GREEN MOUSE follows up: "How Dollar Stores Became Magnets for Crime and Killing."

Picking up where we left off on February 13, when I asked, "What sort of upper crust prohibitionist’s rationale is being advanced here?"

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Neo-prohibitionism, foppery and hypocrisy at Indiana Landmarks as Family Dollar on Vincennes gets a perfectly legal alcohol sales permit.

This led to a traumatic Facebook kerfuffle, deletions and recriminations, and subsequently I was made aware of other back-channel goings-on, but by then the dark pandemic clouds were gathering and nothing much happened with any of it. Honestly, I've no idea whether the Family Dollar in question ever received the alcohol permit.

At the time, I was perfectly well aware of the controversies engendered by the contemporary growth of Family Dollar, Dollar General and other such carpetbagging stores in the context of impoverished areas, employment practices, food deserts, inept local governments and a host of other ills that capitalism gleefully exploits for the benefit of the accumulators of capital, at the expense of ordinary people who exist to be steamrolled.

What particularly bothered me back in February was the involvement of Indiana Landmarks, whether active and real or merely tactically suggested by opponents of the Family Dollar alcoholic beverages permit, as well as the paternalistic attitude of more than one self-identified (and Reisz-stuffed) historic preservationist concerning their responsibility to help the poor folks lest too many paychecks get squandered on booze -- an argument that was tired and regrettable a century ago in the run-up to Prohibition.

To be precise, I take none of it back -- not a word -- and note only that with the intervention of more important matters, the discussion came to an end. So it goes.

Now, about Family Dollar, Dollar General and others of the species. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power, and in this gripping long read, Alec MacGillis explains "How Dollar Stores Became Magnets for Crime and Killing."

 ... The Gun Violence Archive, a website that uses local news reports and law enforcement sources to tally crimes involving firearms, lists more than 200 violent incidents involving guns at Family Dollar or Dollar General stores since the start of 2017, nearly 50 of which resulted in deaths. The incidents include carjackings in the parking lot, drug deals gone bad and altercations inside stores. But a large number involve armed robberies in which workers or customers have been shot. Since the beginning of 2017, employees have been wounded in shootings or pistol-whippings in at least 31 robberies; in at least seven other incidents, employees have been killed. The violence has not let up in recent months, when requirements for customers to wear masks have made it harder for clerks to detect shoppers who are bent on robbery. In early May, a worker at a Family Dollar in Flint, Michigan, was fatally shot after refusing entry to a customer without a mask.

The number of incidents can be explained in part by the stores’ ubiquity: There are now more than 16,000 Dollar Generals and nearly 8,000 Family Dollars in the United States, a 50% increase in the past decade. (By comparison, Walmart has about 4,700 stores in the U.S.) The stores are often in high-crime neighborhoods, where there simply aren’t many other businesses for criminals to target. Routine gun violence has fallen sharply in prosperous cities around the country, but it has remained stubbornly high in many of the cities and towns where these stores predominate. The glowing signs of the discount chains have become indicators of neglect, markers of a geography of the places that the country has written off.

But these factors are not sufficient to explain the trend. The chains’ owners have done little to maintain order in the stores, which tend to be thinly staffed and exist in a state of physical disarray. In the 1970s, criminologists such as Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson argued that rising crime could be partly explained by changes in the social environment that lowered the risk of getting caught. That theory gained increasing acceptance in the decades that followed. “The likelihood of a crime occurring depends on three elements: a motivated offender, a vulnerable victim, and the absence of a capable guardian,” the sociologist Patrick Sharkey wrote, in “Uneasy Peace,” from 2018.

Another way of putting this is that crime is not inevitable. Robberies and killings that have taken place at dollar store chains would not have necessarily happened elsewhere. “The idea that crime is sort of a whack-a-mole game, that if you just press here it’ll move over here,” is wrong, Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told me. Making it harder to commit a crime doesn’t just push crime elsewhere; it reduces it. “Crime is opportunistic,” he said. “If there’s no opportunity, there’s no crime” ...

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Neo-prohibitionism, foppery and hypocrisy at Indiana Landmarks as Family Dollar on Vincennes gets a perfectly legal alcohol sales permit.

Heavens, these people make it hard to take a sabbatical, but someone has to provide the "free press" counterweight by offering an opposing point of view, and it might as well be the Green Mouse. Jeeebus, can you let us rest for once?

In which Greg Sekula of Indiana Landmarks, evidently unaware that the docket for the monthly meetings of the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission’s local board us announced weeks in advance, and furthermore, finds at long last that 1:00 p.m. weekday meetings are difficult for normal folks to attend, strenuously objects to an Indiana alcohol sales permit approved for Family Dollar on Vincennes, and does so on behalf of his employer Indiana Landmarks, which if I’m not mistaken in the past has actually hosted a meeting of the Brewers of Indiana Guild in Indianapolis (which I attended), at which the viability of alcohol sales as a means of saving (that’s right) landmarks was both discussed and advocated.

In fact, is there not a special class of Indiana alcohol sales permits precisely intended for listed historic structures (not newer “shittier” non-contributing buildings), to be used primarily in dense downtown areas, and available as a means of placing alcohol permits where they otherwise might be rejected (in cases of proximity to a church, for example)?

And, isn’t the long existing Uptown Liquors equidistant from New Albany High School? Is the same effort being undertaken to shut it down?

We’re all aware of the Dollar General/Family Dollar opprobrium. It’s real enough, and these sort of stores generally are opposed by the well-heeled, who resent untrammeled capitalism’s inelegant but apparently thriving solution to the absence of shopping options in poor neighborhoods.

You don't hear them questioning untrammeled capitalism, do you?

It’s also quite hard to see how hypocritically massing New Albany’s elite clique cadre against Family Dollar on the grounds of alcohol sales makes sense given the proximity of Uptown Liquors to the high school.

There are numerous reasons why the Vincennes Street corridor has declined, and most begin with the closing of the automobile lanes on the K & I Bridge 40+ years ago. Family Dollar’s very presence in this neighborhood is a symptom of numerous other issues pertaining to institutionalized squalor, which four decades of New Albany civic “leadership” refused to address, and now the beautiful people are disturbed by the ensuing mess.

I’m no fan of Family Dollar, but in terms of alcohol sales permits, what exactly has the company done wrong? If the store is located too close to the school, the local ATC board would not receive a recommendation to approve it. If the store elects to sell to minors, you can rest assured the ATC will intervene, as it does elsewhere. There are very few state institutions that perform their functions as capably as the ATC, trust me.

What sort of upper crust prohibitionist’s rationale is being advanced here?

Is it because Family Dollar won’t be selling $20 six-packs of craft beer, but reasonably priced mass market beers (even hard seltzer) to people who don’t have ready surpluses of disposable income -- or, precisely the reason why Family Dollar exists where it does in the first place?

The supreme irony is this: if the K & I Bridge reopened tomorrow as a pedestrian and bicycle link to Louisville, overnight the desirability of alcohol sales permits located on the Vincennes Street corridor would skyrocket, and just as quickly, Sekula and his pals would be advocating on behalf of Indiana Landmarks to expand the riverfront development area to include the corridor and make more three-ways available for the investors who’ll save historic buildings by selling $15 martinis to gentrifiers.

Those opposed to Family Dollar's lawful exercise are planning a remonstrance with the ATC. It’s not clear to me what real-world criteria they have to oppose it (precious little, me thinks), but I’ll try to keep abreast of this and inform you.

Greg, if you’re reading -- You're okay, but please, enough of this hypocritical elitism. It’s woefully shabby. Can you and Barksdale just stick to buildings and inanimate objects? You’re both very good at that, although the wheels invariably come flying off every time local preservationists pretend to think about actual people.

Following is the correspondence the Green Mouse stumbled across (thanks, D).

---

Subject: Family Dollar, Vincennes Street Alcohol Sales Permit Issued - URGENT ACTION NEEDED

New Albany colleagues,

At today’s meeting of the Floyd County Board of the Indiana Alcohol Tobacco Commission, a permit/license for beer and wine sales was approved for the Family Dollar on Vincennes Street. Unfortunately, I was alerted about this meeting at the 11th hour and was luckily able to be in attendance to voice my objection on behalf of myself (a nearby resident) and Indiana Landmarks. Regrettably, only four individuals were in attendance (myself, David Barksdale, John Clere, and a representative of Carter Management), all of whom spoke in opposition to the permit. Other than the Family Dollar representative (who was not from the area and even acknowledged that he was not familiar with the local store), no one spoke in favor of the application. Since the meeting was at 1 in the afternoon, many folks were unable to attend due to work or school obligations.

Shockingly, the Board voted to recommend approval of the license to the State Board! There is a 15-day appeal time frame, the application of which is attached along with the state guidelines that govern the license process. See attachment and link.

Allowing Family Dollar to sell alcohol will be a setback for efforts to revitalize the Vincennes Street Corridor and surrounding historic neighborhoods – Midtown, Uptown, and Depauw Ave. Historic District. Close proximity to New Albany High School is a major concern in addition to trash potential and access to cheap alcohol by a vulnerable population. Successful efforts have been mounted in neighboring states (specifically Dayton , OH, and Louisville, KY) to stop licenses from being granted to specific stores, particularly in vulnerable neighborhoods.

I believe a united effort is needed to stop this! What is uncertain is whether someone who was not in attendance can enjoin an appeal. Shane Gibson, can you see what options we have?

Greg Sekula,
Indiana Landmarks

The cool kids can go fu ... well, you know what I mean.

The pirate looks at sixty, and the evidence is incontrovertible. Each time in my life, when for some arcane reason it seemed a good idea to try becoming a cool kid -- part of the "in" crowd, belonging to a certain trendy group, inhabiting a clique, seeking to enlist in the power elite or aspiring to a socially ascendant organization -- it always has turned out badly.

Always; without exception.

It's better to remain contrarian, an iconoclast, infidel and outsider, because staying true to yourself at least allows your dignity to remain intact. Independence is neither cool nor uncool. It is merely principled. It just is.

Not only that, but you can't become a cool kid by your own rule book, anyway. The beautiful people, those fashionable arbiters of style, have rules of their own, and if you have to ask what these are, you'll never know.

Furthermore, I'm allergic to arrogance, and the thought of abiding the inevitable group-think is enough to avoid these entangling alliances.

The so-called cool kids generally select a leader; there's a head cheese or a big dog at the apex of their pyramid, and this grand poobah usually turns out to be my intellectual inferior; often, he or she quite simply is a dreadful dullard and the ensuing idolatry makes no sense.

Accordingly the exalted boss's followers acquiesce at being sheeple, no less arrogant or exuding their in-crowd privileges, but otherwise devoid of understanding and unaware of any meaningful narrative apart from yearning to belong to something irrespective of the cost to their identities.

You can count me out.

Again and again, perhaps twice on Sunday, remorseless experience has taught me that the "cool kids" aren't cool at all. They'll always make you drink the Kool-Aid first, before there's any chance of acceptance, and then stripped of autonomy, you become one of the braying jackals.

Don't misunderstand, because remaining independent does not imply aloofness. Cooperation still serves the common good, so long as the conditions are clear. I stand ready to be of assistance -- just don't expect me to sell out.

Because you can't afford me, dipshits.

Follow the change order money, 'cuz Deaf Gahan needs the Reisz Mahal finished before the anticipated re-enthronement.

No follow-ups from the News and Tribune. No digging. Just boilerplate, ma'am -- and if we record the lies exactly as they were told to us, our job is finished.

"It was in such poor shape; they told us it was going to fall down if we didn't do something," New Albany city attorney Shane Gibson said of the Reisz building. "This is really going to be nice."

Nice. Very nice.

Like the grand total of between $12 and $15 million in nice taxpayer funds to alleviate David Barksdale's supposed "inhumane" working conditions in the current City-County Building ... but mostly because an imperial mayor requires a suitably imperial palace from which to govern, correct?

Need I contrast the extravagance required by local governing elites with the homeless camp recently demolished on orders of the very same mayor?

That's okay, progressives, I know; cognitive dissonance is growing. Trace it to its source and you'll find one of your own.

#FireGahan2019

Crews ready to 'hit the ground running' on Reisz building renovation, by Chris Morris (The Tom May Daily Sermonette)

NEW ALBANY — It still doesn't look like much. An old building, with no windows and a front wall that has to be supported by large beams. Hard to imagine anything happening to this structure other than being bulldozed.

But plenty has been going on at the old Reisz Furniture building since last October.

Two side of precisely the same economic elitism, so let's choose our own path of internet radicalization.

As the right wing pageantry grinds to its oafish conclusion in Cleveland, with the duopoly's brethren preparing for its own spectacle in Philadelphia, let us return to important considerations of why neither political party can be trusted.

Donald Trump and the Revolt of the Proles, by Mike Whitney (CounterPunch)

 ... Economic insecurity. Brexit was about economic insecurity. The Trump phenom is about economic insecurity. The rise of left and right-wing groups across Europe and the US is about economic insecurity. This isn’t about ideology, it’s about reality; the reality of not knowing if you’re ever going to be able to retire or put your kids through school or make your house payment or scrape by until payday. The reality of muddling by in an economy where the prospects for survival look worse with every passing day. That’s the reality that made Trump possible, and that’s what this election is about, economic insecurity.

And:

The world is taking its revenge against elites. When will America's wake up? by Thomas Frank (The Guardian)

It felt so right, this Democratic infatuation with the triumphant young global professional. So right, and for a certain class of successful Americans, so very, very obvious. What you do with winners like these is you celebrate them. Winners need to win. Winners need to have their loan payments deferred, to have venture capital directed their way by a former president. That all these gestures might actually represent self-serving behavior by an insular elite does not appear to have crossed our leaders’ minds in those complacent days of June 2016.

But by the time of Hillary Clinton’s speech the happy, complacent mood was already beginning to crumble.

Marohn: "Our words and actions are making it impossible for us to listen to each other. Not only does this hurt our communities, it is making us ripe for exploitation."

At times, the best course of action is cutting to the chase. However, you'll want to click through and read Marohn's views on the Brexit vote.

Listening is the ultimate two-way street, isn't it?

THE IGNORANT AND THE ELITES, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

 ... I'm going to today end with this: I'm not going to argue with you in the comments section about whether the Brexit is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm not going to debate whether or not the people who voted Leave are ignorant or enlightened. I don't want to discuss the global ramifications of Brexit. None of these topics are important to building a Strong Town.

What is important, and it's the only reason I'm writing this piece, is that we're not listening to each other. Even worse, our words and actions are making it impossible for us to listen to each other. Not only does this hurt our communities, it is making us ripe for exploitation.

If you follow us here at Strong Towns, you know that things are going to get more difficult for America -- much more difficult -- before they get better. You can be left-of-center and be a Strong Towns advocate and you can be right-of-center and be a Strong Towns advocate. Your politics doesn't matter. What really matters is whether or not you listen.

We need a movement of people who can work with others. People who, in desperate times, facing a vast array of complex problems, can lead people to respond rationally. If you want to be one of those people -- and I hope you will -- join me in working on your listening skills.

"The Reaction to Brexit Is the Reason Brexit Happened."

A writer for the New York Times visits Sunderland.

 ... when the decision to pull out of the European Union sent markets into a tailspin, Ken Walker, a retired construction worker, was unfazed.

“I don’t have any money in the stock market,” Mr. Walker, 59, said as he drank a pint of beer in a pub. “So what’s it to me?”

The pub, called the Speculation, still had “Vote Leave” posters on its walls, and a fellow drinker exclaimed “Aye!” and banged the counter in agreement.

There's a novel idea. Leave be the social wedge issues, and concentrate on chipping away at the stock portfolios of your "betters." Hit 'em in their wallets. Make 'em squeal. Are you hurting yourself by doing so? Maybe, but you were hurting already.

The Reaction to Brexit Is the Reason Brexit Happened, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

If you believe there's such a thing as "too much democracy," you probably don't believe in democracy at all

... Because the vote was viewed as having been driven by the same racist passions that are fueling the campaign of Donald Trump, a wide swath of commentators suggested that democracy erred, and the vote should perhaps be canceled, for the Britons' own good.

Social media was filled with such calls ...

... You have to be a snob of the first order, completely high on your own gas, to try to apply these arguments to present-day politics, imagining yourself as an analog to Plato's philosopher-kings.

And you have to have a cast-iron head to not grasp that saying stuff like this out loud is part of what inspires populations to movements like Brexit or the Trump campaign in the first place.

"The French are right: tear up public debt – most of it is illegitimate anyway."

I love social elites ... as long as they're properly cooked.

The French are right: tear up public debt – most of it is illegitimate anyway ... Debt audits show that austerity is politically motivated to favour social elites. Is a new working-class internationalism in the air?, by Razmig Keucheyan (Guardian)

As history has shown, France is capable of the best and the worst, and often in short periods of time.

On the day following Marine Le Pen's Front National victory in the European elections, however, France made a decisive contribution to the reinvention of a radical politics for the 21st century. On that day, the committee for a citizen's audit on the public debt issued a 30-page report on French public debt, its origins and evolution in the past decades. The report was written by a group of experts in public finances under the coordination of Michel Husson, one of France's finest critical economists. Its conclusion is straightforward: 60% of French public debt is illegitimate.

These being the community principles we ignore in New Albany.

In New Albany, starting about a year and a half ago, a process was initiated to spend more than a million bucks toward creating a place -- in this instance, a downtown park meant to honor the city's Bicentennial --  conceptually trickling from the top down, as it's always been done, and stewarded by a relatively small group of surely well-meaning persons who nonetheless cannot seem to grasp that the planet is filled with useful ideas, and maybe every now and then, it might be a good thing to be "lower case" democratic about such matters. Unfortunately for the noblesse oblige theory of civic management, our movers and shakers possess too narrow a conceptual vision, which isn't always very obliging. When one's prime objective at every turn is retaining control, it discourages involvement, which in turn becomes the rationale for retaining control: See, no one else can or will do it. It simply isn't true, and I wish "they" could see that.

As an example of what I'm saying, here are eleven principles for creating community spaces. Did any of them feature in the development and implementation of Rent Boy Park?

Eleven Principles for Creating Great Community Places

Didn't think so.

Road diets: Abhorred from Indian Hills to Karolus Magnus.

In New Albany's case, resistance to a "road diet" for Spring Street must be coming from the "greater" public residing entirely outside town. Is there an Indian Hills in Clarksville?

Traffic jam: Brownsboro Road ‘diet’ pits the ‘greater public’ and their Ultimate Driving Machines against Blue Collar bikers, pedestrians

By STAFF | Published: MAY 29, 2012

Run, pedestrian, run!

By Curtis Morrison, Louisville Courant

Progressive change, whether treating sewage or creating safe streets, does not come easily when the always petulant greater public is not getting its way.

Take for example the proposed “road diet” for Lower Brownsboro Road (closer to downtown), a plan to slow traffic by reducing the road to one lane each direction  from two lanes, with a center turn lane. The redesign would add a sidewalk, but commuters from the wealthy areas the road connects to downtown – including Windy Hills and Indian Hills – are less than thrilled.

Why doesn't the council's Pro-Bloc face the public with its smoking ban reasoning?

It occurs to me that New Albany’s Greatly Unnecessary Smoking Debate of ’08 hasn’t been much of a debate at all, at least where the public is concerned.

When all is said and done, and if the city council stumbles through second and third readings of the ordinance next Thursday, all of it will have come down with precisely one -- one – (1) -- public meeting on the topic, and with public speaking/discussion sessions during only two actual council meetings.

As we know, council protocol for public speaking time limits citizens to five minutes. However, this being New Albany, the limit is rarely universally enforced. I’m betting that this coming Thursday, it will.

Apart from at-large councilman John Gonder, who contributed a comment to NAC on Thursday, the council's Pro-Bloc seems uninterested in public dialogue of any sort. We can only speculate as to why it has refrained from facing voters en masse in the way that fellow council members Steve Price, Jack Messer and Diane Benedetti did earlier in the week when explaining their opposition to the ban.

To be sure, irony abounds in 3rd district councilman Steve Price’s decision, at long last, to take an interest in a cause beyond his preferred hobby of voting against things for kicks.

Because Price long ago placed concrete shoes on the notion that he’ll ever give a damn about actually improving his neighborhood, virtually any cause will suffice as evidence of a pulse, and while smoking rights isn’t the noblest available, credit him with the chutzpah to go out, beat the bushes, and rally people to his flag. Price may not grasp the science involved, and in this, he’s far from alone. But he’s exposed his neck.

Here, strangely, the Siamese Councilmen finally part ways. While utterly clueless as to cause and effect, Price’s “freedom for the people” stance is fully consistent with his five-year-long regressive council nap. On the other hand, Dan Coffey’s flagrant hypocrisy, while mildly progressive in some obscure way, can’t be playing very well on the West Side with the nicotine-inspired voters he routinely patronizes.

Meanwhile, with precious little public input, the Pro-Bloc apparently has no plans to greet the people and defend their position, even if the occasional surreptitious cocktail party with our area’s professional health fascism lobby can’t be ruled out.

As I stated yesterday, color me not only skeptical, but contemptuous. When all this newly minted concern for public health coalesces into unified opposition to New Albany’s time-honored slumlord entitlement program, I’ll be a believer. When I see the health department, the drug task forces and Coffey passionately defending the right of the public to basic living standards, I’ll be a believer.

Until then, it’s a random spinning of the “we really care” wheel, and I’ve no choice except to muddy the scrum.

Logically speaking, all businesses should buy state tobacco licenses and become retailers, right?

Yesterday’s post about New Albany’s ongoing Greatly Unnecessary Smoking Debate of ’08 generated a plethora of comments, and I’d say that more than a few cans of worms were opened.
Council smoking farce: I'm taking it personally, too.

I read the essay aloud last evening on New Albany Now (blog talk radio), and Randy Smith provides this link if you wish to hear the spoken word.

Today, let’s focus on the comments generated yesterday. On the topic of the proposed ban’s effect on business, Ruthanne wrote:

Many businesses close because they were already struggling and/or the owners were ready to retire or move on.

Recall that in yesterday’s piece, I wrote:

The impact may indeed be short-term for my own business, but in an uncertain economy, and with consumers beset by rising prices, who among us should be forced by legislative fiat to make such a short-term sacrifice?

Quite frankly, the more I thought about Ruthanne’s comment last evening, the more puzzled I became. There is no way of knowing whether her “struggling … ready to retire” statement is true or not, although I’ve heard it repeated often by the pro-ban lobby both here and elsewhere. One thing that strikes me is that anyone repeating it without forethought may well have never owned a business.

As an example, the owners of the B & B tavern recently moved from Main Street to a new location, the former Stan's. I don’t know them personally, and they don’t run the type of tavern I favor, but those two points matter very little. It is clear from their comments to the Tribune that they believe the vast majority of their clientele to be smokers, and given the necessity of any business owner knowing his or her market, they obviously included this observation – this market research – in their plan of operation.

Also, they've just moved to the new location. Anyone who knows anything about such matters realizes that whether starting up fresh or moving, it's a big challenge for a business at the beginning.

Now, with little warning, the owners of the B & B are being told that their smokers will not be welcomed inside. There isn’t much space at the site to build a grandiose outside area, as might be possible at my own business, and anyway, they may not have any cash left to do it after the move.

So, having established that they're "already struggling" because they've only recently started anew, and now that they’re being given a not-so-gentle governmental shove, what are we to conclude if they can’t make it?

That they were struggling, anyway?

With the unspoken corollary: They must not have been very good business people, anyway.

Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me, although I could be mistaken. Furthermore, if ban proponents are going to shrug at places like the B & B, and blame its ensuing economic misfortune on it and not the legislators yanking the rug from beneath its feet, all the while trusting that respectable people like Sam Anderson and Roger Baylor need only spend more of their bountiful money to cope with the effects of the ban, then I believe we have steamed full throttle back into elitism, plain and simple.

---

I'll confess that in order to make the following somewhat coherent, I've had to miss a few contexts on the fringe. Readers are welcomed to check back with yesterday's thread to view the overall ebb and flow. Ruthanne made the case for an exemption.

Bluegill wants no exemptions. The only one I'm aware of is tobacco stores. Unlike other businesses, the sale of tobacco products is their sole purpose. Tobacco is, after all, still legal. There are no children admitted and second-hand smoke is not an issue, as non-smokers/tobacco users would not be patronizing such a store.

My blogging partner Bluegill answered.

Whether or not non-smokers are present is not an issue, unless you're regulating preference rather than workplace safety (and claiming that smokers are less worthy of protection).

To be honest, if Kaiser's hadn't been here so long, I don't think that provision would have been included. Even Tommy pointed out that his exemption was bollocks.

The fact that some of the council smiled and nodded as if to say "you're welcome" when he said thanks for exempting his family from the law was a pretty pathetic display of either contempt for equality or supreme ignorance.

BTW, if tobacco is the root of all the problems you say it is, why, of all people, should the council single out the family that makes its living by selling it for exemption? Shouldn't they be trying to drive them from our midst in the interest of public health and medicare savings?

Not all tobacco users smoke and there are plenty of other businesses besides tobacco stores where all or a majority of the employees smoke. How many separate but equal situations do you want to endorse? ...

... At this stage of the game, not a single council member gets it. Make it fair or don't do it. Given the majority's constant CYA maneuvering, I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

Maybe we should get Jamey Aebersold to advocate for code enforcement. Do the Kaisers own any rental property?

Bluegill continued to explore elitism.

You all can argue as much as you want but, as long as the ordinance contains the type of exceptions and exemptions that (councilman) John (Gonder) has already voted for once, the ban isn't about public health. It's about personal preferences.

If it's about public health, then all workers must be protected and not just some, unless John and others would like to explain why some lives are worth more than others. That's what the proposed ordinance says, and that's elitist.

He went on to elaborate:

What a lot of this boils down to is the ability to pass ordinances at little to no financial cost.

Like many other ordinances on New Albany's books, the smoking ban (no matter how it's written) is destined to fail in implementation because there's no one to enforce it.

Hell, ban walking and we can all wave to each other as we pass on the sidewalk, just like we've always done.

We'll know the majority of the council is sincere about anything having to do with public health when they agree to pay for enforcement.

We'll know they're sincere about the law at all when they agree to legally and equitably redistrict and at least act like the foundation of democracy means anything to them.

Until then, ANY law they pass will be a matter of saying that everyone should be required to follow the rules except them.

If that's not hypocritical and elitist, what is?

And, Bluegill concludes:

Whether or not an exemption filled ban could withstand a direct legal challenge (and I don't think it could based on the (Louisville) precedent that Roger mentioned on-air) is only part of the picture.

If smoking ban foes are clever enough, they'll also challenge this council's authority to enact any legislation.(Better to do it now than to wait for the slumlords to do it.)

In order to rebuff that challenge, the council would have to prove that their authority was granted through a legal election process. They can't really do that.

I'm intrigued, also, by Randy's on-air assertion that if an exception was made to the ban, he'd immediately insist that he, too, be granted the sovereignty to decide the smoking issue for his own business. But, he says here in print that he supports the ordinance as written.

Why do the exemptions in the current ordinance not matter? Or why would new ones matter more or less?

Re: the vote argument- I would hope that most sensible citizens and, quite frankly, our attorney friends especially, would spend their time and talents arguing that everyone should be treated equally under the law rather than trying to justify why they're not.

Then again, Jerry Ulrich may have more job security than anyone in town. The way things are going, the next vote might be to dedicate EDIT money to the council's legal defense fund.

Indirect subsidies to rental property owners: The ultimate in "elitism"?

And I've turned inside out and 'round about and back and then,
Found myself right back where I started again.
--Jim Croce, “Age”

Can you tear a rotator cuff by shrugging?

----

Spin it any way you like. Point selectively to one ordinance rather than another. Advocate starving an arm of government even while you’re criticizing it for underperformance. Repeat trite homilies so often that even your dog turns tail and runs for cover. Try to square as many circles as you please – go on; no one’s counting, primarily because no one ever learned to count. Transform personal grievances into relentless crusades. Change the subject. Howl at the moon. Pretend you’re a college professor. Switch personalities the way some people change ball caps.

It’s all immensely entertaining to me. Now, sweep all the subterfuge and evasions aside, and the fundamental questions still remain:

Why does the city of New Albany have such difficulties enforcing its own laws?

Why does a culture of ownership mean so little to so many who steadfastly (and hypocritically) claim to believe in market-based, democratic precepts?

Why is it so difficult to grasp that New Urbanism is little more than leveraging usable existing resources to create greater opportunities for greater numbers?

Is there something we’ve missed in the evolution of New Albany, beyond the obvious fact that anti-intellectualism is the only true religion that unites disparate elements within the city’s gates?

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It can’t be denied that at some point in the dim and distant past, the community deemed it fitting and proper to provide a regulatory regime for its housing stock. If this were not so, there would be no pertinent codes on the city’s books, and yet they’re right there.

Evidently the community is – or at least was – in agreement on this point.

Notwithstanding the devil’s advocacy of a relative few who somehow smell the stench of elitism in the impossibly radical notion that rule of law might constitute some form of a level playing field, it would appear that these building and housing codes amount to commonly agreed-upon standards, and as such, they pertain to minimum considerations of safety on behalf of all, but especially those, like children, who are most in need of protection.

Significantly, such standards also are a cost of doing business for those seeking to rent housing space to others.

However, seeing that a rule of bathos continues to define everyday political life in New Albany, it has been apparent for years, perhaps decades, that the city has chosen to abdicate significant portions of its responsibility to enforce these standards. The practical consequences of such negligence are horrid, they are damning to the legacies of those who have aided and abetted it, and only the blindly disingenuous among us have failed to note them.

Not only has the city’s housing stock deteriorated, with commensurate damage to the efforts of current and future generations to preserve the city’s viability, but the cynical and seemingly perpetual abandonment of the poor and the powerless to vicious recurring cycles of vastly reduced health, safety and hope have contributed immeasurably to an abysmally wretched civic reputation that unfortunately has been fully earned.

If all that were not sufficient for compensatory show trials to begin immediately, this historical abandonment of enforcement, and our persistent neglect of standards, has in reality amounted to an indirect subsidy for rental property owners, one that reduces the cost of doing business as a landlord. Whether such a situation increases the owner’s profit margin is a scenario that readers may contemplate on their own time, but I don’t believe it is far-fetched.

Given the prevalence of federally subsided housing, ineffective or infrequent HUD inspections might constitute yet another indirect subsidy of this purportedly “market-based” system of warehousing people. Whether or not this is the case is for others to determine, but the central point remains: Indirect subsidies that result from a relaxation of accepted standards surely reduce some costs for rental property owners, but at an unfairly high price for the city as a whole.

It is my contention that subsidies might be deployed in a far more productive fashion.

Just about everyone, occupying all sides of this and other issues, agree that while rental property always will be a fact of life, and in fact should be a fact of life, the community is better off as a whole when more people own their homes.

Rather than the indirect subsidy given rental property owners when standards are not enforced, which we can reasonably infer does much to enable the less functional aspects of neighborhoods filled to the brim with rental properties, doesn’t it make more sense to enable home ownership through any measure possible? Indirect subsidies, direct subsidies – whatever and whenever possible. Shouldn’t we seek to enable a culture of ownership?

Americans seldom grasp satire, but disingenuousness would seem to be a birthright. The "market forces" referred to earlier this week by commentators like Knighttrain currently aren't "free market" at all, any more than exurban sprawl represents a “free market,” because we all subsidize that particular “free market” mechanism, too. Don't we have both a right and an obligation to examine the myriad ways that direct and indirect subsidies provide for both the continued exploitation of the underprivileged by unregulated landlords, and inflict ever greater individual expense to prop up widened public services in expanding exurban areas?

Why aren't we demanding a "full investigation" of these incredibly expensive phenomenons?

Ah, politics in spring. As we’ve seen throughout this week’s threads, there are many – my 3rd district Uncouncilman almost certainly foremost among them – who will shamelessly seek to transform this issue of a truly civil society's basic community standards into a completely different (and self-aggrandizing) tug-of-war touting have-nots vs. haves, us vs. them, and little people vs. elitists. It's simply not true.

It isn't elitist to seek economic development that makes the pie bigger for all.

It isn't elitist to suggest that we directly subsidize home ownership rather than indirectly subsidize exploitation.

It isn't elitist to posit that without investing in the future of the community, there is little hope of the community’s future.

Elitism? That dog won’t hunt, and at least some of you know better than to imagine that it might. If you’re looking to defend the indefensible, you’re going to have to come up with something stronger than populist blather.

Right, Steve?