, and sanitation fantasies, at least one thing is plain:

No one knows the law.

Over and over again, the questions arose: What legal obligation does the city have to notify property owners of code violations and what can legally be done if they don't respond? For that matter, what enforcement and collection options, according to the state, does the city have if they do respond? Every time, the answer was "I don't know".

Given the number of times the building commissioner has expressed exasperation with those unknowns, you'd think finding them out would be the crux of his efforts. If thinking was the hallmark of New Albany's past couple of decades, though, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

As much credit as I give John Gonder for displaying the fortitude so lacking in previous councils, there's not much sense in continuing the foray into chaos until those legal questions are answered. Otherwise, we'll be seeking to build an enforcement mechanism based on faulty remembrances rather than contemporary understanding.

And with all the superfluous talk throughout this conversation of how great things used to be, another myth is the last thing we need.

---

Time passes. Pins drop, and crickets chirp. Somewhere in the night, a dog barks.

---

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2008
The ordinance against "no-brainers" is subject to multiple interpretations.
Roger A. Baylor

There's good coverage of common sense in the morning newspaper, with our own Bluegill in an advisory capacity.

A code of safety: Some feel crime and code enforcement are linked in New Albany, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

Lax code enforcement welcomes a criminal element into New Albany, according to Jeff Gillenwater.

Gillenwater, a New Albany resident who has lobbied for tougher rules through his work with several neighborhood associations, said deteriorating houses and rentals impact more than merely property values.

“Make it look like nobody cares and potential residents will believe you, including relocating criminals,” he said.

Mayor Doug England promised to lay out his code enforcement plan to the City Council when he returns from back surgery and rehabilitation, which will likely be the first week of January.

Alas, another year has passed during which New Albany's city council has acted boldly on trivial pursuits, such as the currently unenforced (duh) ban on novelty lighters, but proposed nothing of substance to curb the city's empowerment of slumlords, a situation that derives not from ordinance, but from generations of outright political cowardice.

To be sure, there have been fact-finding meetings, and CM John Gonder waxes optimistic, telling the Tribune's Suddeath, "I am very hopeful. I have no reason to think that they will pull out a toothless tiger."

Gonder gets it, and yet toothlessness is such a part of New Albany's heritage of unresponsiveness that it surely must be written into the city's genetic code. According to our political DNA, measures to combat the unchecked reign of the slumlord are DOA. It's going to take more than words. Think: Deeds ... irrespective of the political fallout.

Uncouncilman Steve Price, who by his own testimony yearns to be regarded as a "hobbyist" rental property owner who makes nothing from it (and they call me a socialist), said it best back in August after the initial rental property registration committee meeting: "This is all a bunch of fucking bullshit."

It is, but as usual, not in the way that Price unimagines.

None of us currently know the dimension of the mayor's plan to address the reality of New Albany's default state of non-enforcement. I remain hopeful, although we are well advised to refrain from holding our breaths.

---

Postscript: Doug England did nothing through the end of his term, after which Gahan (seeking re-election this year) has done nothing since the beginning of his. 

Gahan’s 2015 primary opponent, David White, has had nothing to say on the matter, while the GOP’s rental-property-owning mayoral nominee, Kevin Zurschmiede, has led the current effort to reform building codes – without a rental property registration component. 

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

---

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ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL EDITION: Adam's rib tips.

ON THE AVENUES: It's just like when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.

ON THE AVENUES: As Admiral Gahan steers his Speck study into the Bermuda Triangle, crewmen Padgett, Stumler and Caesar grimly toss all the rum overboard.

ON THE AVENUES: Upscale residency at down-low prices.

Yanis Varoufakis, business cults, and why I refuse to wear a suit.

Photo credit: Guardian

Note that Wetherspoon's is a casual pub chain in the UK, and give ample props to Yanis Varoufakis for his New Age-style, "Castro-in-fatigues-at-the-UN" moment. Then I'll explain why suits don't suit me.

Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis goes casual at number 10, by Imogen Fox (Guardian)

... It was apparent from the photocall on Downing Street that we were witnessing a bit of a fashion moment. There was Osborne, himself riding high on his rebooted fashion skills with his Julius-Caesar haircut and properly fitting suit, shaking hands with a man wearing a Wetherspoon’s-appropriate bright-blue shirt and an early-1990s madchester drug dealer’s coat. The shaved head, the feet apart hands-in-pockets bouncer’s stance and the easy grin serving to underline the look.

I resemble these remarks.

At present, I own one suit, and since I lost weight, it's now much too roomy. It hasn't yet occurred to me if there'll be implications in my mayoral campaign, apart from observing that just because one isn't wearing a suit/uniform, it doesn't mean he cannot dress appropriately.

Can a person dress like a normal human being and be mayor? It sounds like an experiment worth performing. The following has been written and revised several times, most recently in March of 2014 as a Potable Curmudgeon column at LouisvilleBeer.com.

---

The PC: It doesn’t suit me.

I pay fairly close attention to civic affairs in New Albany, and perhaps this owes to broad personal interests and a degree of community-mindedness, although as in most communities, a taste for low comedy doesn’t hurt.

Among the political tugs-of-wars witnessed on a daily basis throughout the year, those various mechanisms by which municipal governments of all ideological identities – both country and western – pretend to develop their economies have come to be especially entertaining to me.

Whether it’s my town or yours, they tend to work the same. A business purporting to be the second coming of Henry Ford, Ben & Jerry and Versace, all rolled into one unstoppable juggernaut, argues that it is poised to bring great joy to the inhabitants, not to mention a job or three, if only (ahem) the business climate might be adjusted just a tad. Consequently, it is gifted with a heady cocktail of incentives, including tax abatements, loans, grants, discount sewer coupons, lottery tickets and oral sex on demand.

It’s a little known fact that these businesses actually must make some semblance of a theoretical case to merit their share of governmental largesse, as in a certain number of positions to be created, machines purchased, and dual-purpose flanges shipped. And so they do — theoretically. City councils salivate with Pavlovian aplomb, stenographers (still quaintly referred to in some quarters as “journalists”) cut and paste from breathless press releases, mayors pad their resumes, and the incentive pies are duly sliced.

Ostensibly, that’s where the public/private partnership begins, but in the real world of attention spans the length of a fruit fly’s adolescence, it’s where the relationship usually ends. The barn door has been left ajar. Calendar pages turn, concrete is poured, accountants diligently wield their fiduciary looms … and then, every once in a while, something exceedingly strange happens to shatter the monotony.

At a meeting, a timid hand will be raised, and an inconvenient question proffered:

"Excuse me, resident economic development tsar, but all these claims of jobs and sales and market dominance justifying the incentive package you awarded this company … well, did they actually create those jobs? Did they really ship that many flanges, or was it only a projection? Was anything they were saying actually true?"

Crickets chirp, and pins are heard dropping. The patriotism of the questioner is ridiculed.

Somewhere, a stenographer dozes.

—

Thinking back to the time when I was asked to explain how I’d managed to survive in business for more than two decades with a lowly Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and history, rather than appropriately seductive parchments in business, I recall spitting, harrumphing loudly, and barking back at my interlocutor: Because serendipity rules our planet, and thinking outside boxes trumps rote recitation … and I doubt any of it is taught amid the quasi-theological curriculum at “business” schools.

I went into business because I love beer, and an opportunity was presented for me to love beer (for inconsequential and symbolic pay) while sharing my love of beer with others. It was nothing more at the time, it is nothing less now, and it remains absolutely nothing to build a business school curriculum around.

I’m very, very proud of that fact.

An autobiography is still possible; if so, it will be entitled “Beer, Bile & Bolsheviks: A Fermentable Life,” although if the tome ever comes to fruition, there’ll be precious little inside it about spreadsheets. Numbers are what you hire other people to understand, while carefully applying the greasepaint, rehearsing the shuck and jive, and performing “My Way” for the 3,657th time.

America’s weird indigenous cult of business achievement titillation repels me. My personal heroes have always been artists, baristas, musicians, chefs, writers, actors, dancers, sportsmen, brewers and other practitioners moving within the less easily quantifiable realm of creativity.

How and why they’re paid is far less interesting to me than how they create, and what they produce in an aesthetic sense. How do their physical skills capture the output of their brains?

If the business of America truly is business, then it causes me to openly shudder, and if so, my personal “business” encompasses looking elsewhere – anywhere will do – for a higher order of inspiration, as opposed to worshipping techniques to amass and maintain wealth. While it’s true that Bruce Springsteen is handsomely rewarded for creating music, give me the Boss over Donald Trump, any day. I can whistle along with music, but only wince at avarice.

As a matter of convenience, I accept the term “businessman,” but prefer to think of myself as a beertrepreneur.

The very root word “entrepreneur” is suitably French. There’s an element of daring and risk contained within it, contrasting with “businessman”, which sounds far too numerically vocational and conservative for my blood. Entrepreneurs sweat to create, and can relate to Lear’s raging. Businessmen wear dull threads and merely manage the inspiration of others.

The prime reason for this violent, lifelong allergic reaction to the trappings of chambers of commerce and like-minded business idolatry societies is their vacuously obnoxious glorification of business for the sake of business, in the form of endless rounds of symbolic pom-pom waving, mysterious networking rites, totemic seminars and expense account driven re-education junkets, the sum total of which is the perpetuation of eager, grasping and typically greedy cadres of business “elites”, each dressed exactly alike, refusing to travel in steerage, wholly ignorant of the universe beyond their sales strategies, but perfectly capable of exchanging indecipherable business lingo and colloquialisms that surely would have inspired Sinclair Lewis to update the saga of “Babbitt” for an even more annoying age.

—

That’s why I generally refuse to wear a suit. I waited a long time to find a line of honest work that would permit me to dress like a normal human being. My uniform is different from yours, just as a football player’s is different from mine. Having found such a pursuit, permitted to be both comfortable and unhesitant to dribble hot wing sauce down my chin, I’m hesitant to surrender the autonomy.

I’m a craft beer kind of guy, and there’s a saying in the craft beer business: We brew beer, we drink beer, and we sell what’s left. At the end of the day, if there still are a few farthings lying around, then we made a profit, and while I readily acknowledge the imperative of making a few bucks, it’s worth repeating that love of beer is what drew me to my business.

History, geography, lore and storytelling about beer are my interests. Being truthful in relaying them is my goal. Anything less is Wal-Mart … or AB InBev.

It was inevitable that craft beer would grow up, but if growing up means embracing the tactical fictions and emulating the attitudes of our mass-market brethren, you can count me out. I’d rather raise that timid hand, rouse the steno from the clutches of the sandman — and repair to the nearest bar.

ON THE AVENUES: The same tired "run government like a business" mantra.

ON THE AVENUES: The same tired "run government like a business" mantra.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

It would be refreshing to hear a candidate for public office concede that the anticipated pay package for serving as an elected official would far exceed rates of remuneration at his or her current job, with this prospective increase constituting a prime reason for seeking office in the first place.

Some of those few bothering to vote these days undoubtedly would reply that public service is supposed to be about noble ideals and selfless sacrifice. I’d counter by waiting to see if the aspiring candidate puts forth the proposition that a lifetime of business experience has provided a unique opportunity to “run” government in precisely the same fashion as a taco stand, foundry or jewelry store -- at a considerable pay cut to the chief executive officer whose capitalist expertise in making money is his or her main recommendation.

Something about this equation doesn’t add up, but then again, I’ve never been very adept at mathematics.

While we were away, merrily partying in European locales where folks really can have nice things, David White made a pilgrimage to the Scribner House, and amid the swooning of resident DAR stalwarts, announced his campaign for mayor … as a Democrat.

For those just tuning in, this means that an incumbent mayor (Jeff Gahan) who garnered 64% of the vote in the 2011 general election is viewed as vulnerable within his very own party. Not unexpectedly, White revealed very little about his platform in terms of detail, although the rudiments were summarized in Daniel Suddeath's newspaper account of White's debut:

The four cornerstones of (White’s) Advance New Albany 2016 plan are: Unifying city-county government, job creation, generating a budget surplus and “exceptionalism.”

Judging from the scant content of White’s web site, we are to believe he is capable of executing this plan by virtue of his successful business background – or, as Suddeath reports:

White said he views government as a small business, and that the residents of New Albany are the customers.

The last time we heard this “government as business” argument from a mayoral candidate, the speaker was Irv Stumler, former mayor Doug England’s hand-picked successor, and Jeff Gahan’s first victim in route to a desk somewhere near Hauss Square.

At least White is younger than his predecessor.

All of which reminded me of something I wrote in March of 2011 during my city council at-large campaign. Let’s see how well it has survived the intervening three years.

-------------------------

Last week, I was asked how it’s been possible for me to survive in business for 20 years with a lowly BA in philosophy, rather than a degree in business.

My response: Because serendipity rules our planet, and thinking trumps rote … and I doubt they teach any of this at business school.

In fact, I went into business because (a) I love beer, and (b), an opportunity was presented for me to love beer for pay while sharing my love with others. It was nothing more, it is nothing less, and it remains nothing to build a business school curriculum around. An autobiography is still possible, although if it ever comes to fruition, there’ll be precious little in it about spreadsheets.

Yesterday afternoon at Steinert’s, as I was listening for the second time this week to mayoral hopeful Irv Stumler read aloud his extensive and admittedly admirable Curriculum Vitae, it suddenly occurred to me how America’s weird indigenous cult of business achievement has almost never captured my fancy, but instead, over long decades, mostly repelled me.

Rather, my personal heroes have always been artists, baristas, musicians, chefs, writers, actors, dancers, sportsmen, brewers and other practitioners moving within the less easily quantifiable realm of creativity. How and why they’re paid is far less interesting to me than how they create, and what they produce in an aesthetic sense. How do their physical skills capture the output of their brains?

If the business of America truly is business, then it causes me to openly shudder, and if so, my personal “business” encompasses looking elsewhere – anywhere will do – for a higher order of inspiration, as opposed to worshipping techniques to amass and maintain wealth. While it’s true that Bruce Springsteen is handsomely rewarded for creating music, give me the Boss over Donald Trump, any day. I can whistle along with music, but only wince at avarice.

As a matter of convenience, I accept the term “businessman,” but prefer to think of myself as a beer entrepreneur.

The very word “entrepreneur” strikes me as more applicable. For one thing, it’s suitably French. There’s also an element of daring and risk contained in it, contrasting with “businessman”, which sounds far too numerically vocational and conservative for my blood. Entrepreneurs sweat to create; businessmen merely manage.

The prime reason for my violent, lifelong allergic reaction to the trappings of chambers of commerce and like-minded business idolatry societies is their vacuously obnoxious glorification of business for the sake of business, in the form of endless rounds of symbolic pom-pom waving, mysterious networking rites, totemic seminars and expense account driven re-education junkets, the sum total of which is the perpetuation of eager, grasping and typically greedy cadres of business “elites”, each dressed alike, refusing to travel in steerage, wholly ignorant of the universe beyond their sales strategies, but perfectly capable of exchanging indecipherable business lingo and colloquialisms that surely would have inspired Sinclair Lewis to update the saga ofBabbitt – or in the case of Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana (ROCK), which uses the same sad tools in the context of God's inscrutable instructions – Elmer Gantry.

(How’s that for a paragraph, ma?)

That's why I generally refuse to wear a suit. I waited a long time to find a line of honest work that would permit me to dress like a normal human being on a daily basis. My uniform is different from yours, just as a football player’s is different from mine. Having found such a pursuit, and permitted to be both comfortable and unhesitant to dribble hot sauce down my chin, I’m hesitant to surrender the autonomy.

I’m a craft beer kind of guy, and there’s a saying in the craft beer business: We brew beer, we drink beer, and we sell what’s left. At the end of the day, if there still are a few farthings lying around, then we made a profit, and while I readily acknowledge the imperative of making a few bucks, it’s worth repeating that love of beer is what drew me to my business.

History, geography, lore and storytelling about beer are my fortes. The actual brewers can explain the enzymes. I’d rather let the finished liquid in the glass do the talking, and translate the testimony for our consumers.

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The preceding digression is brought to you by my perpetual annoyance whenever I hear a businessman-turned-politician proclaim that government should be run like a business.

That’s fine with me, in the sense that if I’m elected to city council, and if wisdom like this is accepted at face value, there’ll be quite a lot of craft beer served at meetings – and other times, too.

In an effort to explain, and at the risk of oversimplifying, usually when we’re told to run government like a business, the speaker is referring to expense reduction alone, first by means of greater efficiencies, and if necessary, by making all the cuts required to balance the budget. These infamous days, the state of Indiana looks at it the same way, and will mold its ideologically-derived budget directives to cities in such a manner as to focus attention on one side of the ledger to the exclusion, and at times impossibility, of the other.

The casual, pants-down "businessman" in me responds to all this with a simple question: Okay, but what about revenues?

Generally a pudgy tea partier's finger is wagged. I'm told not to ask, and this juncture, the “government as business” fallacy loses it wheels. If government cannot address revenues as well as expenses, it’s nothing whatsoever “like” a business and should not pretend to be one.

During the hard times in 2010, my company tried mightily to increase efficiencies and reduce expenses, while at the same time improving customer count and increasing volume. One without the other makes no sense to a business, does it? We never stopped trying to make the pie bigger even as we reduced expenditures to make it through the lean period. There was no choice except to address both.

If government is to be run like a business, doesn't it have an imperative to bring in money even as less is spent? It might charge higher prices to its consumers (taxes and fees), or if unable to charge higher prices, it might increase the number of consumers paying lower prices.

Businesses balance these considerations every single day: Will the consumer pay the same price for the lowered quality of good and services? Can the quality be maintained when expenses are cut? Are there intangibles that might justify higher prices in their minds? How do we get more of them to come in and sample what we have to offer?

But beyond that, considering what government does, how are goods and services even to be measured?

In America, we have a mission statement and business plan of sorts, known as the Constitution, from which emanates numerous other mission statements and business plans for governance from the grassroots up. To be specific, how do we calculate the price of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the playing field for which it is government’s job to keep level?

Or do we abandon the mission statement because we’ve decided that human rights are too expensive for consumer/citizens who’d rather opt out of the compact, and can be out-sourced, half-assed and winked at? Need a cop? Just phone the call center in Bangalore ... and take a number.

I’ll not belabor the point. Government is not the same thing as business, and even if it might be in some obscure way, any Democratic candidate urging us to run government like a business needs to come equipped with ideas for making the pie bigger, or introducing a whole new kind of pie (sustainability and the grassroots localization of the economy spring to mind), not just coping in servile fashion with the dubious physiological “benefits” of devouring civil society’s remaining muscle in the interest of certifying the diktats of theocratic Republican ideology.

By any standard of attainment, Irv Stumler has enjoyed a solid career in business. Is he ready to discuss the other side of the ledger?

Let’s hear those ideas, too.

Coffee and doughnuts and downtown business tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning I'm hosting a meeting of the current incarnation of the downtown business association.

Please join us for our next meeting on Tuesday, June 17 at 8:30 AM at the New Albanian Brewing Company (Bank Street Brewhouse), located at 415 Bank St.

John Witten, with New Albany RiverStage Productions will be our guest. There are some exciting events planned for our downtown Amphitheater, John is eager to discuss them with us.

It's an informal group with a high degree of downtown retail representation, which is needed. I'll have coffee and doughnuts, so if you have a spare hour, drop by.