Indianapolis strip club owner attacks councilman for being "pompous." Heck, he could have TASED him -- right, Dugout?

For video, follow the Indy Star link.

In New Albany, it would have been the Common Council, not an Alcoholic Beverage Board snoozer, and here the councilman would be attacking the strip club owner, as Dan Coffey once vowed to do to a private citizen while disguised as a copperhead snake.

It's Halloween every day in the city's 1st council district, but I digress.

Coincidentally, this helps to explain why there has been so little support through the years for filming our city's city council meetings. True, it's gotten less fractious recently, but let the constituents see what really goes on, and strip club attendance might go down.

Or up.

Man accused of attacking Indy Councilman Jeff Miller shares his side of story, by Ryan Martin (Indy Star)

The owner of a south-side strip club is accused of attacking Indianapolis councilman Jeff Miller during a public meeting Monday in an act of retaliation over Miller's yearslong opposition to the bar's liquor license.

Police say Jeffery Moe, 51, grabbed Miller by the throat with both hands, picked him up and slammed his head against a wall. Moe later told police he "cleaned (Miller's) clock and I'll do it again," according to court documents filed Tuesday.

But Moe, who faces two felony and two misdemeanor charges, disputes how the attack was characterized by police. Moe told IndyStar he grabbed Miller's collar and shook him.

“I did not grab his neck. I shook him,” Moe, who owns Lenny's Gentlemen's Club, told IndyStar. “I was not intending to injure Mr. Miller. I was meaning to tell him to stop being a pompous politician.”

HH Parade 4: Watch as Dan "Grand Inquisitor" Coffey throws live copperhead snakes at parade-goers -- but the funeral school has the last (and perhaps only) laugh.

For the kiddos, Coffey had papyrus scrolls detailing the ins and outs of the rhythm method, which paired perfectly with the embryos being tossed onto the street by Right To Life.

At the same time, speaking personally, I prefer baby snakes to copperheads, but then again, I'm not a Falangist.

Speaking of the grimness of Coffey's reaping and droopy snakes, for comic relief comes the single best parade entry of the day, bar none.

It was a spark of creativity amid the dross. The governing committee usually manages to extinguish any attempt at offbeat humor of the sort that might embarrass the hallowed institution (3rd place, seriously?), so abundant kudos to the funeral school.

You were a ray of light, if not a venomous serpent.

Earlier: HH Parade 3: It's #HisNA, so Democrats downsize the float, but jack up their hypocrisy.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time in 2011 when Dan Coffey insisted on the immediate implementation of two-way streets.

"Coffey is arguing that it's the pedestrians that are causing trouble

for the 'poor' motorist. Poor is a quote. Subject new crosswalks."

I missed a city council meeting last Thursday, and so was denied the orgasmic opportunity to witness the latest configuration of the Contortionist Copperhead, our Councilman Cappuccino.

Of course, in many world languages the hard variable "C" of English is represented with the letter "K", which would render the preceding usage a delightful quartet: KKKK.

But enough of strikeouts.

If you're just coming to NAC's coverage of New Gahania, you may not know why we often refer to Dan Coffey as a Copperhead (Kopperhead).

Actually, we didn't pioneer this appellation. It's how Coffey once referred to himself.

Dan Coffey's copperhead shake described: "Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino" (2015/2011/2009).

... surrounded by witnesses numbering at least one fellow council member and various other public officials as well as ordinary pub patrons, Coffey initiated a heated discussion with (Jeff) Gillenwater that ended with Coffey aggressively grabbing Gillenwater by the shoulders and vowing to be “like a copperhead” and to “strike when you least expect it.”

In case you’re wondering, here is the definition of assault ...

Naturally, nothing whatever was done about Coffey's bullying then, nor will it be now. New Albany's "pillars" of leadership -- chief among them Dear Leader, Jeff Gahan -- always tolerate Coffey's antics because they think he can be used, when in fact, he's almost always the one pushing their buttons.

Beyond this idiotic cowardice on the part of presumed community standard bearers, it also may be surprising to learn there was a time when Coffey not only supported two-way traffic on New Albany's interstate-grade streets, but also wanted to be seen as the valiant leader of the effort.

From March 11, 2015, this remembrance of the forgotten time in 2011 when Coffey thought he could fool a new generation of downtown business operators into respecting him.

For once, he miscalculated. They laughed -- and that's why Coffey has returned to bashing them, and defending our beleaguered universal autocentrism.

(thanks Mark)

---

Our long civic nightmare finally ends as CM Cappuccino returns to the country comforts of obstructionism.

Boy, that was strange.

Around the time the Sherman Minton Bridge became ill back in 2011, Dan Coffey started making sense on occasion. I remember him convening a meeting at Lancaster's, and speaking stridently of the importance of using the opportunity of the bridge shutdown to restore two-way traffic to New Albany's streets, RIGHT NOW.

Why? Because it would be beneficial to small, independent businesses downtown.

In subsequent years, the unknown space alien continued to occupy Coffey's body. Heads were scratched raw as he actually became the voice of reason at council meetings. Perhaps the makeover was a run-up to the county commissioner's race in 2014, when Coffey -- with no city council seat to wager or lose -- was unable to muster any semblance of a fighting spirit, and suffered a humiliating 22-point defeat to Mark Seabrook.

Maybe he just decided that urban demolitions were more lucrative kicking back than exurban bulldozing.

Whatever the rationale, the universe has been out of sync, and the gods obviously weren't happy, and so now, at long last, we have our Cappuccino back, merrily contradicting himself on the topic of streets, and -- unopposed in his re-election to the post of Wizard of Westendia -- freely caterwauling and chewing scenery on topics of which he knows next to nothing. It's just like old times. Now all we need is Professor Erika blowing rancid cigarette smoke in his face.

The odds that Coffey actually read Speck's report?

Same probability that I've chugged a Miller Lite in the last five years, which is to say: Zero.

Welcome back. We've missed you so very much.

(Click through to read reporter Suddeath's redevelopment report in its entirety)

River Ridge may gain Toyota instead of New Albany, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

TIF ALSO TIED TO TWO-WAY STREETS

New Albany would likely use TIF funds to provide its 20 percent match to a $2.5 million federal grant for calming traffic in the city’s downtown.

The money could, for example, be used to flip one-way streets to two-way traffic.

On March 18, the city will hold its final public hearing on planner Jeff Speck’s street study, which is strongly in favor of two-way conversion, smaller traffic lanes and more on-street parking.

It’s one step the city has taken as it prepares its strategy for utilizing the federal grant, which was awarded through the Kentuckiana Regional Planning & Development Agency, or KIPDA.

But New Albany City Councilman Dan Coffey believes the city might need another report.

“I still don’t think it would hurt to have another, unbiased study,” said Coffey, who is also a member of the redevelopment commission.

Speck’s study is a plan “that’s been slanted toward one view,” he added.

“I’m really disappointed in the way that turned out,” Coffey said.

Mayor Jeff Gahan’s administration has largely remained noncommittal on Speck’s recommendations. With the Ohio River Bridges Project expected to bring more motorists to New Albany, Gahan has acknowledged the city will likely need to make adjustments to the traffic grid.

The final public meeting on the Speck report will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on March 18 at the Pepin Mansion, which is located at 1003 E. Main St.

Gahan and Coffey Together Forever, Part 7: Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino (29 January 2009).

LAST: Gahan and Coffey Together Forever, Part 6: Let's hear it from the council: Can taxpayers speak openly during their time, or does the Wizard decide who is heard? (24 January 2009).

In my fifth Tribune column, I introduced the general public to the spasmodic violence of Dan Coffey's violent Copperhead Shake. It did not create an uproar, primarily because most people already knew that Cappuccino is the reaaw deal.

Elsewhere upon publication, I noted in passing ...

As for the Coffey Agonistes piece today, all I ask is that anyone planning on attending Monday’s city council meeting ... please bring a video camera.

As stated previously, I plan on using the full five minutes of my non-agenda speaking time to offer a heartfelt homily on something or the other as yet undetermined. It will tug the heart, tease the brain, induce laughter in the gallery and offer the council president the irresistable opportunity to gavel me away from the podium and exact his revenge. It would be nice to have such a moment captured on film and displayed prominently on this page.

In fact, for so long as Coffey’s latest outrage goes publicly unaddressed by his trembling political peers, I suggest that as many of us as possible attend and be prepared to speak. After all, there’s no such thing as too much information, is there?

Eight years have passed.

Has anything changed, Pat?

---

Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino.

29 January 2009

Truth is stranger than fact.
-- Grandpa Jones, “Hee Haw”

During the first city council conclave of 2009, Dan Coffey was elected as president against token opposition, which is to say none, these vital matters commonly being determined in back rooms that formerly were smoky, before the health fascist jihads of the present era, and with words like “democratic” and “contested” seldom required as modifiers.

Coffey represents the 1st council district, which he congenitally insists is ignored by the city’s power elite. Unsurprisingly, he has never explained why nine dynamic years in office have not brought about certifiable gains to his neighborhood. This strange absence of progress may have something to do with Coffey’s own council-side manner … but I digress.

As president, Coffey succeeds 6th district councilman Jeff Gahan, himself a three-time wielder of the magic gavel, and to whom Coffey was joined at the political hip for much of the latter half of 2008, presumably owing to an alliance of expedience on the part of otherwise disparate political entities, both transparently desirous of a larger stage upon which to perform, sharing a stubborn impatience with those who display the impudence to object, and harboring the potentially catastrophic belief that one can manipulate the other.

In essence, Coffey is council president because Gahan finds it useful, and while Gahan perhaps believes that Coffey genuinely has something to offer the city, he may also have acquiesced with Machiavellian intent to position Coffey for a damaging fall. Either way, the events of Thursday, January 15 are sufficient for us to question both Coffey’s suitability for office and Gahan’s political judgment.

Considering Coffey’s boorish and unstable behavior at the conclusion of the meeting, first inside the council chamber and then later at a local licensed establishment, the admonition recently scrawled above the decaying urinals at the Luddite Bar & Grill is sufficiently prescient to apply to Gahan:

“Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

---

Full disclosure compels me to proudly acknowledge that both Mark Cassidy and Jeff Gillenwater are longtime friends, the latter joining me and others as plaintiffs in the redistricting case mentioned here. Furthermore, it should be noted that I did not personally witness the events described, although I’ve spoken to individuals (other than the preceding) who were there.

That said, it is hardly in keeping with established council protocol for Coffey to imperiously jeer and then abruptly terminate the well-intentioned efforts of a fellow citizen – a fellow taxpayer, no less – to address the council during the public speaking period allotted for comments on non-agenda items, a periodically entertaining feature added to the biweekly agenda for the express purpose of giving people the opportunity to, yes, address the council.

Hectored citizen Cassidy came before the council and waited patiently for the opportunity to read a prepared statement and ask a simple question: Does the current legislative aggregation have any intention of doing its Constitutional duty to draw fair electoral districts by lawfully redistricting for the first time since 1992?

Cassidy, a non-partisan volunteer on the redistricting committee formed by the council last year at the behest of a federal court judge annoyed by the council’s sloth, politely endeavored to ask this question, but Coffey – whose job description presumably includes an obligation to uphold procedure and decorum – argued with Cassidy and gaveled him down, reverting to the serial distemper that Coffey oddly believes his fellow New Albanians should view as statesmanlike.

----

But flagrant abuses of authority are seldom confused with statesmanship, and now we must contemplate the latest in a series of red flags warning New Albanians that the voices emanating from Coffey’s interior political world plainly render him unfit for office.

Coffey inhabits an eerie Hieronymus Bosch landscape filled with mysterious conspiracies, withheld information and unfathomable daily slights emanating from people and ideas he cannot begin to grasp, and he comprehends only two poles of reference: Himself, and the enemy – or “them people.”

Accordingly, the story resumes after meeting’s end with Coffey's verbal and physical harassment of another, entirely different citizen in Studio's, the fine downtown eatery and bar on Main Street.

There, surrounded by witnesses numbering at least one fellow council member and various other public officials as well as ordinary pub patrons, Coffey initiated a heated discussion with Gillenwater that ended with Coffey aggressively grabbing Gillenwater by the shoulders and vowing to be “like a copperhead” and to “strike when you least expect it.”

In case you’re wondering, here is the definition of assault:

A crime that occurs when one person tries to physically harm another in a way that makes the person under attack feel immediately threatened. Actual physical contact is not necessary; threatening gestures that would alarm any reasonable person can constitute an assault.

It is incredible, shameful and indefensible. New Albany’s council president refused to permit a citizen to speak during the time allotted for it, and then both verbally and physically accosted another citizen in a public place. Is there any better example of the New Albany Syndrome than Dan Coffey’s skewed perspective of “leadership,” as manifested by these lamentable outbursts?

Aren’t they primal screams, not the sagacious deliberations of a paid public servant?

Can any member of the council excuse Coffey’s bad acting?

Can any of them deny that he continues to make New Albany the laughing stock of the region, thwarting the efforts of so many people to invest in the city’s future and revitalize the municipality?

Can any council member refute that Coffey’s most recent meltdown tars each and every one of them with the same degrading brush?

How can Coffey’s fellow council persons sleep at night knowing that they have empowered him with an office that he is unable to exercise responsibly?

I’m thinking of one of them in particular.

--

NEXT: Gahan and Coffey Together Forever, Part 8: Open thread: City council meeting of Monday, February 2 (3 February 2009).

Coffey emerges from closet: "I am no longer affiliated with the Democrats."

As a preface to what follows, twelve years of cold, hard experience teaches us that Dan Coffey possesses only one foundational sub-cellar: Coffey will be Coffey. He is the very personification of street corner shell game. The odds favor the house ... and Coffey is the house.

This said, at last evening's city council meeting, a bizarrely meek and understated Coffey informed his fellow council members that he's a free agent: "I am no longer affiliated with the Democrats."

Horrified, area Republicans rushed to social media to clarify: "I speak for the Floyd County Republican Party when I say that Dan Coffey is not a member of the Republican Party. That is all."

Later I remarked that if Scott Blair and Dan Coffey both are viewed as "independent," then I might as well run for mayor next time as a socialist, because they're absolutely ruining my brand.

But the final word is reserved for Jeff Gillenwater.

Are there any Floyd County Democrats who are affiliated with the Democrats?

See also:

ON THE AVENUES: This is Dan Coffey, New Albany’s quintessential Democrat.

Vintage Coffey Klatch: "Let me explain by threatening you."

It's a far cry from the infamous Copperhead incident, or the various other threats Dan Coffey has issued over the years, but yesterday he took to the pages of social media to gently caress the blog.

Dan Coffey
Roger, thanks for an older picture of me. I have a lot more hair in this picture. Let me know if you need any of your postings from the past 3 years. I'm sure you will be able to use them fo your upcoming campaign. I"ll do my best to help get them out in the public for you.

NA Confidential
The complete and unexpurgated archives of NA Confidential since 2004 are available without encryption or invocation at http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com

This week's scorecard:

Dan Coffey's homophobic council tantrum: The Video.

Longtime homophobe Coffey offers heartfelt prayer for his "lying piece of (expletive)" colleague.

Prayer duly restored, the Ayatollah Coffey will now decide whether your religion deserves his stamp of approval.

Dan Coffey's copperhead shake described: "Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino" (2009).

For those just tuning in, Dan Coffey's bullying behavior during Monday's council meeting might seem startling.

Rest assured, this career councilman has been embarrassing New Albany for as long as he's been sitting there, pausing only to be completely obliterated by a broadly grinning Mark Seabrook in a catastrophic run for county commissioner run last year.

Consequently, we suffer some more. Here's a 2011 reprint of a 2009 column, explaining the mysterious origins of our coiled, copperhead Cappuccino.

---

REWIND: Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino (2009).

It's 2011, and council person Dan Coffey is being sued for allegedly fleecing an old woman and her family. The simmering case brings to mind the advent of Coffey's violent copperhead shake, which I introduced to the public in this January 29, 2009 column in the Tribune. It did not create an uproar, primarily because most people already knew that Cappuccino is the raw deal.

---

By ROGER BAYLOR
Local Columnist

Truth is stranger than fact.
-- Grandpa Jones, “Hee Haw”

During the first city council conclave of 2009, Dan Coffey was elected as president against token opposition, which is to say none, these vital matters commonly being determined in back rooms that formerly were smoky, before the health fascist jihads of the present era, and with words like “democratic” and “contested” seldom required as modifiers.

Coffey represents the 1st council district, which he congenitally insists is ignored by the city’s power elite. Unsurprisingly, he has never explained why nine dynamic years in office have not brought about certifiable gains to his neighborhood. This strange absence of progress may have something to do with Coffey’s own council-side manner … but I digress.

As president, Coffey succeeds 6th district councilman Jeff Gahan, himself a three-time wielder of the magic gavel, and to whom Coffey was joined at the political hip for much of the latter half of 2008, presumably owing to an alliance of expedience on the part of otherwise disparate political entities, both transparently desirous of a larger stage upon which to perform, sharing a stubborn impatience with those who display the impudence to object, and harboring the potentially catastrophic belief that one can manipulate the other.

In essence, Coffey is council president because Gahan finds it useful, and while Gahan perhaps believes that Coffey genuinely has something to offer the city, he may also have acquiesced with Machiavellian intent to position Coffey for a damaging fall. Either way, the events of Thursday, January 15 are sufficient for us to question both Coffey’s suitability for office and Gahan’s political judgment.

Considering Coffey’s boorish and unstable behavior at the conclusion of the meeting, first inside the council chamber and then later at a local licensed establishment, the admonition recently scrawled above the decaying urinals at the Luddite Bar & Grill is sufficiently prescient to apply to Gahan:

“Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

---

Full disclosure compels me to proudly acknowledge that both Mark Cassidy and Jeff Gillenwater are longtime friends, the latter joining me and others as plaintiffs in the redistricting case mentioned here. Furthermore, it should be noted that I did not personally witness the events described, although I’ve spoken to individuals (other than the preceding) who were there.

That said, it is hardly in keeping with established council protocol for Coffey to imperiously jeer and then abruptly terminate the well-intentioned efforts of a fellow citizen – a fellow taxpayer, no less – to address the council during the public speaking period allotted for comments on non-agenda items, a periodically entertaining feature added to the biweekly agenda for the express purpose of giving people the opportunity to, yes, address the council.

Hectored citizen Cassidy came before the council and waited patiently for the opportunity to read a prepared statement and ask a simple question: Does the current legislative aggregation have any intention of doing its Constitutional duty to draw fair electoral districts by lawfully redistricting for the first time since 1992?

Cassidy, a non-partisan volunteer on the redistricting committee formed by the council last year at the behest of a federal court judge annoyed by the council’s sloth, politely endeavored to ask this question, but Coffey – whose job description presumably includes an obligation to uphold procedure and decorum – argued with Cassidy and gaveled him down, reverting to the serial distemper that Coffey oddly believes his fellow New Albanians should view as statesmanlike.

----

But flagrant abuses of authority are seldom confused with statesmanship, and now we must contemplate the latest in a series of red flags warning New Albanians that the voices emanating from Coffey’s interior political world plainly render him unfit for office.

Coffey inhabits an eerie Hieronymus Bosch landscape filled with mysterious conspiracies, withheld information and unfathomable daily slights emanating from people and ideas he cannot begin to grasp, and he comprehends only two poles of reference: Himself, and the enemy – or “them people.”

Accordingly, the story resumes after meeting’s end with Coffey's verbal and physical harassment of another, entirely different citizen in Studio's, the fine downtown eatery and bar on Main Street.

There, surrounded by witnesses numbering at least one fellow council member and various other public officials as well as ordinary pub patrons, Coffey initiated a heated discussion with Gillenwater that ended with Coffey aggressively grabbing Gillenwater by the shoulders and vowing to be “like a copperhead” and to “strike when you least expect it.”

In case you’re wondering, here is the definition of assault:

A crime that occurs when one person tries to physically harm another in a way that makes the person under attack feel immediately threatened. Actual physical contact is not necessary; threatening gestures that would alarm any reasonable person can constitute an assault.

It is incredible, shameful and indefensible. New Albany’s council president refused to permit a citizen to speak during the time allotted for it, and then both verbally and physically accosted another citizen in a public place. Is there any better example of the New Albany Syndrome than Dan Coffey’s skewed perspective of “leadership,” as manifested by these lamentable outbursts?

Aren’t they primal screams, not the sagacious deliberations of a paid public servant?

Can any member of the council excuse Coffey’s bad acting?

Can any of them deny that he continues to make New Albany the laughing stock of the region, thwarting the efforts of so many people to invest in the city’s future and revitalize the municipality?

Can any council member refute that Coffey’s most recent meltdown tars each and every one of them with the same degrading brush?

How can Coffey’s fellow council persons sleep at night knowing that they have empowered him with an office that he is unable to exercise responsibly?

I’m thinking of one of them in particular.

Are you ready for a Copperhead commissioner?

There's a city council meeting tonight, as moved from the Monday holiday, but council agenda items (including street department appropriations) merely pale in significance compared to the stirring announcement that Dan "Councilman Cappuccino" Coffey plans to challenge former colleague Mark Seabrook for a seat as county commissioner.

It's time to move on ... unless, of course, he loses; after all, the next city council election isn't until 2015. Will the Wizard of Westendia move up the ladder? Will Vicky Ann Denschak take her rightful spot as hag apparent? Will we make it through the day without projectile vomiting?

But seriously: When it comes to Coffey versus Seabrook, I suppose I'm a Copperhead now.

I prefer the venal over the funereal any day.

Anyone got a phone booth? Genuine local Democrats for Obama need a meeting place.

The Bookseller provided an excellent comment on my Saturday post, in which I confided, "I may be an egotistical bastard, and yet I never doubt that the larger stage upon which one performs is collectively built."

Four more years, because Bain-think is Budweiser-think with fewer letters.

I see you remember that a majority of Indiana voters chose Obama (though I'm sure you can find someone to tell you even THAT didn't happen). The shame is that once-reliably Democratic (or maybe just Copperhead) Floyd County did not choose to align with our incumbent President.

How many "Democrats" does it take to accomplish that? And how many "Democrat" officeholders would sign a newspaper ad endorsing Obama this year? Want to get such a public endorsement petition started? You go first. Get Gahan's signature on it, then I'll go next.

Will Bob Caesar go fourth? I'm for it. The NYT editorial board explains why.

EDITORIAL: President Obama’s Second Chance (New York Times)

 ... Mr. Obama went into this convention with an actual record at governing — not just the Republican posture of saying “No” to everything. He has far better ideas about how to create jobs, make Americans’ tax burdens more equitable and improve ordinary Americans’ economic prospects than the tired, failed trickle-down fantasies served up by Mitt Romney and the Republican Party.

He ended the war in Iraq, tried to rescue the Afghan war that Mr. Bush bungled, stepped up the offensive on terrorists far beyond Mr. Bush’s vision and rallied the world to ratchet up pressure on Iran.

He blunted the extreme message of the Tea Party by offering an alternative vision of government’s obligation to help the neediest, provide everyone with the basic structures of society and the economy and end unconscionable discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans. He has protected women’s constitutional rights and liberties, despite his own misgivings about abortion. He ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden — an act that was mentioned repeatedly on the last night of the convention.

REWIND: Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino (2009).

It's 2011, and council person Dan Coffey is being sued for allegedly fleecing an old woman and her family. The simmering case brings to mind the advent of Coffey's violent copperhead shake, which I introduced to the public in this January 29, 2009 column in the Tribune. It did not create an uproar, primarily because most people already knew that Cappuccino is the raw deal.

---

By ROGER BAYLOR
Local Columnist

Truth is stranger than fact.
-- Grandpa Jones, “Hee Haw”

During the first city council conclave of 2009, Dan Coffey was elected as president against token opposition, which is to say none, these vital matters commonly being determined in back rooms that formerly were smoky, before the health fascist jihads of the present era, and with words like “democratic” and “contested” seldom required as modifiers.

Coffey represents the 1st council district, which he congenitally insists is ignored by the city’s power elite. Unsurprisingly, he has never explained why nine dynamic years in office have not brought about certifiable gains to his neighborhood. This strange absence of progress may have something to do with Coffey’s own council-side manner … but I digress.

As president, Coffey succeeds 6th district councilman Jeff Gahan, himself a three-time wielder of the magic gavel, and to whom Coffey was joined at the political hip for much of the latter half of 2008, presumably owing to an alliance of expedience on the part of otherwise disparate political entities, both transparently desirous of a larger stage upon which to perform, sharing a stubborn impatience with those who display the impudence to object, and harboring the potentially catastrophic belief that one can manipulate the other.

In essence, Coffey is council president because Gahan finds it useful, and while Gahan perhaps believes that Coffey genuinely has something to offer the city, he may also have acquiesced with Machiavellian intent to position Coffey for a damaging fall. Either way, the events of Thursday, January 15 are sufficient for us to question both Coffey’s suitability for office and Gahan’s political judgment.

Considering Coffey’s boorish and unstable behavior at the conclusion of the meeting, first inside the council chamber and then later at a local licensed establishment, the admonition recently scrawled above the decaying urinals at the Luddite Bar & Grill is sufficiently prescient to apply to Gahan:

“Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

---

Full disclosure compels me to proudly acknowledge that both Mark Cassidy and Jeff Gillenwater are longtime friends, the latter joining me and others as plaintiffs in the redistricting case mentioned here. Furthermore, it should be noted that I did not personally witness the events described, although I’ve spoken to individuals (other than the preceding) who were there.

That said, it is hardly in keeping with established council protocol for Coffey to imperiously jeer and then abruptly terminate the well-intentioned efforts of a fellow citizen – a fellow taxpayer, no less – to address the council during the public speaking period allotted for comments on non-agenda items, a periodically entertaining feature added to the biweekly agenda for the express purpose of giving people the opportunity to, yes, address the council.

Hectored citizen Cassidy came before the council and waited patiently for the opportunity to read a prepared statement and ask a simple question: Does the current legislative aggregation have any intention of doing its Constitutional duty to draw fair electoral districts by lawfully redistricting for the first time since 1992?

Cassidy, a non-partisan volunteer on the redistricting committee formed by the council last year at the behest of a federal court judge annoyed by the council’s sloth, politely endeavored to ask this question, but Coffey – whose job description presumably includes an obligation to uphold procedure and decorum – argued with Cassidy and gaveled him down, reverting to the serial distemper that Coffey oddly believes his fellow New Albanians should view as statesmanlike.

----

But flagrant abuses of authority are seldom confused with statesmanship, and now we must contemplate the latest in a series of red flags warning New Albanians that the voices emanating from Coffey’s interior political world plainly render him unfit for office.

Coffey inhabits an eerie Hieronymus Bosch landscape filled with mysterious conspiracies, withheld information and unfathomable daily slights emanating from people and ideas he cannot begin to grasp, and he comprehends only two poles of reference: Himself, and the enemy – or “them people.”

Accordingly, the story resumes after meeting’s end with Coffey's verbal and physical harassment of another, entirely different citizen in Studio's, the fine downtown eatery and bar on Main Street.

There, surrounded by witnesses numbering at least one fellow council member and various other public officials as well as ordinary pub patrons, Coffey initiated a heated discussion with Gillenwater that ended with Coffey aggressively grabbing Gillenwater by the shoulders and vowing to be “like a copperhead” and to “strike when you least expect it.”

In case you’re wondering, here is the definition of assault:

A crime that occurs when one person tries to physically harm another in a way that makes the person under attack feel immediately threatened. Actual physical contact is not necessary; threatening gestures that would alarm any reasonable person can constitute an assault.

It is incredible, shameful and indefensible. New Albany’s council president refused to permit a citizen to speak during the time allotted for it, and then both verbally and physically accosted another citizen in a public place. Is there any better example of the New Albany Syndrome than Dan Coffey’s skewed perspective of “leadership,” as manifested by these lamentable outbursts?

Aren’t they primal screams, not the sagacious deliberations of a paid public servant?

Can any member of the council excuse Coffey’s bad acting?

Can any of them deny that he continues to make New Albany the laughing stock of the region, thwarting the efforts of so many people to invest in the city’s future and revitalize the municipality?

Can any council member refute that Coffey’s most recent meltdown tars each and every one of them with the same degrading brush?

How can Coffey’s fellow council persons sleep at night knowing that they have empowered him with an office that he is unable to exercise responsibly?

I’m thinking of one of them in particular.

Whatever it is, Price is against it. No matter what it is or who commenced it, he's against it. Maybe he'd vote in favor of my new hat.

More about the ball cap to come.

First, Babe Ruth has nuthin' on me. It's just too easy calling shots when you have such a wealth of perennial degradation from which to pick and choose. As a case in point:

New Albany City Council could soon get monthly breakdown on sewer finances, by Daniel Suddeath.

The New Albany City Council mixed requirements from an old ordinance with new stipulations for financial oversight of the sewer utility before passing the measure 8-1 on two readings Monday.

That's right. As predicted yesterday, 3rd district councilman Steve Price voted last night against precisely the sort of safeguards he formerly serially demanded, because ...

... as (Price) explained he has no confidence that any council-ordered guidance of wastewater funds will be adhered to by the administration.

It would appear that Price and rationality have permanently parted company. Meanwhile, Dan "Copperhead" Coffey grimaced while pulling his yes lever, but provided the contents of yet another council bingo card slot:

“Our sewer board wasn’t given the information [about sewer revenue], the council wasn’t given the information,” he said.

How could we forget the critical information, which has been denied Coffey (and now the sewer board) continually since his very first day in office? But, the Wizard of Westside's oft-repeated utterance joins other enduring chestnuts like his own "I don't have a problem with that" (followed by an explanation of why he has a problem with that), and Price's "we shouldn't put all the eggs in one basket" as prime bingo card fodder. How's that project coming, anyway?

So, in the end, Mark "I Am Hoosier" ignored the begging of his cousin Daniel and gifted me with the finerprint smeared evidence that he drank Budweiser last week in St. Looey. When asked the one word to describe my feelings at owning such a prestigious item, all I could think of was:

"Halloween."

Let the copperhead have the book, and no one gets read.

(Photo credit: Illustration at left appears all over the Web. I'm not sure where it came from, and will gladly attribute if you give me a tip)