GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Friday) Slick Jeffie's hoarding of power and money is a very real threat to New Albany's future.

Last week was Harvest Homecoming, and my city's favorite amok time kept me pinned to the tarmac, but now we're back to what passes for normal here in New Gahania, where "We're All Here Because We're Not All THERE."

This week as a run-up to Decision 2019, I'm headed back into the ON THE AVENUES archive for five straight days of devastatingly persuasive arguments against four more years of the Gahan Family Values™ Personality Cult.

I've already made the case for Mark Seabrook as mayor. Now let's return to the voluminous case against Gahanism in five informative and entertaining installments, of which today is the fifth and final hammer blow -- until next week, when I may decide to do it all again. Heaven knows we have enough material.

Today's installment is of recent origin (updates in red), but it bears repeating. Gahanism is about power and money, and Team Gahan's justification for its continued existence oddly parallels America's governing "logic" during the Cold War era, paraphrased:

"The threat of Communism is so great that all power must be concentrated at the top, in the hands of a relatively small governing military/industrial/social elite, and all dissent must be suppressed, these extreme measures being necessary so we as a nation can be more coldly efficient in countering the existential peril posed by the USSR ... "

... and making a handy profit while "we" are at it. Substitute the words "Republicans" for Communism and "Floyd County government" for USSR, and it should be perfectly clear where Mayor Sunshine & the Adamettes' set list is coming from.

In a mounting sign of desperation, Gahan and the DemoDisneyDixiecrats are going full-tilt negative slimeball against Mark Seabrook.

Jeff Gahan's "inspired by Pyongyang" personality cult is the obvious corollary to the Floyd County Democratic Party's institutional avarice and accompanying paranoia. In the grand tradition of failed watercolor artists, seminary students and cobblers, Gahan the middling veneer salesman concluded early in the game that celestial destiny was clearing a path for his unparalleled brilliance -- and we've been reminded of it on a daily basis ever since.

Problem is Payhan's an unclothed emperor, and perhaps this time we'll succeed in deposing him.

Previously:

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Monday) The Reisz Mahal luxury city hall, perhaps the signature Gahan boondoggle.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Tuesday) Gahan the faux historic preservationist demolishes the historic structure -- with abundant malice.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Wednesday) The shopping cart mayor's cartoonish veneer of a personality cult. Where do we tithe, Leader Dearest?

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Thursday) That Jeff Gahan has elevated people like David Duggins to positions of authority is reason enough to vote against the Genius of the Floodplain.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Friday) Slick Jeffie's hoarding of power and money is a very real threat to New Albany's future.

---

March 26, 2019

ON THE AVENUES: Gahan's hoarding of power and money is a threat to New Albany's future.

"I had always given Jeff the benefit of the doubt. No more. I'm afraid once again, another human being has let power go to their head."
-- Facebook comment (from outside the mayor's immediate family)

DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party chairman Adam "Tricky" Dickey has a longstanding gag order prohibiting two-way communications between the delicately perfumed governing class and rude dissidents like me.

But periodically we witness this leash being chewed straight through by Mayor Jeff Gahan's family and functionaries (often one and the same person) who find themselves in a state of outraged pique and distemper. When this occurs, they usually return hurriedly to the scene and scrub the social media graffiti clean rather than risk the sting of Dear Leader's nocturnal lash.

As here.

Gahan's own obsessions run primarily to slobbering in the presence of powerful special interests who write him campaign finance checks, and he has shown little ability to inspire genuine affection on the part of regular townspeople. Still, some of them devour the Rice Krispies Treats and chug the Kool-Aid.

Baylor's obsession with the mayor is crazy! He goes to every website he can find to rant against a very good man and excellent mayor. I know he is obsessively in favor of David White, but to constantly malign Mayor Gahan is dirty tactics and should not be tolerated in politics ... this is exactly WHY you should not listen to his rhetoric and vote for your priorities and what his platform stands for. Gahan has done a lot for New Albany and deserves respect for his accomplishments, not maligned for dirty partisanship.

My response to such comments?

"Thanks for reading, and know that I'm not finished yet."

---

"Obsessive" social media outbursts like the preceding make it clear that we're overdue a refresher course about the meaning of politics, power and political realities, as opposed to fantasies.

“The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”
― Wendell Berry

Like it or not, politics is about power -- who has it, who doesn't, who benefits from it, who wins and who loses. At any given time there'll be those among us differing with the balance of prevailing political power, and who believe it to be excessive. Our conceivable responses in terms of resistance are many, from accepting the status quo to opposing it, and from exercising the ballot box to lobbing a Molotov cocktail.

Simply stated, Gahan has amassed far too much power. 

Gahan's pursuit of power has been relentless, marked by an insatiable thirst for money and a fetish for silence and secrecy, as opposed to discussion and openness.

Gahan's primary objective has been the accumulation of as much unrestrained political power as can be gained by a big fish in this otherwise small pond; to raise as much money as he possibly can through pay-to-play campaign finance patronage; and to deploy his concentration of power and money to limit decision-making to an inner circle of cliquish elites.

As Bluegill put it on the topic of last week's Colonial Manor debacle:

Gahan isn’t remotely interested in input. His personal insecurity, control issues, and need to generate campaign kickbacks from the contractors involved keep any sort of real input from ever happening. Citizens get expensive, poorly conceived and executed projects and Gahan gets a flood of tax dollars into his campaign coffers. It’s a worst case scenario, repeated frequently enough to be the hallmark of his tenure as mayor. New Albanians two generations from now will still be paying for his ego trip.

Conversely, ordinary people who disagree with Gahan often find it difficult to make themselves heard. The local newspaper has long since abandoned its investigative mandate and responsibility to the people to become an absentee-owned, feel-good lifestyles rag filled with taxpayer-funded ads from the very same mayor who knows exactly what his largess purchases. Call it what you will, although to me simplicity suffices: it's protection money.

Sorry, but I wasn't raised to root for US Steel, the New York Yankees and berserk kleptocrats. I was raised to believe in fair fights, level playing fields, assistance to underdogs and two-way conversation. The News and Tribune can't be bothered with any of it, so NA Confidential has undertaken to follow Gahan's big money, at least that iceberg's tip of which we can see, given that $500 handshakes are notoriously hard to trace. The results are summarized in a 20-part series, with links in the finale:

The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 20: Buying and selling a city? Our master list of 59 Gahan wheel-greasers is a pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

(An update followed)

April 22, 2019
Gahan's first quarter CFA-4 has been filed, and it's another massive, quivering edifice of pay-to-play cash.

As for the power Gahan has gathered, consider these points.

Gahan is the salaried mayor.

Gahan has amassed $438,041 in campaign finance donations during the period 2011-2018, dwarfing all predecessors. Why so much? Money is power.

Gahan's campaign finance expenditures amply document this power. We'll be exploring them in the coming weeks.

Gahan is the salaried president of the sewer board, which controls tens of millions of dollars.

Gahan’s appointees control the Board of Public Works and Safety, which administers city-owned infrastructure.

Gahan’s appointees control the Redevelopment Commission, through which passes almost all the money (especially Tax Increment Financing funds) for capital projects, again totaling tens of millions of dollars which are not reflected by the yearly general fund budget.

Gahan is the president of the Horseshoe Foundation, and in a position to influence the foundation’s disbursements.

Gahan annexed the New Albany Housing Authority to direct City Hall control in 2017, appointing his own director and their own pliant board, in effect placing NAHA’s physical assets under his sway. They're now being used to purchase commercial properties all over town.

Gahan directed and helped fund former Building Commissioner David Brewer’s successful 2018 run for Township Trustee, extending City Hall’s reach into the trustee’s budget, then rewarding Brewer with a consultancy to make up for his cut in pay.

Gahan belongs to the Ohio River Greenway board, has openly sought to manipulate the Human Rights Commission, and has made a series of board and commission appointments reflecting loyalty first and competence second.

Gahan's political appointees include Police Chief and Fire Chief, and the former has openly participated in purely partisan fashion during previous election cycles.

Gahan has manipulated public funding outlays for city “communications,” transforming legitimate public service announcements into a daily social (and conventional) media stream of messages aimed at his own political self-glorification, via the conduit of favored no-bid contractor ProMedia.

---

Obviously Gahan's patronage machine has lots of buttons -- and he has lots of fingers.

Doug England's wheeling and dealing previously was the gold standard of local legend, although by comparison with Gahan's exploits it appears quaint and penny ante. Here's a story that illustrates the point.

Ten years ago one of Gahan’s current and biggest out-of-town corporate contributors tried to make inroads with England. They met, and England handed the company’s spokesman a card with a Louisville tailor’s address and the measurements for a new suit.

In 2019, Gahan wears the same lackluster Soviet Politburo-vintage suits as before, and the company in question now pulls one lucrative no-bid design contract after another while funneling tens of thousands of dollars straight into Gahan’s breast pockets.

It's irrelevant whether Gahan launders this money to finance Disney World junkets. The point is that money of this magnitude equates to political power. In 2018, Gahan passed almost $9,000 of it directly to other Democratic candidates.

By the standards of a small city with a quarter of its residents existing below the poverty line, Gahan has hoarded a vast stock of power. He wields it autocratically with almost no input from outside the ruling circle, and buttresses his power by means of a ludicrous personality cult reflecting a former veneer salesman's abrupt makeover from regular guy to flawless genius.

It's, well, creepy and more in keeping with Gregor Samsa's metamorphosis, but then again, so very few of them read books.

As such, whenever his family members, their former co-workers and other mindless fans prattle about loathsome stalkers hating on the epitome of mayoral perfection, a reminder is in order.

One simply can't speak truth to power without breaking a few eggs, preferably right between the powermonger's eyes. 

In the face of so much power, money and control, those of us in the political opposition have a perfect right to seek counter-balancing power where and as we find it. It is Gahan's objective to hold power, and the opposition's to modify his grasp of power, or when necessary, to seek depriving him of it. His tools for exercising power are considerable and entrenched. By necessity, ours are improvisational.

My own chosen tools are words.

They may not seem like much compared to money and authority, but I believe the bully pulpit still matters when used consistently and creatively. Then again, I'm literate; the illiterate might disagree, because lacking the words, they're deprived of power, at least my kind of power.

In 2019, an election will decide whether Gahan's reign is furthered, or the city returns to self-government. I'm looking forward to it. My own "obsessive" recommendation on May 7 is to vote for David White in the Democratic mayoral primary and #FireGahan2019 November 5 is to vote for Mark Seabrook in the general election and #FireGahan2019.

Not a Tom May topic: "Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power over Christian Values."

As The Economist noted in 2017 (photo credit above), the secret of evangelical support for Donald Trump lies in the prosperity gospel.

The idiocy of the "pastorpreneurs" -- or, the prosperity gospel, as lifted straight from the corporate capitalist playbook.

Money, power.

Is anyone detecting a trend?

The Immoral Majority review: how evangelicals backed Trump – and how they might atone, by John S Gardner (The Guardian)

As a scandal-ridden presidency lurches towards impeachment, Ben Howe offers valuable insight into how it came to this

In his new book, Ben Howe attempts to explain something that should never have occurred: why most white evangelicals voting in 2016 chose Donald Trump.

Many observers thought Trump could not win because evangelical Christians could not support someone whose life (and tweeting) was so at odds with their beliefs and practices. Indeed, Trump failed to win a majority of evangelicals in any Super Tuesday primary.

Howe’s subtitle tells the tale: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power over Christian Values.

snip

As Howe notes, “Trump evangelicals are very fond of binary choices”, many of which are in essence “false dilemmas” in which a supposed “greater moral consideration takes precedence”. This “whataboutism” was key. Could one have opposed Trump and Clinton? Of course – and Trump would have lost. Yet, as Howe reminds us, “putting God in one compartment” and politics in another “is clearly out of step with Christian tradition”.

This provides a further clue. Howe writes extensively about the impact of social media and cable news in deepening the political divide in America and intensifying it to fresh levels of vitriol and “hyperbolic outrage”, largely based on the idea of victimization. This had dramatic effects: a spirit of bitterness and a “persecution complex” on the right meant that “ [a]s the clicks came, and the ideas were reinforced through group dynamics, they became even more pronounced. Anger had become a currency.”

snip

Trump promised power. “In the end,” Howe writes, “It’s what many absolutely believe Trump as president has given them.”

Power was one of the temptations the devil offered Jesus. He refused.

This is a deeply introspective, at times anguished book ...

"One simply can't speak truth to power without breaking a few eggs, preferably right between the powermonger's eyes."

Earlier this evening I took the time to peruse a few social media discussion threads about tomorrow's mayoral election. I was happy to see more than a few references by voters to their dismay with Gahan's governing record.

Can't vote for someone (Gahan) who refuses to work with the county (he and his administration go out of their way to not work with the county on anything), is in bed with business (city contracts with campaign donors ... hmmmm), and is spending too much on projects that don't need to be done (aka city hall).

Of course, issues like these have been a passion of mine, and it's all very flattering to hear folks talking about them -- because the local chain newspaper hasn't exactly been breaking a sweat to beat a lowly blogger to the punch, eh?

I just go out there and work my side of the street.

ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL: Take your cult of personality and shove it, Dear Leader.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Money is the ultimate bully (2015).

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: No more fear, Jeff (2015).

You can help put an end to all this by voting for David White tomorrow. As a prelude, a brief comment on today's fan mail. 

I wrote this column in March.

ON THE AVENUES: Gahan's hoarding of power and money is a threat to New Albany's future.

Here's an excerpt, dedicated to all the Gahanites who believe they have some sort of "right" to define terms of engagement.

Ask any guerrilla who ever lived. They don't.

---

Whenever Gahan's family members, their former co-workers and other mindless fans prattle about loathsome stalkers hating on the epitome of mayoral perfection, a reminder is in order.

One simply can't speak truth to power without breaking a few eggs, preferably right between the powermonger's eyes.

In the face of so much power, money and control, those of us in the political opposition have a perfect right to seek counter-balancing power where and as we find it. It is Gahan's objective to hold power, and the opposition's to modify his grasp of power, or when necessary, to seek to deprive him of it. His tools for exercising power are considerable and entrenched. By necessity, ours are improvisational.

My own chosen tools are words.

They may not seem like much compared to money and authority, but I believe the bully pulpit still matters when used consistently and creatively. Then again, I'm literate; the illiterate might disagree, because lacking the words, they're deprived of power, at least my kind of power.

In 2019, an election will decide whether Gahan's reign is furthered, or the city returns to self-government. I'm looking forward to it. My own "obsessive" recommendation on May 7 is to vote for David White in the Democratic mayoral primary and #FireGahan2019.

ON THE AVENUES: Gahan's hoarding of power and money is a threat to New Albany's future.

"I had always given Jeff the benefit of the doubt. No more. I'm afraid once again, another human being has let power go to their head."
-- Facebook comment (from outside the mayor's immediate family)

DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party chairman Adam "Tricky" Dickey has a longstanding gag order prohibiting two-way communications between the delicately perfumed governing class and rude dissidents like me.

But periodically we witness this leash being chewed straight through by Mayor Jeff Gahan's family and functionaries (often one and the same person) who find themselves in a state of outraged pique and distemper. When this occurs, they usually return hurriedly to the scene and scrub the social media graffiti clean rather than risk the sting of Dear Leader's nocturnal lash.

As here.

Gahan's own obsessions run primarily to slobbering in the presence of powerful special interests who write him campaign finance checks, and he has shown little ability to inspire genuine affection on the part of regular townspeople. Still, some of them devour the Rice Krispies Treats and chug the Kool-Aid.

Baylor's obsession with the mayor is crazy! He goes to every website he can find to rant against a very good man and excellent mayor. I know he is obsessively in favor of David White, but to constantly malign Mayor Gahan is dirty tactics and should not be tolerated in politics ... this is exactly WHY you should not listen to his rhetoric and vote for your priorities and what his platform stands for. Gahan has done a lot for New Albany and deserves respect for his accomplishments, not maligned for dirty partisanship.

My response to such comments?

"Thanks for reading, and know that I'm not finished yet."

---

"Obsessive" social media outbursts like the preceding make it clear that we're overdue a refresher course about the meaning of politics, power and political realities, as opposed to fantasies.

“The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”
― Wendell Berry

Like it or not, politics is about power -- who has it, who doesn't, who benefits from it, who wins and who loses. At any given time there'll be those among us differing with the balance of prevailing political power, and who believe it to be excessive. Our conceivable responses in terms of resistance are many, from accepting the status quo to opposing it, and from exercising the ballot box to lobbing a Molotov cocktail.

Simply stated, Gahan has amassed far too much power. 

Gahan's pursuit of power has been relentless, marked by an insatiable thirst for money and a fetish for silence and secrecy, as opposed to discussion and openness.

Gahan's primary objective has been the accumulation of as much unrestrained political power as can be gained by a big fish in this otherwise small pond; to raise as much money as he possibly can through pay-to-play campaign finance patronage; and to deploy his concentration of power and money to limit decision-making to an inner circle of cliquish elites.

As Bluegill put it on the topic of last week's Colonial Manor debacle:

Gahan isn’t remotely interested in input. His personal insecurity, control issues, and need to generate campaign kickbacks from the contractors involved keep any sort of real input from ever happening. Citizens get expensive, poorly conceived and executed projects and Gahan gets a flood of tax dollars into his campaign coffers. It’s a worst case scenario, repeated frequently enough to be the hallmark of his tenure as mayor. New Albanians two generations from now will still be paying for his ego trip.

Conversely, ordinary people who disagree with Gahan often find it difficult to make themselves heard. The local newspaper has long since abandoned its investigative mandate and responsibility to the people to become an absentee-owned, feel-good lifestyles rag filled with taxpayer-funded ads from the very same mayor who knows exactly what his largess purchases. Call it what you will, although to me simplicity suffices: it's protection money.

Sorry, but I wasn't raised to root for US Steel, the New York Yankees and berserk kleptocrats. I was raised to believe in fair fights, level playing fields, assistance to underdogs and two-way conversation. The News and Tribune can't be bothered with any of it, so NA Confidential has undertaken to follow Gahan's big money, at least that iceberg's tip of which we can see, given that $500 handshakes are notoriously hard to trace. The results are summarized in a 20-part series, with links in the finale:

The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 20: Buying and selling a city? Our master list of 59 Gahan wheel-greasers is a pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

As for the power Gahan has gathered, consider these points.

Gahan is the salaried mayor.

Gahan has amassed $438,041 in campaign finance donations during the period 2011-2018, dwarfing all predecessors. Why so much? Money is power.

Gahan's campaign finance expenditures amply document this power. We'll be exploring them in the coming weeks.

Gahan is the salaried president of the sewer board, which controls tens of millions of dollars.

Gahan’s appointees control the Board of Public Works and Safety, which administers city-owned infrastructure.

Gahan’s appointees control the Redevelopment Commission, through which passes almost all the money (especially Tax Increment Financing funds) for capital projects, again totaling tens of millions of dollars which are not reflected by the yearly general fund budget.

Gahan is the president of the Horseshoe Foundation, and in a position to influence the foundation’s disbursements.

Gahan annexed the New Albany Housing Authority to direct City Hall control in 2017, appointing his own director and their own pliant board, in effect placing NAHA’s physical assets under his sway. They're now being used to purchase commercial properties all over town.

Gahan directed and helped fund former Building Commissioner David Brewer’s successful 2018 run for Township Trustee, extending City Hall’s reach into the trustee’s budget, then rewarding Brewer with a consultancy to make up for his cut in pay.

Gahan belongs to the Ohio River Greenway board, has openly sought to manipulate the Human Rights Commission, and has made a series of board and commission appointments reflecting loyalty first and competence second.

Gahan's political appointees include Police Chief and Fire Chief, and the former has openly participated in purely partisan fashion during previous election cycles.

Gahan has manipulated public funding outlays for city “communications,” transforming legitimate public service announcements into a daily social (and conventional) media stream of messages aimed at his own political self-glorification, via the conduit of favored no-bid contractor ProMedia.

---

Obviously Gahan's patronage machine has lots of buttons -- and he has lots of fingers.

Doug England's wheeling and dealing previously was the gold standard of local legend, although by comparison with Gahan's exploits it appears quaint and penny ante. Here's a story that illustrates the point.

Ten years ago one of Gahan’s current and biggest out-of-town corporate contributors tried to make inroads with England. They met, and England handed the company’s spokesman a card with a Louisville tailor’s address and the measurements for a new suit.

In 2019, Gahan wears the same lackluster Soviet Politburo-vintage suits as before, and the company in question now pulls one lucrative no-bid design contract after another while funneling tens of thousands of dollars straight into Gahan’s breast pockets.

It's irrelevant whether Gahan launders this money to finance Disney World junkets. The point is that money of this magnitude equates to political power. In 2018, Gahan passed almost $9,000 of it directly to other Democratic candidates.

By the standards of a small city with a quarter of its residents existing below the poverty line, Gahan has hoarded a vast stock of power. He wields it autocratically with almost no input from outside the ruling circle, and buttresses his power by means of a ludicrous personality cult reflecting a former veneer salesman's abrupt makeover from regular guy to flawless genius.

It's, well, creepy and more in keeping with Gregor Samsa's metamorphosis, but then again, so very few of them read books.

As such, whenever his family members, their former co-workers and other mindless fans prattle about loathsome stalkers hating on the epitome of mayoral perfection, a reminder is in order.

One simply can't speak truth to power without breaking a few eggs, preferably right between the powermonger's eyes. 

In the face of so much power, money and control, those of us in the political opposition have a perfect right to seek counter-balancing power where and as we find it. It is Gahan's objective to hold power, and the opposition's to modify his grasp of power, or when necessary, to seek depriving him of it. His tools for exercising power are considerable and entrenched. By necessity, ours are improvisational.

My own chosen tools are words.

They may not seem like much compared to money and authority, but I believe the bully pulpit still matters when used consistently and creatively. Then again, I'm literate; the illiterate might disagree, because lacking the words, they're deprived of power, at least my kind of power.

In 2019, an election will decide whether Gahan's reign is furthered, or the city returns to self-government. I'm looking forward to it. My own "obsessive" recommendation on May 7 is to vote for David White in the Democratic mayoral primary and #FireGahan2019.

---

Recent columns:

March 19: ON THE AVENUES: In 1989, six months of traveling fabulously in Europe.

March 12: ON THE AVENUES: Tender mercies, or why Democratic Party luminaries didn't want to be seen at the "Protect Hoosiers from Hate" rally.

March 5: ON THE AVENUES: Prom planning's nice and all, but New Albany still needs an autonomous independent business alliance.

February 26: ON THE AVENUES: Pretty in pink slips, aren’t they? Those who mutilated Speck need to be cashiered.

February 22: ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL: Take your cult of personality and shove it, Dear Leader.

ON THE AVENUES: Clamming up is hard to do, but I'm trying my best.

ON THE AVENUES: Clamming up is hard to do, but I'm trying my best.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.



Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
-- Michael Corleone

I can’t remember being born, though surely it was a traumatic experience. Being reborn is proving to be just as disruptive. I’m trying my best, but habits of long standing die hard.

In a previous column, I wrote a few words about trying to wean myself from an axiom attributed to television journalist David Brinkley, one that has served as motivation for my entire career as a noxious scribe and chronic pain in the butt: “You’re entitled to MY opinion.”

So far, results are mixed.

It may seem to readers as if nothing’s changed at all. I’m prepared to argue that apart from yet another recent outbreak of callous indifference on the part of city officials, this time as their everlasting cowardice pertains to the street grid-abetted death of a bicyclist, you’d have experienced a noticeable softening.

Yes, I responded to THAT outrage, full-throated and unapologetic. As long as the self-inflated denizens of the mayor’s ruling monetization camp remain breathtakingly boneheaded about life, death and human safety in Speed Thru City, I’ll call out their miserable hunks of vapid wasted brain matter ... every single time.

Otherwise, I’m taking my abstinence pledge very seriously.

Having never smoked, groped with a Diet Coke problem or consumed beverage alcohol to excess, perhaps there’s no basis for comparison for the sensation of withdrawal when seeking to moderate my addiction to the gentle art of the polemic -- as well as rhetoric, invective, disputation and a handful of other ten-dollar terms combining to suggest a very strong personal point of view about a topic, and the willingness to pursue it by whatever means are necessary to get my case across and win the damn argument.

In other words, I’m just as “passionate” about the expository art of acidic commentary as the esteemed councilman David Barksdale when it comes to his fondness for using someone else’s money to dress up old buildings, all the while enabling money to continue flowing into a campaign account of a mayor from the opposite political party.

Oops -- I did it again.

Just a momentary lapse of reason, and now I’m back up there, high on that wagon.

---

Joking aside, there’s something suitably deep and serious about all of this. The past month has been a challenging one, and there’s a colossal inner struggle raging. There’s been something existential in my noggin demanding a resolution.

When does a hardened dissenter choose to “give in” to the system -- to the bastards, the powerful, the tyrannical and the despotic -- and conversely, when does he or she say no, the fight must continue, come what may?

When does a person assess the playing field and conclude that while the fight must go on, it cannot continue in its current form, and somehow must be reformatted – to the down low, or via the underground?

Hence the inner struggle. I already know the rational answer, because the tipping point arrives when one’s own actions begin to invite retaliation from the vandals against others. That’s when it gets serious.

The Czechoslovak ruling apparatus during Communist times was appropriately Kafkaesque in this manner. Dissidents might be subjected to direct, physical punishment, but they also were deprived socially and economically by being denied employment in their fields of expertise and training. Doctors became window washers and engineers worked as garbage collectors.

What’s more, their families often were made to endure the same indignities. Literal black marks were affixed to sons and daughters, who continued to pay for the “crimes” of their mothers and fathers. It didn’t end until the whole rotten edifice caved in on itself.

The American way may be slightly different, and dissidents here still retain a few protections even if the architects of excessive capital accumulation andtheir drooling lackeys connive diligently to strip them away, sliver by sliver.

But chicanery remains rampant, and the smaller the pond, the greater the peril. As one coping mechanism, I've been thinking a lot about my upbringing, particularly my father's worldview.

---

The two of us couldn't be any more different overall, but nowadays it seems that I managed to learn at least three important lessons from him.

For one, an affinity for the underdog, which points directly to the second: utter and everlasting contempt for those who amass power in whatever form and infer their own privileges accordingly, and concluding with the final point, which is a solemn obligation to seek whatever way possible to make it a fair fight.

Consequently, I detest the arrogant, self-serving cliques that form around power structures, and I find them just as objectionable whether large in scale or small. For this reason, my daily commentary toward local exemplars of this odiousness can be barbed, acidic, and occasionally downright nasty.

Verily, someone has to do it.

The chain newspaper refuses, so someone has to challenge the orthodoxy and offer the alternatives. If the rhetoric gets salty and steamed, then it’s just part of the game.

I detest unchecked authority, back-room plotting, fixes laid in, cash-stuffed envelopes, threats against people who haven’t the means to fight back, and the hypocrisy of the elites when it comes to excusing their own bad behavior as necessary under the circumstances.

Tellingly, these things I loathe usually emanate from groveling and unintelligent buffoons, and this offends me aesthetically on top of the other reasons to strike back.

Accordingly, I could not care less that any of this offends the people with whom I'm disagreeing in the first place.

The polemic is intended to be a war of words, and I'm personally well equipped to hold my own in such a struggle. Most of the small-timers who feel the sting of this blog’s lash also whine about my vocabulary, and this expression of inadequacy, while amusing, implies no responsibility on my part to be their tutor.

However, lately I've been trying to temper the excesses. 

As noted, it’s a big challenge. At least I'm trying. The reason I'm trying is the local election cycle quickly approaching in 2019. Should the political conflict between increasingly desperate Gahanism and the coalescing Resistance escalate, I've no way of containing the collateral damage and restricting it to me and my person, alone.

For this reason, a degree of circumspection is necessary, and I'm doing my best to accommodate the real world, as it exists right here and now, which is to say at the present time, I’m outgunned by the unscrupulous.

You'll no doubt have observed throughout human history that power of any sort, once amassed, is seldom if ever relinquished without the process turning ugly. I accept this as an ironclad fact, albeit quite sad, and speaking only for myself, I welcome their hatred (thanks, FDR).

Alone, I can cope just fine, and they can’t do much to hurt me. However, I cannot expect others near me to shoulder the same burden. 

I'll continue to explore ways to adapt, modulate and moderate -- to temper the satire, restrain my barbed tongue and keep the debate as factual as possible.

Just know that complete 100% silence isn't an achievable option, precisely because of the way my father raised me. He didn’t take kindly to shysters, mobsters and charlatans -- and neither do I.

Wish me luck -- or tell me to go to Hell. I'll get by, either way, because laughter never goes out of fashion.

---

Recent columns:

September 30: ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL EDITION: As David White's mayoral campaign begins, let's briefly survey the electoral landscape.

September 28: ON THE AVENUES: If this is adulting, I’d rather be leaving on a jet plane.

September 20: ON THE AVENUES: Fighting the power with ballots, not bullets.

September 11: ON THE AVENUES: After 49 years, two more reasons to be an Oakland A's fan.

ON THE AVENUES: Fighting the power with ballots, not bullets.

ON THE AVENUES: Fighting the power with ballots, not bullets.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Next summer will be the 30th anniversary of my month’s stay in the German Democratic Republic, or as we still refer to the fading image in our cracked rear view mirrors, East Germany.

In 1989 I had the opportunity to spend more than three months in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and the USSR. This period remains a defining experience in my life, something that continues to intrigue and haunt me all these years later.

Regular readers of the NA Confidential blog know this, seeing as I’ve told the story so many times before. In 1989, I was still traveling in Europe when suddenly the Berlin Wall came down. No one expected it, least of all the Ost Berliners who lined up at checkpoints on the fateful evening of November 9 with little more in mind than seeing what life was like on the other side.

Earlier the same day, border guards would have opened fire on them for trying to cross.

For them, for me, for virtually all of us, the Cold War’s spheres of influence seemed eternal at the time. We had no idea drastic change was just around the corner. There were minor fissures, hairline cracks and other warning signs, but no indication they wouldn’t be resolved within the overall context of the postwar victors’ division of power.

Here, there and everywhere, politics ultimately is about power -- who has it, who doesn’t, who is in, who is out -- and who ultimately decides. In East Germany, the Communist regime addressed the people like this: If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

However, it was different in Hungary, no less a Communist state than the GDR, and to be sure, capable of undemocratic threats and repression when necessary. Hungarian leader Janos Kadar artfully borrowed money from the capitalist countries in order to make consumer goods more readily available, thus altering the political power equation: If you’re not against us, you’re for us.

These days it is assumed that political power is about money and vice versa, but in fact it isn’t always about money, even for Mitch McConnell, and as numerous small-time, tinhorn dictators have proven. Not all those Communist-era kingpins were in it for the money, although the closer you got to the Balkans, the more likely there’d be noticeable self-enrichment. Like Kadar, some of them were personally austere.

I’ve always cited Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu as the worst composite of all worlds. He was a true doctrinal believer in Marxism-Leninism who didn’t at all practice what he preached, amassing personal wealth amid widespread societal misery, and also imbued with an evangelistic mission to inflict his inner aesthetic (read: atrocities) on a captive population.

It was power, all right, and the oppressive ability to puff his own ego by commanding uniformity in thought and design from people who didn’t possess the means to resist -- or so Ceausescu thought, until he learned the hard way.

You’ll recall the year 1989 concluding with Ceausescu in the company of his widely detested wife Elena, the two of them captured by revolutionaries, given only a cursory trial and then shot on the spot in the courtyard of a school.

It is reputed that those soldiers chosen to carry out the verdict refused the option of a conscience-salving random blank round, and were so eager they actually started shooting before the video was ready to record the executions.

Frustrated small-timers like Ceausescu who possess grand, unfulfilled ambitions invariably become the worst leaders of all, and to repeat, it isn’t always about the money. Rather, their purported political stewardship becomes a process for assuaging the pain of being picked last for kickball in elementary school.

They begin by seeking vengeance against their perceived betters, but like any addiction, soon too much evening-up isn’t enough, and it doesn’t take long before these big fish in small ponds are mashing members of their own peer group underfoot.

Granted, some of them die with their boots off, in bed. Sick and old, Kadar began seeing the ghosts of the people he’d ordered killed on his way to the top. All the goulash communism in Budapest couldn’t help him by then, and Shakespeare would have had a field day with Kadar’s dementia-laden inner terror.

In 1989, the DDR’s Erich Honecker already was suffering from cancer, perhaps the outcome of his nation’s institutionalized environmental catastrophe. Honecker fled the collapsing police state of his own creation and washed up in Chile, where the terminal disease killed him with the same remorseless efficiency as policeman manning his wall’s many towers targeted potential escapees.

And so I say death to chains … and to tyrants, every last one of them.

---

Maybe I’m digressing, maybe not, so let me try to arrive at a point. While a particular monopoly on political power may seem to be permanent and irreversible, history is filled with evidence to the contrary, and in 1989, as explained here, I witnessed it myself.

The Berlin Wall would stand forever, right up to the point when emboldened ordinary people began chipping at the asbestos-laced monstrosity with screwdrivers, shovels, tire irons and their bare hands. In less than a year, Germany was reunified. The East Bloc disappeared almost overnight, and a few years later, so did the USSR.

The elites, juntas and cliques may seem to have all the power, all the money, all the propaganda, and all the guns – metaphorical or otherwise.

But they never, ever have a monopoly on truth, honesty or simple human decency.

Paranoia’s a big destroyer. So is hubris. Even worse is the reality once addressed by John Lennon: “One thing you can’t hide, is when you’re crippled inside.”

It can be hidden for a while, though not forever. Back in 2008, there was a huge red maple on the west side of our house. It seemed healthy enough, then one night we heard a crash. A branch had fallen, barely missing our car parked in the driveway. Shining a flashlight up the trunk, we could see the tree was hollow and termite infested.

There was little choice except to have the red maple taken down, which was done just a few days before the damaging straight-line winds from the hurricane occurring to the southwest, in the Gulf of Mexico, which probably would have knocked the hollow tree on our house.

I really hated losing that tree. But we needed to be rid of it before further damage occurred. Trees are to be loved, but has anyone of sound mind ever fretted over losing a despot?

This guy got it right.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This passage wasn’t written by Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa or even the fellow clad in denim carving away at the Berlin Wall with his souvenir Bulgarian pen knife.

Rather, it was Thomas Jefferson.

---

Recent columns:

September 11: ON THE AVENUES: After 49 years, two more reasons to be an Oakland A's fan.

September 9: ON THE AVENUES: May, Kennedy, wigs and prayers, but where's the delightful infidel gardening column?

August 30: ON THE AVENUES: From Baltic to Mediterranean, the diary of an unrepentant New Albanian Europhile.

August 23: ON THE AVENUES: The "downfall" occurs when we all fall down.

August 20: Non-learning curve: This ON THE AVENUES column repeat reveals that since 2011, we've been discussing the safety hazards on Spring Street between 10th and 9th. Too bad City Hall is deaf.

As the Bored of Works dithers over safe streets, a reprise: "On the crass exploitation and politicization of tragedy."

Politics is about power. It's about who has power, who gets to use power, and who gets power poured down their gullets like cheap champagne. Unsurprisingly, those who have power often hoard it. They'd rather keep power for themselves, and the smaller the pond, the greater the urge to strut one's proportionately minor power as a big fish poseur.

But let's leave Warren Nash out of this, shall we?

When Chloe Allen was killed in 2016 by a driver as she tried to cross the street, I was accused by Jeff Gahan's anonymous social media bot of politicizing tragedy, and replied with this column, one far too easily transferable to the present, in the aftermath of Matt Brewer's death last week.

I'm happy to announce that almost seven years into his tenure as my city councilman, Greg Phipps may at last have grasped the nature of the threat. It's probably too late, but there's always time to learn.

In plain text: "(Phipps) asked the board to tell him if they didn't intend to do anything about the issues that he brings before them because the council does control their budget and he will pursue other avenues to address these issues."

Phipps's thoughts stand in vivid contrast to the robotic bureaucratese of Gahan's star appointees, as ever unable to muster a human response from behind the circled wagons.

Now is a fine time to reprise ON THE AVENUES from May 26, 2016.

---

ON THE AVENUES: On the crass exploitation and politicization of tragedy.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

One of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays is The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. A spoiler alert is unnecessary, for the title character’s assassination at the hands of supposedly patriotic conspirators is central to the narrative.

Following Caesar's death, Marc Antony crafts a funeral oration. With words carefully chosen, Antony initiates the process of politicizing his friend’s death.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, —
For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men, —
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.

By the time Antony has finished “burying” Caesar, the mood of the crowd has shifted ominously, and the assassins have become the hunted. It is rumored that in an early draft of the play, Shakespeare penned these words for a fleeing Brutus:

Antony, vile malcontent, thou hast crassly exploited this tragedy for political purposes.

The roots of “tragedy” in the modern sense extend to ancient Greece.

Tragedy (from the Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia[a]) is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity …

In everyday terms, we use the word “tragedy” as a sort of catch-all, one describing unexpected, bad and destructive situations or events, which often involve someone’s death.

A tragic occurrence can be a simple twist of fate, or echoing the ancient Greek point of view, the victim may have suffered ill tidings owing to an inner flaw or moral weakness, as Anthony Weiner might well attest.

Moreover, we recognize the potentially collective nature of tragedy, in the sense that our flaws and weaknesses as a society can result in disasters, or abet them.

In 1988, tens of thousands died as the result of an earthquake in then-Soviet Armenia, often as the result of shoddy construction techniques and lack of preparedness. Of course, the earthquake itself was unpreventable, but not preparing for the eventuality of earthquakes in a region noted for seismic activity is a human variable. To an appreciable extent, Armenians tragically died because of choices made by a network of other persons, not Mother Nature.

The debate will continue as to the concept of collective responsibility in totalitarian systems, but we needn’t restrict our gaze to dictatorships.

In America, ostensibly a nation founded on rule of law and devoted to individual liberty, the period following the Civil War, from 1865 to the present, has been marred by tragedy in the specific form of discrimination, lynching and myriad affiliated acts of purposeful violence directed against African-Americans by dominant white supremacist culture.

These acts are neither random nor senseless. Rather, they occur within the framework of American politics, as opposed to inexplicable spins of a cosmic wheel.

Writer Matt Taibbi offers this working definition of politics:

“Politics at its most basic isn't a Princeton debating society. It's a desperate battle over who gets what.”

Taibbi’s reckoning matches what my poli-sci instructor said on the first day of class at IU Southeast in 1978, paraphrased: Politics is about power – what power is, how it is used, who gets to have it, and who doesn’t.

This is why Dr. Martin Luther King did not hesitate to crassly exploit tragedy for political purposes, as in 1963, when members of the Ku Klux Klan planted sticks of dynamite beneath church steps in Birmingham, Alabama and killed four African-American girls.

And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.

When Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, his death was crassly exploited for political purposes. The cycle continued. In 1998, there was yet another tragedy, this time in Wyoming.

On October 7, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally attacked and tied to a fence in a field outside of Laramie, Wyo. and left to die. On October 12, Matt succumbed to his wounds in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The savagery of this young man’s death helped prompt a long overdue recalibration of America’s moral compass.

The horrific killing of Matthew Shepard in 1998 is widely seen as one of the worst anti-gay hate crimes in American history. Matthew was beaten by two assailants, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. They pistol whipped him with a gun then tied him to a fence in freezing conditions and set fire to him before leaving him to die.

The attack became a cause célèbre: it precipitated a national backlash against hyper-macho culture and tacit tolerance of homophobia. As a result of Matthew’s death, many good things have happened for the gay community.

This backlash following Shepard’s murder was knowingly spurred and intentionally politicized by LGBT activists, civil rights advocates, world famous celebrities, but also ordinary folks inhabiting a table at Denny’s. It was crass, exploitative and fully justified. I supported it then, and I do now.

Perhaps then we’re all malcontents, each and every one of us, crassly exploiting tragedy for political purposes, whether it’s Marc Antony, the grieving Armenians pointing fingers at the Kremlin, Dr. King, human rights proponents memorializing Shepard – or a citizen like Lori Kay Sympson, who doesn’t want you to forget that her friend Chloe Allen was killed trying to cross a dangerous street in New Albany, where streets are kept dangerous due to crass exploitation – that’s right, for political purposes.

Politics is power. For a prevaricating politician like Greg Phipps to selectively deny the efficacy of this statement by tarring others as malcontents is a tragedy in itself, and a misreading of history eligible for crass exploitation by those of us, malcontented or otherwise, who apparently understand his elected position – and his past – far better than he does.

Forget Shane. Jeff Gahan's EXCELLENT NEW WORDS include political satire, which is a corrective to misused political power.

Over the weekend, social media exchanges with members of New Albany's First Family made it clear that we're past due a refresher course about concepts in reality, as opposed to fantasy.

Posting articles with his head photoshopped on snakes or other creatures, and making new words out of his name is not the best way to get his attention. And then filling those articles with lies because you didn't bother to find the truth... that's not politics. It's just lazy. If you want to talk to the mayor, find something positive to say every once in a while. Then call him or email him at work. That's where he will be.

Coffey's the copperhead, not Jeff Gahan, and oddly, she didn't mention nepotism, which is a prime manifestation of political power ... but I digress.

What we've got here is failure to communicate, so let's begin with the notion of political satire. Bill Moyers offers a few "Perspectives on Political Satire," including this introduction.

In his interview with Bill Moyers, Salman Rushdie talked about the recent strife brought about by the publication of cartoons seen by many Muslims as deeply offensive. Rushdie said: "What kind of god is it that's offended by a cartoon in Danish." Satire has long been a tool of political criticism — but in a world where politics and faith are often intertwined should there be a limit to the freedom of expression? Comedian Steven Colbert recently learned that as much as America loves it's satire — it's objects may not laugh when roasted at a Washington Press Club dinner. Learn more about the history of American political satire below, and tell us what you think.

Although the term satire may describe an entire work, a passage, or a tone, its characteristics are shared: among these, it employs comedy or humor; has a target and an ideal to compare it to; and describes folly or vice in detail.

From THE COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA:

From ancient times satirists have shared a common aim: to expose foolishness in all its guises — vanity, hypocrisy, pedantry, idolatry, bigotry, sentimentality — and to effect reform through such exposure. The many diverse forms their statements have taken reflect the origin of the word satire, which is derived from the Latin satura, meaning "dish of mixed fruits," hence a medley.

Below, read about some of the major highlights in American political satire, from the early printed word of the 1700's to the popular television and Web varieties of today.

Satire can be about anything, politics or otherwise, but ultimately politics is about power -- who has it, how it is used, who benefits, and so on.

Donald Trump hasd Steve Bannon; Gahan has family member Steve Bonifer, and it's likely that Bonifer, a lifelong teacher of civics, government and history knows exactly how politics and power relate to each other, so please, can we stop the charade?

Speaking personally, the mayor and I have fundamental disagreements about politics. In large measure, he prefers narrower silence to broader discussion, and so those of us in the political opposition must seek power where and as we find it.

It is Gahan's objective to hold power, and the opposition's to modify his grasp of power, or when necessary, to seek depriving him of it. His tools for exercising power are considerable and familiar to the office; the hostility of his housing authority situation is the perfect example, as it is the exercise of raw power to get what he wants.

My own tools are words. They may not seem like much compared to money and authority, but I believe the bully pulpit still matters when used creatively. Then again, I'm literate; the illiterate might disagree, because lacking the words, they're deprived of power.

Below there's an interesting short discussion about politics I found on-line, and it merely serves as fodder for a wider discussion. Note the primary definition of politics as having to do with power.

As a card-carrying human being, naturally I understand the cult of personality in one's own household -- including the mayor's.

However, when megalomania spills over into the outside world, as it long since has done right here in New Albany, it's about political power ... and it is worthy of political satire in addition to whatever facts may come our way, and regularly do.

In 2019, an election will decide. I'm looking forward to it.

---

Politics is exciting because people disagree. They disagree about how they should live. Who should get what? How should power and other resources be distributed? Should society be based on cooperation or conflict? And so on. 

They also disagree about how such matters should be resolved. How should collective decisions be made? Who should have a say? How much influence should each person have? And so forth. 

For Aristotle, this made politics the ‘master science’: that is, nothing less than the activity through which human beings attempt to improve their lives and create the Good Society. 

Politics is, above all, a social activity. It is always a dialogue, and never a monologue. Solitary individuals such as Robinson Crusoe may be able to develop a simple economy, produce art, and so on, but they cannot engage in politics. Politics emerges only with the arrival of a Man (or Woman) Friday. 

Nevertheless, the disagreement that lies at the heart of politics also extends to the nature of the subject and how it should be studied. People disagree about what it is that makes social interaction ‘political’, whether it is where it takes place (within government, the state or the public sphere generally), or the kind of activity it involves (peacefully resolving conflict or exercising control over less powerful groups).

ON THE AVENUES REVISITED: Chocolate covered frozen banana republic, or "understanding" Harvest Homecoming, our peculiar institution.

ON THE AVENUES REVISITED: Chocolate covered frozen banana republic, or "understanding" Harvest Homecoming, our peculiar institution.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It's always instructive to revisit earlier columns. Some things change, while others remain the same.

When I wrote these words three years ago (16 October 2014), my working world remained tied to what was known back then as Bank Street Brewhouse. My own declaration of independence was followed by a campaign for mayor, which I lost. John Gonder lost his bid for another at-large council term. 

Jeff Gahan's cult of personality triumphed in 2015, and the Anchor Corps marches assuredly into a future of institutionalized inanity. Harvest Homecoming's ongoing minor tweaks neither pose a threat to the entity's iron grip on two weeks each October, nor betray the slightest interest in change.  

There we are. I think this piece has dated well, but you may see it differently. If so, let me know. These are your pages, too, and unlike Gahan, I'm happy to provide space for opposing points of view. 

---

Love him, hate him, or anywhere in between … but you simply cannot deny that John Gonder is a New Albanian civic rarity.

Gonder is a Democratic Party member and an elected official of a certain age who nonetheless is capable of breaking free and thinking independently. He is aware of the outside world, and comfortable in this apostasy.

Generally speaking, he surveys terrain situated outside his party’s perennially self-delineated Dixiecrat box. Less often than I’d like, he is an essayist, and invariably his thoughts are witty and articulate.

I’m told that John Gonder currently is on the “shit list” maintained by the ruling circle. This is an honor and a distinction, because when one insists on being a progressive thinker in this benighted locality, they surely don’t record your name with a pencil.

I'm delighted to read Gonder’s typically measured reasonableness about Harvest Homecoming, especially since at the moment, the bruised and battered downtown landscape is littered with decapitated straw men, while those politicians willing to speak for attribution mostly mimic the stenographer’s pure drivel as they muster the forces to repel this latest incursion of elitism threatening our most peculiar of institutions.

As previously noted, Harvest Homecoming is the “third rail” of New Albany politics, and as a reminder, this is a metaphor deriving from mass transit rail systems, in which the third rail is the conductor of electricity and as such, quite hazardous to the touch.

third rail

A dangerous area of discussion, a point at which the mere mention of a subject result is disaster. Commonly used in politics.

Somewhat uniquely among the purported local “leadership” cadre, John Gonder is willing to grasp the third rail and challenge the 800-lb gorilla, albeit it with a gentler touch than I’ve been able to muster.

A Moveable Feast

... Since Mr. (Jeff) Cummins welcomed ideas, and since the Tribune has elevated the festival topic to wider discussion, it seems the future of the festival and the continued health of the downtown revival could be best served by making the Harvest Homecoming a moveable feast, migrating from one part of downtown to another, as conditions change and dictate. New Albany's downtown was benefitted by the stimulus of the Harvest Homecoming in the festival's early years. I believe the festival still is a net plus for the city, but it could be a greater contributor to the city which welcomes its pitching of the tents each year at no small cost to the taxpayers.

Creative suggestions like Gonder’s fully mirror many others offered here and elsewhere, to the effect that the festival might alter its configuration of booths to acknowledge modernity, and avoid interfering with existing year-round businesses.

Alas, the councilman’s fundamental rationality – moreover, the combined rationality of every single one of us who endeavors to imagine contemporary ways of thinking and acting outside traditionally constraining municipal boxes -- probably isn’t enough to compel the leaden weight of Harvest Homecoming to willingly concede even the first ounce of hereditary privilege, and this shouldn’t strike anyone as particularly unusual.

---

Having been given carte blanche for 46 years, Harvest Homecoming as an institution has not been compelled to justify its existence, or to prove its worth with facts, as opposed to feelings. It simply is, and must continue, and like any entrenched bureaucracy, it will not surrender voluntarily what it regards as “earned” territorial rights.

Consider the attitude of just one Harvest Homecoming functionary, the festival’s reigning "head honcho" (as dubbed not by me, but by the Gnaws and Trombone). When given the opportunity by the newspaper’s ever accommodating Chris Morris to address downtown business owners prior to his business model’s annual downtown takeover, Jeff Cummins promptly elucidated an intriguing Tao of the Homecoming Harvest.

I want to try and get downtown merchants to understand what the festival is all about.

I cannot stress this point often enough: It’s about downtown day-in, day-out downtown investors and stakeholders being compelled to “understand” Harvest Homecoming’s annual footprint, and not the other way around.

Later, during a Facebook discussion about Harvest Homecoming’s and the city’s ill treatment of Wick’s Pizza, Cummins barged into the room.

Do not speak about what you do not know as being fact. Speculation makes one a fool … The back and forth on social media, 3rd party conversations and assumptions accomplish nothing. Go direct to whom you have the issue and discuss it face to face … Don't play games, it's wasted unproductive time spent. Ask the question.

With Cummins on the “direct” line, so to speak, I prompted him to introduce himself to those who didn’t know him, and provided a link to the aforementioned newspaper article. Then, I asked him two questions.

Does Harvest Homecoming understand what WE'RE about? In the past, I've observed Harvest Homecoming officials telling people that they could not distribute handbills amid the booth area. Now, it seems to me that this is perfectly legal -- freedom of expression, if you will. On what legal basis can the city "lease" free speech on public right-of-ways to a private entity?

The head honcho was ready with his answer.

Not going to debate on here. You have a large tendency to misconstrue what is said to suit your needs.

Which places me in a league with ... Harvest Homecoming. So much for demanding that we ask questions, but unfortunately, it gets even worse.

Given that debating is unworthy of a head honcho's time, Cummins remains eager to remind those 52-weeks-a-year downtown business stakeholders that the fault for booth day disruptions is theirs, not the festival's. From Morris’s fluff piece:

Cummins ... conceded that some businesses fare better than others, but added that some establishments do more to prepare for the thousands of visitors that come to New Albany by adjusting their product offerings for the event.

Businesses just like these, as reported on Fb:

The business I work for will have to close during those days and send four employees home with no pay.


We do 33-50% less business during the week of Harvest Homecoming. Great success.


I lose money every time HH comes to town. We move a lot of equipment and usually can pull up to my building to do so. Because of HH I'll use the alley to get as close as I can. One of their officials came into my store and began screaming and cussing at my employee, "Who's F***ing van is in alley, move it or it will be towed." We had to throw him out. Now, he did this while customers were in the store. And of course when I proceeded to move my vehicle I was severely cussed at and threatened. This is only one negative incident. There are plenty more.

Well, who are you going to believe? Your own eyes, experience and balance sheet, or the head honcho?

---

Or, for that matter, the mayor.

The leadership of Harvest Homecoming has been “adaptive and accommodating” and tweak the festival by offering new events in recent years, Mayor Jeff Gahan said Monday.

But of course they have. Third rails tend to be that way, don’t they? And then there’s John Gonder, doggedly daring to channel the late Bobby Kennedy:

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

Or an even better one, far less often quoted:

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

Politically, John Gonder is completely outnumbered by the "C" and "D" students, by the adults who weren't elected to student council as students and missed the prom, and consequently shall be punishing us forever more for these omissions, by the big fish who find the meandering currents of the small pond much to their liking, and by the grandees of Gonder’s own arthritic Democratic Party, in which he might well be the only Floyd County dues-paying member who could reside anonymously in Massachusetts without being regarded as a Ted Cruz-caliber interloper.

Billy Joel was right, and honesty is such a lonely word, indeed.

Harvest Homecoming isn’t about the parade, the booth placement, elephant ear vendors from Keokuk, roving carnies, Chinese-crafted trinkets, corn hole champs, pay-for-play monopolies or even the true believers among attendees, whom even I have little desire to offend; after all, I never said I wanted it to end, only to adapt.

Rather, it's all about the power – this minor league, small potatoes, penny ante power, but power just the same.

That’s right: Harvest Homecoming graciously welcomes any and all ideas, so long as it is understood that nothing whatever can substantively change, and these ideas, once received, are daintily flicked into nearby wastepaper baskets once the petitioners have departed the vicinity.

I understand it perfectly, Jeff Cummins.

It’s rather like a one-party, one-festival state, isn’t it?

---

Recent columns:

September 28: ON THE AVENUES: Sniffles, gratitude and mental exhaustion. Apparently vacation is over.

September 21: ON THE AVENUES with THE BEER BEAT: Getting in tune with the straight and narrow.

September 14: ON THE AVENUES with THE BEER BEAT: Beef Steak and Porter always made good belly mortar, but did America’s “top” steakhouses get the memo?

September 7: ON THE AVENUES with THE BEER BEAT: We are dispirited in the post-factual beer world.

Dear merchants and business owners: “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

Earlier today, there was controversy about a matter pertaining to local businesses. I see no need to go into great detail, apart from saying that City Hall threw them a curveball, driving a wedge between operators that ultimately share the same interests.

The problem? Basic communications, or an absence of basic communications on the part of City Hall. To the best of my knowledge, though only after the issue briefly flared on social media, almost all of the stakeholders are talking apart from one, and there'll be a resolution.

To me, this is an imperfect outcome even if it's one satisfactory to most of the complainants (all but one, actually -- and that's why it's imperfect), although as happens so very often these days, watching as City Hall hopped painfully around the room after shooting itself in the foot was pure slapstick, and entirely worth the price of admission.

I knew I'd written something about this general topic of unity at some point in the distant past. Here it is, from January 9, 2014.

On Tuesday morning, there'll be a merchant meeting, at which local indie business owners will be briefed about what's happening, with the news flowing from the top down via City Hall and Develop New Albany. I may not be in business at present, but I'll go to my grave asserting that this directional cadence is backward.

Indie businesses should be coming together to pool their economic clout and community influence, and telling elected officials what is expected of them.

If feeling this way makes me a socialist, so be it. As a prelude to three years ago, kindly note that New Albany First has ceased to exist, and the two-way street grid finally is coming ... almost six years after Jeff Gahan promised it in the run-up to the 2011 election.

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ON THE AVENUES: I am not a Frankenstein. I'm a Fronkensteen.

In early May of 2013, there was a meeting upstairs at the Exchange Pub + Kitchen. Truly, it was an unprecedented gathering.

Representatives from Develop New Albany, New Albany First, the informal downtown “merchant mixer” group, and the city’s food and drink bloc were present, along with Mayor Jeff Gahan and economic development chief David Duggins, who also is head of the Urban Enterprise Association. There may have been others; if I recall correctly, New Albany Clean and Green was not invited.

I didn’t keep precise notes.

The gist of the session was to discuss ways of encouraging the coordination of efforts undertaken by these currently separate groups. How might they all be aligned to row in the same direction, thus avoiding the catastrophe of the “joint” branding non-effort in 2011 – the infamous “Come to City” fiasco?

It wasn’t a bad meeting, and at the time, the outlook seemed quite promising. I suppose my mood reflected a state of resignation I’ve always reluctantly accepted, if not openly endorsed: If business owners, entrepreneurs and attendant non-profits cannot unify of their own accord – a lamentable failure, but sadly, the congenital default setting in battered New Albany – and, if City Hall desires a unified front to advance the city’s interests, then it’s time for riot acts to be read, integrated tasks to be delegated, and heads banged together.

In retrospect, my hopes were set far too high. They probably always are. Alas, while dreamers like me see the possibilities, others ask: But what about MY own narrow fiefdom?

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What I see more clearly now is that my viewpoint was based on an assumption about vacuums, namely, that there necessarily exists urgency in filling them on the part of this or any other municipal administration. Is there value in such cooperation, and is the expenditure of effort necessary to build such a unified front a priority?

Allow me to explain.

To no one’s surprise, Doug England was an example of a mayor who didn’t care much for the idea of unity. He preferred hands-on backroom cronyism, on occasion limply offering uninspired lip service to the ideal of togetherness, and then yawningly deferring to DNA’s ennui through various pay-backs and personal favors, naturally omitting any appreciable financial support to the organization itself on the part of the city.

But in fairness to Thrice Hizzoner, why on earth would he bother otherwise?

If the indies and entrepreneurs were doing all the deep spending and heavy lifting without making any demands, if the non-profits were somnolent, and if England’s political supporters could be stroked just the same from the safety of the shadows, why offer anything of substance?

Why care at all?

Outsourcing a diminished mayoral attention span represented the best of all possible worlds. Yes, it was cynical, but take the cynicism out of New Albany politics, and you’re left with little of substance. It isn’t like we have political parties in any readily identifiable sense eagerly waiting to fill the gaping idea chasm. They merely acquiesce in the charade, occasionally unleashing torrents of legalistic obscurantism sufficient to embarrass a curate.

The crux of it is this: The argument from common sense, which I so foolishly imagined as relevant last spring, favors using any and all community assets to bring assorted stakeholders together and advance the city’s overall prospects for improvement.

Unfortunately, the problem with doing so from a petty political standpoint (is there any other?) is that doing so might unintentionally lead to the creation of an opposing power base, one capable of leveraging an agenda of its own, without even begging the Democratic Party’s priestly grandees for written permission.

And what if such an independent power base advocated change along broad, non-partisan lines for – say – a two-way street grid, thereby making it impossible for City Hall to adhere to the position that the community as a whole doesn’t have any detectable opinion on the matter?

Boy, that’d be a tough one to explain, and so let’s face facts. There are far more politicians fearing such a Frankenstein-like eventuality than ones willing to play to role of midwives at their birth. After all, a strategy of “divide and conquer” is among the earliest of commandments inscribed on any political tablet, anywhere and anytime. Here in New Albany, it’s in our blood. Our Bicentennial tag line should have been this:

“Since 1817: Divided, Conquered and Sedated At River’s Edge.”

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In the months since the May meeting, there has been no further movement on the agenda items discussed that day, which means that as usual, the joke’s on us. In the ongoing absence of unity, stakeholders remain divided against themselves, while the ghost of Benjamin Franklin continues to remind us: “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

We won’t, and consequently we are, and I’ll never understand why.

Independent businesses seem as determined as ever to go it alone, come what may, as though style points for tragic heroism matter more than collectively bargained influence commensurate with their level of toil and investment.

The UEA is a deflated, dying entity absorbed by the current administration, with its money to be spent by the city at will, whenever a few farthings somehow trickle into the bank account.

NA 1st does its low-key localism thing, and our Main Street organization, DNA, continues to refrain from grubby politicking out of rigorous principle – except, of course, when the word “politics” is pronounced “Farmers Market” – and then all hands are extended to accept the cash-stuffed envelope, grubbily.

Being the perennially contrarian sort, I feel compelled to ask: If the same old politics as usual seeks to maintain our condition of continued separation and ongoing degradation, doesn’t it seem that the very first priority should be renewed effort for greater unity?

I mean, we’re the ones doing the actual work.

Shouldn’t we get together and have a say in at least some of role-playing?