Pints & Union Portfolio: Drink a pint of Akasha Otterburn English Brown tonight and I'll match the pub's dollar donation to The Food Literacy Project.

If you're in the vicinity of downtown New Albany today after opening at 4:00 p.m., consider stopping by Pints&union and enjoying a pint of Akasha Otterburn English Brown.

We have ten fine drafts, but here's why I'm recommending just one of them.

At Pints&union there's a new Thursday innovation for Pint Night, in which pub staff selects a charity/nonprofit to feature on a monthly basis, and we donate a dollar to it from every regularly priced draft beer sold on Thursday.

Concurrently these programs and projects also have a weekly platform to educate and inform the good folks who frequent the pub.

During the month of June we're partnering with The Food Literacy Project, which provides farm-based experiential education and entrepreneurial youth development programs aimed at bringing the field-to-fork experience to life for Louisville area youth. Last Tuesday we sold around 100 pints, which means that roughly $100 is headed to The Food Literacy Project.

Tonight (Thursday, June 13) I'm personally sweetening the deal: Drink a pint of Akasha's lovely Otterburn English Brown Ale and I'll match the pub's donation, dollar to dollar. If we sell 20 pints of Otterburn, then The Food Literacy Project gets $40. It's a great beer for an equally great cause. 

Here's the whole draft lineup.

Truth in headlines: "New Albany BUYS two seats on 1Si's Economic Development Council with $30K donation -- but that's fine because it's all meaningless."

It turns out I wasn't the only observer who found it a bit strange that the Tom May Compendium's city council coverage yesterday trumpeted the purely peripheral: "New Albany gets two seats on 1Si's Economic Development Council with donation," but then again, perhaps terminal decline has a way of disorienting headlines and content.

First a brief detour, because recently arrived readers might be confused, so here's a reminder of why I'm referring to the local chain newspaper in this way.

"News and Tribune" changes its name to "Tom May Compendium."

(March 25, 2018)

First the newspaper doubled down on its weekly Sunday coverage of religious superstition with two columnists, one local (Tom May) and the other not (Nancy Kennedy).

Now May gets a second column slot (albeit it one not published weekly) at a time when the newspaper surely would be better served by a newfound commitment to diversity.

Apparently the free-lancer May used to be the ad-driven publisher Hanson's minister, or best friend, or some such example of crony journalism. It's the sort of fertilizer guaranteed to produce a bumper crop of satire, so now I'm a farmer -- and I'm digging, digging, digging.

Back to those two awesome donation bonuses.

One Southern Indiana visits city council, sells $30,000 of pencils, and flies back to Abuja.

In Morris's story for the Tom May Cornucopia, only a slim paragraph is devoted to these seats on 1Si's mysterious star chamber. Fortunately, Mark Cassidy attended Thursday's meeting and he explains what the newspaper neglected to add.

Mark begins by referencing my larger point that our regional economic development (read: oligarch enrichment) organization tends toward breathless exaggeration when claiming ripple-effect prowess; perhaps not in accuracy of the raw statistics they quote, but assuredly as it pertains to their role in producing them.

I asked the council how I could obtain the materials 1SI presented to the council as proof of their worth. Vicki Glotzbach (city clerk) offered to make me a copy that night, and Dan Coffey offered his to me on the spot. Thanks to both of them. I will be reading it closely. Not that it will make any difference.

Indeed. This particular barn-less horse was last seen galloping in the direction of River Ridge. Regardless, I'm looking forward to Mark's report. He then gets to the "two seats" sequence. I've highlighted one critical point.

Bob Caesar asked the only question. He wanted to know why the money we gave them last year was for a specific project, but this year it is more of a general contribution. Actually it's an excellent question. Scott Blair rambled on about this and that, and then came what I think was the real answer: For a $30k donation of this type, the city will get two seats on the 1SI high muckety-muck Economic Development Council. One is appointed by the Mayor and one by Council.

This is a board that gets to hear things first. Anyone think Scott wants a seat?

And, yes, the only way to get a seat on this prestigious board is by contributing a minimum of $10,000. Qualifications such as education and/or experience be damned. A fat wallet is all it takes.

Perhaps the Tom May Anthology's headline should have read like this.

New Albany BUYS two seats on 1Si's Economic Development Council with $30K donation -- but that's fine because it's all meaningless.

Begging for density -- or, a city council meeting recap for Thursday, March 15, and the case for liquor as proper vaccine.

I live in a country that chronically devalues, denigrates and under-funds social services — or, if you will, the safety net.

Then, neglecting to drink the three martinis that might have given me immunity to the inevitable IQ-reduction therapy, I am treated to a city council populated entirely by 50-something white male NAHS graduates undertaking to discuss helping strapped local charities by reviving curbside donations by sanctioned panhandlers bearing buckets, but only the certified organizations, mind you; we wouldn’t want those in need to beg for THEMSELVES, would we?

How gauche, so let’s be sure and make the bucket brigades LOOK as respectable as possible, maybe lanyards, badges and a dress code, then they’ll fleece enough drivers on Calmed! Chaotic! two-way streets (no one can decide which, so enter your biased viewpoint here) to refrain from soaking the taxpayers for social services.

We don’t want it to LOOK bad when these sanctioned organizations like the Salvation Army shake down drivers, or it to LOOK bad for the needy to tend to their own panhandling, or for it to LOOK bad for there to be people in need in the first place, which is why perennial luminaries like Dan Coffey can simultaneously insist there isn’t anywhere near enough affordable housing in NA, then vote against the Mews proposal in his own district, though he flipped and voted for a PUDD development at Daisy & Green Valley (below), all the while insisting that 500 affordable housing units at the New Albany Housing Authority must be abolished.

Meanwhile, ask our nine city council members to define density, and their answers will range from “3” to “33” to “TILT.” The Democrats who wrote the comprehensive plan that stipulated density continue to oppose density, having forgotten to define it exactly in the document they approves.

The banker Blair supports annexing more suburban land when we know it only escalates maintenance costs. Paddy Mac thinks walkers are always to blame in accidents because they don’t know their place, and compares the street grid to the painted striping on a factory floor. Coffey plots a coup to seize municipal power for the K of C; barring that, he'll accept public money to restore the facade.

Barksdale, supposedly a Republican, supports the Mayor (a Democrat) more often than Phipps, one of Gahan’s most dependable yes men.

If I were to predicate my 2019 support for council representatives on a simple pattern of logical consistency from one meeting to the next — from ONE MINUTE to the next -- there’d be no need to even consider voting. I haven’t witnessed so many circular arguments since King Larry walked the earth (one time on a single ordinance requiring three votes, Kochert voted for, against, and abstained), when all I really want to do is to live in a country that values social services without the need to assign non-profit bucket-wielders a Caesar-issue security clearance.

The newspaper's coverage centers on the zoning ordinance. Nothing is said about the "let's make NA great again for non-profits begging in the streets" ordinance adjustment, which ultimately was tabled so Coffey can fine-tune it into a shibboleth he can micro-manage between barbecued bologna campaign backslappers.

New Albany City Council turns down proposed development at Daisy Lane and Green Valley, by Erin Walden (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — A high-end housing development proposed to go near Green Valley Road and East Daisy Lane has been squelched.

The first two readings of an ordinance that would have rezoned 5.1 acres for development failed on a 5-4 vote during New Albany City Council's meeting Thursday night.

Check out the new logo for TheatreWorks of Southern Indiana, and please consider donating.

At Facebook, TheatreWorks of Southern Indiana has revealed this sharp new logo.

A big thank you to Stephen Brown and Mind's Eye Creative for our new logo! We love it!

Mr. and Mrs. Confidential have donated to the cause, and you also should consider a sponsorship.

Patron of the Arts Sponsorship

Support the Arts in SoIN

TheatreWorks of Southern Indiana is pleased to offer a creative outlet for actors throughout the region as well as presenting top notch entertainment and educational opportunities. As a non-profit, we depend on patrons and businesses to augment ticket sales in the operation of the theatre. As a patron you will receive priority notification of upcoming events as well as acknowledgement in each program for the 2017-2018 season.

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A handy attention-getter: "Want a More Progressive Democratic Party? Stop Donating to It."

Think of it as tough love.

As for Occam's Razor in everyday life: The reason for the gaping leadership void in the Floyd Democratic Party is precisely the absence of leadership, nothingness less, and nothingness more. Meet the new loss ... same as the old loss.

Want a More Progressive Democratic Party? Stop Donating to It, by Lawrence Hess (The Nation)

...  My wife and I are donors to progressive causes and candidates. Over the years we have also given to Democratic Party campaign committees in efforts—along with other progressive donors—to move the party in the progressive direction. Now we are through with that. We will not donate to any of the Democratic Party’s four campaign committees or any allied independent expenditure committees unless and until the party makes meaningful and substantial progressive changes regarding personnel, targeted voters, and agenda. We encourage all party donors, at whatever level, to join us.

Planned Parenthood, primary endorsements, Ayatollah Coffey, and Feeling the Bern.

Before Christmas, as some new variety of Neanderthal right-wing offensive against Planned Parenthood seemed to be mounting (I tend to lose track of them), a friend announced that she'd match donations to PP up to a maximum amount.

We had skipped a year or two, and so I tithed ... freely and happily.

Then, as so often occurs, New Albany's city council offered black comic relief. With funding for Blessings in a Backback in the fanny pack, and her legislative "legacy" complete, departing at-large council person Shirley Baird seemed ready to insert a benign resolution into the agenda in support of PP.

Dan Coffey, at the time still clinging to a Vietnamese-rice-paper-thin allegiance to the Democratic Party, readied to unleash the legions of the pious.

The Ayatollah Coffey sharpens his knives for a Thursday evening orgy of ward-heeling religious ecstasy.

Courageous to the last inning, Baird promptly pulled the offensive resolution, perhaps having been told by Adam Disney that keeping Coffey happy would ensure many bountiful returns during the next cemetery registration drive.

Planned Parenthood resolution pulled from Thursday council agenda, so I guess the Coffey spontaneous combustion is off, too.

But there is no rest for progressives in this squalid town. No sooner than we had made our donation to PP, the organization goes and does this.

online-backlash-after-planned-parenthood-endorses-hillary-clinton/">Massive Online Backlash After Planned Parenthood Endorses Hillary Clinton

In a historic move yesterday, Planned Parenthood endorsed Hillary Clinton for President – its first endorsement in a presidential primary in the nonprofit’s 100-year existence.

(Slaps head) ... if we'd wanted to donate to Hillary, it would have been money handed directly to her campaign. This may or may not yet occur, depending on the autumn threat posed by the fascists, with the point being that PP offers this endorsement in the primary, not the general election.

Let there be no misunderstandings about Planned Parenthood. We support it, but the next donation of equal or greater amount is going to Bernie Sanders. As one compelled to suffer through the clownish cerebral decline of the local Democratic Party, I have no desire to finance the ethos of "Let's Out-Republican the GOP."

Fuck a bunch of Dickeyism. Rather, "Feel the Bern."

Meanwhile ... PP reminds us that in One Party Indiana, the spirit of Generalissimo Franco and the Inquisition live on. ‬

Just one week in to Indiana’s legislative session, anti-woman politicians have proposed five bills opposing access to safe, legal abortion – with more likely to follow. It’s time to speak out against extreme restrictions and gross misinformation.

• SB 144 (Sen. Banks)/HB 1122 (Rep. Nisly) would restrict a woman's access to safe, legal abortion on pregnancies as early as 6 weeks - long before most women even know they are pregnant. If enacted, these bills would result in an effective ban on abortion in Indiana.

• SB 374 (Sen. Waltz) more than doubles the waiting period between the time a woman receives counseling and the abortion procedure to 48 hours. It also increases penalties on abortion providers. If enacted, this bill could strain the resources of women who access abortion – many of whom already face significant barriers to high-quality health care.

• SB 313 (Sen. Holdman) distorts the lived experiences of women facing unexpected and difficult decisions during their pregnancy. If enacted, it would force doctors to speculate on a woman’s motives at a time when the urgent need is non-judgmental care and support.

• SB 314 (Sen. Brown) continues the dangerous rhetoric of anti-abortion extremists. In doing so, it contributes to a hostile climate for health care providers and patients.

These bills make clear that some of our legislators have no respect for Hoosier women and their families or privacy for health care decision-making.

Pledge to take action now to stop these dangerous measures in their tracks.

In solidarity,

Planned Parenthood Advocates of Indiana and Kentucky