Gahan's street grid sausage-making: CNA 27 tour attendees, please help us -- New Albany is being held hostage by New Urban Imposters.

Today's the 14th, and perfect weather for New Albany's leadership cadres to mislead people -- and make no mistake, that's exactly what they'll be doing.

Gahan, Rosenbarger set to go full frontal Pinocchio about their urbanism credentials when the Congress for the New Urbanism 27 meets in Louisville June 11-15.

If any CNA 27 attendees are reading this note, and you plan to tag along on the New Albany tour this afternoon, please do me this one small favor: ask questions of these serial liars.

• Why the beg buttons? 
• Why the Main Street beautification median?
• Why the reformatted Market Street median? 
• Where are the bike lanes?
• Why so many fading sharrow markings?
• What's the reason for the plethora of routinely ignored pedestrian crossing beg-button-flashing-light "permission" stations? 
• Why is the traffic still moving so damned fast? 
• Isn't there more to walkability than bright shiny beautification projects?

They won't so much as attempt to answer, and you'll probably be hustled off to detention with the police chief.

But please try. Gahan's street grid bait 'n' switch is abhorrent, and the emperor is unclothed.

Gahan, Rosenbarger set to go full frontal Pinocchio about their urbanism credentials when the Congress for the New Urbanism 27 meets in Louisville June 11-15.

Jeff Speck's coming to the Congress for the New Urbanism's CNU 27 in Louisville. On Wednesday afternoon (June 12) in Louisville he'll be speaking about his new book Walkable City Rules.

On Friday (June 14) Speck returns to New Albany.

Whoa, boy.

We've long noted that Deaf Gahan, Pinocchio Rosenbarger and various other pay-to-play functionaries brutally gutted Speck's amazing Downtown Street Network Proposal, a renewal plan for the downtown street grid. They retained the two-way street reversion and quickly punted, discarding every other useful suggestion Speck made about bicycling, wasteful medians, the interstate intersections and so much else.

If any CNA 27 attendees are reading this note ("help us, we're being held hostage by idiots"), and you plan to tag along on the New Albany tour on June 14, please do me this one small favor: ask questions. Why the beg buttons? Why the reformatted Market Street median? Where are the bike lanes? What's the reason for the plethora of ignored pedestrian crossing beg-button-flashing-light "permission" stations? Why's the traffic still moving so fast? Isn't there more to walkability than bright shiny beautification projects?

We could have had transformation. Gahan, Rosenbarger and their coterie settled for dull shrapnel reflecting their fundamental cowardice. They should be ashamed of themselves, but as we've seen oft times before, there's nowhere near the level of self-awareness necessary for shame.

About The Congress

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is the nation’s oldest international nonprofit working to build great places and walkable, vibrant neighborhoods. CNU will host its 27th annual Congress, CNU 27.Louisville, in Louisville, KY June 12-15, 2019.

The Congress is the premier national placemaking event, convening 1500+ diverse, interdisciplinary urbanists and placemakers from all 50 states and around the globe to exchange ideas, explore urban places, work alongside residents, and learn in the field.

Congress programming is varied and accessible to urbanists and members of the public at any level of knowledge and understanding of New Urbanism.

It's the design, stupid: Months too late, but now the city will deploy speed radar detector signs on Spring Street, so as to collect information fundamentally flawed by the mere presence of the detectors.

All the way back on June 22, the Green Mouse observed the inexplicable.

Neighborhood inequality? On the placid street where Caesar lives, traffic must be moving too fast. Someone fetch a traffic engineer!

Back down here in the flood plain, City Hall's two-way grid design changed nothing apart from direction; the new street design continues to produce traffic speeds that are unsafe -- people actually die from it and not a soul employed by the city will address this fact -- and now we erect speed radar detector signs as some sort of compensation, presumably in the hope that the sight of these detectors will itself reduce speeds enough to declare victory ... or give another contract to HWC.

I'll repeat again: every bit of this is perfectly obvious to anyone who spends 15 minutes on foot or riding a bicycle in the vicinity of Spring Street. And yet something this simple continues to elude the professional monetization class in this city.

Why's it so hard for them to admit they're wrong?

Radar detector signs going up on Spring Street in New Albany, by Chris Morris (Collected Sermons of Tom May)

NEW ALBANY — Motorists soon will notice something a little different along Spring Street.

Radar detector signs, similar to the ones on McDonald Lane, are scheduled to be installed the first week of December. There will be six signs, three in each direction spaced along Spring from Vincennes Street to State Street.

City Engineer Larry Summers said the signs will tell drivers how fast they are traveling, and well as collect data on speeds through particular areas of the street.

While the street conversion from one-way to two-way traffic last year slowed traffic, residents along Spring still say other measures need to be taken to keep motorists from exceeding the speed limit. Following the death of skateboarder Matthew Brewer, who was struck by a minivan at Spring and Ninth streets in August, residents came before the New Albany Board of Public Works & Safety pleading that something be done to make the street safer.

How would Pat McLaughlin know what "truthful dialogue" means when his local Democratic looters so very seldom participate in it?

Tonight's the night. If you're a fan of sleazy, slimy, self-serving seediness, you'll want to be at this evening's council meeting as Pat McLaughlin (D-Fantasy Island) introduces a politically-motivated resolution to censure council president Al Knable.

“Resolution to Censure the Council President for Misstatements to the Council and Media Concerning New Albany Public Safety and the 911 Emergency Telephone Service.”

To be sure, it's no use assembling a political patronage machine if the elders can't periodically lift the jalopy's leg and spray Bud Light Lime-scented urine around the room, but even by the barren, subterranean intellectual standards of Gahanism, this resolution is a sham, one that closes with what surely are the most hypocritical words every uttered in Councilpalooza.

“THEREFORE, We the Common Council of the City of New Albany adopt the censure and encourage truthful dialogue in all matters.”

LOLWRP (laugh out loud with rusty pitchforks).

These pitiful Democrats now piously stipulating truthful dialogue – how often have they collaborated in denying it, or telling whoppers themselves? Here are a few occasions that spring to mind in my personal experience.

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Truthful dialogue? I attended a Tree Board meeting in May of 2016 and asked to see minutes of previous meetings. Two years later, I've received nothing.

Truthful dialogue? Was there even five minutes of public discussion about the plan to gift Flaherty and Collins with sewer tap-in waivers, a freebie without precedent, and one never previously offered to non-profits and educational entities?

Truthful dialogue? I famously asked Bob Caesar to provide the Bicentennial Commission financial records. He delayed me for two whole years, then flat refused; I made an information request from the city "corporate" attorney, who informed me these records of a formally chartered municipal entity, one that spent taxpayer money over a period of several years, don’t exist.

Truthful dialogue: We created the storm water board to be self governing and independent -- until it acted independently, then mayor-in-waiting Gahan mounted the lawsuit to strip it of independence, this being a precursor to City Hall annexing the Urban Enterprise Association and the New Albany Housing Authority.

Truthful dialogue? Develop New Albany, another taxpayer-supported organization, refuses to answer questions about the cultural appropriation encouraged by its own governing board during last year’s Taco Walk.

Truthful dialogue? Has anyone outside the mayor’s immediate circle seen financials from the water park's operation? Anyone? Bueller?

Truthful dialogue? Speaking of parks, has evidence yet surfaced of a single word in Gahan's 2011 campaign platform suggesting that just a few years later, he'd have split the county parks department and added almost $3 million in annual budget outlays to a new city-only "quality of life" want?

Truthful dialogue? Jeff Gahan, who as council president angrily refused to allow minions to speak at council meetings on behalf of the mayor at the time, has himself sent a minion to represent him at council meetings almost every time since day one in 2012.

---

The preceding are just the first vivid examples to come to mind.

Until a local DemoDisneyDixiecrat shows the first sign of a weak, labored pulse with regard to the concept of "truthful dialogue," it's the same old bait and switch: Indulge in endless “for show alone" gestures and signaling on social issues to avert eyes from the machine-led pillage being conducted by Dickey, Gahan, Gibson, Duggins and their merry crews, who'll go to any length, however nasty, fetishistic and depraved, to remain the biggest bottom-feeders peddling influence in this shrunken pond.

I encourage you to attend tonight and use your three minutes. Message me and I'll tell you how. 

Previously:

Ethically challenged local Democrats can't find a single friend as public opinion weighs in on the party's toxic Knable censure resolution.

More profiles in cravenness: "McLaughlin did not want to make a public comment until Monday's meeting."

ON THE AVENUES: Al Knable doesn’t lie, but the local Democratic Party is a flood-plain Pinocchio. Let’s censure it at the ballot box.

Gahanism is gangsterism, and Pat McLaughlin's nonsensical resolution censuring Al Knable is the best example yet of the local Democratic Party's utter depravity.

Did you miss the headline? The crux of it - DemoDisneyDixiecratic chairman Dickey is up to his eyeballs in fake facts, not to mention male moo cow feces.

The politics of diversion: "Chief Bailey is playing a losing hand, but then, they're not really his cards."

Ethically challenged local Democrats can't find a single friend as public opinion weighs in on the party's toxic Knable censure resolution.

Cricket's chirping? That's their swamp music.

For those just tuning in for today's sad installment of Local DemoDisneyDixiecrats of the Formerly Black But Now Very Greenback Lagoon, two pivotal local election cycles are approaching, the soulless pretend-left political machine is on the ropes, and that bleakest of functionaries, Pat "How High, Sir?" McLaughlin has channeled his inner Adam Dickey into a resolution to censure city council colleague Al Knable for an entirely imagined offense -- or to be brutally frank, for performing the task of council president far better than Paddy Mac ever did.

These are the depraved depths to which Team Gahan has plunged, whether the News and Tribune's deficient management team can bring itself to admit the obvious, or not.

McLaughlin's resolution serves as convenient and compelling proof that our local Democrats have left the rails. The only viable alternative to more of the same is to vote against them at every opportunity.

But first, let's take a brief glance at some of the reactions to our coverage of the ongoing travesty.

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Did you miss the headline? The crux of it - DemoDisneyDixiecratic chairman Dickey is up to his eyeballs in fake facts, not to mention male moo cow feces.

Jeff Gillenwater (junior editor): "This (Democratic Party Fb post) is a lie to advance a political agenda. Members of both parties have been discussing the possibility of a call center merger for nearly a decade. Bailey and the rest of you affiliated with this ridiculous smear attempt ought to be ashamed but, as so many have learned and are learning the hard way, you all don’t really recognize shame amongst the cheap shots, half-truths, and innuendo. The number of people swearing off the local party and its candidates because of abominable behavior like this is growing. They do not see the party as a vehicle for progressive ideas and humanitarian concerns precisely because it’s not. Those still clinging to “local leadership” are likewise losing the respect of many. Keep it up.

D: "The conflicts we Democrats face at the national level require we take the high road at the local level. This (Democratic Party) article and what lies behind it do the opposite, and threaten everything the Dems should be standing for."

B: "Wow. That’s incredibly dishonest, even by local standards ... This has been thoroughly discredited in other threads and forums. The censure is complete partisan nonsense of the worst kind."

K: People know better than to believe that crap, don’t they? I believe Al at his word - a mistake ... This is going to backfire on them.

Billy Stewart (county commissioner): "We can have disagreements about policy and what we believe in how things should be but there is never a reason to try to destroy someone over partisan politics. I don't always agree with other elected officials but I respect their views. I'm truly saddened by the actions of a few City officials trying to smear the reputation of a good person. The only way we can change things is through the ballet box. Remember who did what and vote accordingly."

A: "So, does Pat's Resolution invite us all to write our own Resolutions? Whereas, we can encourage truthful dialogue from he, Jeffrey, and other city officials? That sounds like a fun game! Pat's Resolution could be used as the template and we just change the words and subject to expose real liars. It could be a competition. All participating have their first reading on Monday under Pat's agenda item, and all who participate win because standing up to bullies makes you a winner! ... I hope Pat doesn't become chicken at the last minute and pull his resolution from the agenda. That would spoil all the fun."

BC: If this is the best the Dems can do, then they are in major trouble in Floyd County. They are dying on the vine already and this is simply an extreme stretch to TRY to be noteworthy. Knowing Al as I do, he is an upstanding member of the community and is a straightforward guy who wants the best for New Albany.

---

Gahanism is gangsterism, and Pat McLaughlin's nonsensical resolution censuring Al Knable is the best example yet of the local Democratic Party's utter depravity.

R: "Mclaughlin is my council rep. I haven’t seen him in my neighborhood since Baron Hill was running for re-election more than a decade ago. I’m vacillating between whether anger or appalled embarrassment better describes my reaction to this idiocy. Al Knable may have some views with which I differ, but he’s not averse to listening and actually hearing what citizens say."

D: "What a waste of time and money... to attempt to discredit someone you are working with for the greater good of your city. It’s an embarrassment. I’m sorry Al Knable ... keep doing what you’re doing. Posing questions and getting the answers for your constituents. Representing their best interests with integrity. It’s in your job description. What I’m SURE is not there is when something you don’t like comes to light, you strike out at the credible people. Stay the course and do the right thing, always."

---

More profiles in cravenness: "McLaughlin did not want to make a public comment until Monday's meeting."

S: "Not sure what to make of this world when Dan Coffey is the voice of reason."

M: "Think I have figured it out. It’s just his way of announcing that the price will be high for him to flip. And he will, if the price is right. Have seen him make 180 turns before."

P: "I’ve known Al for around 40 years, both personally and professionally. I will continue to trust and support him. This is what happens when a good person tries to get into to politics to make a difference, and it greatly saddens me."

W: "This is a total waste of the city council's time. I want to know how the $5 million is going to be spent on the city. I want to know what’s going to happen to the NAHA residences. I want to know about cleanup in the city parks department. I want my city to have a combined efficient 9-1-1 center."

---

ON THE AVENUES: Al Knable doesn’t lie, but the local Democratic Party is a flood-plain Pinocchio. Let’s censure it at the ballot box.

Reverend Mike Becht: "I am certain that if Mr. Baylor and I sat down to discuss issues and politics, we would find ourselves holding opposite points of view on many areas of public concern. However, it is telling that we appear to be 100% in sync with respect to one pressing matter - the current tempest enveloping Dr. Al Knable.

Having known Al for more than 35 years, I can personally vouch for his honesty and integrity. That is not to say we always agree on every topic. I'm sure we do not; but I have NEVER once found him to be less than candid, respectful and fair, even when we find ourselves landing at opposite positions on a matter. To suggest that he would lie for political gain is patently absurd, and reveals more about the character of the ones who are making that claim than about the good doctor, himself.

"I am never surprised by the ugliness and mudslinging that goes on in politics. But I am surprised that some in power have calculated that their best course of action is to engineer a public attempt at character assassination.

"Some question the provenance of the quote attributed to Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Regardless of who originated the thought, there is no escaping the truism it propounds. I, for one, am not willing to stand by and watch a good man pilloried. And if you have any sense of decency, neither should you."

---

Following are comments posted here and there in support of the censure resolution.

More profiles in cravenness: "McLaughlin did not want to make a public comment until Monday's meeting."

A teensy-weensy microdot of back story and context would be nice, but you'll never get it from the News and Tribune, which seeks only to transport you to the end of the article in two minutes or less, and get back to cooking school.

But now for the good news: That's why you have NA Confidential to take you down into the bunker with the flies on the wall, to where the 'Bamatized chain newspaper can't -- nay, won't -- go.

If you're just tuning in, the Floyd County Democratic Party has fired up a mess of monkey brains, chased their souffle with ice-cold Bud Light Lime-A-Ritas, and contracted prion disease (eternal thanks to Charles P. Pierce).

Kuru belongs to a class of diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), also called prion diseases. It primarily affects the cerebellum — the part of your brain responsible for coordination and balance.

NAC started covering this story on Tuesday.

ON THE AVENUES: Al Knable doesn’t lie, but the local Democratic Party is a flood-plain Pinocchio. Let’s censure it at the ballot box.

Gahanism is gangsterism, and Pat McLaughlin's nonsensical resolution censuring Al Knable is the best example yet of the local Democratic Party's utter depravity.

Did you miss the headline? The crux of it - DemoDisneyDixiecratic chairman Dickey is up to his eyeballs in fake facts, not to mention male moo cow feces.

The politics of diversion: "Chief Bailey is playing a losing hand, but then, they're not really his cards."

Today the newspaper picks up the story, and quite badly.

Folks, let's get real: the lame censure resolution directed against Al Knable could not have sprung fully formed from the brain of Pat McLaughlin. The party's ranking Democrats are behind the chicanery. The puppet's strings are connected to city corporate counsel, party chairman and mayor. This is the way it always works, and will continue to work until voters fire them in 2019.

Chances are that Dan Coffey's not the only observer who understands this, even if Chris Morris doesn't.

New Albany City Council to consider Knable censure over 911 dispatch statements

 ... Councilman Dan Coffey did not withhold comment about the censure, or how he will likely vote on the resolution.

"It's 100 percent political," Coffey said. "Al is one of the most honest people I've ever met. I know his votes on the council are not political. I am really disappointed in that one [resolution]."

Coffey said the vote will likely go along party lines. That means the two independents, Coffey and Scott Blair, will likely decide the matter on whether Knable will be officially censured. The council also includes four Democrats and three Republicans.

McLaughlin did not want to make a public comment until Monday's meeting.

ON THE AVENUES: Al Knable doesn’t lie, but the local Democratic Party is a flood-plain Pinocchio. Let’s censure it at the ballot box.

ON THE AVENUES: Al Knable doesn’t lie, but the local Democratic Party is a flood-plain Pinocchio. Let’s censure it at the ballot box.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Last night I wrote to Greg Phipps, my 3rd district councilman, urging him to vote against Pat McLaughlin's absurd, politically-motivated city council resolution to censure Al Knable, the body's current president.

Phipps' characteristic reply was cut and pasted to at least one other like-minded questioner.

"Just received the council packet this evening. Will carefully examine the arguments then vote accordingly."

What were you expecting, profiles in courage?

Welcome to Adam’s Enable Asylum, and remember to check your humanity at the door, because New Albanians presently are witnessing the most blatant example yet of the pervasive gangsterism of Gahanism, and perhaps (at long last), we've arrived at the auto-destruct nadir of the Floyd County Democratic Party, although at this point they’ve placed the bar so low in the primordial mud that just about any of the regime's ward heelers smashed out of their minds on Bud Light Lime could faint over it.

Monday’s upcoming censure resolution, team-authored by Adam Dickey, Jeff Gahan, Shane Gibson, Warren Nash, a late-model robot Adam borrowed from the Democratic National Committee and maybe even McLaughlin himself, who otherwise is destined to serve only as sycophantic delivery device, has two chief aims.

First, it is to cripple the council for the remainder of Knable's term as president. He became council president only because the two independents fled from designated Democratic grandee Bob Caesar. Once Knable was seated and got down to work, Dear Leader's conspiracy against him began taking shape.

Of course, the Republican Knable has been far better organized and much more ambitious than former president McLaughlin, whose "leadership" during endless years amounted to dysfunctional acquiescence to whatever was asked of him by Dickey’s and Gahan's greasy cabal of human slush siphons.

With only four mostly reliable Democrats remaining on the council, and in spite of the mayor’s ability to periodically “convince” non-Democratic members (including one lamentable Republican) with attractive special interest barters, the fact is that Team Gahan can’t rely on council obedience as currently constituted, so it might as well throw a grenade in the room, and blame Knable at year’s end for the lack of results.

Second, and far more importantly, it is to serve as a clear and unmistakable warning to all and sundry that no childish act of malice, pettiness or chicanery is too small to be considered for deployment by the Floyd County Democratic Party if it is deemed sufficient to maintain power in the city (the county bolted years ago).

Dickey, Gahan, Gibson, Duggins and their crews will go to any length, however nasty, fetishistic and depraved, to remain the biggest fish peddling influence in this pitifully small pond.

Indeed, in the absence of coherent principle, mobster tactics are all they have left, but fortunately these have useful and instructive purposes for those among us who still value basic human decency. As such, the ludicrous Knable smear campaign actually serves as a convenient referendum on the fitness of our council representatives to govern.

Every last one of them comes up for re-election in 2019, and speaking only for myself and my home 3rd district, Phipps’ vote on Monday evening absolutely will determine my level of political involvement next year. If Phipps casts a ballot to abet character assassination, we can pretend no longer. The journey from thoughtful idealist to abject Dickey lackey will have ballot implications of its own.

I promise.

More importantly, for those readers considering themselves as progressives, and aligned with “the resistance” as defined nationally (and on Facebook), the advent of this local Democratic Party resolution to slime an honest man means you no longer have the luxury of indulging your purely selective cognitive dissonance.

It’s wonderful to resist tyranny, but if you are decrying it there and coddling it here, we have a problem.

If you’re on the left side of the aisle, and if you persist in believing that the local Democratic Party shares your views in terms of genuine action, as opposed to Dickey’s “forever for show only” gestures and signaling, then you’re quite simply swallowing a colossal bait ‘n’ switch.

It may be helpful to grasp that Dan Canon and Jeff Gahan are as diametrically opposed as the North and South Poles. They are parallel lines that cannot meet. The criteria you’re correctly using to celebrate Canon just as surely disallows Gahan and his shameless flunkies from consideration.

That’s because the local Democratic Party is not about ideas, and hasn't ever been.

Rather, it is a crass patronage machine designed to create those juicy rivulets of sustenance that wet the beaks of appointees, secure loyalty, and maintain a level of largess capable of exploitation.

Our faux Democrats feed on sycophantism, nepotism, favoritism, glad-handing, threats and intimidation. It’s a swamp of fear, loathing and third-raters, and it’s not in Washington DC – it’s right here, rising like an oily mist from Falling Run, oozing between the third floor cracks, and inundating all of us in a morass of embarrassing complicity.

Gahan’s and Dickey’s vision of a local Democratic Party is about ideals only in the jaundiced and opportunistic sense that these can be voiced without any compulsion to follow through, and used as convenient camouflage for the down-and-grubby utility of reanimating what the local party historically existed to achieve, which isn’t civil rights or justice, but preferential pork-barreling and the maintenance of favoritism alone -- enforced with "gentle" brass knuckle reminders (or TASERs) when necessary.

Folks, if you’re shaking your fist at the "enemy," and your “friends” are behaving no differently, then it’s time to look in the mirror. Lest we forget, the only local elected official to publicly oppose Gahan’s public housing putsch to date is Ed Clere, a Republican.

Meanwhile, esteemed and credentialed Democrats like Phipps have stated for attribution that the demolition of 500 affordable housing units has nothing to do with them. Tell me, progressives: Which one’s your enemy, and which one’s your friend?

McLaughlin’s bullshit resolution means it’s time at long last to be truthful. You cannot “resist” the excesses of the Right by doubling down on behalf of the Democratic Party as it currently exists and operates on a daily basis right here in the real world, as opposed to Adam's orgasmic Disney World.

In my view, both major parties can go to hell, and the Democrats might as well board the first train to Hades. The sooner the local DemoDisneyDixecratic Party disappears, the sooner something better can be built in its place. How can it get any worse?

But it can’t get better until we realize and openly affirm that McLaughlin’s censure resolution bares this gutless local version of pretend-Democrats for all to see. They're soulless monetizers without a moral compass, and the only humane thing to do is euthanize the party, and start all over again.

Resistance?

It isn’t enough for the left-of-center resistance to be solely predicated on identity politics and social justice issues of the sort that Mayor Gahan routinely and insincerely hoists to bedazzle progressives, who are sufficiently desperate to accept toothless Potemkin human rights lean-tos in exchange for looking the other way as Gahan’s increasingly self-serving and megalomaniacal “luxury” expenditures and attacks on the working poor jump the rails of sustainability and common sense -- and contradict everything a progressive purports to stand for.

I’ll close with my own testimony.

At this point in time, after 14 years of observing this endlessly self-renewing political debacle, I’d like nothing better than to make a clean break. It would be wonderful, indeed, to enjoy a quiet existence, with my lovely wife, our cats, books, music and oceans of booze; and be back in the good beer business, helping and mentoring my friend Joe with Pints&union and reconnecting the threads of brewing, history, geography, food and folkways, just like oft times before.

It’s what I’m very best at doing, and I should be doing it. I’d prefer doing it here, in New Albany. We've so very much unrealized potential.

Alas, I understand all too well that these many years of blogging advocacy, and my perpetual willingness to say what others can't (or won’t), certainly damages my chances of getting back to work.

If so, then so be it. Here's the thing.

Among other disgraces, Gahan’s public housing putsch, his endless budget-busting luxury expenditures, their contempt for the disadvantaged among us, those botched pro-automotive two-way street grid “reforms,” the mayor’s thuggish threats against city employees – and now this fresh new character assassination directed at Al Knable – you see, these are rancid, reeking failures and abominable power plays.

They’re disgusting, and they’re wrong, and while I sometimes wish my father hadn’t raised me to speak my mind and stand up to tyrannical bullies, cliques and personality cults, that’s surely what he did.

At this juncture, I can’t seem to unlearn his lesson. I don't want to unlearn it, and I'll continue to dissent from this crisis of pure avarice. I can’t ignore Gahan’s and the Democratic Party’s divisive megalomania, and I won’t.

You shouldn’t, either.

The first step in fixing what ails us is to open our eyes and see the local Democratic Party hypocrisy in the clear light of day for what it really is, not what you’d like for it to be – and with McLaughlin’s horrendous and indefensible censure resolution, there no longer can be any doubt about who is lying.

And who isn’t.

---

Recent columns:

March 22: ON THE AVENUES: Remembering Max Allen, bartender extraordinaire.

March 15: ON THE AVENUES: The books I've been reading during the winter months.

March 8: ON THE AVENUES: Necessity was the mother of NARBA, a food and drink invention in need of re-animation.

March 1: ON THE AVENUES: Scoreboard daze of old.

Irv Stumler sez: If you're walking or biking, you have no right to use city streets. Get a car, or get lost.

Tyrannosaurus kooks.

The perpetually agitated Irv Stumler attended yesterday's Board of Works meeting to follow up on his "One Way Streets Forever" public meeting testimony of Monday evening, and while his superannuated boilerplate remained much the same, he tossed in an exciting new twist.

To summarize Stumler's increasingly embarrassing rantings (paraphrased):

"No evidence I've ever bothered to view supports two-way street reversions, because only my own assumptions can be trusted, not yours, since all the downtown business owners agree with me, anyway, and besides, if you're scared of fast-moving traffic, then as a taxpayer, you have no rights to use the street unless you're in a vehicle."

That's the disjointed size of it, and it's the latter point which he chose to emphasize at BOW's weekly confab -- with undisguised disdain and a palpably aristocratic sneer. If you are scared of urban streets used as industrial thoroughfares, then you're deficient. What are you, some kind of unemployed homosexual? Can't you afford a car?

It's the corrosive malady Stumler shares with his Silver Hills neighbor, council man Bob Caesar. Both are so fundamentally eaten up with knee-jerk opposition to the type of person who'd dare advocate change of any sort that whatever faculties of human reason they possess stand no chance, and are overwhelmed by a childish sort of spite ... with a heavy undertone of envy, but we'll leave this evaluation to the professionals.

In short, those people are not respectable people, and they cannot be allowed to win. 

And so, the simple fact is that Stumler and his ilk believe only motorized vehicles have defensible "rights" on city streets. We might point to evidence around the planet indicating alternative models, but since Stumler won't bother considering them, they don't exist. He looks the other way and covers his eyes.

Photos like this one ...

... are merely scurrilous pornography to Stumler, and of course those peddling the very idea of multi-modal streets are pornographers -- and we know what Puritans do with pornographers.

After all, there are no trucks in this photo, and without trucks -- and cement plants, and steelworks, and quarries -- how can there be an economy? Stumler missed his calling. He might have become the best centrally-controlled industrial economic planner a Soviet Five Year Plan ever saw.

Look, I'm no fan of HWC Engineering, but it's noteworthy that the firm ran computer models of New Albany street usage for 20 years into the future, and these established the seaworthiness of two-way streets with as few "assumptions" as possible. They had to do it, otherwise a criminally timid City Hall wouldn't do anything at all.  

Stumler hasn't mentioned this, not once, perhaps because it would require conceding that when enough facts are compiled, "assumptions" yield to percentages and probability.

When your eyes are wide shut, you tend not to see anything. Stumler is smart enough to know this, but a soul in torment is precisely the finest breeding ground for equations such as 2 + 2 = 37.

I wish Irv Stumler had stayed at the meeting yesterday to hear me speak. He'd have heard me patiently correct his many and mounting two-way street mistakes, from "there is no speeding on Elm and Spring" to "no downtown business owner wants two-way streets," and not excluding Caesar's perennial chestnut, "there are half as many parking places on a two-way street."

So I corrected them. Again.

It's nothing, really. Having been in the bar biz for so many years, you get used to cleaning up the vomit of others -- and as long as Stumler keeps spinning lies about the streets, we may need a bucket brigade before he's through.

John Rosenbarger plays for the Patriots?

I always thought Benedict Arnold was a better analogy, but we play the rancid hands we're dealt. Let's take a look at the Top Ten Reasons John Rosenbarger Is Pretty In A Pink (Slip).

Seeking to avoid termination, poor ol' Rosenbarger goes full Orwell and claims Main Street potholes as "successes."

Main Street Deforestation Project: If John Rosenbarger's lips are moving, chances are he's lying about traffic diversion. Here's why.

Ooh, ooh ... Main Street also needs some gold-plated spigots for watering the flowers in the median.

ON THE AVENUES: Really, the word “progressive” embarrasses you? That’s okay, because political cowardice disgusts me.

ON THE AVENUES: Egg, meet face: How many different ways can we botch the Main Street Deforestation Project?

Geppetto wept as Rosenbarger seized the microphone.

Jeff Speck on John Rosenbarger's 12-ft wide Spring Street traffic lanes: “A 12-foot lane is a 70 mph lane."

Answer the question, John Rosenbarger: Can Jeff Speck's ideas work here, or not?

Ranting on John Rosenbarger's fundamental contradictions in the aftermath of an atrocious day in the neighborhood.

On the Rosenbarger planning conundrum, and FAN Fair, here I come.

I hope Speck is right, even if the political facts in New Albany suggest otherwise.

I'm not sure if my friend and colleague Jeff Gillenwater always approves my quoting him, but the way I see it, we're trying to accomplish something here, and to do so by means of words, sentences, paragraphs and essays intended to espouse and advance, and also by recording local events for posterity. At this blog, we're writing about the bits of New Albany that are important, but otherwise neglected by other more conventional sources.

I accept help, support and succor anywhere I can find it. Frankly, we're engaged in a form of political struggle against institutionalized mediocrity, and it isn't a genteel game.

Earlier this week, Jeff G and I corresponded briefly with Jeff Speck, proponent of walkability and the street grid reforms designed to institute and enhance it. As most of you know, Speck is authoring the study of New Albany's traffic and streets which (as we're told so often privately) will serve as the blueprint for our city's transportation future.

The problem, as I explained most recently here, is that we've been persistently unable to locate elected or appointed officials who are willing (or able) to say aloud what they claim privately to embrace, as whispered in darkened back corridors. I've frequently pointed out that my personal ethos differs with this approach, because my world works like this: If it's true, fair and you embrace it, then you're obliged to own it, sell it, and accept the credit or the consequences, come what may.

It is unimaginable to me that any of us in the better beer business ever would have advanced the cause of "craft" beer by fearfully huddling terrified on the down low.

Back to Jeff G, who phrases it this way:

Official statements about the street grid in question:

• Police department says there is no speeding problem.
• Planning department says there is no heavy truck problem.
• Development/Redevelopment Director says no one is interested in talking or hearing about it.
• Mayor/Board of Works say nothing.

If these folks are correct, sincere. and working in my interests as is, then what is Speck doing here anyway? Isn't it all fine? If it's not, why so many city statements denying problems and dialogue? Which part of this is trustworthy, the denial of problems or the hiring of Speck to solve them?

You'll notice that I'm not divulging exactly what thoughts we exchanged with Speck earlier this week. I don't have his permission to do so.

However, it might suffice to say that his view of the situation here differs somewhat from ours (i.e., he takes their word for it), and that I sincerely wish that he is right, and we're wrong -- although the evidence on the ground here in town doesn't support the faith of Pollyannas of any dimension, from any academic or geographical perspective.

In fact, I'm reminded of an episode of television's M*A*S*H (Season 4; Episode 92). In "The Novocaine Mutiny," Hawkeye is accused of mutiny against temporary camp commander Frank Burns. In Burns' testimony before the tribunal, he is the unquestioned hero and Hawkeye the pernicious villain.

Hawkeye's recollection is the polar opposite, and naturally it is the factual one. He is found innocent.

My point?

Until Wednesday, I'd never considered the similarities between New Albany's public projects honcho John Rosenbarger and the TV character of Frank Burns. Since Wednesday, "The Novocaine Mutiny" is playing out in real time, right here, as the semis and dump trucks whiz past unchecked on Spring Street.

In my heart of hearts, I know that the same old failed suspects are going to botch this Speck reform plan, just like they always have and always will botch reform plans. It's because they have no interest in reform, because they've never been compelled to pay a price for their disinterest. They've forfeited our trust again and again, even if it may not seem obvious from afar.

But maybe Aesop's "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is a better example.

This time around the dance floor, with the Speck plan looming, Rosenbarger swears he is being genuine about the helpful principles of street grid reform. He (and others) are all on board. They're for it and not against it, and yet they cannot bring themselves to say this for attribution. What I want to make clear in rebuttal is simple.

"Sorry John, but nobody believes a liar ... even when he is telling the truth."

Except that I don't believe he is telling the truth. Why start this late in the game?

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Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, 6 to 8 p.m. at BSB

Not that he actually wrote it, mind you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to intimidate the elderly.

City council president Dan Coffey took to the Tribune yesterday in an effort to explain why his political opponents are the source of the council's inability to take substantive action on virtually anything -- except, of course, Coffey's personal jihad against his political opponents.

Incidents not first time for vocal group at City Council meetings

After reading Steve Kozarovich’s opinion in the “Cheers and Jeers” column Aug. 26, I felt I needed to respond so the people in our community would know what happened at our City Council meeting.

Open thread: Is this the worst city council imaginable?

There was a city council meeting last night, and there might as well have been a circle jerk for all the good it did for the city. Afterwards, everyone retreated to Studio’s and looked into their own personal mirrors, the ones that show the distorted reflections of wannabeens as serial in their abdication of responsibility as Larry Kochert ever was.

It’s a shame. Anyone got a novelty lighter to play with while the city rots?

I was present for eleven minutes of it before being ejected, and just as a courtesy, permit me now to inform readers that they shouldn’t hold their breaths waiting for me to apologize for telling the truth about a congenital liar, however infirm, aged and embittered she may be.

Won’t happen, folks.

But in the time afforded by my departure, and a few subsequent pints, the thought that kept returning was this council’s abject failure to achieve anything substantive.

Anything.

The excuse that is offered time and again is that times are hard, and wow, who had any idea how tough it was going to be, and damn, we have it rough! The state won’t help, and it’s someone else’s fault, and we can’t be bothered to read or to learn or to offer something – anything – that might represent a glimmer of creativity in a time of duress.

In short, we don’t know anything, we won’t learn anything, and we’d like for those of you less worldly than we are to return us to office next time, because we promise not to have a clue then, either, and we can go our merry ways.

Really? That’s inspiring, isn’t it?

Am I reading them incorrectly? Let me know, and I promise not to call you a liar. Unless, of course, you are.