Particularly in Nawbany: "Why We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes."

"We can’t let car companies again shape the vision for our future; if we don’t dream big now, we may never get the chance again. Let’s let’s elevate a different kind of transportation infrastructure that recognizes universal basic mobility as a human right and brings it to every man, woman, and child. If we don’t think of micromobility as the serious solution to a whole host of societal and environmental problems, then who will?"

I'll never forget, back when we were asking only that City Hall implement the entirety of Jeff Speck's street grid network proposals -- which in addition to calling for a reversion to two-way traffic prioritized a state-of-the-art downtown bicycle network -- these potentially transformative improvements were blithely characterized as outlandish by Greg Phipps (councilman) and Greg Roberts (ESNA). Modernity was cackled out of the room as going way too far for primeval New Gahanians, not just by these two, but by other "progressives" who seldom are.

By their unwillingness to do the homework, to try to understand exactly what Speck was aiming at, and to do battle ... with their abject eagerness to stroke Dear Leader's ego ... community "leaders" like these abetted Jeff Gahan's whopper of a bait 'n' switch on the street grid. Promises abandoned, Gahan commissioned HWC Engineering to gut a wonderful walkability and biking enhancement program, recasting it into yet another re-election omnibus paving project, retaining the basic two-way reversion but rendering it almost useless through timidity and incomprehension.

Then again, when's the last time you've seen Gahan or any of his sycophants walking or biking?

Yes, Dear Leader gifted us with two-way streets, and they've been mildly effective, albeit neutered by constraints into insensibility. Perhaps that's why the drivers are still treating downtown streets like race tracks.

But that's fine. Just push that button and the drivers from elsewhere will let you cross the street, just so long as it doesn't add seconds to their cross-town commute. 

Why We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes, by Terenig Topjian (CityLab)

In the 1930s big auto dreamed up freeways and demanded massive car infrastructure. Micromobility needs its own Futurama—one where cars are marginalized.

There’s a quote that’s stuck with me for some time from Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom: “You know why people don't like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so f***ing smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?”

American urbanists and bike advocates are smart, or at least well informed. We know how important cycling is. We are educated about cycling cities in other parts of the world and how they are so much better for health, well-being, economics, traffic, pollution, climate, equity, personal freedom, and on and on.

But if we’re so smart how come we lose so goddamn always?

Why is the best we seem to be able to accomplish just a few miles of striped asphalt bike “lanes,” or if we’re lucky, a few blocks of plastic pylons—“protected” bike lanes?

Our current model is to beg for twigs
More often than not, bike infrastructure is created reactively. Typically in response to a collision or near collision with a car, an individual or advocacy group identifies a single route that needs better infrastructure. We gather community support and lobby local officials for the desired change, trying as hard as we can to ask for the cheapest, smallest changes so that our requests will be seen as realistic.

What’s the problem with this model?

It’s like imagining a bridge and asking for twigs—useless, unable to bear any meaningful weight, easily broken. And it’s treating bike infrastructure like a hopeless charity case.

This makes bike infrastructure seem like a small, special-interest demand that produces no real results in terms of shifting to sustainable transportation, and it makes those giving up road space and tax dollars feel as though they are supporting a hopeless charity.

But when roads, highways, and bridges are designed and built, they aren’t done one neighborhood at a time, one city-council approval at a time. We don’t build a few miles of track, or lay down some asphalt wherever there is “local support” and then leave 10-mile gaps in between.

And yet this is exactly how we “plan” bike infrastructure.

Bike lanes are intermittent at best in most North American cities, and since they are usually paint jobs that put cyclists between fast-moving traffic and parked cars with doors that capriciously swing open, only experienced riders brave them. The lanes are easily blocked anyway, by police, delivery trucks, and film crews, if not random cars banking on the low likelihood of being ticketed.

This kind of bike “infrastructure” doesn’t actually do very much to protect existing cyclists, let alone encourage and inspire the general population to start cycling.

Why are we settling for easily broken twigs? The total number of people on bikes and other micromobility modes like scooters and skateboards is large and growing. An enormous force has been divided and conquered, splintered among thousands of neighborhoods ...

Divided is the way we're kept by the country's Gahans. It is purposeful. If you intend to insist on being characterized as a "progressive," maybe a good place to start is to progress past the insipid lies and self-aggrandizing campaign finance schemes of the local C-minus students, and start standing up for grassroots solutions calculated to improve the place where you live.

"We can’t eradicate dangerous human errors, but we can design our road systems to protect us."

No matter your station in in life, here's a reminder that if you fancy yourself "progressive," but believe city streets are meant for the convenience of high-speed, pass-through traffic, and not to better serve the needs of a healthy neighborhood occupied by humans, then I've got some jarring news.

Turns out you're not very progressive at all. That's because street grid design is a social justice issue, too.

Beginning today, a new rule: any candidate for public office who fails to display a solid grasp of these issues won't get my vote. We may be perfectly aligned otherwise, but if a candidate feels it best for cars to speed from one end of the city to the other on a street corrupted into a highway, sorry, no go.

In the following, the author focuses on speed limits, which as we know are only partially effective. Other design elements are probably more important. The point is to begin at the beginning: speed kills, and if safety is the goal, we should be doing what it takes to reduce vehicular speeds in neighborhoods.

---


Hey, Neighbor! Slow Down, Speed Matters, by Alli Henry (Walk Arlington)

Alli Henry is the Program Manager for WalkArlington. As an engaged Arlington resident, she spends her days advocating for creating walkable, livable and equitable neighborhoods.

It’s no secret – speed plays a major role in traffic related injuries and fatalities. With national traffic deaths on the rise, cities across the US are embracing safer street policies and lowering speed limits.

Most vehicle crashes can be prevented by avoiding dangerous behaviors like distracted driving, driving under the influence and excessive speeding. Yes – we’re all human and we make mistakes, but human error shouldn’t result in life or death situations. Studies have proven lowering speed limits is a highly effective tool in creating safer environments for all users (i.e. vehicles, bikes and pedestrians) to share the streets.

Boston and Seattle, recently joined a growing list of US cities that have reduced speed limits on arterial (fancy word for major roads) and neighborhood streets in the name of safety initiatives, such as Vision Zero. As highlighted in this Vision Zero video, “No loss of life is acceptable. The road systems need to keep us moving, but it must also be designed to protect us at every turn.”

Speed Matters
It’s no coincidence progressive cities are reducing speed limits to 20-25 mph. Research has determined that traveling above 30 mph puts our most vulnerable users at higher risk of serious injuries and death. A recent study published by Smart Growth America, identified people of color, lower-incomes and older adults as being the highest risk populations.

The graphic below, created by the City of Seattle, illustrates the varied chances of a person walking surviving a collision with a vehicle. Pedestrians have a 90% survival rate if stuck by a vehicle going 20 mph. Sadly, chances of survival are reduced to only 50% when a vehicle is going +10 MPH faster (30 mph).

There’s no single solution to make our streets safer; however, there are proven fixes we can collectively pursue. In addition to speed reductions, tougher school-zone enforcement, installing protected bike lanes and implementing “Complete Streets” are all becoming increasing popular tools.

What’s next?
It’s simple, take action! We must demand safer streets and holistic collaboration from our elected officials, engineers, urban planners, enforcement officers, educators and citizens. After all – we’re all in this together and every day we delay taking action leaves our communities and loved ones vulnerable.

Dan Canon: "If you're ready for change, I'm ready to fight for it." Meanwhile, Gahan's public housing putsch proceeds apace.

New Albany's public housing residents are among the city most vulnerable. To borrow candidate Canon's words, they're getting screwed by a government that doesn't listen, and they need someone to fight for them.

This poses a vexing problem for local Democrats, seeing as the perpetrator of this outrage isn't a Republican.

Jeff Gahan is a Democrat, or at least he plays one at ribbon cuttings, and not only is Gahan's attitude toward these folks just as callous, unresponsive and condescending as any stereotypical and villainous Republican's might be, because in addition, Gahan is the apple of the local party's eye, a gleaming fertilizer of patronage in human form. 

If the term "great white hope" didn't already exist, we'd need to invent it to describe the emerging cult of personality of Gahanism. No one has swallowed more of the abundant Kool-Aid than party chairman Adam Dickey, and whichever of the mayor's family members currently occupy positions of party authority.

As progressive Democrats nationwide follow candidate Canon's lead and follow the money, Gahan has only one default setting for pretend-governance: "Show me even more money."

Candidate Canon's video is stirring. It pushes all the right buttons. Unfortunately for local Democrats, the cognitive dissonance can only worsen, because these criticisms comprise an index finger pointing right at Gahan.

Or maybe it's a middle finger. Sometimes I can't tell them apart.

We're fast approaching a year since Gahan's public housing putsch was launched. In all this time, not a single local Democratic elected official apart from the mayor himself has bothered to comment for attribution on this situation.

As for the local Democratic candidates contesting state elections in 2018, only Anna Murray has responded with hopes for a good outcome, but little in the way of specifics.

Let's hope the Democratic silence dissipates. As it stands, the hypocrisy is a tad constricting, even by Dickey's world-class standards -- and I'd dearly love to have someone to vote for next year.

An essay the Adamites won't read: "Our movement must base itself on a politics capable of confronting both Trump and the rotten elite liberalism that enabled his rise."

Here in Floyd County, the only mantra local Democrats have been able to muster is Make Monetization Great Again.

They'll wail and moan about Trump, then without even washing their hands, praise Jeff Gahan for promoting luxury at the expense of the most vulnerable, as in the instance of public housing "reform."

I'd say this sort of inattention to basic ideological hygiene can spread disease, except the rot's already so pervasive that it probably doesn't matter.

Politicking Without Politics, by Paul Heideman (Jacobin)

Democratic elites are delusional — you can’t subdue the reactionary right without a robust alternative political vision.

For a distillation of the Democratic Party’s self-conception today, one could do worse than consult Nancy Pelosi’s recent pronouncement: “We don’t have a party orthodoxy — they [the Republicans] are ideological.”

For some time now, this view of the political divide — Democrats are consummate pragmatists, Republicans are rigid slaves to dogma — has predominated in elite liberal circles. Hillary Clinton, after all, centered her campaign on competence and experience far more than any actual conception of politics.

And despite the resulting disaster, this desire to have a politics without politics — this strategy to build a coalition bereft of any clear values or principles — has continued to animate liberals’ opposition to Trump. Democrats really believe, it seems, that they can subdue the reactionary right without articulating any alternative political vision beyond prudent governance.

SNIP

Over the longer term, the fruits of the Democrats’ strategy are even more troubling. In framing their opposition to Trump as non-political, Democrats are perpetuating the crisis in American liberalism.

Obama initially appeared to be liberalism’s savior, promising to redeem it from its abject failures during the Bush years. But eight years of managerial centrism left the party hollowed out both institutionally and ideologically. Without any real challenge from the left, Obama never strayed far from the path laid out by the banks and tech companies that funded his campaigns. While his personal gifts allowed him to win very high approval ratings for a two-term president, his policies did little to alleviate the growing misery in many parts of the country. Obama’s inability to rewrite the political and economic rules of the game ensured that any candidate who lacked his talents would be unable to stitch together the same coalition.

It is this continued fidelity to American capitalism, this unwavering commitment to keeping things more or less as they are, that stands behind the Democrats’ apparent fear of ideas. Any actual attempt to advance the principles that loom large in the American liberal imagination would entail some sort of confrontation with capital, and the Democratic Party, bought and paid for by capital, is unwilling to contemplate such a step.

FINAL SNIP

Fortunately, the alternative to Democratic vapidity is not hard to find. It has reverberated through much of the popular resistance to Trump’s presidency. When thousands of people gathered at JFK Airport to protest the Muslim ban, they didn’t make an hour-long subway trip to stand in the cold because they thought Trump was being hypocritical or unpresidential. They gathered because they felt Trump had infringed on core values of egalitarianism and fairness. They were moved by a basic sense of injustice. They were moved, in other words, by politics.

While the liberal evasion of politics gives the impression that the Democrats have no ideas they are confident enough to defend, mobilizations like the refugee solidarity protests do the exact opposite. When thousands of people assemble with signs declaring “Refugees are Welcome Here,” they stake out a political ground that directly confronts Trump. They provide a political pole capable of further mobilization.

Joseph Stiglitz 1: "Creating a Learning Society" even in New Albany?

The economist and educator Joseph Stiglitz is a Hoosier, born in Gary in 1943. Not unexpectedly, he's lived elsewhere ever since.

Economics can be an impenetrable morass, and there is no way of briefly surveying the career of someone as ubiquitous as Stiglitz, but here's a brieg biographical teaser.

Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, "The Economics of Information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, which have now become standard tools not only of theorists, but of policy analysts. He has made major contributions to macro-economics and monetary theory, to development economics and trade theory, to public and corporate finance, to the theories of industrial organization and rural organization, and to the theories of welfare economics and of income and wealth distribution. In the 1980s, he helped revive interest in the economics of R&D.

His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance.

In New Albany, the Oscar Meyer Prize-winning fraudomist Dan Coffey also has done pioneering work in the economics of information, proving that when the the mayor is hostile, there's never enough information, but when he isn't, any available information must be carefully guarded by storage in grandma's cookie jar.

If the title of Stiglitz's forthcoming book is any indication, it is doubtful that he and Coffey will be breaking bread for the ritual sopping of barbecued bologna, washed down by copious quantities of sun tea, any time soon.

(No, Dan. "Leaning" means something else entirely)

But doesn't the phrase "Creating a Learning Society" perfectly capture New Albany's challenges as we move forward? The political culture of non-learning isn't keeping pace, and it may be time to try something different, for a change.

Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress, by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald. With Philippe Aghion, Kenneth J. Arrow, Robert M. Solow, and Michael Woodford

It has long been recognized that an improved standard of living results from advances in technology, not from the accumulation of capital. It has also become clear that what truly separates developed from less-developed countries is not just a gap in resources or output but a gap in knowledge. In fact, the pace at which developing countries grow is largely a function of the pace at which they close that gap.

Thus, to understand how countries grow and develop, it is essential to know how they learn and become more productive and what government can do to promote learning. In Creating a Learning Society, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald cast light on the significance of this insight for economic theory and policy. Taking as a starting point Kenneth J. Arrow's 1962 paper "Learning by Doing," they explain why the production of knowledge differs from that of other goods and why market economies alone typically do not produce and transmit knowledge efficiently. Closing knowledge gaps and helping laggards learn are central to growth and development. But creating a learning society is equally crucial if we are to sustain improved living standards in advanced countries.

Democratic city council candidates, this one's for you.

For those of you competing in the May primary in New Albany, seeking a city council seat as Democrats (as words go it's a non sequitur, but we'll let it slide), I have a question.

Bob, Dan, Pat ... you can leave the room.

Mayor Jeff Gahan obviously is "receiving significant campaign contributions from companies who are awarded large public contracts," in what is "an obvious conflict of interest, ethically stunted if not outright graft." The chairman of your party sits on the appointed Redevelopment Commission, which has been used early and often by the Gahan team to bypass the elected council to which you aspire.

There is a noteworthy absence of transparency, and millions of dollars are being borrowed against future taxes not merely to subsidize capital projects, but to finance them in their entirety -- and plenty of campaign finance slush is flowing back into the mayor's coffers from those private entities scoring the contracts.

Sure, the GOP does it, too -- except you're not the GOP type, right? You're a Democrat, and there are core ideals to such an identification beyond massed money, right?

In fact, many of you sincerely espouse progressive ideals, but when it comes to genuine manifestations of these ideals -- not scattershot park improvements or prayer breakfasts, but (for instance) the transformational social impacts of street design on neighborhoods and independent small business, nothing much at all is happening.

In fact, you're being patronized, or more commonly, just ignored outright, and so, my question to you is this.

Are you feeling queasy yet?

Drinking Progressively returns tonight to Bank Street Brewhouse at 6:00 p.m.

We're keeping it local, and surveying a non-partisan program to improve New Albany progressively.

In November, I first mentioned the idea of brief weekly meetings to discuss local issues in an informal atmosphere -- with beer. In short: How do we make New Albany a place where we want to stay, not leave?

Is it possible?

The gist of this notion is not unlike the Drinking Liberally groups, although we'd be drinking progressively according to definition:

Happening or developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step.

Drinking Progressively will be an informal open discussion about what is to be done locally, in any and every sense, in preparation for city elections next year. It's the development of the ideal civic platform for progress, as opposed to regress. Anyone is welcome to attend, and the intent is ecumenical, so party affiliations (or none at all) are irrelevant. Come and go as you please; no mandatory anything.

What we're looking for is a shovel-ready platform. In the process of writing, quite a few seemingly mundane considerations will be examined, and this is the point.

Time: Tuesday evenings, each week, roughly 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., at the WCTU Reading Room at Bank Street Brewhouse. I'll pledge to be there as often as possible, but these gatherings needn't depend on the presence of any one person.

As an added bonus, on Tuesdays we offer inexpensive pint specials from our session series.

In addition, there's this:

ON THE AVENUES: Why not a progressive movement in New Albany? It sure beats a two-party debacle.

And check here, too: Greater New Albany blog.

Drinking Progressively: Tonight at BSB, 6:00 p.m., but no tacos until Friday.

In November, I first mentioned the idea of brief weekly meetings to discuss local issues in an informal atmosphere -- with beer. In short: How do we make New Albany a place where we want to stay, not leave?

Is it possible?

The gist of this notion is not unlike the Drinking Liberally groups, although we'd be drinking progressively according to definition:

Happening or developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step.

Drinking Progressively will be an informal open discussion about what is to be done locally, in any and every sense, in preparation for city elections next year. It's the development of the ideal civic platform for progress, as opposed to regress. Anyone is welcome to attend, and the intent is ecumenical, so party affiliations (or none at all) are irrelevant. Come and go as you please; no mandatory anything.

Last week, we kicked off this series with a far-ranging chat about platform planks. We'll return to them tonight, because the idea is to integrate ideas, not merely spew them.

Consider the negative example of the Main Street Improvement Project, funded (and as reported last evening, with the pavement already decaying) prior to the completion and presumed application of a street and traffic study that likely will illustrate how bad an idea the Main Street project really was when politically conceived in such a way, in the complete absence of connectivity.

What we're looking for is a shovel-ready platform. In the process of writing, quite a few seemingly mundane considerations will be examined, and this is the point.

Time: Tuesday evenings, each week, roughly 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., at the WCTU Reading Room at Bank Street Brewhouse. I'll pledge to be there as often as possible, but these gatherings needn't depend on the presence of any one person.

As an added bonus, on Tuesdays we offer inexpensive pint specials from our session series.

In addition, there's this:

ON THE AVENUES: Why not a progressive movement in New Albany? It sure beats a two-party debacle.

And check here, too: Greater New Albany blog.

One Fine Day in the Park with Adam ... and a Football.

Inspired by FDR, the Floyd County Democratic Party squelches free expression on social media.

Local Democrats courageously prepare for 2015 by censoring Roger on social media.

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

Drinking Progressively: Tuesday evenings, beginning on November 25.

I've been trying to get the word out to those expecting Drinking (and Thinking) Progressively to begin tonight ... I made a change until next Tuesday.

Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, beginning on November 25.

Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, beginning on November 25.

Last week I mentioned the idea of brief weekly meetings to discuss local issues in an informal atmosphere -- with beer.

In short: How do we make New Albany a place where we want to stay, not leave?

Can we?

The gist of this notion is not unlike the Drinking Liberally groups, although we'd be drinking progressively according to definition:

Happening or developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step.

Drinking Progressively will be an informal open discussion about what is to be done locally, in any and every sense, in preparation for city elections next year. It's the development of the ideal civic platform. Anyone is welcome, and the intent is ecumenical, so party affiliations (or none at all) are irrelevant. Come and go as you please; no mandatory anything.

Time: Tuesday evenings, each week, roughly 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., at the WCTU Reading Room at Bank Street Brewhouse. I'll pledge to be there as often as possible, but these gatherings needn't depend on the presence of any one person.

Kickoff: Tuesday, November 25.

As an added bonus, on Tuesdays we offer inexpensive pint specials from our session series.

In addition, there's this:

ON THE AVENUES: Why not a progressive movement in New Albany? It sure beats a two-party debacle.

And check here, too: Greater New Albany blog.

ON THE AVENUES: Why not a progressive movement in New Albany? It sure beats a two-party debacle.

ON THE AVENUES: Why not a progressive movement in New Albany? It sure beats a two-party debacle.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

This column originally was published as "Bully pulpit electoral vistas" on October 20, 2011 – a year after the 2010 Floyd County elections, and just prior to the most recent round of city elections that same year, during which Jeff Gahan was elected mayor, and city council returned to the third floor with a 7-1-1 Democratic majority.

Since then, city council has changed dramatically. Now, instead of the Gang of Four’s obstructionist council saying “no” and accomplishing nothing, Pat McLaughlin’s rubber stamp council says “yes” to the mayor – and accomplishes just as much.

Then there's the Floyd County Democratic Party, which hasn’t changed at all. In county elections on Tuesday, the FCDP was unceremoniously handed its ass on a stained microwave platter salvaged from the late, lamented Sammy O’s.

The FCDP managed a grand total of one win in contested races, and actually doubled down on its losing percentage in big ticket contests for the Indiana House and Senate. The FCDP’s only apparent strategy for county elections came down to getting out the vote, and what votes came out, and were not squelched by Floyd County’s legendary propensity to administratively out-banana Third World quasi-republics with flagrant voting irregularities more common to East Timor than West Endia, were cast against the Democrats.

If you’ve lived here any length of time, you already know the script for what comes next. The FCDP retreats to its municipal lair, licks its wounds, looks longingly for inspiration to the lunatic conservative political ravings of noted policy maker Walt Disney, seeks the re-enthronement of an increasingly isolated and paranoid sitting mayor and his bored, pliant council – and regresses even further into the gloaming of irrelevance and ultimate collapse.

But don’t you think it’s time to reintroduce progressive thought to New Albany, where it is best situated to be relevant, as principled counterpoint to both the spluttering cave men of the GOP and the FCDP's unreconstructed Dixiecrat cadre?

I do, so let’s talk. The column is reprinted as originally written, and so the progressive platform planks are due for revision and augmentation. Some of my endorsements in 2011, mercifully omitted here, are the source of enduring embarrassment. However, I strongly believe that my conclusion remains cogent. It's all about awareness, and introducing these ideas to the debate. It's a process for right now.

---

October 20, 2011

The general election approaches. Just last spring, I harbored a middling desire to contest it. This notion was rendered moot in the primary, where I finished fifth in a field of six and failed to advance.

Que sera, sera.

Given the unconventional nature of my campaign (not one red, white or blue cent was expended), it was highly encouraging to receive more than 1,300 votes, even if they were not enough to finish in the top three. An adage holds that the first time out, building name recognition is the goal, and so I’d say my first-ever run was a very cost-effective introduction to the electorate.

As for what it means in the future tense, fifty-one years have given me no firm idea of what I intend to do when I grow up. The only truly reliable deity is serendipity, and life is what continues to happen while we’re busy making other plans. Some variety of community service, politically speaking, may yet occur before I’m finished.

Right now, I’d rather sell (and drink) lots of Progressive Pints.

---

While not entirely unexpected, perhaps the most revealing aspect of the primary campaign for me was attending Democratic Party events, and realizing in sadness and disgust that with only occasional exceptions, the higher placed the local Democratic Party power broker, the lesser chance he or she holds any beliefs remotely approximating the Democratic Party’s platform as it is now, as opposed to as it was back in pre-LBJ times.

As a leftist doomed to inhabit this benighted shard of riverside floodplain, it felt like a bad time travel film – Planet of the Dixiecrats, perhaps – wherein an entire supposed ruling caste stands stock still, refusing to read the memo, as decades tick past and the remainder of the world proceeds inevitably into the future.

Uninformed stasis makes perfect sense as a Republican worldview, as Dave Matthews’ career as GOP party chairman so tellingly attests, but the fact that the same reasoning girds the crumbling remnants of the Democratic Party’s ward-heeling machine, now reduced to a late-model station wagon suspended atop concrete blocks, tells us exactly why eight years of an 8-1 council “majority” has yielded almost nothing except missed opportunities.

And so, I might have sought an at-large seat as an independent, and might yet, but the reason I didn’t was the immensely entertaining opportunity to glide into Democratic strongholds and make statements like this:

Let’s begin by speaking aloud the unthinkable: I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and I will again in 2012. Terms like left, liberal and progressive don’t offend me.

They describe me.

While campaigning for council, it’s my intention to fight for the relevant principles and values of the Democratic Party, and to apply them to our situation, right here in New Albany.

New Albany’s overarching need is to fight the good fight for greater local determination. The Indy-centric budgeting system we have now is inefficient and infected with malicious Republican ideology. Cutting essentials in education, public safety and social services is madness.

Accordingly, it’s my core belief that current Republican policies are the problem, not the solution, and I don’t much care if Ed Clere and Ron Grooms and Steve Stemler and Tony Bennett and Mitch Daniels don’t like it, because they’re Republicans – even Stemler – and we’re not.

It was worth it just to watch the unreconstructed party elders cringe like vampires at the garlic buffet.

---

On October 22, it will be seven years to the day of the very first NAC blog posting. In the course of almost 5,000 more posts since then, we’ve never stopped learning, and from this amazing, ongoing, always edifying discussion, my 2011 campaign planks largely were drawn:

Human dignity has no price tag; we must re-animate the Human Rights Commission.

“No” votes aren’t leadership. Council members must be open to new ideas, willing to learn, and able to adapt to changing realities.

We must pursue optimum localization of the economy for a more sustainable economic foundation, with more money staying in New Albany, and greater economic self-sufficiency.

Economic development funds are for economic development. They are not sewer rate subsidies, bribes for wealthy multi-national corporations, or meant for the oligarch protection society, i.e., One Southern Indiana.

Economic localization is bottom-up, not top-down. Enhanced cooperation between existing entities like New Albany First, Develop New Albany and the Urban Enterprise Association is welcomed insofar as their activities reflect grassroots needs.

Environmental restoration and sustainability are fundamental to resolving longstanding problems with storm water and the sewer system.

Sustainable green initiatives harmonize with the goal of remaking the city and its streets into a place primarily intended for the use of people, not their cars. We must maximize the advantages of urban living according to what these are, not how suburbanites think they should be.

Progressive, family-friendly neighborhood policies also come from the bottom up. Many current problems result from generations of bad remedies and design flaws. We must rethink these, plan, explore cause and effect, recognize inter-relatedness and repair them.

We must enforce ordinances. All proceeds from enforcement should be kept here to help fund further improvements, which include mandatory rental property inspections.

No tolls! The Ohio River Bridges Project is a multi-billion dollar transportation boondoggle disproportionately burdening Hoosier small businesses, Hoosier workers and Hoosier families.

Slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, the terms of our civic dialogue continue to change, and although I lost in May, these platform planks live on. To as great an extent as possible, and admittedly with imperfection, my candidate endorsements in the forthcoming general election were made with these positions in mind. Granted, not all the winners will embrace them, but for once, they’ll at least be aware of them.

Pardon the interruption: "Today I am announcing my Exploratory Committee for the office of Mayor of New Albany."

Hello, I'm Roger Baylor.

Today I am announcing my Exploratory Committee for the office of Mayor of New Albany.

To refresh readers’ memories, here were the vote totals from the general election in 2011.

• Gahan: 4,506 votes or 64.3 percent
• Bagshaw: 1,389 votes or 19.8 percent
• Messer: 1,024 votes or 14.6 percent
• Keister: 88 votes or 1.2 percent

You may recall that I ran for city council-at-large as a Democrat in the primary that same year, finishing with 1,341 votes. Obviously, 20% isn’t going to cut the mustard, although the cheese is another story entirely, and this is the reason for today’s announcement of an exploratory committee, and the many opportunities for beer-fueled meetings it entails.

For ten years running, progressive ideals have been the sole impetus for progress in New Albany. The problem is that progressivism has been held hostage to leaden, glacial and sullen implementation, in tiny bits and imperceptible pieces.

This owes primarily (a) to too little book reading, and (b) to the dictates of the same, tired politics of patronage, as practiced by two boring, uncreative and frankly embarrassing political parties. To look back over three decades of decay management is to see numerous missed opportunities, when simply looking at what has been proven to work in more dynamic settings might have provided a ready template for reinvention.

Instead, old ways of thinking that first failed during the Warren G. Harding years are spiced with a dash of Sriracha sauce, and voila! Victory is declared, and the paybacks commence anew. Unfortunately, we haven’t won. We’re not even close to winning the future, and yet still the forward movement proceeds at the pace of tectonic plates.

Obviously, the usual suspects and the usual grudging, halting, dilatory tactics aren’t going to be adequate to usher New Albany into the 20th century, much less the third decade of the 21st. This is the reason for the exploratory committee. In barroom chat, veritas.

In the coming weeks, I will be reaching out to a broad, bi-partisan array of local men and women united by a common desire to drink gratis Progressive Pints as we brainstorm ways to contest the 2015 election. All I can guarantee at present is that not a single one of them will be employees of the Floyd County Health Department, and that at no point now or in the future will I agree to wear a suit and tie, although I may be compelled to purchase new underwear, because it’s been a few years now, and the chafing is getting to me.

Isn’t it time for progressivism to be pushed to the front of the local agenda? The back of the bus may have been good enough for your great grandfather, who voted for Eugene Debs before being hauled off to Leavenworth (maybe it was Birdseye), but it isn’t good enough now, when tolls threaten our civic fabric, and Bill Allen’s squalid dump of a Main Street building begs for immediate confiscation and redeployment.

There’ll be show trials, transparency, immediate two-way streets, the most heads spotted rolling since Robespierre, a Bicentennial do-over, exile, hemlock, sustainability, Wi-Fi, an annexation of Community Dark, a proliferation of Community Dark and the conversion of Main Street into a bicycle superhighway. No unattended child will be left behind, and no party boss behinds will be left without a vigorous spanking. There’ll be a chicken in every pot, and the farmers market in a roofless vacant lot.

This effort is not about a person, it is about the cause of New Albanian freedom and greatness and craft beer. I'd like to ask you to join with us - volunteer, donate, or just pass this along to a friend. Thanks so much.

Indiana House GOP omits agenda item as Rhonda Rhoads rushes forward with a muddy shovel.

Their own press release.

Their own pictograms.

At NAC: "This is bad law-making," but still, Rhonda Rhoads lends her name to HJR infamy.

Bicentennial gal-lops (where the streets run one way), Indiana Sesquicentennial edition.

In 1966, progress was being measured by our advancement from privies to flush toilets.

In 2013, it's the other way around, and Mike Pence intends to keep it that way.

(Photo credit: NA-FC library's Historical Image Archive ... captioned "Indiana Sesquicentennial parade, Greenville Volunteer Firemen's float in the Floyd County taken 10/1/1966)"

Inauguration 3: "Obama's Inauguration Speech: A Primer."

When even a conservative commentator like David Brooks is compelled to concede that Barack Obama’s second inaugural speech "surely has to rank among the best of the past half-century," one making a strong "argument for a pragmatic and patriotic progressivism," then it's been a fairly good day. As usual, Charlie Pierce gets pride of place in summarizing Barack Obama's speech.

Obama's Inauguration Speech: A Primer, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

... The president's second inaugural address was as clear a statement of progressive principles as a president has given since LBJ got up there and shoved the Voting Rights Act and the words "We shall overcome" right up old Richard Russell's ass in 1965 ...

... The speech was a bold refutation of almost everything the Republican party has stood for over the past 40 years. It was a loud — and, for this president, damned near derisive — denouncement of all the mindless, reactionary bunkum that the Republicans have come to stand for in 2013; you could hear the sound of the punch he landed on the subject of global warming halfway to Annapolis. But the meat of the speech was a brave assertion of the power of government, not as an alien entity, but as an instrument of the collective will and desires of a self-governing people.

Inauguration 1: "We are made for this moment."

It was a day for celebration and mirth, because there's nothing quite like angry disgruntled "look at me" white guys to double me over with laughter, especially when they can only communicate only through incoherent grunts and Facebook memes.

My advice is to man up and get on with it. I've made it through Nixon, Ray-Gun and two Bushes (oddly enough, Bush Elder wasn't all that bad) ... and lemme tell you, you'll survive. Drink better quality alcohol. It helps.

Instead of howling at the moon, rigging the Electoral College and stockpiling ammo, how's about picking up some litter or something, er, almost communal, if you know what I mean.

Obama's second inauguration: 'We are made for this moment'

• President vows to reclaim the spirit of founding fathers
• Gay rights, climate change and immigration mentioned
• Crowd of about half a million watches Washington swearing-in

By Ewen MacAskill (Guardian)

... Attempting to debunk the rightwing interpretation of the constitution that has held sway in the US, Obama, in what became a near constant refrain throughout his speech, said the founding fathers did not intend the country to become enslaved by the constitution and that patriotism was not the preserve of the right.

"That is our generation's task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness.," Obama said.

It was down to the current generation to make the principles a reality, he declared. "For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing."

Four more years, because Bain-think is Budweiser-think with fewer letters.

In many varied ways, 2008 was the worst year of my life in purely personal terms, and just prior to the presidential election that autumn, pretty much the whole country decided to join me in a state of dazed, depressed confusion. But then something unexpected happened, and Barack Obama got himself elected. Even my reliably fascistic state of Indiana landed in the blue column, a moment for cherishing during Nurnberg rallies to come.

Of course, four years of crazed opposition to modernity have followed, with America's right-wing nutjob cadres constructing a network of trenches to rival those zig-zagging across the Western Front in 1915, and now the element most directly responsible for impeding the cause of American progress demands that we reward its conniving intransigence by handing it the keys, ensuring that the title to the nation remains in the hands of the 1%.

No thanks. I'd just as soon drink Bud Light.

I'm constantly reminded by conservatives that a Randian, self-referential greed is the only barometer of such matters, and so, am I better off now than in 2008?

You bet your ass I am, and on all fronts, except the predictably shallow standards of my own aging, confused generation. I might be whining, moaning and mocking, because in dollar terms, my pay packet actually has diminished somewhat since 2008, and my personal wealth as measured by unnecessary objects also has declined, but these are conditions I can tolerate precisely because I've been busy investing everything I have, and several things I don't, into my brewing dream. In short, I've been following the conventional small business wisdom as touted by those most critical of my politics, and remaining leftist all the while.

And it drives them bat shit crazy.

We continue working hard to bring our business dreams to fruition, which parasitical socialist leftists like me supposedly are incapable of doing. Yes, it's slower than we thought it would be, but NABC moves forward. The growth has been incremental. We make first downs, and the work is both sustainable and honest. We never laid off an employee during the recession. We made numerous mistakes, try to learn from them, and keep fighting.

At no single point during any of it have I even once been tempted to say that Barack Obama's big government has kept me down. To the contrary, and yet again on the Democratic Convention's final night, the president has inspired me to believe in the future, to trust my instincts, to remain a part of the collective community -- in it together, as implied in any pursuit of a more perfect union. NABC was built not just by its owners, but also by the employees, the customers, the vendors ... the list goes on, and on, and it never implies a sense of unbridled, individualistic egoism. I may be an egotistical bastard, and yet I never doubt that the larger stage upon which one performs is collectively built.

Furthermore, neither hidebound conservatism nor antebellum throwbacks are options in the craft beer world. Rebelling against them is why the craft beer world exists. Times and economies have changed, and while no economic segment is perfect, I'm prepared to argue that craft beer's ongoing prosperity illustrates that we've adapted better than most.

Of course, for me it goes even deeper than lessons of my chosen field.

When right-wingers froth at the mouth in their insistence that big government -- that Obama's big government -- is so very bad that I must fall to my knees and beg for the intervention of big corporations, big religion and big lies as chosen curatives, or risk straight white males like me being doomed ... well, I won't get fooled again. I smile and grin, because they're just plain wrong.

Their medicine is far, far worse than the disease, because in every breath, one can hear the the unmistakable sound of padlocks connecting chains binding conscience. I can't imagine a time when for me, like for most of them, it'll be strictly about the profits, and the use of that money as a means of hierarchical, societal control. I'll struggle with them to the last gasp when it comes to their visions of capitulation through theocracy, and if I can figure out a way to use good beer towards this end, you can bet I will.

It's neither 2008, nor 1859. It's 2012, and I've into a sixth decade on the planet. I'm looking forward to the final third of my life, to whatever time remains allotted, as I continue to think and act in a manner to disprove the tired, sad bromide about people necessarily becoming ever more conservative with advancing age. What's the use is knowledge and experience if all you wish to do is turn back clocks?

Can't we just make better clocks?

This post's got no title, just words and a tune ... (November 1, 2008)

... Axiomatically, the people screaming anti-Obama epithets at Republican rallies identify themselves as religious people. They go to church. What’s more, it isn’t that they’re somehow guilty of incomprehension, or of misunderstanding the sermons they hear while awaiting the collection plate. In general terms, they’re grasping the point perfectly well: It’s us, and them. “They” must convert. “We” must proselytize. The message is clear. If you’re not one of them, you’re not really American.

And that’s bullshit. Always has been, and always will be.

"Something Wicked This Way Comes," from the New Yorker.

This excellent essay (thanks, R) offers a view of the difference between wicked and tame problems, and more strikingly to me, reference to three basic forms of reactionary response to progress and social advancement: Perversity, futility, and jeopardy. We've heard these troglodyte responses so many times in New Albany that the effect is somewhat numbing. We'll hear them again, won't we?

online/blogs/comment/2012/06/something-wicked-this-way-comes.html" style="font-weight: bold;">SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, posted by Atul Gawande (New Yorker)

... Two decades ago, the economist Albert O. Hirschman published a historical study of the opposition to basic social advances; “the rhetoric of intransigence,” as he put it. He examined the structure of arguments—in the eighteenth century, against expansions of basic rights, such as freedom of speech, thought, and religion; in the nineteenth century, against widening the range of citizens who could vote and participate in government; and, in the twentieth century, against government-assured minimal levels of education, economic well-being, and security. In each instance, the reforms aimed to address deep, pressing, and complex societal problems—wicked problems, as we might call them. The reforms pursued straightforward goals but required inherently complicated, difficult-to-explain means of implementation. And, in each instance, Hirschman observed, reactionary argument took three basic forms: perversity, futility, and jeopardy.

"Prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn."

Been to a city council meeting lately, George?

The right's stupidity spreads, enabled by a too-polite left; Conservativism may be the refuge of the dim. But the room for rightwing ideas is made by those too timid to properly object, by George Monbiot (guardian.co.uk)

Yes, conservatism thrives on low intelligence and poor information. But the liberals in politics on both sides of the Atlantic continue to back off, yielding to the supremacy of the stupid. It's turkeys all the way down.