Blurred lines: Extol's "End of Summer Bash" and the Southern Indiana Community Housing Corporation's "charitable" status prompt the reincarnation of Lt. Columbo.

It's a good thing when local magazines sponsor free community gatherings. Naturally blog readers are encouraged to support this Extol function and events like it. Go there, have fun, and rock on.

I'm taking great pains to make it clear that what you're about to read is not blanket criticism, or a call to boycott anything, or some sort of hatchet job. It isn't, not at all.

Rather, as Lieutenant Columbo once said, "There are a couple of loose ends I'd like to tie up."

On the surface of it, surveying the obvious synergies implied by the fest's sponsors, just about all of it is benign and sensible.

For instance, there's participation from New Washington State Bank, which is about to make its presence felt downtown by occupying space in the former Jimmy's Music Building, which is being remodeled by Steve Resch, whose son Jacob is an outstanding musician booked to play the fest.

It makes perfect sense.

There are invaluable community assets like the Horseshoe Foundation and SoIn; the tourism bureau and Extol collaborate to publish the annual area visitor's guide.

They make perfect sense, too.

The fest's sponsors include AllTerrain Paving, a company whose profile recently has risen markedly via aggressive bids on Team Gahan's local construction projects. The company has ties to Neace Ventures, and the latter also has had past involvement with Extol as an investor. Denton Floyd is in charge of the Reisz Building/City Hall project and previously had the brief for Mansions on Main in the former M. Fine Building.

Perfect sense as well.

Of course, both AllTerrain and Denton-Floyd (as well as John Neace of Neace Ventures) have donated heavily in the past to Mayor Jeff Gahan's campaign finance fund, and if I'm not mistaken, they've all also made election tithes to the (unsuccessful) county commissioner and (ongoing) at-large city council campaigns of Jason Applegate, who with wife Angie Fenton is the owner of Extol and the sales agent for the magazine.

Regular readers know that we pay close attention to campaign finance, and yet all of the preceding strikes me as boilerplate. Movers move and shakers shake; so it goes in any small city, and readers may draw their own conclusions, if any. Thus far, there's not much to see.

Still, echoing Columbo once again, "there's just one more thing." 

Extol identifies the non-profit Southern Indiana Community Housing Corporation as a "charity" worthy of inclusion in the bash's charitable outreach. Proceeds and donations will be disbursed to SICHC ("benefiting the residents of NAHA"), WHAS Crusade for Children and USA Cares via Extol Charities, a fund of the Community Foundation of Southern Indiana.

However SICHC is by no means an autonomous "charitable" organization. It is an appendage of the New Albany Housing Authority, itself captive to Jeff Gahan's staffing and board appointments, several of whom have board seats on both entities, NAHA and SICHC.

This is a charity? In a world where Bud Light is called "beer," I suppose anything is possible when mangling semantics. As non-profits go, SICHC's involvement as a "charity" is stretching the limits of propriety.

I'm told that SICHC originally was set up by deposed NAHA chieftain Bob Lane as a means of advancing voucher housing off site of the various NAHA properties. It may also have been necessary in legal terms to make applications for tax credit-driven projects Lane was pursuing to regenerate NAHA's physical plant -- these being the projects Gahan vehemently rejected in the run-up to the mayor's seizure of NAHA and subsequent firing of Lane.

Of course Gahan's choice to replace Lane was the woefully unqualified (and overpaid) David Duggins, previously Gahan's chief fixer at Redevelopment, where Duggins took great care to involve entities ... yes, like Neace Ventures, AllTerrain Paving and Denton-Floyd in big-money redevelopment projects.

Did Extol consider all this?

Glancing at Elevate, we see that whatever else SICHC does to "benefit" residents of NAHA, it is the owner of eight or nine small properties around town (many tied to the abortive Linden Meadows project) and one very large one: Cross Creek Apartments on Green Valley Road.

It's hard to see SICHC as a "charity" worthy of inclusion in Extol's festival, and so I sent multiple messages to both Applegate and Extol asking for this relationship to be clarified. Neither of them have replied. 

There may be a simple answer, but if so, it isn't being given, at least yet, although this does explain Applegate sightings at the NAHA administrative offices.

If we still pretend to believe in something approximating journalism, my question is a legitimate one to ask of Extol. Why is SICHC being referred to as a charity when there is so much relevant background being ignored?

Applegate seems oblivious to the plain fact that wearing multiple hats has a way of blurring lines and prompting legitimate questions. After all, he's the owner of a media outlet who sells ads to many of these entities, and he's a candidate for local office as an open and enthusiastic supporter of a corrupted mayor whose only real platform is political patronage tied to campaign donations and pay-to-play chicanery ... and who advertises heavily in Extol.

Speaking for myself, I have no personal grievances"against" anyone mentioned here, even the ones immersing themselves in Gahan's soiled web. Rather, my grievance is with the process as we've grown to tolerate it, and it's critical to remember that most folks hereabouts never wanted local government to be about dark money to such a large extent that we're obliged to spend time following it to the sources.

Unfortunately the political patronage system that always bubbled on low heat has been injected with steroids by Gahan, Adam Dickey, Warren Nash and other exalted Democratic Party functionaries, and consequently we've come to a place where the money must be followed.

I regret it this mess, but I didn't create it, and since "real" journalists like Chris Morris and Susan Duncan refuse to ask these questions, I will, if for no other reason that stubbornness. As Morrissey once observed, the more you ignore me, the closer I get.

I earnestly encourage Applegate and/or Extol to provide an answer, and we'll provide space here for it, free from extraneous commentary on my part.

Better yet, maybe just commission the esteemed David Duggins to write it, given that SICHC's involvement probably was his idea to begin with.

Altruism, capitalism, charity and drinking before noon.

A Dutch historian born the year before the Berlin Wall fell went viral.

Says Rutger Bregman, the hero of Davos: "No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there."

Bregman wasn't couching his critique in terms of altruism, but rather offering a prescription to treat capitalism's absurdly dystopian excesses.

“This is about saving capitalism,” he said. “Most innovation has come about through government spending. During the golden age period [after the second world war], there were way higher taxes on wealth, property, inheritance and top incomes. That’s what we need today if we are going to tame this beast called capitalism.”

It reminded me of Ayn Rand, who spent a lifetime arguing against altruism.

There are some ... who believe as Rand did: that those who rely on social systems are---to use her ugly term---“parasites,” and those who amass large amounts of private wealth are heroic supermen.

Her zealous disciples responded in kind.

Rand disciple Alan Greenspan, for example, initiated the era of “Reaganomics” in the early 1980s by engineering “an increase in the most regressive tax on the poor and middle class,” writes Gary Weiss, “the Social Security payroll tax—combined with a cut in benefits.” For Greenspan, “this was no contradiction. Social Security was a system of altruism at its worst. Its beneficiaries were looters. Raising their taxes and cutting their benefits was no loss to society.”

Then Rand got old, became ill and opted to accept "parasitic" Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Rand taught “there is no such thing as the public interest,” that programs like Social Security and Medicare steal from “creators” and illegitimately redistribute their wealth. This was a "sublimely enticing argument for wealthy businessmen who had no interest whatever in the public interest.... Yet the taxpayers of America paid Rand's and Frank O'Connor's medical expenses." Randians have offered many convoluted explanations for what her critics see as sheer hypocrisy. We may or may not find them persuasive.

The preceding is intended as introduction to an interesting critique of "Effective Altruism," in a Jacobin article by Mathew Snow titled Against Charity.

A growing social movement ... brands itself Effective Altruism. Effective Altruists calculate where expendable income is best spent and encourage the relatively affluent to channel their capital accordingly. Among their most highly favored causes are the Against Malaria Foundation (which distributes insecticide-treated bed nets), the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (which works to establish school-based deworming programs), and GiveDirectly (which gives unconditional cash transfers to people in extreme poverty).

Over 17,000 people have pledged to give at least 1 percent of their income annually to such endorsed causes, and over 1,000 have pledged to give at least 10 percent. It is particularly popular among millennials, leading some to laud it as “the new social movement of our generation.”

In short, "Rather than creating an individualized 'culture of giving,' we should be challenging capitalism’s institutionalized taking."

The irony of Effective Altruism is that it implores individuals to use their money to procure necessities for those who desperately need them, but says nothing about the system that determines how those necessities are produced and distributed in the first place.

If we look at the institutions that make and allocate the resources others so desperately need, we must ask whether it is wrong to withhold those resources from others for the sake of payment and profit. Doing so not only seems morally reprehensible, it is morally reprehensible for precisely the same reason Effective Altruists argue it is wrong not to donate money to charities: it’s immoral to value some small sum of money (or what it might buy) over a human life or minimum standard of living.

In this way, Effective Altruism’s argument trades off an obvious moral truth without any mention of its direct tension with capitalist accumulation: as men and women with money and moral consciences, we can’t put a price on life, but as men and women participating in a system governed by the logic of capital, we must.

The absurd result is that Effective Altruism implores individuals to pay whatever price the market demands for basic necessities on moral grounds that cut against subjecting those necessities to capitalist market logic at all.

And the conclusion:

Rather than asking how individual consumers can guarantee the basic sustenance of millions of people, we should be questioning an economic system that only halts misery and starvation if it is profitable. Rather than solely creating an individualized “culture of giving,” we should be challenging capitalism’s institutionalized taking.

Just trying to inspire discussion over beers, y'all.

Tomorrow at Chef Space, all sweet tooths are invited to a bake sale to benefit local charities.

Chef Space is Louisville's only non-profit kitchen incubator, and tomorrow (Friday, September 14) it is hosting a Bake Sale to benefit local charities.

The bake sale runs from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and takes place at the Chef Space campus at 1812 W Muhammad Ali Blvd, Louisville, Kentucky 40203.

Here's the lowdown from the Facebook event page.

Calling All Sweet Tooths – You’re Invited!

Chef Space Hosting Bake Sale to Benefit Local Charities

A Celebration of National Baked Goods Day

Chef Space is hosting the very first West Louisville Bake Sale on Friday, September 14th in celebration of National Baked Goods Day. Six local bakers are joining forces to fill Chef Space with treats and raise money for six different local community organizations. Chef Space is a quick three-minute drive from downtown, there is plenty of parking, and the bakers will be accepting cash or credit cards.

Chef Space, 1812 W. Muhammad Ali Blvd

Participating Bakeries and Benefits Organizations

Scarlett’s Bakery - Benefitting Scarlett Hope

Believe Cakes and More - Benefitting Coleridge Taylor Elementary School

Norma Jean’s Baked Goods - Benefitting (TBA)

Sweet Dreams Baked Goods - Benefitting The Sweet Dreams Project

Sweet On You Bakery - Benefitting Office of Multicultural Ministries & National
Endometriosis Research Center

Sweet Peaches - Benefitting The Lily Pad

For more information, www.ChefSpace.org

Regular readers will recall my profile of Chef Space for Food & Dining Magazine's Spring 2018 issue (Vol. 59).

Later the full text appeared right here at NA Confidential.

LIVE TO EAT: "Chef Space: a kitchen incubator ... and a community venture."

"We’re Louisville’s only non-profit kitchen incubator, dedicated to helping early stage entrepreneurs launch their food-based businesses," explains Andrew Held, vice president of operations.

Christopher Lavenson is the president of Chef Space, and he proceeds to a bigger picture. "We’re part of a larger revitalization project, and this basically is an engine to create jobs through food entrepreneurship."

Granted, clogging our streets with charitable donation bucket brigades MIGHT slow traffic, but it would be UNSAFE to bet on it.

Noting in advance that my 3rd district council representative Greg Phipps is absolutely correct in expressing disgust with the solar-powered Nothing Doing Machines, as erected by planners who never walk, for the ostensible purpose of helping pedestrians cross the street, here's the rough paraphrase of a conversation he and I had following Thursday evening's soul-crushing student city council meeting.

Me: We need to talk about the street grid.

Greg: I know you have issues, but look, at times you have to compromise, and it's better than it was before. It's a start.

Me: Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say it is better than before. It can still be improved, so we need to talk about the next phases for improvement.

Greg: Well, you know, probably nothing else is ever going to happen.

Me: 

As reported earlier, council devoted thirty minutes to a discussion of potential ways to alter the body's own previous legislation in 2013 to ban non-profits, little leaguers, knitting circles and Dishevel New Albany from sending volunteers wading out into the street to solicit donations from road-enraged drivers at major  intersections.

Back in 2013, when Dan Coffey lobbied furiously in favor of this ban (now he's caterwauling just as frenetically against it), the major point in its favor was safety:

"Drivers suck and they're distracted, and walkers suck and they're distracted, and we need to keep them separate." 

Actually there's a far better argument, one so obvious that even Bob Caesar grasps a shard of it, in that if non-profits can't come up with any better way to raise money than shaming distracted drivers, maybe they need to rethink their entire existence.

But I digress.

Last Thursday night, the discussion got predictably weird when Phipps suggested that in the aftermath of the two-way grid project's completion, and the addition of turn lanes at those major intersections preferred by city-sanctioned panhandlers, it is more dangerous for bucket brigades in 2018 than it was in 2013, to which Coffey turned on this lazy fastball down the middle of the chute and correctly replied, paraphrased:

But if the grid project actually has slowed traffic and improved matters for the pedestrians like you say it has, wouldn't collecting donations be safer, not more dangerous?

Yes, it was THAT kind of night. Here's a series at Strong Towns, which I'll introduce with this passage, substituting Our Town for Wichita):

In cities where Vision Zero has worked, the public sector has shown dedication to reorienting its departments away from the traditional, siloed approach toward a collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach to streets that involve traffic engineers, police and fire departments, elected officials, public health professionals, and the community from the very outset of streets projects — extending this collaboration to community-wide planning for safe streets.

In New Albany, we must change our conception of streets simply as conduits to move cars as efficiently as possible to places that enhance the health, wealth, and safety of all New Albanians.

In successful cities, streets are for people.

A New Vision for our Streets: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 by Alex Pemberton

A completely preventable traffic death shows us how street design makes our cities unsafe, and how simple adjustments could change that.

Collateral damage: Sadly, the era of "One Night with the Publican" guided tasting certificates for charity has ended, at least for now.

I can't remember when the tradition started of my donation of certificates for private beer tastings to worthy non-profit organizations for their use in fund-raising, typically at silent auctions. If pressed to guess, perhaps ten years. Some of these organizations have been repeat customers, year after year. The total number of certificate redemptions over this span of time probably has been somewhere between 75 and 100.

It's been a wonderful ride, and a great way of leveraging value for positive results. I'm proud of it. The certificates cost NABC only a few ounces of beer per attendee, breadsticks and my time, anywhere between one hour and three, depending on the interest of the particular group. These tastings kept me sharp and on my toes. There was the occasional dud, but my memories are uniformly excellent.

It's February, the usual calls and e-mails are coming through, and I'm obliged to be the bearer of bad tidings. Owing to my estrangement from NABC -- I remain a shareholder, albeit one stripped of corporate offices and with no say or day to day presence -- this charitable component has come to an end. I hate to say no; alas, I cannot say yes.

Maybe as time passes, I'll come up with something similar. Maybe something similar might work with another local establishment, whether brewer, bar or restaurant. Maybe next year. For the time being, I see little choice except to wait until another method of operation presents itself.

This makes me feel awful, but there's not much I can do. Sorry.

Nash: "I just had to get a little creative."

I may be a complete joke, but I know a good column when I read it.

NASH: Give what you can, by Matt Nash

 ... Seven years ago, I decided that I would do what I could for a charity. I don’t have a lot of money to make much of a difference, but I do have some time and some talents that can be used for good instead of evil. Over the years, I have developed a few different ways to help raise money for the Polar Plunge for Special Olympics. This year was my most successful in collecting donations — I just had to get a little creative.