ON THE AVENUES: I'm voting for Biden. Otherwise it's Trump's burgeoning fascist GOP death cult.

photo credit

It’s bizarre the way that memories can stay with us for decades, and then we awaken to find it's hard to recall what we had for lunch yesterday.

For instance, I still remember watching a very scary B&W horror flick when I was a little kid, so terrifying that it still resonates decades later.

In one of the pivotal scenes, a scientist is attacked in a cave by his own mutant creation, a gigantic monstrous blood-sucking vampire spider, which drains the man of all his bodily fluids, leaving him shriveled and bleached out, pasty pale, suitable for nothing except empty calories for the carrion flies.

But let’s not dwell on Mike Pence’s deathly pallor in his debate with Kamala Harris on Wednesday.

I hear the fly wants his money back: "Where's the beef?"

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And so finally the election draws near.

Don’t worry.

I’m not about to climb down from the dizzying heights of the hill upon which I am fully prepared to drink (to die? Seriously? I wouldn’t consider DYING for these amoral, greedy schmucks – and that’s just the NFL owners), this looming height being my deep, pervasive and abiding disgust with America’s fraudulent two-party political duopoly.

As a genuine social democrat trapped in an anti-intellectual milieu filled with progressive poseurs who can’t muster the chutzpah to contest the dimwits on the other side, my hostility to the Democratic Party peaked in early March, when the capitulating centrists pulled every last string, called in all the necessary markers, and vanquished the party’s left wing.

Had I chosen, I might have devoted this column’s weekly inches ever since April to the myriad failures of the Democrats, beginning with our vacuous local party elites here in the New Albanian swampland, then scaling the slimy pole of unprincipled aff/inf/luence until the Democratic National Committee itself came into view, at which point I would be compelled to excuse myself, step away from the laptop, and slip into a Hazmat suit.

Of course, as damning as the indictments capable of being made against the Democrats, the Republicans have devolved spectacularly from merely objectionable into a drain-circling death cult, of which I’ll have more to say in a moment.

In the sense of our hallowed two-party system of spoils, irrespective of which “side” one chooses to inhabit (to squat?), politics today is a dismal, depressing and depraved journey into the very dark heart of human dysfunction.

By extension, this same old song and dance in American idiocy would have remained roughly the same as always in 2020 if not for the emergence of the COVID-19 virus and the pandemic that followed. Literally for once in our lives, there was a new twist in the tale.

One “side” is failing this test far more spectacularly than the other, and they're the ones I'll be voting against.

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We’ve observed previously that the COVID-19 virus opportunistically targets vulnerable human physiologies. But the extent to which it has done precisely the same in terms of weakened human psychologies and belief systems simply cannot be underestimated.

We’ve seen already thin remaining layers of civility and sensibility stripped away. The science deniers have “enchantingly” multiplied not unlike Pence’s spider-victim-fly diet of pure excrement, waxing orgasmic as they’ve urged old folks to take one for the greater glory of the stock market. The owners of capital meanwhile have used the occasion to double down, while for the rest of us the economy seized up.

Then the deeper ugliness came forward, the accumulated bile, conspiratorial gibberish and raw hatred, much of it borne of generations-long cognitive dissonance, exploding from the ranks of the right-wing’s white know-nothings as Black Lives Matter demonstrations explicated the systemic persistence of racism and absence of social justice.

Through it all, numerous previous unaddressed crises – climate change, health care, income inequality, basic human rights – didn’t exactly disappear.

To be sure, not every Democrat got the pandemic response memo, and even a few Republicans quietly sidestepped their own party’s institutionalized inadequacies, but the primary outcome of the virus’s own truth-revealing capabilities has been the surgical exposure of the GOP’s fundamental(ist) fascination with dying for the “cause.”

And the cause itself? Someone else’s, as it always has been. Mostly the “cause” of bigger money, with a jot or two of apocalyptic religion, wrapped in a flag, although it’s never clear with these retrograde fantasists whether they mean an American or a Confederate flag.

The Republican death cult is the inevitable outcome of five decades spent busily espousing and later gleefully implementing neoliberal, survival-of-the-fittest economic orthodoxy, as abetted by hypocritical end-times Christian theocrats, and washed down with enough white supremacist Kool-Aid to float a fleet of oil tankers.

We should hardly be surprised at this acceptance of death as inevitable. For years, conservatives have responded to gun violence with angry renunciations of any links to gun proliferation or lax gun control laws, offering instead “thoughts and prayers.” The one exception where Republicans express outrage is over the “death” of fetal cells inside women’s bodies—indicating that the fight is less about “murder,” as the anti-abortionists like to call it, than it is about controlling women’s bodies. By and large, the nation’s right-wing factions have for years wanted us to accept mass deaths and preventable mortality as a price for our “freedom.” They expect the same during a pandemic.

But the Republican death cult truly pole-vaulted over the tipping point, and left Democrats in the dust, when BLM became part of our daily discourse, illustrating that James Baldwin’s words ring more presciently than ever before:

When the Israelis pick up guns, or the Poles, or the Irish, or any white man in the world says “give me liberty, or give me death,” the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad nigger so there won't be any more like him.

Structural racism, white fragility, white supremacy – all of it tied neatly together over a period of four centuries.

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As malicious and looney-bin ludicrous as Donald Trump most surely remains on an everyday basis, allow me to remind you for perhaps the last time that he’s merely a symptom, and symbolic of the rotting disease within.

Trump’s a salesman with only one product, himself, and one true skill, which is enabling the truly dangerous fascists to worship him as an “answer” and purchase the snake oil.

Bullshit.

If it makes sense to you, as it does to me, that to be white is to be racist by nurture, and if whites as yet are the majority in America, if inexorably declining in terms of raw numbers compared to non-whites – and if whites overwhelmingly support Trump in 2020, as in 2016, then logically, Trump is the fruition of American history to the present time, not an aberration at all.

And, if American history since the Reagan era has been an exercise in unfettered capital accumulation by wealthy elites, enabled by neoliberal economic policies on BOTH sides of the duopoly’s aisles, but as always the very heart of the Republican Party’s preference for oligarchies and extractive, robber baron capitalism as its worst, then once again, Trump is a culmination of sorts.

Guns, money and Jesus; that a majority of white “Christians” find it expedient to indulge the worst demons of their nature with respect to racial and cultural distractions merely suggests that Abraham Lincoln’s conception of “better” angels was wishful thinking at best.

Trump’s siren call is for whites to reaffirm their superiority, the supremacist snowflakes having been shaken to the core by the Obama presidency. If lots and lots of us, up and down the spectrum, can make a blood sacrifice of death via COVID, that’s just icing on their cow pies.

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Yes, I dislike the DNC, the Democratic Party’s hawkish warmongers, its centrist "liberal" cowardice, the neoliberal economic gutting, and the sheer volume of hypocrisy existing on the left side of the aisle.

Why, then, am I voting for Biden and Harris?

Because of the GOP’s death cult.

Because there comes a time when triage is paramount, and the bleeding must be stopped.

Because while there is no guarantee matters will improve with Biden, there is no chance of improvement with Trump, only further degradation.

Electing Biden and the Democrats won't resolve the fundamental problem of why 60+ million Americans have alchemized a narcissistic con man into a deity, and come together to fluff his personality cult.

(The short answer involves racism/caste, a misplaced sense of powerlessness, and no more comprehensive an education than an ordinary house fly.)

It will, however, remove at least one blithering buffoon from the daily news cycle, so maybe...just maybe...we can convince 10% of the 60 million that the issues go far beyond the charlatan-in-chief, who is little more than a figurehead for self-deception.

Personally, up ticket, it will be all Democrats for me. Locally, in spite of the GOP’s ethical chasm, a precious few Republicans will nonetheless receive my vote. One is an incumbent who’s right for the job. Another is a protest vote against the prevailing NAHS student council nepotocracy.

The third is Greg Roution, a man I've never once met. He’s a Republican running for coroner against Anthony Oxendine, a funereal circus-master who once tried to sneak a crematorium through the back door into my neighborhood and became all doofus petulant when his bluff was called. 

That's all, folks. Go out and vote, vote against the death cult's vulgarians, and don't forget:

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October 1: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to the last will and testament of NA Confidential. 

September 24: ON THE AVENUES: Magic and loss. 

September 17: ON THE AVENUES: Stuck inside of Nawbany with the Flanders blues again.

September 10: ON THE AVENUES: The Weekly Wad lives on in the minds of malcontents.

Typically toothless city council mask resolution proves that even a pandemic can't compel New Albany’s Democrats to actually GOVERN.

Local Democrats have adhered to the Warren Nash Dictum for the past half-century. It goes like this: "Talk like a liberal, perform like a conservative."

Vote slated on resolution requesting use of face coverings in public (Suddeath; N&T)

The assumption, which to my knowledge has yet to be proven wrong, is that any genuine left/liberal-minded person in New Albany will be content with mere words, not action, and still vote Democratic; meanwhile, the Strom Thurmond Democrats -- still far too much of a thing here -- will vote Democratic for many of the city offices while happily supporting Republicans higher up the ticket.

It's just that simple.

Resolutions are always meaningless; to float one during a public health crisis, declare victory and walk away is, well, disgusting.

What's worse, everyone involves knows it, and yet they gaze at the teleprompter, play their parts, mouth their lines without a trace of conviction, and look forward to the redevelopment commission meetings because the real business of decision-making is conducted by an appointed board.

All right, self-styled progressives. Now we can kick back and wait for Republicans at the state level to take the proper response to the pandemic; we might start trying locally, but our Democrats can't be bothered to govern.

Sorry, love you guys in an ideological sense, but you're prepared to continue rewarding local Democrats for doing nothing, even during a pandemic.

Why can't you see this?

Collapse: "As matters now stand, the only arguably defensible reason to vote for Democrats is to vote against Republicans."

Jared Diamond had it right. Following are three articles that should not be read without booze at the ready -- if you're progressively inclined, that is.

The Coming Collapse, by Chris Hedges (Common Dreams)

It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion.

The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.

The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics. It will not demilitarize our police and reform a prison system that has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population. It plays to the margins, especially in election seasons, refusing to address substantive political and social problems and instead focusing on narrow cultural issues like gay rights, abortion and gun control in our peculiar species of anti-politics.

snip

And so, to quote Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?

We must invest our energy in building parallel, popular institutions to protect ourselves and to pit power against power. These parallel institutions, including unions, community development organizations, local currencies, alternative political parties and food cooperatives, will have to be constructed town by town. The elites in a time of distress will retreat to their gated compounds and leave us to fend for ourselves. Basic services, from garbage collection to public transportation, food distribution and health care, will collapse. Massive unemployment and underemployment, triggering social unrest, will be dealt with not through government job creation but the brutality of militarized police and a complete suspension of civil liberties. Critics of the system, already pushed to the margins, will be silenced and attacked as enemies of the state. The last vestiges of labor unions will be targeted for abolition, a process that will soon be accelerated given the expected ruling in a case before the Supreme Court that will cripple the ability of public-sector unions to represent workers. The dollar will stop being the world’s reserve currency, causing a steep devaluation. Banks will close. Global warming will extract heavier and heavier costs, especially on the coastal populations, farming and the infrastructure, costs that the depleted state will be unable to address. The corporate press, like the ruling elites, will go from burlesque to absurdism, its rhetoric so patently fictitious it will, as in all totalitarian states, be unmoored from reality. The media outlets will all sound as fatuous as Trump. And, to quote W.H. Auden, “the little children will die in the streets.”

Here is part one of the author's diary chronicling the "oddest" House race in America (New York 19).

The Battle of Woodstock, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

What does it mean when the biggest threat to upstart Democrats is the national Democratic Party?

Before he knew it, pulling the veil back on Iraq was a memory. Beals) was now witnessing something just as strange that he felt the world needed to hear about: the machinations of congressional campaigning.

Major-party politics in America, he insists, is little more than a giant protection racket. As he describes it, the party bureaucracies use local elections as forums to gobble up cash by the multi-millions, with ideology or even winning being, at best, ancillary considerations.

The need to continually raise more and more money to support party bureaucracies becomes so intense that the notion of choosing candidates based on ideas or principles becomes a far-away dream.

"It's like The Godfather," says Beals. "You know how Michael says, 'In five years, the Corleone family will be completely legitimate'? It's just one day. One day. Like, we're not there."

snip

"This is where things get dark, but I think there are a lot of people who want you to think we can't win those votes," he says. "They want us to just get back to focusing on the fundraising, and keep the cash cow going."

Beals belongs to the camp that believes that part of what's turned off voters in both parties is the co-mingling of corporate money and politics, and that the only way to win people back is to eschew that money. For this reason, he makes sure to work in a line about how "I don't accept corporate PAC donations" at every door knock.

Since 2016, only a few high-profile Democrats have dared to edge within shouting distance of this point of view ...

Depressed yet? Just one more.

November’s “Revolution” Will Not Be Televised, by Andrew Levine (CounterPunch)

If, as is widely predicted, Democrats trounce Republicans in the 2018 mid-term elections, the political scene in the United States could become a tad less awful. That is the good news.

The bad news isn’t news at all; it is that Democrats worth supporting for reasons other than Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and the odiousness of House and Senate Republicans, Republican governors, and Republicans at all levels of state and local government, are few and far between.

As candidates emerge from this spring’s and the coming summer’s primaries, the situation may become less bleak, but it will still not be good. The reason is plain: Democrats are odious too, and even if that wretched party is ultimately salvageable, this is not going to happen over the next few months.

It would be a step in the right direction, though, were some fresh progressive faces to come on the scene – women (the emphasis this year is on them) and men of evident dedication and integrity who would give voters reasons to vote for Democrats beyond the ones that are so painfully obvious.

As matters now stand, the only arguably defensible reason to vote for Democrats is to vote against Republicans. If the party leaders can be kept from sabotaging the efforts of genuine progressives, and if there are enough of them and their spiels turn out to be more honest than, say, Obama’s was ten years ago, then, perhaps that could change for the better.

Transforming the Democratic Party is a Herculean task. But it is a lot more doable than overturning the duopoly party system that Democrats and Republicans have concocted over the years ...

1. Great again? "Forget fear and loathing. The US election inspires projectile vomiting."

Money into influence? That's not restricted to the major party candidates, is it?

Forget fear and loathing. The US election inspires projectile vomiting, by Barbara Ehrenreich (The Guardian)

The most sordid side of our democracy has been laid out for all to see. But that’s only the beginning: whoever wins, the mutual revulsion will only intensify

... (Trump's) supporters – generally portrayed as laid-off blue-collar workers who, in the absence of unions, have devoted themselves to the cause of whiteness – cheer on each of his macro-aggressions. To them, he is a giant middle finger in the face of the bipartisan political elite, and the crazier he acts, the more resounding this fuck-you gets. It doesn’t matter that most of Trump’s assertions can’t stand up to fact-checking; ignorance has been enshrined by an entire alternative media, stretching from Fox News to Stormfront on the Nazi-leaning right.

On the liberal left, tragically, we do not have Bernie Sanders, who would have dispatched Trump’s populist pretensions with a wrist flick. But no, representing the side of tolerance, good government and cosmopolitanism, we have the very epitome of Democratic party elitism, a woman who labeled half of Trump’s supporters “deplorables”, a politician who is so robotic that any efforts to analyze her motives risk the charge of anthropomorphism. Consider her statement on the Standing Rock occupation in North Dakota, which could have been issued by an unmanned typewriter. As soldiers and police bore down on the protesters, she urged all parties – tribal peoples and the pipeline company that threatens their culture and habitat – “to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest”.

If a withering cynicism hangs over the land it’s because both candidates share a Tony-Blairish zeal for turning money into influence and vice versa. He has his Trump Foundation, whose largest beneficiary was reportedly a fountain in need of renovations that faces the Trump Plaza hotel. She has the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which shares some of its revenues with the global poor, but also emits a stench of corruption which, according to leaked emails, even the ever tractable Chelsea could not help noticing ...

2. Great again? "No Matter Who Loses the Election, the Winner Will Be the National Security State."

Welcome to the "peacetime" war state.

No Matter Who Loses the Election, the Winner Will Be the National Security State, by Tom Engelhardt (The Nation)

Both Trump and Clinton have pledged to pour more money into the already bloated military and security apparatus.

The United States remains the great imperial state on Planet Earth in terms of the reach of its military and the power of its economy and culture to influence the workings of everything just about everywhere. And yet, based on the last strange year of election campaigning, it’s hard not to think that something—and not just The Donald—is unnervingly amiss on Planet America.

3. Great again? "Barrel Bomb: the Cataclysmic Close of Campaign 2016."

Counting the minutes until business as usual.

Barrel Bomb: the Cataclysmic Close of Campaign 2016, by Chris Floyd (CounterPunch)

Well, here we are: at the bottom of the barrel under forty feet of slag. In a few days’ time, we’ll know our fate: the five-alarm fire of Trump Rule (oh, how those police unions are chomping at the bit!) or the Clinton Age of Hyper-War (oh, how those neocons are chomping at the bit!). In either case, the entrenched coagulation of corporate interests and war profiteers that have strangled the peace, prosperity and prospects of the American people will not be budged an inch. The change that people are so desperately hungry for — so hungry that that some of them might well elect an Establishment insider whose sinister clowning makes him appear to be a ‘rebel’ — will not come. Thus their bitterness will grow deeper, more sour, erupting more and more often in physical violence: from militarized police against protestors, from Trump-empowered racists (if he wins or loses), from extremist militias, from angry, maddened people on every side. And of course there will be more — much more — of the horrific, never-ending, globe-spanning violence of the bipartisan Terror War that churns on and on, no matter who is sitting temporarily in the White House.

There’s no use in pretending that’s not what we face. But there’s also no use in pretending that this situation is somehow sui generis, some terribly unlucky conflation of unforeseen circumstances coming together at this particular time. It is in fact the culmination and embodiment of the deliberate choices of the most powerful forces in society: the choices to enrich themselves beyond all reason and extend their military and economic dominance over the earth.

Diane pissed off the mighty Oz, and five years later ...

... Slate Run Road still awaits attention.

Is there any better example than Slate Run Road as proof that multi-modal transportation design such as that espoused by Jeff Speck can exist outside the city's core?

But it takes political will ... and a remote sense of fairness, because it's clear that Team Gahan's non-action on Slate Run is a result of vindictive political considerations.

These need to stop, and the means to do so is right around the corner.

August 21, 2010: New Albany seeking input on Slate Run construction, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

...“What we want to do is upgrade the facility to make it accessible and safe for pedestrians,” (Carl) Malysz said. “There’s a couple of different design approaches and that’s what we want to talk with the neighborhood about.”

The predicted gutting of Speck begins as Mayor Jeff Gahan gives the finger to complete streets advocates.

If you'd like to see complete streets on your lifetime, removing Jeff Gahan from office has become the sole option.

Firm hired to provide options for changing New Albany street grid, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — New Albany will likely take at least six more months to decide upon any changes to the street grid in downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods.

The New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety approved a contract Tuesday to hire the Scottsburg firm HWC Engineering. The firm will review planner Jeff Speck’s proposal for changing the street grid, as well as input received by the public during three meetings earlier this year, and provide three options for the city consider.

It’s expect the conceptual design will take at least six months to prepare. If the city elects to move forward with one of the options, the project engineering is estimated to take up to another year to prepare.

Why is Jeff Gahan terrified of publicly supporting Speck? Leadership, anyone?

Time and again, we've forcefully called out City Hall for focusing its bizarrely scant public love of the Speck Plan (it's a "love" that dares not speak its name) solely on the study's recommendations to address future ORBP-created, pass-through traffic issues, while utterly refusing to publicly support the socially and economically transformational aspects of walkability outlined therein.

Make no mistake: City Hall is fully deserving of our censure -- and yours. It has been a persistently cowardly public performance on the part of Jeff Gahan, because as Bluegill notes, Gahan sings different tunes depending on the audience.

The mayor recently asked my wife what she thought about (the Speck proposals). Her answer: implement the Speck plan in its entirety as soon as possible. His response (not verbatim, but very close): I agree and a majority of people seem to be saying the same. We'll have some opposition, but I think we can get it done. That's what the mayor told her, just before walking into the public meeting and not taking a position. If he can say that to one person, he can say it to everyone.

Yes, he can. But he has not, and shows no signs whatever of leading on this issue.

As Jeff Speck has publicly stated on numerous occasions, New Albany has fine bones for enhanced walkability. What New Albany does not have, and what Jeff Gahan and his reality-challenged minions seem intent on ignoring as a matter of institutional preference, is an overt, stated commitment to equality for all users of streets and sidewalks.

Something like this: Mission Pedestrian and the Declaration of Pedestrian Rights.

Such lingering deficiencies become even more glaringly obvious at times like last week's Bored of Public Works meeting, where the customarily somnolent body of political appointees determined to address snow removal concerns: Sidewalk yellow snow and red herring removal. Unsurprisingly, the Bored denied responsibility, but was unable to point to any specific precedent in the city's code of ordinances.

In a comment appended to this post, reader W noticed this, too.

For an example of a progressive (and comprehensive) approach to sidewalks in Indiana, look at the sidewalk code of Evansville:

http://www.codepublishing.com/in/evansville/html/Evansville12/Evansville1205.html

You'll see Evansville has a comprehensive schedule of sidewalk maintenance. 35 entries in their city code about sidewalks.

Contrast that to the very thin mention of sidewalks in the ordinances in the the New Albany code:

http://www.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/Indiana/newalb/cityofnewalbanyindianacodeofordinances?f=templates$fn=default.htm$3.0$vid=amlegal:newalbany_in

Look at section "TITLE IX: GENERAL REGULATIONS" and go to section "99. STREETS AND SIDEWALKS" - the only sidewalk regulations involve replacing sidewalks removed during construction. 

No stated plan of inspection, no stated plan to maintain or repair. No definition of sidewalk responsibilities.

The "Barrett Law" referred to in the Evansville code allows the shared cost of maintenance to be paid by the home owner over a reasonable period time - 10 years in Evansville's definition.

Louisville has a sidewalk repair program where the cost of sidewalk repair by the city is waived if the homeowner continues to live in the property for five years after repair. Otherwise the cost becomes a lien against the property paid at the time of sale.

Walkable New Albany... 

Reader M summarizes:

Having safer streets and a more walkable city is worth it regardless of traffic increasing due to tolls. In fact, if the traffic doesn't increase when the bridges open, we'll end up with all the benefits of two way streets and less traffic. Seems like a win either way.

Why is Jeff Gahan scared?

Dear Mayor Gahan: Would you agree that these steps to slow traffic, deter distraction and promote walkability are all about PUBLIC SAFETY?

If so, then why are we undertaking to implement so few of these steps, and so reluctantly?

“These pedestrian improvements also improve motorists’ and bicyclists’ safety. It’s a win-win-win. Everyone’s safer.”

That word again ... safety.

You invoked it repeatedly to justify demolishing a historic structure, even after you'd received a legitimate and workable rehab offer from a contractor (I'll have the information about that soon enough ... ans what happened to the "salvaged" contents, anyway?)

Why does City Hall continue to ignore safety as it pertains to the streets?

Why must public safety as promoted on the city's own streets and sidewalks wait until Jeff Speck tells us what's already published here, and what has been known for many years?

Or should I be asking Adam Dickey these questions?

How to Restore Walking as a Way of Life, by Jay Walljasper (Project for Public Spaces)

The gravest danger to walkers as well as bicyclists and motorists is other motorists who drive dangerously. According to data collected by the New York City Department of Transportation from 2008-2012, “dangerous driver choices” contributes to pedestrian deaths in 70 percent of cases. “Dangerous pedestrian choices” is responsible in 30 percent of cases and joint responsibility in 17 percent of cases.

As the old saying goes, speed kills ...

... Many experts think it’s not as simple as changing the speed limits. Charlie Zegeer, project manager at the University of North Carolina’s authoritative Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) says, “Research shows that lowering a speed limit doesn’t work to slow traffic– it’s the roadway design that affects the speed.”

(list follows)

Area political IQ dips below the Mendoza Line as election draws near.

As arranged to provide for a candidate to purchase front page ad space, thus appearing almost as an editorial endorsement of Frank Loop for sheriff, thus dooming us to a Steve Bush victory, here is the News and Tribune's Voters' Guide, which includes multitudinous gems of self-serving wisdom, like this one from Ted Heavrin:

"I have been asked by both parties to run for the position."

Really, Dave Matthews? Not that it doesn't make some measure of sense, given that Heavrin is as much a "Democrat" as Vladimir Putin is a member of Pussy Riot; and stranger things have happened in this cavernous intellectual vacuum.

Another memorable snippet comes from Ron Grooms, who makes a forceful case for his political experience, whenever it comes to watching other folks do all the heavy lifting:

"Salaries need to be increased," purrs Grooms, who proceeds to spout vapid platitudes about education and training, sans the first original idea as to how someone in his position actually might affect such matters, short of being re-elected and repeating the platitudes next time around.

At least the voters' guide is not surrounded with Hanson Eye Activated Remuneration Tentacles (see, the newspaper really does have a HEART).

Meanwhile, guest columnist Matt Nash, who as yet has managed to avoid the wrath of 'Bama pensioner surrogates and retains his bully pulpit, sadly points to the obvious: You'll all be bitching, and about three of you will vote OR bother to be involved in any sensible way with local affairs.

Hell, you might as well be Ron Grooms. What's his salary, anyway?

NASH: It’s time to make some decisions

May has arrived and brought with it another primary election day. If I had to guess, I would say that newspaper opinion page readers are more prone to vote than members of the general public at large, but still the number of people that will be voting next week is going to be low.

Many people act like they are concerned at everything that is going on around them, but this primary election will likely still not generate much interest at all.

Are you concerned at the direction the state of Indiana is going? Do the bridge tolls or other highway problems concern you? Do you feel that Indiana is moving in the right direction as it pertains to the “gay marriage amendment?” Do you think that our schools are being funded properly, and do you agree with the direction of the state as it pertains to education?

Nearly everyone has an opinion on each of these matters, but very few will take the time to vote next week.

What I learned this week, local indie business owner's edition.

Last night, Susan “Marktmeister” Kaempfer was permitted (nay, actively encouraged by both city and council) to erect a straw man (“they’re going to take away our farmers market”) and to smash it to pieces. This she proceeded to do, as any five-year-old child might have done in the absence of adult supervision.

It should suffice to say that adult supervision did not materialize.

The council needn’t have abetted it by moving non-agenda speaking time forward, but it did, because the body does not possess firm, principled leadership. It has barely any leadership at all in the absence of texting the Democratic Party chairman prior to meetings.

City Hall remained aloof because it received a few phone calls, and it persists in thinking that the telephone is the only means of communication on the planet, and so it feared them, reverting to the traditional rope-a-dope: Heck, we can’t do anything. After all, we’re only the mayor and chosen staff. Let the council have what it wants, as inherited from the departed England administration.

It was the usual black eye for New Albany; the usual squabbling, bickering and nutjobbery, and the same old political paybacks to the same old suspects without any intrusion of contemporary reality. Of course, at the end of the meaningless, senseless, insulting, Kaempferesque spectacle, there was no firm resolution of anything at all, because there was no rational consideration preceding or prompting any of it. There was nothing to vote up, or down, just fetid air heavy with fear, loathing and lies.

As Billy Preston once advised, “Nothing from Nothing Leaves Nothing,” although in New Albany, nothing from nothing leaves a $300,000 bill for a project on a plot of land no one knows the value of, on behalf of a transient retail organization, as politically enabled by a non-profit group unable or unwilling to restrain the for-profit political avarice of certain of its members. City Hall slouched, whistling. Thumbs were twiddled. Shirley Baird nodded knowingly to a tomato vendor, whose thumb would be taken off the scale henceforth.

But here’s the kicker.

We already knew it. Been there, done that.

There may be fifty ways to leave your lover, but in New Albany, there are 108,000 ways to know when the fix is in. Rather, here is what I learned yesterday, as composed of two equal parts: First, the morning meeting between city officials and representatives of downtown groups, at which we learned that economic development policy (or non-policy) is determined solely by the "tools" handed down to the city by others, and are confined by a box with clearly delineated lines that preclude creative thinking, and second, the staged, pre-arranged and gloriously Abner Louima’ed farmers market debacle.

In New Albany, part-time, short-term market vendors, most of whom do not reside in New Albany, and who avail themselves at rapidly escalating city expense of the farmers market facility for 40-odd prime days during the year, are far more worthy of City Hall’s and the city council’s attention and money than local independent small business owners who have invested millions of dollars and countless hours in operating 365 days out of the year.

It would seem that our phone calls don't count. 

But I thought DNA was the political arm of England Doug's re-election campaign. Either way, it isn't very non-profit of them.

Yesterday, NAC's co-editor made a pithy comment at Fb:

"Develop New Albany: The political arm of the mayor's office."

Later he noted that at present, two city operatives and a council woman are listed as being "attached" to DNA: Mike Hall and Tonya Fischer, and Shirley Baird. And yet it was David Duggins who accompanied Baird to last November's meeting at the Board of Works, when the latter revealed funding for the ill-advised farmers market fluff-up.

I'm not even sure why we're having an "interested downtown economic entities" meeting this morning. It appears that DNA already has been gifted with the brass ring. Funny, I was always under the impression that one was compelled to actually grab it. Silly me.

Bluegill has written so much of note these last two days that I'll continue to quote passages of his with which I'm in agreement.

"I vote to remove DNA from the farmers market operation altogether so that we might, as a community, have an honest conversation about its future."

And, best of all, another in a long, sad line of local luminaries unable to fathom the true nature of social media.

"After DNA rolled out its market 'poll', there was some discussion last night on their Facebook page with some for but several against, particularly after others explained what DNA had not: that their proposal will cost over $300K and that there are other potential alternatives. Went to see how it was going this morning and DNA had deleted the whole thread. Great stuff from a group whose charter calls for them to help facilitate discourse around downtown issues.

To which I'll add: It's also worth noting that the last time discussions started occurring regularly at DNA's page, postings by non-administrators were disabled.

The ineptitude would be staggering if it weren't so Intrinsically (though not Exclusively) New Albany.

Consider going to the polling page and disrupting DNA's bush league tactics by voting for the parking garage. Real poll questions for real people, here.

In which we finally hear Silent Ron's side of the HJR story -- except he says absolutely nothing at all.

In the run-up to the Indiana Senate's vote on HJR-3, Ron Grooms refrained from all social media inquiries prior to infamously adding his name to the list of "yea" votes for the Hoosier Stain. Rest assured; it wasn't just social media on my part. I wrote him privately, and my e-mail also was ignored. Still has been, to this very moment.

Following is a Facebook thread ensuing after a blog post share, beginning on February 18, and concluding (so far) yesterday. In it, Ron Grooms finally offers a tepid reply.

Of course, it's no reply at all.

Now he instructs me to phone him, presumably to listen as the same tripe is recycled, and the same evasions repeated aloud. He might phone me, as my number as there on my FB page for the entire world to see, but no matter, for you see, I'm a written word kind of guy. Am I judgmental this way? Of course I am. Words matter, and the written word matters. Listing various public meetings attended isn't exactly exculpatory, is it? Universals are what matter in this instance. Explain them in writing, or not at all. Oratory disappears. Words on the page remain.

C'mon, Ron. Take pen in hand, and explain your collusion with cowardly discrimination. Describe how it jibes with liberty, justice, economic development and those other hoary bromides you and your brethren toss out without ever thinking. Gimme some meat here, Ron ... and not over the phone, thanks.

Write. It. Down.

---

It would be revealing to hear Silent Senator Ron Grooms's side of the pro-HJR-3 story. What high personal principle is involved in aligning with the anti-human rights bash mob? Electoral considerations only? Is economic development pursued by depriving talented citizens of inalienable rights? Ron, are you going to say anything at all, anytime soon?

RW
I have never heard him say anything of substance before.
February 18 at 8:14am · Like

JG
As unfortunate as it is that Grooms has turned out to be the sort of senator so many of us expected, this another race that has inspired me not to vote unless a better alternative materializes.
February 18 at 10:28am · Like

MC
I'm pretty in the same boat as JG. Mr. Freiberger will have to step it up to get my vote. His recent statement was a step in the right direction. I definitely don't want to hear anymore about his ball playing days.
February 18 at 1:31pm · Like · 1

Roger A. Baylor How can Silent Ron be punished? Give a guy an idea here.
February 18 at 1:44pm · Like

KB
Without a strong candidate running against him, I'm not sure he sees his actions as remotely harming his future and continued political aspirations.
February 18 at 1:47pm · Like

Roger A. Baylor
Chuck didn't lose by much last time. But: I understand all your points.
February 18 at 2:03pm · Like

KB
Grooms is more entrenched now....
February 18 at 2:05pm · Like

Roger A. Baylor
I'll end with this. We all hate sporting analogies, but I've always been hesitant to underestimate Chuck. He hustled and got the most out of average basketball skills. Now, granted, I'd like to see that diligence applied toward a left-liberal agenda like mine. At the end of the day, we're going to have a State Senator no matter what. Silent Ron's a disaster, and voting against the worst candidate is a refuge of sorts. Dunno, but for now, I stick to my viewpoint.
February 18 at 8:29pm · Like

AB
Freiberger is more conservative than Ron in many ways. Even if Ron wasn't a family friend, I wouldn't vote for Chuck. The Clark County races are shaping up to be much more interesting to me, especially the prosecutors race. Both guys are very much qualified. You got to like that.
February 18 at 8:34pm · Like

Roger A. Baylor
AB, yeah, well, Ron loses me forever on the HJR fiasco, especially compared with his continual advocacy of same old economic development fluffing; apparently it's okay to subsidize the unctuous Kerry Stemlers of the world while at the same time dissing the sort of diversity that builds a genuine contemporary workforce. I call that old and out of touch ... politically, of course; he seems a nice enough guy personally. Then there's the silence.
February 18 at 8:42pm · Like

KB
I, too, take issue with the silence. Whether it's bridges/tolls, school vouchers, or HJR-3, he has yet to tell constituents which way his political winds are blowing until he actually votes. And even when an entire school cafeteria or gym is telling him they don't like the plan as outlined by the GOP, he lines right up for the party line. It makes him look like a political pawn playing typical political games, whether he intends to be one or not. I disagree with Clere on many things, but have been heartened by his principled stances on Medicaid and HJR-3 even when they've ruffled party feathers ... On the other hand, I wasn't impressed with Freiberger last time I saw his campaign materials. His pitch seemed to boil down to him being a democrat in name only, and that he has a conservative haircut. I'm also not terribly impressed by anyone currently serving on the county council, given that body's track record of managing the county and its funds. I'll reserve judgment until I see more of what he has to say this time around, but I'm not terribly hopeful he'll present a strong candidacy or viable option against an incumbent.
February 18 at 9:11pm · Like

RS
Ron Grooms made a choice. He must be fired. If voting for Chuck Freiberger accomplishes that, so be it. At the very least, Freiberger will pretend to listen to constituents
February 18 at 9:15pm · Like · 1

Ron Grooms
Roger,If you would like to contact the State House office phone, 317-234-9425,and leave your name and number ,I will be happy to return your call as soon as possible.You can email me at S46@iga.in.gov.In November,2013, we conducted four town hall meetings on each Saturday morning in November.On Friday,February28,2014 we will complete our fourth straight Town Hall meeting on Fridays when we meet in Highlander Point.We appear weeky in the district to gather input and provide my position on issues. HJR 3( House Joint Resolution) came to the Senate after being amended in the House after its origin.The Senate had 5 session days to debate the bill after the House sent it to the Senate.My opinion was seldom asked by the media and when asked was never printed.Many citizens spoke their opinions during our weekly February meetings or during private meetings of small groups as requested.There were several meetings of four or less with me, on both sides of the HJR 3 issues.I am currently answering letters from January about this issue. Also.let me know if you have concerns about the various winery or microbrewery bills that passed in recent sessions. Ron
February 23 at 12:48am · Like

RS
Hey, Roger. See? Ron has been "responsive." He's perfectly willing to tell you that he is responsive. You should be ashamed of yourself for letting yourself read anything into his actual vote on HJR-3 or any prior votes that he is anything other than responsive. After all, this is only the defining issue of the 21st century so far. What makes you think Sen. Ron Grooms is a bigot who is completely disconnected with a demographic as little as 5 years younger than he? What makes you think he is an ideologue so wrapped up in partisan lockstep that he is willing to create a legal, nay Constitutional ban on the marriages of homosexuals? It is clear to me, from Mr. Grooms's Facebook response that he merely voted along party lines and simply didn't know that a vast majority of his constituents find his vote to be repulsive and disqualifying. Perhaps only now does he realize how deeply he has diminished his reputation and legacy. Gosh, Roger Baylor, you seem to have been so unfair. Surely now Sen. Grooms will commit to kill this bill in the next legislative session. Aren't you now embarrassed that you called him out? Sen. Grooms is sensitive to this issue and no merely voted aye to let us know how responsive he is to constituent sentiment. Clearly, you have hurt his feelings. If only he had known how repulsive his vote would be, he would have stood up for the future, not a regressive past.
February 23 at 2:33am · Like

Roger A. Baylor
Apparently he can be reached if predisposed to agree, but if not, then the damage must be completed first, before belated alibis are proffered. Lame.
20 hours ago

Everlasting municipal dysfunction, bowel movements and political cowardice.

On Sunday, I did not rest. I ranted. It didn't make me feel better. It made me feel worse.

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

... Conversely, while many of the complete street platitudes uttered yesterday make me feel good, the reality that there is no discernible will on anyone's part to implement them induces a very bad feeling. If you really believe the city will wither and die unless something is done, as Rosenbarger actually said aloud -- for heaven's sake, John (and your political bosses over uncounted generations) -- doesn't it mean you're ready to dispense with the idiotic charade and actually DO SOMETHING to change it?

My blogging co-conspirator weighed in at FB, and perfectly encapsulated my feelings.

Jeff Gillenwater: Whenever someone like Rosenbarger claims, as they often do, that New Albany and surrounding areas are just too scared and stupid to take very obvious steps toward improvement, that there's little to no hope, no valid reason to invest any more of one's mind or money here thinking it will get better any time soon, I believe them a little more each time -- as I've learned over the past few years just how dedicated they are to proving it. 

Others believe them, too, and smart, engaged people - many with both the talent and intent to contribute in important ways - end up leaving as it quickly becomes the only reasonable thing to do in response. As it turns out, most people with choices don't actually want to sacrifice their intelligence, their passion, and their overall better selves to a bunch of sadly dysfunctional twits and their senseless, self-imposed limitations. 

Along those lines, a note to political wannabes in New Albany, incumbent and otherwise, starting with the Democratic Party Chair and trickling down just like their 30-year-old, failed economic plan: If your stump speech does not include a rather strident section about the need to and your willingness to immediately and completely revamp the city's planning and development/redevelopment departments from scratch, don't bother calling me, emailing me, sending me paper mail, or attempting to schmooze me at events and, for decency's sake, stay the hell off my porch.

Roger A. Baylor: Obviously, when it comes to everyday business, I can't throw in the towel, and I won't, because I tend to be an ornery and stubborn SOB. But as of yesterday, self-interest increasingly will define what I do. These regressives just aren't worth my time and effort.

JG: New Albany needs your business a lot more than your business needs New Albany. The same is true for others. I sincerely think that should be much more fully explored en masse. I dislike the subsidy/quid pro quo game but, if that's going to be the primary deal for the foreseeable future - if city officials are going to stand by and not only tell people that what they're doing is impossible while they're doing it but also actively work to prove and reinforce impossibility as some sort of self-immolation - then hand them fuel and a match and keep your distance. 

There are any number of towns or neighborhoods in the metro that would be happy to have those business and personal investments and would likely do more to acknowledge the respective contributions with contributions of their own. The desire to feed people is noble. Allowing one's self to be starved in the process so that others can advance their pitiful, "public" careers isn't. This City that so regularly and so openly disrespects the many people and ideas doing the work on the ground every day makes people mean, distrustful, and resentful but those feelings, too, as legitimate as they are in context, can be much better directed.

RAB: Adam Dickey might be interested in this thread, although last time I wrote him back, the conversation ended rather abruptly ... which probably owes to the fact that in this town, talking a good game is all there really is. If accomplishment genuinely mattered ...

I'll stop there. How does one end a post like this?

By scoffing at the usual suspects for the umpteenth time? By beating up on myself for every believing any of their perennial bullshit? By thinking that maybe, some day, a genuine reformer will claw his or her way through the unbearably anti-progressive local political party structures, when the likelihood of it happening is roughly equal to my cat setting up a soapbox in Rent Boy Park and reciting Aristotle in letter-perfect ancient Greek?

I'm not sure why Saturday's vacuous folderol should be any more annoying than the palpable nonsense I've heard repeated for ten uninterrupted years, but it was, and the same old song and dance has become colossally tiresome. It's way past time that they came running to us, rather than the other way around. I'd consider an Occupy The City County Building movement if I wasn't afraid the doltishly endless cowardice would rub off on me.

How about a bowel movement instead?

Now, that's more like it.

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

Yesterday I attended the FAN Fair workshop featuring John Rosenbarger (New Albany Public Works Projects) and his daughter Beth (Planner/GIS Specialist in Bloomington IN), entitled "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood."

Spoiler alert: It was anything but.

Beth was delightful in recounting how she learned about walkability's importance by living in myriad other places, and arborist Greg Mills made an excellent, albeit brief, presentation about trees as part of the solution. Bravo to the organizers for their efforts.

But after listening to John Rosenbarger speak, I am now more comprehensively pessimistic than ever before as to this city's hope for any semblance of street grid change in my lifetime. 

It will take days to organize these thoughts into a coherent whole, but the gist was this:

We are prepared to spend endless years talking about the wonders of complete streets, admiring the way such matters unfold anywhere else except here, but because any such wonderment must be defined by half-ass, no-ass measures that require absolutely no political comprehension or open political support, because the citizenry is abysmally conservative, and consequently almost nothing can ever be allowed to happen, even though we grasp that it must, and whatever does leak through the cordon can happen only slowly, incrementally, over endless decades, reflecting planners like Rosenbarger's workplace experiences and rampant personal design prejudices. 

The predictable overall result of yesterday's presentation: Much delightful information that succeeds in other places not named "New Albany," there are few if any "workable solutions" for neighborhoods in such a pit as "New Albany," and absolutely no hope for change here, where we live, even as we know better.

Let's begin with one of many examples. Last week, I took advantage of the one-way comment feature at the East Main Street Top-Down "Improvement" Project web site to ask chief engineer Wes Christmas a question, paraphrased:

Won't the East Main Street project have the effect of diverting truck traffic to other streets, especially Spring?

He answered:

"The E Main Street improvement was not designed to cause diversion of any existing traffic. The improvement was designed to provide for improved and safer pedestrian mobility throughout the corridor, in part by reducing the speed of existing traffic, including trucks."

Ohkaaay. Yesterday, when I queried him, Rosenbarger quickly echoed this sentiment, although conceding that from a walkability standpoint, the street's revised lanes will still be far too wide, a political compromise undertaken precisely for the purpose of not deterring trucks from using the calmed street., but merely slowing them.

In other words, as Bluegill has repeatedly pointed out, the walkability "improvement" of Main Street begins with measures designed to negate any desired improvements, even if such improvements are more sorely needed virtually anywhere else in the city other than Main Street.

The point to me about truck diversion is this: What is likely to happen in real life?

If you're a truck driver considering the merits of the new, reshaped Main Street, which already was a two-way street anyway, and slower than one-way arterials (if Main Street residents spent a month living on Spring or Elm, they'd understand the difference), what are your driving calculations likely to be when deciding on a route from one end of town to the other?

Clearly the design compromise, whereby a median is added to Main (incidentally precluding the single best place in the city for bicycle lanes that actually matter) and lanes kept unnecessarily wide, merely improves the prospects for trucks to self-divert to other streets ... especially the one-way streets ... where absolutely nothing has ever been done, in design or enforcement, to discourage the presence of trucks by slowing them down at all. Or, for that matter, cars.

Christmas said: We're trying to reduce the speed, not divert them ... but if they have another street to use without reduced-speed streets, what in hell's name do you think is going to happen?

And: Isn't that diversion, whether intended or not?

Rosenbarger spend quite a lot of his time yesterday mumbling about the unacceptable costs of congestion, which pretty much proves something I've been saying for a while about inbred political cowardice, and although I'll have more to write about this with time, what I think about this, I phrased in the form of a tweet to Jeff Speck yesterday afternoon:

@JeffSpeckAICP When your city planner outlines complete street options by parsing 50 shades of traffic congestion, you grasp political fear.

He retweeted it, and that makes me feel very good.

Conversely, while many of the complete street platitudes uttered yesterday make me feel good, the reality that there is no discernible will on anyone's part to implement them induces a very bad feeling. If you really believe the city will wither and die unless something is done, as Rosenbarger actually said aloud -- for heaven's sake, John (and your political bosses over uncounted generations) -- doesn't it mean you're ready to dispense with the idiotic charade and actually DO SOMETHING to change it?

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

Let's take a moment to review.

In early December, as we considered the probable effects of the Main Street "improvement" project on similar streets nearby (read: what is judged right for Main likely will not be judged right for Market, Spring and Elm), I lobbed a pass toward the rim and Bluegill duly slammed it home.

(I've been asking) a slew of questions about city streets. Long experience has taught me the utter futility of expecting answers from anyone who actually matters, although there’s nothing to stop me from attending various meetings and poking a rhetorical stick through the bars, all the while questioning whether it’s me or them inside the cage.

Specifically, I asked:

If the city does not do for Elm, Spring and Market what it proposes to do on Main, how does the city explain to residents located on or near these other three streets why it is city policy to depress their property values owing to the greater good required of those transiting the city's streets to reach the other side?

As Groucho Marx never said, “Guess the secret word, and win an invitation to a Democratic Party fundraiser.” The word is “holistic,” and the best answer – the only answer – I’ve received so far comes from NAC’s own Jeff Gillenwater, as posted on Facebook, and since it undoubtedly is the correct reply, let’s take a look.

The City is well aware that what it's doing on Main will divert more auto traffic onto those other streets, Spring in particular.

That's why they're doing it first. That's why the oft expressed "need" for a traffic study does not include Main in its current form as a functioning part of the total grid. That's why the barely there, boilerplate "study" done to justify changes on Main contains no mention of connections to or projected impact on surrounding areas nor any other alternatives than the one they chose before doing the study.

From New Albany's earliest days, Main Street was and is supposed to be the highway, the through street, the primary connector of downtown to other places, but city planners don't want it to be that anymore.

Much like the sacrifice of Mount Tabor residential areas for poorly developed commercial strips on its fringes, the sacrifice of Spring and other nearby streets for Main has long been a part of the plan. And that's precisely why they don't/won't talk about it out loud. A part of any holistic answer, historically and currently, likely has to do with diverting auto traffic to Main, not away from it. That, however, doesn't fit the current gerrymandering scheme.

Ever since the two-way streets discussion first emerged some time ago, occasional chats with John Rosenbarger nearly always have featured a variation of this comment from him at some point in the conversation, accompanied by suitably uncomfortable body language: "Well, if we can't reconvert them to two-way streets, we can at least calm traffic on them."

Now, if I'm misreporting this in any way, John can correct me, but I've heard him say it more than once.

I've always judged his response to be the default ambiguity of an appointed official who has retained his position for decades by adapting, chameleon-like, to whatever political winds are blowing as administrations change. I've defended him and other planners for the thanklessness of their professional duties. These days, my thoughts are becoming somewhat less charitable. I'm beginning to catch the whiff of betrayal in the air.

Since we began peeling back the layers of the Main Street project, it has become ever more obvious that the city's planners have proceeded in precisely the way Jeff suggests in the passage quoted above, and did not begin doing so just yesterday. If so, then the ripples from Main Street, effectively dooming the arterials to an eternity of counter-productivity, have been known, observed, accepted, and part of the plan all along ... in a place where planning in the most general of terms possesses the same sought-after panache as unscooped dog turds festering on the sidewalk.

John is a city planner. John lives on Main Street. John's authored a plan that exalts walkability on his own street, and ignored it elsewhere. There may or may not be a connection, but the oft-repeated component we can summarily dismiss is that the work John does somehow is purely secular and in the realm of unavoidable engineering-wonk, and as such, entirely apolitical.

Bullshit. In fact, John does not work for an eternal, heavenly code of street width and pass-through. He works for Mayor Jeff Gahan, an elected official, and all these decisions whether those made are those finding a home in File 86, ultimately are political decisions. As such, they're up for consideration and reconsideration in the political arena. Let's not forget that.

According to the following report on  the forthcoming FAN Fair, John will be speaking about the desirability of alternate transportation, which presumably includes walking. Originally I was to be in Indianapolis on that day, but I've changed plans. I'll be at the FAN Fair, and with any luck, I'll be allowed to ask several of these questions, prime among them: Is walkability to be confined to Main Street, or do the rest of us in Outer Slumlordia get a chance, too?

FAN Fair: Walking, biking and busing not just an alternative in Southern Indiana; Inaugural event addresses region's sustainability, environmental issues, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

SOUTHERN INDIANA — It may be labeled as alternative travel, but biking or walking to destinations is just another mode of transit to many planners and transportation experts.

Not only does it increase social interaction while decreasing greenhouse emissions and dependence on fuel, but so-called alternate transportation is also cheaper and making a footprint even in Southern Indiana, according to local experts.

“I do think that we are living in a transition period where the tide is shifting toward developing and retrofitting communities to be more sustainable,” Beth Rosenbarger said.

She is a planner and GIS specialist for the Monroe County Planning Department in Bloomington, and also the daughter of John Rosenbarger, who is the director of Public Works Projects for New Albany.

The Rosenbargers will be among the guests speaking about topics such as energy independence and alternate transportation during the inaugural Floyd Action Network FAN Fair on Feb. 1 ...

(For more information, visit the website www.floydactionnetwork.org)

Indiana alcohol legislation, teetotaling and "public safety."

Yes, Representative Bill Davis is serious: If small brewers were to sell closed containers of craft beer at farmers markets (as farmhouse wineries already can), public drunkenness and illicit fornication soon would chase the kiddos away from the heirloom tomato stall. I was there in the room when Davis remarked that if he had his way, Prohibition would yet again be the law(less) of the land.

Perhaps soon the legislature of Mississippi will begin its sessions with a new prayer: "Thank God for Indiana, or else we'd be the most ... "

You know, red state shit.

Legislature had little taste for alcohol bills, by Maureen Hayden (CNHI Statehouse Bureau)

Greensburg — When it comes to alcohol, the 2013 legislative session may be marked more by what it didn’t do to boost booze sales than what it did.

Legislators did decide to let a small group of well-established wineries and breweries to get into the business of distilling spirits, and it cleared the way for an auction of some cheap liquor licenses for lakefront development in a resort community on Lake Michigan. But they crafted both bills to have narrow impact.

In turning down another bill that would have given Indiana breweries the same right as Indiana wineries to sell their products at farmers’ markets, the legislative gatekeepers signaled their distaste for lifting Indiana’s historically strict limits on alcohol.

“If we did that, the next thing you’d know, we’d have farmers markets turning into liquor stores,” said House Public Policy Chairman Bill Davis, a Republican from Portland who’s played a key role in killing alcohol expansion bills.

Davis is a teetotaler who’s repeatedly killed a bill that would allow grocery and liquor stores to sell carry-out alcohol on Sundays. But he said decisions aren’t based on his personal views, but on what’s best for the public safety.

Escaping from Hauss Square, Birmingham AL and L'America itself? Get it in writing first.

Earlier in the week there were ruminations on the general topic of intellectualism's cruel fate within the political precincts comprising the city New Albany.

ON THE AVENUES: Anachronisms and intellectuals, here and there.

Hence, the tendency of New Albanian intellectuals to seek refuge in the cool embrace of Progressive Pints.

Forget for moment the blinding speed with which local ink-stained wretches, their pockets filled with 'Bama doubloons and Gideon screeds, rushed forward to Tweet my very point as it pertains to the media.

Rather, consider Bluegill's subsequent suggestion of reading material:

America -- the Grim Truth, by Lance Freeman (Escape from America Magazine)

Americans, I have some bad news for you:

You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.

Another excerpt addresses our own peculiarly runted newsie institution.

If the people cannot make a change, how about the media? Not a chance. From Fox News to the New York Times, the mass media in the United States is nothing but the public relations wing of the corporatocracy, primarily the military industrial complex. At least the citizens of the former Soviet Union knew that their news was bullshit. In America, you grow up thinking you’ve got a free media, which makes the propaganda doubly effective. If you don’t think American media is mere corporate propaganda, ask yourself the following question: have you ever heard a major American news outlet suggest that the country could fund a single-payer health system by cutting military spending?

If only the Garner administration had made good on its promise of a million bucks. Come to think of it, just a dollar per broken promise in these burgs would add up to a plane ticket -- and that's just the spewspaper

Meet “Frank,” a teabagger.

Yesterday afternoon, in route to Turtle Run, we exited the interstate at Edwardsville. There, in a yard facing State Road 62, was a huge hand-lettered sign in someone's yard extolling the virtues of Romney, Ryan and Mourdock. It might as well have been "Frank's" yard.

When ignorance becomes a movement: Meet ‘Frank’ from Louisville, a ‘Tea Party guy’, by Brian Tucker (Insider Louisville)

... Although my work will likely never be completed, I have arrived at a milepost of sorts and am now able to begin filing my report that shall ultimately be my life’s work – defining and debunking Teabaggery.

At first I thought it would be an easy venture -and it has been in some ways- because people love to tell you everything they know about politics.

Especially when they are dead wrong.

Meet “Frank.”