REPOST: "The moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas," by the late, great Christopher Hitchens.

I've chosen to allow NA Confidential to run its course, and so to close out the dreadful pandemic year of 2020, I'll be making a daily post from the archives. The following appeared on December 14, 2014. 

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How I miss Christopher Hitchens.

Introductory excerpts from Hitchens' timeless essay are reprinted below, so be sure to follow the link to read the whole, glorious piece, first noted here at NAC in 2008. I reread this every year on or before Christmas Eve. In 2013, there was added gravity, which also deserves another look.

In 2013, as Christmas approached, I'd just finished reading Ray Mouton's novel, In God's House. In 1984, Ray was the lawyer chosen by the state of Louisiana's Catholic Church hierarchy to defend the first priest ever to be charged in secular court with child molestation. Looking back on the perspective of the present day, we obviously know what became of all this, and that Ray's appointment with destiny was the first tiny peek inside a truly massive scandal. I wasn't expecting to be moved to such an extent by Ray's book, but I was -- and remain.

Carrying these thoughts into my annual date with Hitchens, I find the atheist's cynicism to be vastly enhanced.

'Tis the Season To Be Incredulous: The moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas, by Christopher Hitchens (Slate; Dec. 15, 2008)

… My own wish is more ambitious: to write an anti-Christmas column that becomes fiercer every year while remaining, in essence, the same. The core objection, which I restate every December at about this time, is that for almost a whole month, the United States—a country constitutionally based on a separation between church and state—turns itself into the cultural and commercial equivalent of a one-party state.

As in such dismal banana republics, the dreary, sinister thing is that the official propaganda is inescapable. You go to a train station or an airport, and the image and the music of the Dear Leader are everywhere. You go to a more private place, such as a doctor's office or a store or a restaurant, and the identical tinny, maddening, repetitive ululations are to be heard. So, unless you are fortunate, are the same cheap and mass-produced images and pictures, from snowmen to cribs to reindeer. It becomes more than usually odious to switch on the radio and the television, because certain officially determined "themes" have been programmed into the system. Most objectionable of all, the fanatics force your children to observe the Dear Leader's birthday, and so (this being the especial hallmark of the totalitarian state) you cannot bar your own private door to the hectoring, incessant noise, but must have it literally brought home to you by your offspring. Time that is supposed to be devoted to education is devoted instead to the celebration of mythical events ...

Two years ago: What does my being an atheist have to do with anything at all?

Facebook reminded me of this post from January 8, 2018. It generated 130 comments, which I'm not going to repeat here. 

The content seems especially apropos given my current sabbatical from local political commentary, which I'm navigating with a calm sense of detachment and resignation when not kicking, screaming and contemplating an alias. 

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No flippancy in what I'm about to write; I'm genuinely curious.

To begin, I'm well aware that outspokenness has a tendency to make enemies, and as such, when I signed on to be a dissident, I figured I was going to have some. No complaints; eggs, omelettes, and all that.

This said, I was told something today that actually strikes me as surprising.

There's a prominent individual in town who loathes me (it isn't a mutual feeling; I just wish the Peter Principle wasn't so firmly entrenched in his line of work), and as I'm informed, one big piece of his dislike for me is that I'm an atheist, while he believes that our society rests on a foundation of "Christian values" (as it was relayed to me).

Judging by his job performance (not to mention political affiliation), this seems a tad hypocritical, although that's not my point.

But on second thought, maybe I have no point, and shouldn't be surprised at all. I've never had a beef with Christianity as a personal belief system; rather, it's the tendency of Christians to evangelize and assert theological primacy in an arena where there should be no winners -- but rather how you play whatever game you've chosen.

Never mind. An eyebrow is arched; after all, what does my being an atheist have to do with the fundamental basis for our disagreements?

However, I suppose it happens all the time. So it goes.

The national media discovers SoIn: "3 Indiana Judges Suspended After White Castle Brawl That Left 2 Of Them Wounded."

Social media debates on this topic began shortly after the incident in May, then subsided, only to explode into the stratosphere when the story finally went national.

Opinion seems divided into two distinct strands of thought. The first, advocated by those who know the three judges personally, is that everyone deserves another chance. The other, expressed by the Indiana Supreme Court, upholds the existence of a higher bar (pun unintended) for those donning judicial robes.

The cynical way to look at it would be to shrug; all other institutions have become degraded in the last quarter-century, and nowadays nationwide there are more barely qualified judges than flavors of hard seltzer.

Who cares if they drink and carouse? Haven't we all?

Perhaps a less hopeless take is to assert that without a rediscovery of useful core ethics to guide the judiciary, their verdicts are rendered into nonsense.

I'm reminded of the late father of a close friend, who was a banker at a time when banking was local and not a by-product of neoliberal self-immolation. In short, my friend's dad was a banker 24 hours a day, not merely eight. He dressed, thought and lived the job, because if a banker behaved like a rock star out in public, it reduced confidence in the institution guarding one's savings.

I realize the relationship between a banker and his community was more complicated than this, even then. It doesn't change the fact that my friend's father recognized a responsibility, and knew his personal honor was at stake.

Southern Indiana currently is a laughingstock owing to the tale of the strip-club-seeking drunken judges and their ill-advised journey to White Castle. Fortunately for everyone involved, no one died and the ignominy will be short-lived in a nation with the collective attention span of a moth.

Is a suspension and some form of penance enough punishment for these judges? I've no idea.

If their own case came before them, how would they decide it?   

3 Indiana Judges Suspended After White Castle Brawl That Left 2 Of Them Wounded, by Laurel Wamsley (NPR)

Back in May, three Indiana judges got into a fight. It was the crescendo of an incident brimming with colorful details: a gaggle of judges drinking the night before a judicial conference, a failed attempt to visit a strip club called the Red Garter, a brawl in the parking lot of an Indianapolis White Castle ...

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Last night I wrote the equivalent of two columns (you're rubbing your eyes already), but neither seems appropriate just yet. Instead, let's take an instructive journey by means of the rewind button, back to January 25, 2017.

You'll notice that nothing's changed. Matt Lorch subsequently was removed as council attorney, and the Democrats suffered another catastrophic election defeat in 2018. Adam Dickey kept his job, and now it's 2019.

#FireGahan2019 #FreeDistrictThree #FlushTheClique 

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You can’t blame Dan Coffey for understanding simple math.

Coffey might well be one of the nastiest politicians to mar this or any other underachieving settlement, at least since records were first scrawled on the wall at the Caves of Altamira, but say this for the man: He doesn’t need an abacus to smell raw fear – and take advantage of it.

When Coffey bolted from the Democratic Party in January of 2016 in preparation for becoming the most obvious Donald Trump supporter in New Albany, you can be sure he’d already run the power poll numbers.

After city elections in 2015, there were two more Republicans on the city council than before, totaling three. Scott Blair already had declared himself an Independent, and Coffey correctly surmised that Blair would eventually tire of desperate efforts to please Mayor Jeff Gahan when Gahan had no intention of responding to Blair’s overtures.

Coffey saw Blair joining the GOP bloc more often than not, leaving four Democrats – and one pivotal seat for the Dan Coffey Party.

That pesky math again: Three Republicans plus one independent equals four Democrats in need of a fifth vote, placing Coffey in the catbird’s seat.

All Coffey needed to do was wait until his swing vote passed from possibility to reality, and this magic moment arrived in spades on November 9, 2016, as the full extent of the Democratic Party’s latest precipitous collapse in Floyd County elections became evident, and Team Gahan began mainlining Bud Light Lime.

With party chairman Adam Dickey fundamentally lacking the cojones to resign, which is what should occur immediately after catastrophes, and with Dickey’s “leadership” quotient at rock bottom, what remained of the ramshackle political entity was inherited by Papa Gahan, by default the highest ranked Democratic official left wobbling, and bunker-bound inheritor of Dickey’s vast nothingness.

In a delightful reprise from the 1960s sitcom Green Acres, this turn of events freed Coffey to play the wheeler-dealer Mr. Haney to Gahan’s hapless Oliver Douglas.

In January, it came time to select city council “leaders,” and Gahan went into his customarily paranoid, reactive Alamo mode. The four remaining council Democrats were handed defective slingshots and instructed to fight to the death, but first, it was necessary to obtain a ringing affirmation of Pat McLaughlin (president) and Greg Phipps (vice-president) as pliable, unquestioning council rubber stamps.

Blair and Coffey were one step ahead of Gahan’s small-pond theatrics, and both duly visited the mayor to collect their available winnings in return for supporting McLaughlin and Phipps against Republican trial balloon candidacies. Order was restored, and the council’s ruling twosome remained tenuously toothsome, as yet in place to field 3:00 a.m. phone calls from the city’s reigning agoraphobic.

Blair’s favors aren’t known, but Coffey’s became manifest at January’s second meeting, when it was made perfectly clear that the price of Coffey’s loving cooperation would be council attorney Matt Lorch’s head.

Council Republicans quickly objected to the impromptu lynch mob, and Bob “I So Desperately Want to Be Mayor” Caesar was conveniently absent, so L’affaire Lorch was tabled. It isn’t clear what will happen next.

However, quite enough already has happened to provide final, damning proof that the Floyd County Democratic Party is utterly without a moral compass.

The Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the deepest known point in Earth's oceans. In 2010 the United States Center for Coastal & Ocean Mapping measured the depth of the Challenger Deep at 10,994 meters (36,070 feet) below sea level with an estimated vertical accuracy of ± 40 meters.

That’s right; the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.

It’s where Gahan’s and Dickey’s creation, the Good Ship Democratic Lollipop, currently rests, and taken together, these two narcissistic beached whales in a child’s overmatched wading pool are managing against all imaginable odds to make the buffoonish serial liar Donald Trump look precisely like George Washington.

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A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.
-- Leon Trotsky

Younger readers may not be familiar with the workings of the organization known as the Comintern.

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International (1919–1943), was an international communist organization that advocated world communism.

At the risk of oversimplifying, once the Soviet Union came into existence following World War I, the international Communist movement finally possessed real-world dirt acreage to serve as refuge and fulcrum.

Moscow was to Communism what the Vatican was (and is) to Catholicism. The Kremlin coordinated and directed the planet’s Communist parties, and generally did not take “no” for an answer when work orders were disseminated.

For almost 30 years after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin served as the anointed Communist equivalent of the Pope. Stalin’s decrees required utter loyalty; after all, he was the infallible mastermind, and the goal was the revolution’s ultimate triumph everywhere, not just Russia,

If Stalin zigged, so did a diehard Communist in Argentina. As he zagged, another dyed-in-the-wool Communist in Scotland followed suit. There was almost no room for discussion or dissent, but at least for a while, Communists outside the USSR were able to blithely ignore the brutality of Stalin’s paranoid totalitarianism.

That’s because the doctrinal faith and the propagandistic Kool-Aid were strong, and the utopian Commie chic alluring, seemingly promising a peaceful, prosperous future. After all, it wasn’t about the USSR’s needs, it was about the proletariat as a whole – except it really was about Stalin, and not a lathe operator in Italy, and there came a time when theory and practice were poles apart.

And yet the Comintern still demanded obedience, even after Stalin’s death, and many Communists outside the USSR chose to deny facts rather than face cognitive dissonance. Few seemed able to do what the famous writer George Orwell did: Abandon the Soviet Union, but retain his socialist beliefs.

For Stalin, Marxism was of the Groucho variety: Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes? The overarching point for those obedient Stalinists in the West is that once Stalinism was discredited and tossed into the “dustbin of history” (Trotsky’s words again), so were they, those who hadn’t believed their own two eyes. The damage to their credibility was irreparable.

Stalin certainly didn’t invent the rigorous suppression of individual conscience. He wasn’t the first to deny the necessity of justifying the end, or to proclaim the imperative of absolute obedience on the part of expendable foot soldiers, whose only job – whether from a sense of duty or inchoate terror – is to move to their assigned places on the chessboard when directed, come what may.

Just the same, Stalin may have perfected these conditions. They’re not the sort of behaviors we should emulate, are they?

I repeat: Are they?

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If you’ve spent any amount of time in New Gahania, it’s plainly evident that Matt Lorch is everything Dan Coffey isn’t.

Lorch is jovial, reliable and ethical.

Lorch is trustworthy and doesn’t play games of the sort that can hurt people.

Lorch’s position as the latest in a long, successful family line of lawyers has not come without personal challenges, as with his hearing impairment, which if anything impels him to work harder and more efficiently.

What’s more, unlike Coffey, Lorch has been an absolutely dependable member of the Democratic Party, resolutely toiling for the greater good of the organization.

I can’t help thinking back to Coffey’s ill-fated race for county commissioner, which he lost in a landslide. Lorch attended Coffey’s biggest fundraiser, and offered Coffey his full support as a fellow Democrat. He probably donated, too.

Ultimately, this points to the unkindest and most disgusting cut of all – and it has nothing whatever to do with Coffey, a man incapable of trustworthiness. While Matt Lorch is everything Dan Coffey isn’t, and cannot ever be, for Coffey to spit in Lorch’s face comes as no surprise, precisely because as a loathsome, grandstanding, bullying, homophobic sociopath, it’s what Coffey does.

It’s like your dog licking his balls, just because he can.

Yes, but it’s Gahan and Dickey who leeringly are throwing Matt Lorch under the bus, and it’s the steadily shrinking handful of elected Democrats, like Pat McLaughlin and Greg Phipps, who are being asked by Gahan and Dickey to lend their stamp of approval to the shameful sacrifice of Lorch for no other reason than the way it encourages Coffey’s variable tumescence, and rather than objecting as a dignified human being to the sheer insanity of this, they’re the ones who are shrugging and asking timidly, “Yes, dear leaders -- which axle?”

Perhaps the Floyd County Democratic Party recent electoral disintegration has rendered its adherents confused and stunned, like Abe Lincoln’s duck hit on the head, and I’ll try mightily to phrase these questions in simple language, so even the Democratic central committee might understand them.

How are Gahan and Dickey to extinguish the smoldering dumpster fire of a Floyd County Democratic Party if they’re so eager to toss solid, loyal Democrats to the self-centered whims of an anti-democratic Copperhead?

How can Gahan and Dickey even pretend to “lead” the political opposition to the GOP’s escalating hegemony – here, there and everywhere – when they’ve failed to reveal a single coherent resistance tactic since November 9, but found ample time to plunge a rusty dagger in Matt Lorch’s back?

How can these people be trusted, ever again?

If you’re a Democratic Party voter, it matters far less whether Gahan and Dickey can sleep at night; after all, they’re proving themselves to be just as dangerously sociopathic as Coffey himself.

Rather, how can YOU as a Democrat sleep at night if you allow them to get away with it?

Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are asking Democrats precisely the same question as Stalin did Communists: Who are you going to believe, us or your own two eyes?

The fact is that your own two eyes are revealing sordid and uncomfortable truths, and I believe you should honor your conscience and refuse to countenance their madness. Gahan’s and Dickey’s ends do not justify their means, and this isn’t the time to mimic the lemming’s logic and follow them into the abyss.

They’re conniving and ethically destitute. They’re utterly lacking a moral compass. If you support Gahan and Dickey in this metaphorical beheading to curry favor with Coffey, then your own moral compass has gone missing, too.

It isn’t too late to rediscover it, and to do the right thing.

Isn't it time to take back your party?

Isn't it time for a change?

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Recent columns:

January 8: ON THE AVENUES: In the 3rd district, that "stepping aside" time finally has arrived.

January 1: ON THE AVENUES: As a new year dawns, I’m existentially yours.

December 29: ON THE AVENUES: Another year older and deeper in debt, so let's doo-doo it all over again.

December 20: ON THE AVENUES: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2018 Remix).

Gahan's NAHA putsch continues to dazzle the DemoDisneyDixiecrats, so let's ask Irving Joshua about zero threshold, employee drug testing and the status of "interim."

Diligent readers will recall that in 2017, just after Mayor Jeff Gahan shifted David Duggins from redevelopment to the New Albany Housing Authority to serve as "interim" director in the wake of Bob Lane's firing (yes, both actions were taken by a theoretically autonomous board, which in fact was appointed and enabled by Gahan, which means that the mayor indisputably owns both actions), HUD placed Duggins' new fiefdom on "zero threshold."

In fact, the NAHA's Director of Finance and HUD Compliance, Mike Bainbridge, resigned from his position because of this first of numerous artful rules evasions.

Eventually the "zero threshold" restriction was removed, although only after intensive lobbying at the expense of time and money -- or was it something more?

Several witnesses report Duggins bragging about engineering the firing of someone at HUD in order to evade the zero threshold restriction, shortly after which the new NAHA colonial overlord began acquiring new vehicles for his new fiefdom.

Gahan says the NAHA Board of Commissioners is in charge, and that's bunk, but we'll play along and ask imported board president Irving Joshua the question.

Does Duggins really have clout like this, or was just more of the same tired rhetoric?

NAC's original postings on the general topic of zero threshold are repeated below, but first, in a recent private conversation over Fuller's ESB, the Green Mouse asked Shane's Excellent New Words to define the word "interim":

It's an adjective, meaning "in or for the intervening period; provisional or temporary." Synonyms include pro tem, stopgap, short-term, fill-in, caretaker, acting, transitional, makeshift, improvised, impromptu.' "

Two more questions for the top-dog commish: How's the job search coming, Irving? There IS a job search, right?

Then there's the big unanswered question of the incredible disappearing drug screening program for NAHA employees. A source reminds us that following Duggins' appointment as an NAHA employee (as we've seen, Irving, this was a hiring facilitated contrary to HUD guidelines), the NAHA's longtime policy of prospective employees being screened for drug use abruptly was forgotten.

Irving, do you still have a drug screening program for employees at NAHA? If not, what happened to it?  

Shouldn't y'all be peeing into a cup just like the guys and gals mopping floors, or do the elite cadres in New Albany pick and choose the rules they wish to follow?

Gahan's public housing putsch is a farce, isn't it?

That wasn't a question for you, Irving.

It's directed at the voters, for answering when they #FireGahan2019.

xxxxxxxxxx

July 14, 2017

N & T's Beilman with delightful devastation for Deaf Gahan: "New Albany Housing Authority leaders knowingly violated policy, HUD order, documents state."

"In a phone interview Thursday, (HUD spokesman Brian) Sullivan confirmed the board did not follow the required search process, nor did it receive approval from HUD before appointing (David) Duggins as interim director as required from the zero-threshold status."

Even though News and Tribune reporter Elizabeth Beilman's bosses at editorial presumably remain utterly confused about the toxic reality of Deaf Gahan's Public Housing Putsch 2017 ...

Newspaper editorial board displays abject cluelessness about the Great Gahan Public Housing Putsch of 2017. (March 12, 2017)

Must we accept Chris Morris's viewpoint as gospel, given that at least he lives in New Albany, whereas the remainder of the Jeffersonville-centric editorial board knows absolutely nothing about our city, and as time goes on, grows ever prouder of this fact?

... Beilman has put together an admirable, near-classic story* about the subsequent putsch-inspired chaos at the New Albany Housing Authority. The interim director's semi-coherent flailings are especially instructive.

I strongly urge that readers visit the newspaper site and read the whole story, as the revealingly shambolic elements of Gahan's public housing foot-shoot are revealed one by one, apart from the necessary connection with Deaf himself, who unmistakably is their author -- but of course, the mayor must be omitted from the exercise lest ad revenues be threatened.

The link and excerpt are below, though first, here's a belt of background from June 24.

Public Housing Putsch '17: Gahan, Trump remain in lock step as sycophants queue after the NAHA's director of finance resigns.

It's a measure of Jeff Gahan's generalized ethical barrenness (GEB) that when word reached the Green Mouse that Mike Bainbridge had resigned on Thursday as director of finance and compliance at the New Albany Housing Authority (NAHA), all thoughts immediately turned to the flagrant unsuitability of whatever pre-rigged replacement is to be chosen by Gahan's handpicked board of bobble-headed sycophants (GIGO).

Also, yesterday's ON THE AVENUES examined the fiasco from a different angle.

Obviously, the reason why interim director Duggins has nothing to say is because he knows just as little about the daily workings of the agency to which he has been transferred as any of Donald Trump’s bumbling cabinet appointees. With Duggins tongue-tied, (Irving) Joshua must lead the diversion.

Here's Beilman.

New Albany Housing Authority leaders knowingly violated policy, HUD order, documents state, by Elizabeth Beilman (N & T)

Former compliance director cites 'unethical' actions in resignation

NEW ALBANY — The New Albany Housing Authority board and interim executive director knowingly violated internal policy and a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development order, according to a former official's resignation letter. HUD confirmed issues with compliance.

The allegations of "possibly illegal and unethical" actions surfaced in a resignation letter tendered by Mike Bainbridge, the former NAHA director of finance and HUD compliance. The letter obtained by the News and Tribune was dated June 15 and effective immediately.

"When actions are taken by Agency leadership including the Board of Commissioners which blatantly and knowingly conflict with HUD rules and regulations, I'm left with no choice but to resign, as I cannot be associated with such activities," Bainbridge wrote in the letter.

In terms of integrity and principle, Mike Bainbridge has set a meritorious example that Gahan's bootlicking sycophants probably won't ever grasp.

"In matters that are this serious and significant, I do not want to make statements that are based in even the slightest degree of speculation or opinion," (Bainbridge's) statement read. "I prefer to deal in, and present, only known facts. The facts that led me to resign from my position with NAHA are stated in my letter of resignation, and proven by the attachments to that letter. I will let those facts stand on their own merits."

Use a chit and read Beilman's piece. You won't regret it.

*An aside: From Beilman's piece: "The News and Tribune first reported on Bainbridge's resignation in late June." It did. After you read it at NAC first. It would be nice if the newspaper might occasionally attribute in such cases ... I regularly do it for them ... though as a rank amateur, perhaps I'm obliged to credit the professionals.

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*An aside: From Beilman's piece: "The News and Tribune first reported on Bainbridge's resignation in late June." It did. After you read it at NAC first. It would be nice if the newspaper might occasionally attribute in such cases ... I regularly do it for them ... though as a rank amateur, perhaps I'm obliged to credit the professionals.

xxxxxxxxxx

June 24, 2017

Public Housing Putsch '17: Gahan, Trump remain in lock step as sycophants queue after the NAHA's director of finance resigns.

It's a measure of Jeff Gahan's generalized ethical barrenness (GEB) that when word reached the Green Mouse that Mike Bainbridge had resigned on Thursday as director of finance and compliance at the New Albany Housing Authority (NAHA), all thoughts immediately turned to the flagrant unsuitability of whatever pre-rigged replacement is to be chosen by Gahan's handpicked board of bobble-headed sycophants (GIGO).

ON THE AVENUES: Hi there, NAHA wastrels. My name is Peter Principle, and these are my friends Deaf and Dugout.

Given Gahan's perennial nepotism fetish, will it be a member of the mayor's extended family, perhaps Chris Gardner or Steve Bonifer?

Perhaps a regency by the Wizard of Westside, Dan Coffey himself? If so, he'll need an ivory abacus with gold lamé turnbuckles -- but Dugout can have it TIFFed, right?

Better yet: Bob Norwood, bootlicking insurance mogul to the stars?

And again this reminder: No local elected officials with the possible exception of a typically venomous Coffey have spoken publicly about Gahan's plans for the NAHA.

Silence is acceptance, is it not?

Seems they're all imaging the Orwellian words inscribed on the locomotive headed for the camps, right next to the smiley faced mud flat anchor: “Hop on Board the Quality of Life Express.”

---

Previously:

It's #OurNA, all right: "New Albany attempting to purge itself of the poor" ... so, are local Democrats finally catching on to the Gahan shell game?

N & T's Beilman with delightful devastation for Deaf Gahan: "New Albany Housing Authority leaders knowingly violated policy, HUD order, documents state."

And it comes as no surprise.

"In a phone interview Thursday, (HUD spokesman Brian) Sullivan confirmed the board did not follow the required search process, nor did it receive approval from HUD before appointing (David) Duggins as interim director as required from the zero-threshold status."

Even though News and Tribune reporter Elizabeth Beilman's bosses at editorial presumably remain utterly confused about the toxic reality of Deaf Gahan's Public Housing Putsch 2017 ...

Newspaper editorial board displays abject cluelessness about the Great Gahan Public Housing Putsch of 2017. (March 12, 2017)

Must we accept Chris Morris's viewpoint as gospel, given that at least he lives in New Albany, whereas the remainder of the Jeffersonville-centric editorial board knows absolutely nothing about our city, and as time goes on, grows ever prouder of this fact?

... Beilman has put together an admirable, near-classic story* about the subsequent putsch-inspired chaos at the New Albany Housing Authority. The interim director's semi-coherent flailings are especially instructive.

I strongly urge that readers visit the newspaper site and read the whole story, as the revealingly shambolic elements of Gahan's public housing foot-shoot are revealed one by one, apart from the necessary connection with Deaf himself, who unmistakably is their author -- but of course, the mayor must be omitted from the exercise lest ad revenues be threatened.

The link and excerpt are below, though first, here's a belt of background from June 24.

Public Housing Putsch '17: Gahan, Trump remain in lock step as sycophants queue after the NAHA's director of finance resigns.

It's a measure of Jeff Gahan's generalized ethical barrenness (GEB) that when word reached the Green Mouse that Mike Bainbridge had resigned on Thursday as director of finance and compliance at the New Albany Housing Authority (NAHA), all thoughts immediately turned to the flagrant unsuitability of whatever pre-rigged replacement is to be chosen by Gahan's handpicked board of bobble-headed sycophants (GIGO).

Also, yesterday's ON THE AVENUES examined the fiasco from a different angle.

Obviously, the reason why interim director Duggins has nothing to say is because he knows just as little about the daily workings of the agency to which he has been transferred as any of Donald Trump’s bumbling cabinet appointees. With Duggins tongue-tied, (Irving) Joshua must lead the diversion.

Here's Beilman.

New Albany Housing Authority leaders knowingly violated policy, HUD order, documents state, by Elizabeth Beilman (N & T)

Former compliance director cites 'unethical' actions in resignation

NEW ALBANY — The New Albany Housing Authority board and interim executive director knowingly violated internal policy and a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development order, according to a former official's resignation letter. HUD confirmed issues with compliance.

The allegations of "possibly illegal and unethical" actions surfaced in a resignation letter tendered by Mike Bainbridge, the former NAHA director of finance and HUD compliance. The letter obtained by the News and Tribune was dated June 15 and effective immediately.

"When actions are taken by Agency leadership including the Board of Commissioners which blatantly and knowingly conflict with HUD rules and regulations, I'm left with no choice but to resign, as I cannot be associated with such activities," Bainbridge wrote in the letter.

In terms of integrity and principle, Mike Bainbridge has set a meritorious example that Gahan's bootlicking sycophants probably won't ever grasp.

"In matters that are this serious and significant, I do not want to make statements that are based in even the slightest degree of speculation or opinion," (Bainbridge's) statement read. "I prefer to deal in, and present, only known facts. The facts that led me to resign from my position with NAHA are stated in my letter of resignation, and proven by the attachments to that letter. I will let those facts stand on their own merits."

Use a chit and read Beilman's piece. You won't regret it.

---

*An aside: From Beilman's piece: "The News and Tribune first reported on Bainbridge's resignation in late June." It did. After you read it at NAC first. It would be nice if the newspaper might occasionally attribute in such cases ... I regularly do it for them ... though as a rank amateur, perhaps I'm obliged to credit the professionals. 

Coffey, undemocratic Democrats "win" as Lorch ousted from city council attorney position.

Matt Lorch is a stand-up guy, and he's taking the high road by insisting that the parting is mutual.

Posterity will note that it was a great deal more one-sided than that -- and at NA Confidential, we enjoy recording the historical record for posterity. When the News and Tribune is finished with its Hanson Mannequin contest, it's free to join us.

Gahan's Grab: Yes, principled Democratic positions on public housing actually DO exist, and here's one of them. But first, some Kool Aid!

Coffey v. Lorch: Masochism's as good as necrophilia to a blind yes-man, so off to council we go.

Democrats fold lightning fast as Coffey broadens demands to include groceries, free cable and the return of square dancing.

ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

Coffey v. Lorch: Masochism's as good as necrophilia to a blind yes-man, so off to council we go.

Is it the Ides of March yet? It seems like a long time ago, but as the council minutes, January 19 was the night we learned about the price of Dan Coffey's swing vote: Council attorney Matt Lorch's job.

ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

First, the minutes.

So, will there be further beak-wetted fireworks tonight?

Is Coffey still lusting for human blood, or was the mayor's promise to rehabilitate senior housing at Riverview Towers (Coffey's traditional vote haven) enough to satiate the Copperhead's appetite?

If the matter arises, how will the shameless City Hall sycophant Bob Caesar vote? The Green Mouse suggests that Caesar has come dangerously close to showing signs of a conscience over the appeasement of Coffey at the expense of a loyal Democrat ... but Caesar covets the mayor's chair, and so does Pat McLaughlin, and they don't know whether Jeff Gahan will run again ... so what to do, especially when your default setting is political weakness?

Hmm. Looks like I picked another bad night to stop drinking.

ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

You can’t blame Dan Coffey for understanding simple math.

Coffey might well be one of the nastiest politicians to mar this or any other underachieving settlement, at least since records were first scrawled on the wall at the Caves of Altamira, but say this for the man: He doesn’t need an abacus to smell raw fear – and take advantage of it.

When Coffey bolted from the Democratic Party in January of 2016 in preparation for becoming the most obvious Donald Trump supporter in New Albany, you can be sure he’d already run the power poll numbers.

After city elections in 2015, there were two more Republicans on the city council than before, totaling three. Scott Blair already had declared himself an Independent, and Coffey correctly surmised that Blair would eventually tire of desperate efforts to please Mayor Jeff Gahan when Gahan had no intention of responding to Blair’s overtures.

Coffey saw Blair joining the GOP bloc more often than not, leaving four Democrats – and one pivotal seat for the Dan Coffey Party.

That pesky math again: Three Republicans plus one independent equals four Democrats in need of a fifth vote, placing Coffey in the catbird’s seat.

All Coffey needed to do was wait until his swing vote passed from possibility to reality, and this magic moment arrived in spades on November 9, 2016, as the full extent of the Democratic Party’s latest precipitous collapse in Floyd County elections became evident, and Team Gahan began mainlining Bud Light Lime.

With party chairman Adam Dickey fundamentally lacking the cojones to resign, which is what should occur immediately after catastrophes, and with Dickey’s “leadership” quotient at rock bottom, what remained of the ramshackle political entity was inherited by Papa Gahan, by default the highest ranked Democratic official left wobbling, and bunker-bound inheritor of Dickey’s vast nothingness.

In a delightful reprise from the 1960s sitcom Green Acres, this turn of events freed Coffey to play the wheeler-dealer Mr. Haney to Gahan’s hapless Oliver Douglas.

In January, it came time to select city council “leaders,” and Gahan went into his customarily paranoid, reactive Alamo mode. The four remaining council Democrats were handed defective slingshots and instructed to fight to the death, but first, it was necessary to obtain a ringing affirmation of Pat McLaughlin (president) and Greg Phipps (vice-president) as pliable, unquestioning council rubber stamps.

Blair and Coffey were one step ahead of Gahan’s small-pond theatrics, and both duly visited the mayor to collect their available winnings in return for supporting McLaughlin and Phipps against Republican trial balloon candidacies. Order was restored, and the council’s ruling twosome remained tenuously toothsome, as yet in place to field 3:00 a.m. phone calls from the city’s reigning agoraphobic.

Blair’s favors aren’t known, but Coffey’s became manifest at January’s second meeting, when it was made perfectly clear that the price of Coffey’s loving cooperation would be council attorney Matt Lorch’s head.

Council Republicans quickly objected to the impromptu lynch mob, and Bob “I So Desperately Want to Be Mayor” Caesar was conveniently absent, so L’affaire Lorch was tabled. It isn’t clear what will happen next.

However, quite enough already has happened to provide final, damning proof that the Floyd County Democratic Party is utterly without a moral compass.

The Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the deepest known point in Earth's oceans. In 2010 the United States Center for Coastal & Ocean Mapping measured the depth of the Challenger Deep at 10,994 meters (36,070 feet) below sea level with an estimated vertical accuracy of ± 40 meters.

That’s right; the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.

It’s where Gahan’s and Dickey’s creation, the Good Ship Democratic Lollipop, currently rests, and taken together, these two narcissistic beached whales in a child’s overmatched wading pool are managing against all imaginable odds to make the buffoonish serial liar Donald Trump look precisely like George Washington.

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A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.
-- Leon Trotsky

Younger readers may not be familiar with the workings of the organization known as the Comintern.

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International (1919–1943), was an international communist organization that advocated world communism.

At the risk of oversimplifying, once the Soviet Union came into existence following World War I, the international Communist movement finally possessed real-world dirt acreage to serve as refuge and fulcrum.

Moscow was to Communism what the Vatican was (and is) to Catholicism. The Kremlin coordinated and directed the planet’s Communist parties, and generally did not take “no” for an answer when work orders were disseminated.

For almost 30 years after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin was anointed the Communist equivalent of the Pope. Stalin’s decrees required utter loyalty; after all, he was the infallible mastermind, and the goal was the revolution’s ultimate triumph everywhere, not just Russia,

If Stalin zigged, so did a diehard Communist in Argentina. As he zagged, another dyed-in-the-wool Communist in Scotland followed suit. There was almost no room for discussion or dissent, but at least for a while, Communists outside the USSR were able to blithely ignore the brutality of Stalin’s paranoid totalitarianism.

That’s because the doctrinal faith and the propagandistic Kool-Aid were strong, and the utopian Commie chic alluring, seemingly promising a peaceful, prosperous future. After all, it wasn’t about the USSR’s needs, it was about the proletariat as a whole – except it really was about Stalin, and not a lathe operator in Italy, and there came a time when theory and practice were poles apart.

And yet the Comintern still demanded obedience, even after Stalin’s death, and many Communists outside the USSR chose to deny facts rather than face cognitive dissonance. Few seemed able to do what the famous writer George Orwell did: Abandon the Soviet Union, but retain his socialist beliefs.

For Stalin, Marxism was of the Groucho variety: Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes? The overarching point for those obedient Stalinists in the West is that once Stalinism was discredited and tossed into the “dustbin of history” (Trotsky’s words again), so were they, those who hadn’t believed their own two eyes. The damage to their credibility was irreparable.

Stalin certainly didn’t invent the rigorous suppression of individual conscience. He wasn’t the first to deny the necessity of justifying the end, or to proclaim the imperative of absolute obedience on the part of expendable foot soldiers, whose only job – whether from a sense of duty or inchoate terror – is to move to their assigned places on the chessboard when directed, come what may.

Just the same, Stalin may have perfected these conditions. They’re not the sort of behaviors we should emulate, are they?

I repeat: Are they?

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If you’ve spent any amount of time in New Gahania, it’s plainly evident that Matt Lorch is everything Dan Coffey isn’t.

Lorch is jovial, reliable and ethical.

Lorch is trustworthy and doesn’t play games of the sort that can hurt people.

Lorch’s position as the latest in a long, successful family line of lawyers has not come without personal challenges, as with his hearing impairment, which if anything impels him to work harder and more efficiently.

What’s more, unlike Coffey, Lorch has been an absolutely dependable member of the Democratic Party, resolutely toiling for the greater good of the organization.

I can’t help thinking back to Coffey’s ill-fated race for county commissioner, which he lost in a landslide. Lorch attended Coffey’s biggest fundraiser, and offered Coffey his full support as a fellow Democrat. He probably donated, too.

Ultimately, this points to the unkindest and most disgusting cut of all – and it has nothing whatever to do with Coffey, a man incapable of trustworthiness. While Matt Lorch is everything Dan Coffey isn’t, and cannot ever be, for Coffey to spit in Lorch’s face comes as no surprise, precisely because as a loathsome, grandstanding, bullying, homophobic sociopath, it’s what Coffey does.

It’s like your dog licking his balls, just because he can.

Yes, but it’s Gahan and Dickey who are leeringly throwing Matt Lorch under the bus, and it’s the steadily shrinking handful of elected Democrats, like Pat McLaughlin and Greg Phipps, who are being asked by Gahan and Dickey to lend their stamp of approval to the shameful sacrifice of Lorch for no other reason than the way it encourages Coffey’s variable tumescence, and rather than objecting as a dignified human being to the sheer insanity of this, they’re the ones who are shrugging and asking timidly, “Yes, dear leaders -- which axle?”

Perhaps the Floyd County Democratic Party recent electoral disintegration has rendered its adherents confused and stunned, like Abe Lincoln’s duck hit on the head, and I’ll try mightily to phrase these questions in simple language, so even the central committee can understand them.

How are Gahan and Dickey to extinguish the smoldering dumpster fire of a Floyd County Democratic Party if they’re so eager to toss solid, loyal Democrats to the self-centered whims of an anti-democratic Copperhead?

How can Gahan and Dickey even pretend to “lead” the political opposition to the GOP’s escalating hegemony – here, there and everywhere – when they’ve failed to reveal a single coherent resistance tactic since November 9, but found ample time to plunge a rusty dagger in Matt Lorch’s back?

How can these people be trusted, ever again?

If you’re a Democratic Party voter, it matters far less whether Gahan and Dickey can sleep at night; after all, they’re proving themselves to be just as dangerously sociopathic as Coffey himself.

Rather, how can YOU as a Democrat sleep at night if you allow them to get away with it?

Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are asking Democrats precisely the same question as Stalin did Communists: Who are you going to believe, us or your own two eyes?

The fact is that your own two eyes are revealing sordid and uncomfortable truths, and I believe you should honor your conscience and refuse to countenance their madness. Gahan’s and Dickey’s ends do not justify their means, and this isn’t the time to mimic the lemming’s logic and follow them into the abyss.

They’re conniving and ethically destitute. They’re utterly lacking a moral compass. If you support Gahan and Dickey in this metaphorical beheading to curry favor with Coffey, then your own moral compass has gone missing, too.

It isn’t too late to rediscover it, and to do the right thing.

Isn't it time to take back your party?

Isn't it time for a change?

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Recent columns:

January 19: ON THE AVENUES: Mezcal for what ails you.

January 12: ON THE AVENUES: I can only handle one resistance at a time, please.

January 5: ON THE AVENUES: Gahan's stadium arcadium kicks off a new year with hilarity, pathos and own goals.

December 29: ON THE AVENUES: The 45 46 Most Popular NA Confidential Stories of 2016.

Time for an encore: "The moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas," by the late, great Christopher Hitchens.

I miss Hitch. Last considered here in December of 2014, Hitchens' anti-Christmas masterpiece sustains me during these weeks of ideological overkill. 

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How I miss Christopher Hitchens.

Introductory excerpts from Hitchens' timeless essay are reprinted below, so be sure to follow the link to read the whole, glorious piece, first noted here at NAC in 2008. I reread this every year on or before Christmas Eve. In 2013, there was added gravity, which also deserves another look.

In 2013, as Christmas approached, I'd just finished reading Ray Mouton's novel, In God's House. In 1984, Ray was the lawyer chosen by the state of Louisiana's Catholic Church hierarchy to defend the first priest ever to be charged in secular court with child molestation. Looking back on the perspective of the present day, we obviously know what became of all this, and that Ray's appointment with destiny was the first tiny peek inside a truly massive scandal. I wasn't expecting to be moved to such an extent by Ray's book, but I was -- and remain.

Carrying these thoughts into my annual date with Hitchens, I find the atheist's cynicism to be vastly enhanced.

'Tis the Season To Be Incredulous: The moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas, by Christopher Hitchens (Slate; Dec. 15, 2008)

… My own wish is more ambitious: to write an anti-Christmas column that becomes fiercer every year while remaining, in essence, the same. The core objection, which I restate every December at about this time, is that for almost a whole month, the United States—a country constitutionally based on a separation between church and state—turns itself into the cultural and commercial equivalent of a one-party state.

As in such dismal banana republics, the dreary, sinister thing is that the official propaganda is inescapable. You go to a train station or an airport, and the image and the music of the Dear Leader are everywhere. You go to a more private place, such as a doctor's office or a store or a restaurant, and the identical tinny, maddening, repetitive ululations are to be heard. So, unless you are fortunate, are the same cheap and mass-produced images and pictures, from snowmen to cribs to reindeer. It becomes more than usually odious to switch on the radio and the television, because certain officially determined "themes" have been programmed into the system. Most objectionable of all, the fanatics force your children to observe the Dear Leader's birthday, and so (this being the especial hallmark of the totalitarian state) you cannot bar your own private door to the hectoring, incessant noise, but must have it literally brought home to you by your offspring. Time that is supposed to be devoted to education is devoted instead to the celebration of mythical events ...

Cornel West: "The rule of Big Money and its attendant culture of cupidity and mendacity have led to our grand moment of spiritual blackout."

But hey -- WATER PARK!

Spiritual blackout in America: Election 2016, by Cornel West (Boston Globe)

THE MOST FRIGHTENING feature of the civic melancholia in present-day America is the relative collapse of integrity, honesty, and decency — an undeniable spiritual blackout of grand proportions. The sad spectacle of the presidential election is no surprise. Rather, the neofascist catastrophe called Donald Trump and the neoliberal disaster named Hillary Clinton are predictable symbols of our spiritual blackout. Trump dislodged an inert conservative establishment by unleashing an ugly contempt for liberal elites and vulnerable citizens of color — and the mainstream media followed every performance (even his tweets!) for financial gain. Clinton laid bare a dishonest liberal establishment that was unfair to Bernie Sanders and obsessed with winning at any cost — and the mainstream media selectively weighed in for pecuniary ends.

In short, the rule of Big Money and its attendant culture of cupidity and mendacity have led to our grand moment of spiritual blackout.

Dear Jeff: "When Drivers Hit Pedestrians, Where Do We Lay the Moral Blame?"

So why do so many people blame the pedestrian?

Earlier today, I was walking on Spring Street, the world’s longest interstate entrance ramp, as recently certified by the Guinness Book of World Records.

City officials giddy as New Albany finally makes Guinness Book of World Records (REPOST).

At one point, three of four vehicles coming past -- probably all of them traveling between 35 and 40 mph -- shared a single feature in common.

Their drivers, two men and a woman, were staring at mobile phones.

When Drivers Hit Pedestrians, Where Do We Lay the Moral Blame?, by Peter Simek (Front Burner blog at Dallas Magazine)

... When your city is constructed in such way that it values efficiency and speed for vehicular traffic above all else, taking every opportunity to create a thoughtless, unobstructed environment for drivers, that design teaches the people who live in the city that the public realm values the car over the pedestrian. When a pedestrian interrupts the vehicular environment, he or she demonized for stepping out of line. They are judged to be thoughtless, reckless, or irresponsible because they have invaded a space that the city has instructed us belongs to cars.

Lane widths prominent as "FHWA prepares to knock down complete street barrier."

It cannot be repeated often enough: Spring Street runs through a densely populated downtown urban area, and a revitalizing downtown business district, and has traffic lanes the width of interstate lanes.

Until we do something about these widths, traffic will not slow, and walker/biker safety will continue to be compromised.

It is a public safety issue, and it is an issue of political morality.

Why must public safety be contingent on Jeff Gahan's re-election?

He may be able to sleep at night, but this doesn't mean the remainder of us should rest easily.

FHWA prepares to knock down complete street barrier, by Robert Steuteville (Better Cities & Towns)

A significant barrier to human-scale, complete streets appears ready to fall. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is proposing to drop 11 of 13 mandatory standards for streets under 50 miles per hour, which will help in the design of federally owned urban streets.

“It is definitely a step in the right direction that FHWA is finally responding to the overwhelming amount of research showing little safety benefit to most of their controlling criteria,” says Wes Marshall, associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado.

Wider lane width is one of the crucial criteria for urban streets that has been shown to have no safety benefit. A series of studies have shown that in urban places 12-foot lanes—which have been used on arterial streets since the middle of the 20th century, are less safe than narrower lanes because they encourage speeding. For comparison, Interstate lanes are 12 feet wide.

Voting: Financial security, illiteracy and moral framing.

Frequent reader S introduces the topic of voting (and non-voting) patters of the financially insecure with this comment.

This probably says a lot about New Albany. It surely affects local elections even more, I would guess. Perhaps a different kind of "Get out the vote" campaign strategy is called for ...

Perhaps the most noteworthy revelation to be drawn from the survey is the very existence of Americans who feel financially secure.

Study: Financially Insecure Americans Less Likely to Vote (Associated Press)

Less financially secure Americans lean toward the Democratic Party, but are also less likely to vote, especially in midterm elections, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

The survey released Thursday by the nonpartisan Washington-based research group looked beyond income to measure economic security, instead considering such factors as whether people are employed, have difficulty paying bills or possess a retirement savings account.

Those who Pew ranked as the most "financially secure" were almost certain to be registered to vote, with Pew classifying 63 percent as likely to vote in November. But among the bottom 20 percent, only 54 percent are registered and only 20 percent were likely voters in the midterms.

In this excerpt from Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, Henry Giroux takes it a step further: Illiteracy isn't just about being unable to read words on a page. Rather, it describes the loss of a filter by which one translates "private troubles to broader social issues."

The Spectacle of Illiteracy and the Crisis of Democracy, by Henry Giroux (Moyers and Company)

Wright Mills argued 50 years ago that one important measure of the demise of vibrant democracy and the corresponding impoverishment of political life can be found in the increasing inability of a society to translate private troubles to broader public issues ...

... It is not that we have become a society of the spectacle — though that is partly true — but that we have fallen prey to a new kind of illiteracy in which the distinction between illusion and reality is lost, just as the ability to experience our feelings of discontent and our fears of uncertainty are reduced to private troubles, paralyzing us in a sea of resentment waiting to be manipulated by extremists extending from religious fanatics to right-wing radio hosts. This is a prescription for a kind of rage that looks for easy answers, demands a heightened emotional release and resents any attempts to think through the connection between our individual woes and any number of larger social forces. A short list of such forces would include an unchecked system of finance, the anti-democratic power of the corporate state, the rise of multinationals and the destruction of the manufacturing base and the privatization of public schooling along with its devaluing of education as a public good. As the public collapses into the personal, the personal becomes “the only politics there is, the only politics with a tangible referent or emotional valence,” the formative educational and political conditions that make a democracy possible begin to disappear. Under such circumstances, the language of the social is either devalued, pathologized or ignored and all dreams of the future are now modeled around the narcissistic, privatized and self-indulgent needs of consumer and celebrity culture and the dictates of the allegedly free market. How else to explain the rage against big government but barely a peep against the rule of big corporations who increasingly control not only the government but almost every vital aspect of our lives from health care to the quality of our environment?

Depressed yet?

Let's not neglect George Lakoff, whose work was considered in this space a few weeks ago. Added to a variable consciousness borne of financial insecurity, and illiteracy as launching a crisis of democracy, there's the familiar but now modeified "illiterate and impoverished chicken who when bothering to vote at all opts for Colonel Sanders," owing to unconscious "strict father morality.

Lakoff: " Poor conservatives vote their identity as conservatives, not their lack of material wealth."

... George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, has been working on moral frames for 50 years. In Communicating Our American Values and Vision, he gives this precis: "Framing is not primarily about politics or political messaging or communication. It is far more fundamental than that: frames are the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality – and sometimes to create what we take to be reality. But frames do have an enormous bearing on politics … they structure our ideas and concepts, they shape the way we reason … For the most part, our use of frames is unconscious and automatic."

Unless the school corporation referendum brings out municipal voters in May, there'll almost certainly be another historic low in turnout.

Who'll be the ones pulling those metaphorical levers?

"There is an evolutionary pressure pushing motorists towards hatred of cyclists."

At Facebook, on the topic of Jeff Speck's Downtown Street Network Proposal, a person who lives in Jeffersonville and works in Louisville wrote, "I love downtown New Albany! Please no bicycles."

Including Bike Lanes

Cycling is the largest planning revolution currently underway. . . in only some American cities. The news is full of American cities that have created significant cycling populations by investing in downtown bike networks. Among the reasons to institute such a network is pedestrian safety: bikes help to slow cars down, and new bike lanes are a great way to use up excess road width currently dedicated to oversized driving lanes. When properly designed, bike lanes make streets safer for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians alike -- page 39, Speck New Albany proposal.

So, why single out cyclists?

Moreover, why do drivers become so angry with cyclists? The BBC's Stafford says it is because cyclists "offend the moral order."

Do you agree?

The psychology of why cyclists enrage car drivers, by Tom Stafford (BBC)

Something about cyclists seems to provoke fury in other road users. If you doubt this, try a search for the word "cyclist" on Twitter. As I write this one of the latest tweets is this: "Had enough of cyclists today! Just wanna ram them with my car." This kind of sentiment would get people locked up if directed against an ethnic minority or religion, but it seems to be fair game, in many people's minds, when directed against cyclists. Why all the rage?

I've got a theory, of course. It's not because cyclists are annoying. It isn't even because we have a selective memory for that one stand-out annoying cyclist over the hundreds of boring, non-annoying ones (although that probably is a factor). No, my theory is that motorists hate cyclists because they think they offend the moral order.

Lakoff: " Poor conservatives vote their identity as conservatives, not their lack of material wealth."

Long but recommended reading for Chairman Adam ... to be fair, for all of us on the "left" side of the aisle.

 ... George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, has been working on moral frames for 50 years. In Communicating Our American Values and Vision, he gives this precis: "Framing is not primarily about politics or political messaging or communication. It is far more fundamental than that: frames are the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality – and sometimes to create what we take to be reality. But frames do have an enormous bearing on politics … they structure our ideas and concepts, they shape the way we reason … For the most part, our use of frames is unconscious and automatic."

Leading to this expression of what it means to be a Hoosier in Pence-istan, circa 2015:

 ... In fact, there is no centre: the more progressives capitulate, the more boldly the conservatives express their vision, and the further to the right the mainstream moves.

I was directed back to Lakoff after too long an interregnum when I stumbled on this article, and the "strict father family" framing explaining why the chickens vote for Colonel Sanders.

The following is a Truthout interview with Professor George Lakoff about his latest effort, THE ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant!, to convince progressives to “frame” their political language and appeals based on deep-seated and active values. These are positions and actions that most of the public supports, but absent appropriate “framing” often vote their fears instead of progressive beliefs. It is necessary to ground a nurturing politics for the common good and core values in language and a moral foundation that appeals – rhetorically and emotionally – to the better selves of voters.

You write, “remember that voters vote their identity and their values, which need not coincide with their self-interest.” I remember writing a commentary on a poor congressional district, let’s say about 98 percent white, in Kentucky. Most of the residents were on food stamps, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid – or all of them. However, they have voted in recent elections by landslide majorities to re-elect a congressman who opposes food stamps and supports cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Can you elaborate on how this can occur?

A single moral worldview dominates conservative policies in every domain of life – family, personal identity, sex, religion, sports, education, the market, foreign policy and politics – what I’ve called strict father morality. Your moral worldview is central to how you understand your life.

In a strict father family, the father is in charge and is assumed to know right from wrong, to have moral as well as physical authority. He is supposed to protect the family, support the family, set the rules, enforce the rules, maintain respect, govern sexuality and reproduction, and teach his kids right from wrong, that is, to grow up with the same moral system. His word defines what is right and is law; no backtalk. Disobedience is punished, painfully, so that children learn not to disobey. Via physical discipline, they learn internal discipline, which is how they become moral beings. With discipline they can become prosperous.

If you are not prosperous, you are not disciplined enough, not taking enough personal responsibility and deserve your poverty. At the center is the principle of personal responsibility and moral hierarchy: those who are more moral (in this sense of morality) should rule: God over man, man over nature, parents over children, the rich over the poor, Western culture over non-Western culture, America over other countries, men over women, straights over gays, Christians over non-Christians, etc.

On conservative religion, God is a strict father; in sports, coaches are strict with their athletes; in classrooms, teachers should be strict with students; in business, employers rule over employees; in the market, the market should decide – the market itself is the strict father, deciding that those who have financial discipline deserve their wealth, and others deserve their poverty; and in politics, this moral system itself should rule.

Conservatives can be poor, but they can still be kings in their own castles – strict fathers at home, in their personal identity: in their religion, in their sex lives, in the sports they love. Poor conservatives vote their identity as conservatives, not their lack of material wealth.

Back to Zoe Williams at The Guardian for a brief sketch of the nurturant-family model.

... The nurturant-family model is the progressive view: in it, the ideals are empathy, interdependence, co-operation, communication, authority that is legitimate and proves its legitimacy with its openness to interrogation. "The world that the nurturant parent seeks to create has exactly the opposite properties," Lakoff writes in Moral Politics. As progressives identify failures of logic in the conservative position, so it works the other way round (one of Lakoff's examples: "How can liberals support federal funding for Aids research and treatment, while promoting the spread of Aids by sanctioning sexual behaviour that leads to Aids?").

"The moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas," by the late, great Christopher Hitchens.

How I miss Christopher Hitchens.

Introductory excerpts from Hitchens' timeless essay are reprinted below, so be sure to follow the link to read the whole, glorious piece, first noted here at NAC in 2008. I reread this every year on or before Christmas Eve. In 2013, there was added gravity, which also deserves another look.

In 2013, as Christmas approached, I'd just finished reading Ray Mouton's novel, In God's House. In 1984, Ray was the lawyer chosen by the state of Louisiana's Catholic Church hierarchy to defend the first priest ever to be charged in secular court with child molestation. Looking back on the perspective of the present day, we obviously know what became of all this, and that Ray's appointment with destiny was the first tiny peek inside a truly massive scandal. I wasn't expecting to be moved to such an extent by Ray's book, but I was -- and remain.

Carrying these thoughts into my annual date with Hitchens, I find the atheist's cynicism to be vastly enhanced.

'Tis the Season To Be Incredulous: The moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas, by Christopher Hitchens (Slate; Dec. 15, 2008)

… My own wish is more ambitious: to write an anti-Christmas column that becomes fiercer every year while remaining, in essence, the same. The core objection, which I restate every December at about this time, is that for almost a whole month, the United States—a country constitutionally based on a separation between church and state—turns itself into the cultural and commercial equivalent of a one-party state.

As in such dismal banana republics, the dreary, sinister thing is that the official propaganda is inescapable. You go to a train station or an airport, and the image and the music of the Dear Leader are everywhere. You go to a more private place, such as a doctor's office or a store or a restaurant, and the identical tinny, maddening, repetitive ululations are to be heard. So, unless you are fortunate, are the same cheap and mass-produced images and pictures, from snowmen to cribs to reindeer. It becomes more than usually odious to switch on the radio and the television, because certain officially determined "themes" have been programmed into the system. Most objectionable of all, the fanatics force your children to observe the Dear Leader's birthday, and so (this being the especial hallmark of the totalitarian state) you cannot bar your own private door to the hectoring, incessant noise, but must have it literally brought home to you by your offspring. Time that is supposed to be devoted to education is devoted instead to the celebration of mythical events ...