To defund police is not to abolish police. It is to reduce and reallocate police budgets.

Photo credit: Mother Jones.

From The Economist: (Order above the law) ... How to fix American policing. The country’s forces kill too many of those they serve. Here is how to change that.

Systemic racism does not mean that all officers are racists or bad people; it means that the system operates in a racially biased manner regardless of individual motivations.

Militarization and violence. Aren't they synonymous?

A paper by Jonathan Mummolo, a political scientist at Princeton, found that police militarisation fails to enhance public safety while also eroding public trust in the police.

That makes sense: military forces are designed to win wars, not trust. The army’s goals and those of the police differ. The army kills its enemies. Police are supposed to serve and protect Americans without violating their civil rights—and to face consequences for violating those rights.

Yet when it comes to killing, few officers face consequences.

Curative measures are a navigational challenge. Police unions are one such outcropping and courts, another.

With courts a narrow avenue for reform, some have started to advocate hitting law-enforcement agencies where it hurts: right in the budget. Advocates in at least 15 cities are waging campaigns to defund the police and use the money on other social services.

Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College professor and defunding advocate, says that people assume “the problem is that individual officers aren’t doing their jobs properly, when the problem really is that they have been asked to do too big a job.” Police have been asked to provide security in schools, respond to people’s mental-health crises and drug overdoses. “Policing is about use of force,” Mr Vitale explains. “It should be a last resort...We don’t want another community meeting with police. We want them out of our lives.”

Barry Friedman, who runs New York University’s Policing Project, has a simpler suggestion: clear legislation.

Rolling Stone provides a fine overview of what it actually means to "defund the police." To defund police is not to abolish police. It is to reduce and reallocate police budgets.

Consider the fact that four Minneapolis police officers responded to a 911 call that described a minor, nonviolent crime. “George Floyd is the perfect case to look at,” Garcia says. “What he was accused of — what the police were called for — was a nonviolent offense: trying to use a fake $20 bill. If we reduce the number of crimes that exist or repeal ordinances which are really bloated with nonviolent offenses that were created during Broken Windows, it will allow police to focus on violent crime — on the crimes where they are actually needed — instead of criminalizing the poor.”

Vaguely reminiscent of the intent of NA-FC schools and the recently rejected safety referendum, eh?

But many of the typical voter's objections apart from the impact on the pocketbooks of ratepayers centered on prevention as namby-pamby; we need more security, not counseling . How many people did I hear or read saying if the money covered armed police, high walls and padlocked gates, they'd be okay with it?

This brings us back to The Economist and another pressing issue.

Unlike most police forces elsewhere, American police patrol a heavily armed country. That can make their job dangerous—between 2000 and 2014, 2,445 died on duty, compared with just 25 in Britain. But police also return fire, killing around 1,000 people each year.

And the rub:

African-Americans are nearly three times likelier than whites to be killed by police. In fact, being killed by police is now the sixth-leading cause of death for young black men. African-Americans are likelier to be convicted, and serve longer sentences than whites convicted of the same crime; they comprise 13% of the adult population, but 33% of the imprisoned population.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Social distancing and the single drinker.

A very timely reminder: For the past 40 years I've always tried my best, at all times and twice on Sunday, to keep at least 6 feet away from the nearest Miller Lite.

The pandemic has strengthened my resolve.

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Let's begin with some bad news.

Farewell for now to a golden age of drinking, by Schumpeter (The Economist)

The pandemic has hurt the booze business

... Lockdown and its aftermath leaves craft firms most exposed. Some have been bought by industry giants; abi now owns Goose Island and Camden Town Brewery. But many still sell from their own small premises, making it harder to attract social-distancing customers. Even in good times many barely covered their costs. Being small, they have less leverage to force their wares onto supermarket shelves. Some will either be sold or sluiced down the drain. Inevitably, the industry will lose some of its creative fizz.

In addition, two longer-term threats loom on the horizon: demography and drugs. Studies show that Generation z, the eldest of whom have recently reached drinking age, are far less likely to consume alcohol than their elders, says Javier Gonzalez Lastra of Berenberg, a bank. That will affect the drinks industry for years to come, because peak alcohol consumption has traditionally been between the ages of 18 and 34. Partly as a result, in America, historically the world’s biggest drinks market, total alcohol sales volumes have declined for three years in a row. Overlapping with youthful sobriety is cannabis use. A report co-written by iwsr last year found that this was an emerging alternative to booze among the young. Millennials in America accounted for almost half of “dualists”, who both smoke pot and imbibe. Covid-19 could benefit cannabis further. In Schumpeter’s limited experience, pot-smoking has always been something of a furtive activity. That may make it better suited to social distancing than clinking glasses in a pub.

The good news is that a great awakening of regulatory experimentation allowed to survive pandemic states of emergency would help keep us in the game.

Hip Hops: Public drinking -- and changing “stupid American liquor laws”

Rules and regulations are inevitable in any business or profession, but the ones pertaining to beverage alcohol often are a more impenetrable thicket than most, multiplied 50 times for each state in the union, compounded by additional layers of local blue laws, and seemingly imposed for the very purpose of denying that the repeal of Prohibition ever took place.

In the same article there's a list of Louisville area breweries and their current opening status.

Food & Dining Magazine’s "Hip Hops" column is devoted to the beer beat, and an essential component for the health and well being of any city’s beer scene is its core of local breweries. In the broadest of terms, the pandemic has been kind to Louisville’s breweries. Many of ours never closed entirely during the pandemic, and others have reopened.

Here’s a status list with the (incomplete) lowdown, as assembled Sunday afternoon in the company of a tankard of Falls City Bock — and then another, after the first.

Scammers, fraudsters, and the task of "Un-Corrupting City Hall."

This long read helpfully explains why New Albany's Ethics Commission was stillborn.

Un-Corrupting City Hall, by Ethan McLeod (CityLab)

These cities all suffered notorious municipal scandals. What have officials and voters done to tackle corruption and keep it from happening again?

H. Philip West Jr. breathed a sigh of relief in June when Providence’s 294-room Graduate Hotel decided to remove the portraits of Vincent “Buddy” Cianci from its guestrooms. The longtime mayor, who died in 2016, is an iconic character in the Rhode Island capital’s history. But as far as West is concerned, Cianci is a stain on Providence—one that he’s spent years trying, unsuccessfully, to scrub away.

It was only five years ago that Cianci—out of prison after a racketeering conspiracy conviction in 2007 and twice forced to resign from office due to felony convictions nearly two decades apart—mounted a third run for mayor. He lost, but West, former director of Common Cause Rhode Island, was still troubled to see him draw 45 percent of the vote.

“When you’ve dealt with such a brilliant scammer and fraudster, how can you convince people that they should not support him? I’m not sure you ever can,” says West, who helped write a new city ethics code and create a municipal investigatory body after Cianci’s 2001 indictment. “Ultimately you just have to say, ‘We’re going to build a structure that’s going to hold anybody who’s elected going forward accountable.’”

That’s the same pledge that voters and leaders have made in other places where civic corruption has been a chronic issue. Weary from national embarrassment and seeing history repeat itself, cities like Baltimore, New Orleans, and Chicago have responded to political scandals with charter overhauls and executive orders, empowered independent investigators to probe corruption, and challenged problematic local political traditions.

But successfully leading a wave of reform can be a tall order, with human nature and deeply entrenched political culture standing in the way. “This is about personal greed,” Tim Krebs, chair of the University of New Mexico’s political science department, says. “As long as you have human beings in government, you’re not going to be able to root [corruption] out entirely.”

Boosting oversight doesn’t always work, and for some, the jury is still out as reforms await testing. But in cities large and small, when voters and officials commit to challenging corruption and embracing transparency, they’re seeing results.

Examples are offered from Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Greater Los Angeles and New Orleans, before the narrative turns back to Providence.

The Providence Ethics Commission didn’t actually meet until 2015 ... West said he’s proud of the ethics code and other reforms he helped with, but is bothered that he hasn’t yet seen the commission enforce the new rules for any violations. “With a power, you can’t really know what it is until you exercise it and you find out what the resistance is. I really can’t say that they’ve got decent enforcement power until I see that they’re using it.”

The coda.

“It takes a long time to build good government, and sadly, a clever, corrupt official can do great damage in short time,” he says. “Until those people retire and are gone, corruption will still have its presence, its taint.”

Not in New Albany, but "In Car-Choked Brussels, the Pedestrians Are Winning."

The obvious reaction: If pro-pedestrian reforms are the winning strategy for a big city of 2.2 million residents (and countless visitors), then what's the difference between this and a small city of 37,000?

Shouldn't it be easier in the smaller unit?

In Car-Choked Brussels, the Pedestrians Are Winning, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

The Belgian capital is one of the most congested in Europe. But an ambitious suite of street makeovers is pushing traffic outside the central city.

Right now, there can be an almost eerie calm to some sections of central Brussels. Take an evening stroll down down Boulevard Anspach, the broad avenue that forms the Belgian capital’s spine, and you may find the roadway empty, its limestone and wrought-iron facades echoing the footsteps of a rare passer-by on the sidewalk.

This uncanny silence in the heart of a blaring metro area of 2.2 million residents—known as one of Europe’s most notoriously congested capitals—is no accident. Right now the Brussels Capital Region is slowly drawing towards completing one of the most ambitious pro-pedestrian makeovers yet seen this century. Carried out on a scale only Madrid can really compete with, Brussels is systematically banishing anything but emergency and delivery vehicles from a large network of streets and squares that are not just central, but axial ...

Emanuel, Gahan and the campaign finance iceberg -- can it be reformed?

Surprisingly, Rahm Emanuel isn't running for another term as mayor of Chicago -- but he needn't leave his campaign war chest behind.

(Emanuel) also has deep pockets: For his mayoral bid, he raised five times the amount ten of his rivals raised together. For all of these reasons, some on Twitter speculated today that he might be eyeing the 2020 presidential race after he relinquishes his mayoral duties. Whether or not that turns out to be true, he is not likely to disappear into the background.

“Obviously the guy’s got $10 million dollars in his campaign war chest, so he's going to be a player moving forward,” said Ron Holmes, a political strategist in Chicago with ten years of experience in Illinois politics.

In case you're wondering, $10,000,000 divided by 2.7 million people (the population of Chicago) equals $3.70 per person.

Conversely, using Mayor Jeff Gahan's CFA-4 filing in January as a point of reference, Gahan came into 2018 with roughly $87,000 in future campaign funds. Divided by New Albany's population of 38,000, this equals $2.29 for each man, woman and child in the city.

In a city where 25% of residents exist below the poverty line, Gahan's campaign finance documents routinely feature donations in $1,000 to $5,000 increments from firms and individuals benefiting from city contracts. I've displayed many of them in this space.

Obviously, these donations represent what has been calculated by donor and recipient as justifiable for those gifts being reported. As adults, we all know that these donations probably are the tip of an iceberg.

No polemics, no rhetoric, just this: Emanuel or Gahan; same problem about big money in politics, just a different municipal scale. Rahm's not running. Jeff almost certainly will. Next year when our mayor lofts those nice depictions of bright shiny objects to solicit your vote, two questions should come to mind: how much did these wonders actually cost us, and how much did the engineers and contractors donate to Gahan as a token of their esteem?

I'd ask only that you consider these points before voting. Is this really the way you want local government to work?

Cities Take Aim at the Spiraling Costs of Local Elections, by Sarah Holder (CityLab)

It’s well known that a run for a big office needs big money backing it, but up and down the ballot, budgets have been swelling, and not only in the U.S.’s largest cities. Several localities—including Portland, Denver, and Baltimore—have initiatives in motion to overhaul the system either by driving down the dollar amounts each person can give or solicit, piloting public financing projects that make each donated dollar go further, or both. The overarching goal is to keep big money and its influence out of local politics, and to give all candidates a fair shot.

New rules of thumb in transportation planning provide thumbnails for scoring local political aspirants.

It occurred to me to backdate this post to 2004, thus providing enough time for 4th district councilman Pat McLaughlin to methodically consider the potential uses of thumbs.

OUR OLD PLANNING RULES OF THUMB ARE “ALL THUMBS”, by Joe Cortright (Strong Towns)

We all know and use rules of thumb. They’re handy for simplifying otherwise difficult problems and quickly making reasonably prudent decisions. We know that we should measure twice and cut once, that a stitch in time saves nine, and that we should allow a little extra following distance when the roads are slick.

What purport to be “standards” in the worlds of transportation and land use are in many cases just elaborate rules of thumb. And while they might have made sense in some limited or original context, the cumulative effect of these rules is that we have a transportation system which is by regulation, practice, and received wisdom, “all thumbs.”

SNIP

Our “all thumbs” approach to transportation planning leads to a specific pattern of development that is as inefficient for cars as it is hostile for persons traveling on foot, via bicycle and on transit.

What is needed are a new set of rules of thumb. Like all heuristics, this isn’t meant to be taken as a final set of “standards” to fit every situation – but there are some emerging ideas about what we might emphasize.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #1: CLOSER IS BETTER
Having more different destinations close at hand facilitates a wide range of mode choices, especially walking and cycling. Mixing uses, which is often anathema under traditional zoning codes turns out to be desirable for consumers and expeditious for transportation.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #2: SLOWER IS SAFER
When cars and people on foot and on bikes interact, safety comes from slow speeds even more than separation. Local streets that move traffic slowly are friendlier—and safer—for non-auto modes of transportation.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #3: SHARING IS EFFICIENT
Rather than require every use to provide parking for the peak hour of the year, arranging uses so people can park once, and walk mostly leads to less traffic, greater safety and more congenial, fine-grained development patterns.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #4: OUR OBJECTIVE SHOULD BE ACCESSIBILITY, NOT MOBILITY
Many transportation heuristics emphasize speed: how do we make things move faster. But what we really care about is getting to (or being at) our destinations, not rapidly traveling among them. Speed should be secondary to choice.

* “I want to highlight and emphasize that the city did not rush to make a decision on the finalization of the conversion project. Instead, the city took its time and was methodical. The City also was not afraid to compromise and modify the plan as needed, especially when it came to changes prompted by the feedback received from residents. This project exemplifies how local government, community members, and contractors can come together to design the best plan for their city,” stated City Council President Patrick McLaughlin.

LIVE TO EAT: Rogers, McCabe, their new Bar Vetti and Danny Meyer's "no tipping" movement.

For every action ...

Danny Meyer Has a Few ‘Tips’ of His Own, by Anna Lappé (The Nation)

An interview with the restaurateur behind Shake Shack on ending tips and educating diners.

Meyer is increasingly seen as a leader in bringing progressive values to a cutthroat industry. Case in point: In 2015, he announced that a number of his restaurants would eliminate what he’s called “one of the biggest hoaxes ever pulled on an entire culture”: tipping.

 ... there is an opposite and equal (and predictable) reaction.

Danny Meyer, David Chang, Others Sued Over No-Tipping ‘Conspiracy’, by Whitney Filloon (Eater)

A lawsuit claims restaurant owners are profiting from zero-gratuity policies at the expense of servers and diners

The no-tipping movement has widely been praised as a way to improve the lives of restaurant workers, but a new lawsuit claims restaurant owners are really the ones profiting from zero-gratuity policies.

A proposed class-action lawsuit filed in California federal court names several Bay Area and New York restaurants — including those owned by no-tipping pioneer Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group — as defendants, and claims that no-tipping policies are “part of a conspiracy to charge [diners] more for their food,” Law360 reports.

The suit argues that restaurant owners, including Meyer and Momofuku boss David Chang, colluded to establish no-tipping policies in “secret meetings,” and that the real aim of such policies was to line their own pockets by raising menu prices.

Across the river, two food and drink professionals who are quite well known to New Albanian eaters have embraced the no-tipping model.

As a reminder, in most of Europe the service and various taxes are included in the bill, and either indicated clearly on the check or posted in plain sight. The rule of thumb is rounding up; if you think your server did a good job, bump the total a Euro or two, up to 10% maximum. However, you're under no obligation to do so. 

In essence, what you see is what you get. I've always liked it that way.

Best of luck to Ryan and Andrew with Bar Vetti and their "no tipping" policy.

How HiCotton Hospitality plans to make pay equitable in its restaurants, by Caitlin Bowling (Insider Louisville)

Business partners Andrew McCabe and Ryan Rogers are tired of people looking down on restaurant work as an entry-level job, but they also recognize that making a good living wage in the industry can be tough.

“Before I opened my first restaurant, I was like any other restaurant employee in this city working as a line cook making an hourly wage and trying to figure out how to make ends meet,” Rogers said. “How do I pay my rent? How do I pay my car? How do I pay my insurance? And then: What am I left with?”

With the new Italian restaurant Bar Vetti — opening Monday, Oct. 16 — McCabe and Rogers are testing a different way to compensate employees that they believe will allow workers to make good money and eliminate wage discrepancies between employees who work behind the scenes and those who work out front.

“We want to change that [perception] and make it more of a career path,” said McCabe, who also is executive chef at Bar Vetti.

First, Bar Vetti has a “no tipping” policy, so servers and bartenders paychecks won’t suffer if business is slow. And second, Rogers said all workers would be paid “well above minimum wage.”

“It’s a big gamble for us. It’s an experiment,” said Rogers, founder of the restaurant group HiCotton Hospitality.

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. 

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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.

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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.

Nationally, not locally: "The Democrats are also in a profound struggle over their future."

In Floyd County, the long-term trend shows no signs of abating.

In response to Republican Full, the Undemocratic Chairman Dickey offers Republican Light.

Increasingly, local voters taste the choices and opt for the more flavorful of the options, rather than the one that just tastes like water.

Maybe this will change, though given the good-old-boy inclinations of the local party's intellectually vacant standard-bearers, holding one's breath might not be a good plan.

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Civil war has broken out inside the Democratic party. Does the future belong to the populist left or the centrists? (The Guardian)

Last week’s defeat in a high-profile congressional contest sparked a tough fight over the heart of the Democratic party. Heather Cox Richardson, Jean Hannah Edelstein and Michael Cohen look at what the future might hold

 ... Unlike the Republicans, though, who will have to reinvent themselves if they are ever to recover from the damage of the Trump era, the Democrats have the opportunity to heal their differences for an easier transition to a new political era. Establishment Democrats are not wrong to put faith in experience: Clinton, after all, lost the electoral college, but won the popular vote by more than two points. The upstart Democrats who rallied to Sanders are, though, demanding a focus on economic fairness, one that echoes the Democratic leadership of the 1930s. “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence,” FDR said in 1944. “People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

Heather Cox Richardson is professor of history at Boston College

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We must learn from Jeremy Corbyn’s success and speak to younger voters
One might have thought that the November election would have drawn a clear line under Democratic centrism. But the defeat of Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s 6th congressional district may have been its true death wheeze. Even with six times as much funding as his opponent and a crazed and incompetent Republican president, Ossoff could not get enough of the district’s wealthy and well-educated Republicans to vote for him to flip the district.

When Bernie Sanders remarked that he wasn’t sure that Ossoff was a true progressive, it wasn’t a kind thing to say, but it also wasn’t inaccurate. The future of the Democratic party is not men like Ossoff. We must learn from the comeback of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK election and start putting our might and money behind candidates who are truly on the left.

Jean Hannah Edelstein is a writer based in New York

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Liberals should be wary of policies that will scare away the middle classes
It has been a rough couple of months for the Democratic party. As Republicans have sought to roll back the key legislative accomplishments of President Obama, it has been one disaster after another. Even with President Trump’s approval ratings at historically low levels, Democrats continue to lose special elections around the country.

But in spite of these losses, there is a clear glimmer of hope – one that could presage a significant Democratic victory in congressional elections next year. Democrats are losing, but they are losing by much smaller margins than they have in the past.

Michael Cohen is the author of American Maelstrom: the 1968 Election and the Politics of Division

“There are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.”

First, Bernie Sanders in West Virginia.

'Healthcare is a Right': Bernie Sanders Finds Common Ground in Trump Country, by Nika Knight (Common Dreams)

The warm reception to Sanders' views—that climate change is real, that universal healthcare is a right, and that free higher education is necessary, among others—demonstrated that residents of this county that voted 75 percent for Trump support far more progressive policies than those touted by the president.

Then, the upper reaches of the Democratic Party, no more willing than Jeff Gahan to stop mainlining Big Cash.

Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party, by Trevor Timm (The Guardian)

... In other words, they’re doubling down on the exact same failing strategy that Clinton used in the final months of the campaign. Sanders himself put it this way in his usual blunt style in an interview with New York magazine this week – when asked about whether the Democrats can adapt to the political reality, he said: “There are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.”

In the long term, change may be coming for Democrats whether they like it or not. Sanders loyalists are quietly attempting to take over many local Democratic party positions around the country. While Ellison lost the race for the DNC chair, it was incredibly close – closer than Sanders came to beating Clinton. And Sanders’ supporters are already organizing primary challenges to incumbent Democrats who aren’t sufficiently opposing Trump.

Speaking of the mayor, let's drop in on his meeting with the local party minion chairman.

Thomas Frank and Bernie Sanders talk about things Adam Dickey doesn't want to hear.

Since I'm in such a good mood this morning, we'll be taking a glance as Thomas Frank and Bernie Sanders talk about an array of compelling ideas that local party bigwig Adam Dickey doesn't want to hear.

However, first let's take a brief diversion into post-electoral Democratic self-delusion, one of Mr. Disney's perennial specialties.

Can They Count?, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Blaming third-party voters for Trump’s win isn’t just bad politics. It’s bad math.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election day victory, political wonks find themselves in an urgent predicament — apparently, not a single one of them owns a calculator. This crisis is ill-timed indeed. Performing simple feats of addition and subtraction is a vital part of the wonks’ post-election number-crunching ritual. But without calculators, wonks make mistakes.

The calculator crisis has already had an impact on public opinion. Justifiably unnerved by the shortage, data-slingers have flailed in the days and weeks following the election. As a result, they’ve churned out misleading analyses full of bad math.

The worst instances of bad math have to do with the so-called “protest vote,” cast by those voters who, disgusted by the major candidates on offer, pulled the lever for marginal third-party challengers like the Green Party’s Jill Stein. To hear the wonks tell it, these voters were dupes — frauds even — and they cost Clinton the election.

Because what really happened was this.

The Democrats lost because their Republican challenger was able to galvanize voters far more successfully than Hillary Clinton, whose technocratic blend of esoteric policy-talk and milquetoast liberalism did next to nothing to motivate turnout, even with the specter of a Trump presidency looming large.

So, the Democrats drew the short straw, and the reform process begins. Or does it?

How the Democrats could win again, if they wanted, by Thomas Frank (The Guardian)

Labor and economic equality used to be at the heart of liberal politics. Rich professionals expunged these concerns – and have reaped the consequences

What makes 2016 a disaster for Democrats is not merely the party’s epic wipeout in Washington and the state capitals, but that the contest was fought out on a terrain that should have been favorable to them. This was an election about social class –about class-based grievances – and yet the Party of the People blew it. How that happened is the question of the year, just as it has been the question of other disastrous election years before. And just like before, I suspect the Democrats will find all manner of convenient reasons to take no corrective action.

But first let us focus on the good news. Donald Trump has smashed the consensus factions of both parties. Along the way, he has destroyed the core doctrine of Clintonism: that all elections are decided by money and that therefore Democrats must match Republican fundraising dollar for dollar. This is the doctrine on which progressive hopes have been sacrificed for decades, and now it is dead. Clinton outspent Trump two-to-one and it still wasn’t enough.

Leaving aside the question of how this conclusion pertains to Jeff Gahan's fattened war chest, it isn't pretty.

This year the Republicans chose an honest-to-god scary candidate, a man who really ought to have been kept out of the White House, and the party’s centrists choked. Instead of winning, the pragmatists delivered Democrats to the worst situation they’ve been in for many decades, with control of no branch of the federal government and only a handful of state legislatures. Over the years, and at the behest of this faction, Democrats gave up what they stood for piece by piece and what they have to show for it now is nothing.

At least we now understand what it really means to swing.

... the real swing voters are the working people who over the years have switched their loyalty from the Democrats to Trump’s Republicans. Their views are pretty much the reverse of the standard model. On certain matters they are open to conservative blandishments; on economic issues, however, they are pretty far to the left. They don’t admire free trade or balanced budgets or entitlement reform – the signature issues of centrism – they hate those things. And if Democrats want to reach them, they will have to turn away from the so-called center and back to the economic left.

Frank doesn't believe the Democratic Party will be up to the task of introspection and rehabilitation. The party won't make the necessary changes, and ...

This will happen because what leading liberals cannot understand – what they are psychologically blocked from understanding – is that the problem isn’t really the white working class. The problem is them.

For those of an optimistic nature, there's a potential silver lining.

If the unreconstructed Democratic party is to be saved, I suspect, what will save it is what always saves it: the colossal incompetence of the Republicans. This, too, we can already see coming down the rails. Donald Trump is getting the wrecking crew back together, and before too long, I suspect, he will have the country pining for Hillary Clinton.

Ah, what might have been, but Bernie Sanders is not looking back in anger.

Bernie Sanders: Where We Go From Here, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

It feels like a bomb went off in Washington. In less than a year, the leaders of both major parties have been crushed, fundamentally reshaping a political culture that for generations had seemed unalterable. The new order has belligerent outsider Donald Trump heading to the White House, ostensibly backed in Congress by a tamed and repentant majority of establishment Republicans. Hillary Clinton's devastating loss, meanwhile, has left the minority Democrats in disarray. A pitched battle for the soul of the opposition party has already been enjoined behind the scenes.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won overwhelming youth support and 13 million votes during primary season, now sits on one side of that battle, in a position of enormous influence. The party has named him "outreach chair," and Minnesota congressman and Sanders political ally Keith Ellison is the favorite to be named head of the Democratic National Committee. This is a huge change from earlier this year, when the Sanders campaign was completely on the outs with the DNC, but many see Sanders' brand of politics as the Democrats' best shot at returning to prominence.

Since November 9, the Floyd County Democratic party has continued doing what it's done best during Chairman Dickey's tenure: Avoid any trace of content while erecting sanitized facades to hide behind.

Of course, there are times when Occam's razor rules, and the simplest explanation is the best; as such, local Democrats have absolutely nothing in the tank, and so nothingness is the only path the party can take.

We already know how it's going to play out hereabouts:

New Albany Heating and Air presents ...

COOL PAPA GAHAN AND THE COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED FLOYD COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PARTY

"Meet the new loss ... same as the old loss ... "

Robert Reich has an "8-Point Plan for a New Democratic Party," and I fully expect Floyd County's Democrats to whittle it down to less than zero.

Has a single local ranking Democrat had anything intelligible to say since the debacle on November 8?

Donald Trump ran roughshod, but roughly 40% of the county opted for Hillary Clinton, and it stands to reason that these people might be interested to know what's next.

(crickets chirp)
(pins drop)
(somewhere, a dog forlornly barks)
(the flutter of this passing moth's wings is deafening)

I resent being proven wrong again; after all, I thought local Democrats couldn't display any fewer leadership skills.

But when the going gets tough ... water park!

Robert Reich's 8-Point Plan for a New Democratic Party, by Tessa Stuart (Rolling Stone)

Former labor secretary says the party must be rebuilt from the ground up, and has some ideas on how it should be done ... "the entire organization has to be reinvented," Robert Reich says of the DNC.

During the 2016 primary, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich was an outspoken supporter of Bernie Sanders. When he threw his weight behind Hillary Clinton's bid in the general election, he did so while also calling for the formation of a new progressive party to take up Sanders' cause after the election. In the wake of Democrats' humiliating defeat in November – not just for the presidency, but in a number of Congressional races – the UC Berkeley professor and co-founder of Inequality Media says the Democratic Party must be rebuilt from the ground up, and he has some ideas about how it ought to be done ...

... This requires a completely different kind of politics in response, and the Democratic Party needs to think at a much, much larger and more ambitious level than a lot of the Democrats I've been talking to over the last week have been. Here's Reich's blueprint for the future of the party."

To learn the details, click through. Here is the title list:

1. Overhaul the DNC
2. Embrace populism
3. Mobilize, energize and educate the base
4. Expose Trump as a fraud
5. Focus on 2018 now
6. Look to the state and local level
7. Protect groups threatened by Trump
8. Failing all else, look outside the party

Look outside the party? That's interesting.

"All I can tell you at this point in time is that millions of people are afraid of what's to come. They want to know what to do. They want to be engaged and involved. They want to be part of a peaceful resistance army, with regard to what they expect to happen over the next months or years. And that expectation it is, it seems to me, justified and realistic. The Democrats would be wise to take advantage of this upsurge in public concern, and this desire to be directly involved."

The problem for our local Democrats is when you've been this bad for this long, even Santa Claus isn't returning your calls.

But look, they're already hard at work mobilizing, energizing and educating the base!

"They just killed my business" ... and other incredible tales as "Harvest Homecoming creates parking dilemma at Underground Station."

NAC broke this story last Wednesday, and it was the most-viewed post of September.

Trumple-down carny economics: The needs of Fiesta Rides outweighs the needs of bricks and mortar indie businesses at Underground Station.

Meanwhile, Underground Station's Ron Carter is right.

Art Niemeier and a handful of other "reformers" within Harvest Homecoming have been exemplary in their efforts to deal with the fundamental and increasingly intractable problem: The festival's 50-year-old business model is largely incompatible with downtown's revitalization.

"Carter is confident that a solution is possible — especially if it involves the city."

A solution cannot be reached without recognition of another fundamental reality: Harvest Homecoming cannot continue in its current configuration without the city's permission. The festival exists because it is given a free ride on public right-of-way. It's a simple as that.

And: The city can no longer base its yearly acquiescence on tradition alone in a time when the stakes continue to be raised. Harvest Homecoming needs to adapt, but it cannot (will not?) do so if it continues to take advantage of its status as Third Rail -- untouchable and sacrosanct.

A half-century is a very long time, but it isn't the 11th Commandment. City Hall says it's on the job, but as usual, whatever Jeff Gahan is doing to shape an outcome is taking place behind closed doors, without the participation of key downtown stakeholders.

Until everyone is invited to the table, this won't get any better. It's isn't personal. It's just business -- lots of businesses, and not just a few.

Harvest Homecoming creates parking dilemma at Underground Station, by Danielle Grady (News and Tribune)

Underground Station owners say festival blocks access

NEW ALBANY — With new downtown New Albany developments come new problems for the Harvest Homecoming Festival. This year’s dilemma: Business owners at the newly full Underground Station have had their main source of parking blocked for over a week due to ride set-up, with almost one more week of lost business to go.

ON THE AVENUES 3-PK, PART ONE: Chocolate covered frozen banana republic, or "understanding" Harvest Homecoming, our peculiar institution (2014).

ON THE AVENUES 3-PK, PART ONE: Chocolate covered frozen banana republic, or "understanding" Harvest Homecoming, our peculiar institution (2014).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

From October of 2014, a rumination that shows how far we've come ... or haven't. As this year's two-week blockade of Underground Station merchants attests, there is a long way to go, and given a coming influx of downtown residents, will the 800-lb gorilla finally be backed into the corner? 

---

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 sure 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?

---

September 22: ON THE AVENUES: On two-way streets, a modest proposal for the consideration of my disoriented one-way counterpart.

September 15: ON THE AVENUES Now for my next amazing conversion trick (KABOOM!!!) – look at those pretty windows on Schmitt Furniture.

September 8: ON THE AVENUES: It no longer keeps me waiting.

September 1: ON THE AVENUES: Complete ventriloquism, or the stagecraft of "throwing" your two-way streets.

"For millions of Americans, the dysfunction of our political system may be frightening, but it’s creating a unique reform moment."

(1 of 4)

Basketball-laden holiday weekends are death for readership, but I'd rather think about public participation, ranked-choice voting, Constitutional reform and other structural reforms.

This Is What Political Revolution Really Looks Like, by Wendy R. Weiser, Rob Richie and Sanford Levinson (The Nation)

Without these structural reforms to American democracy, even a progressive presidency couldn’t accomplish much.

The rise of Bernie Sanders, whatever the fate of his campaign, has likely altered the trajectory of progressive politics in the United States for decades to come. He has not only rallied millions of supporters to stand with him, in the words of Michael Harrington, on “the left wing of the possible,” he has significantly expanded the realm of the possible itself. Yet for many on the left even Sanders’s fiery denunciations of a rigged political and economic system fail to account for how profoundly that is the case and how challenging it will be to un-rig it. In this installment of “That’s Debatable,” our continuing series of forums, Wendy Weiser, Rob Richie, and Sanford Levinson argue that deeper structural reforms would be necessary for a “political revolution” to make our federal government more responsive to the people in whose name it governs and whose interests it is supposed to serve.

Pat Harrison's Slumlord Uprising of 2008, 4/6: "Code enforcement and rental registrations back in the news."

Eight years later, and it's déjà vu all over again as Pat Harrison prepares to defend our downtrodden slumlords against the Gestapo.

The following was originally published here on February 7, 2008.

1/6
2/6
3/6
5/6
6/6

---

Code enforcement and rental registrations back in the news.

Get, 'em, Lloyd.

Lloyd Wimp keeps his New Albany property maintained; he wants rental property owners to do the same, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune).

(Lloyd) Wimp is leading a movement with like-minded property owners who want better enforcement of codes in New Albany. His current focus is rental property owners that live out of the city and do not keep their lots up to par.

Wimp spoke to the Building Commission on Monday about the problem.

“One of the big issues that I understand is they (code enforcement officials) are having trouble finding who owns the property, and when they find out who owns the property, finding out where they are at,” Wimp said.

After researching cities around Indiana, Wimp has come to the conclusion that requiring rental property owners to register with the local government would help solve some of the problems.

Better hurry down to the courthouse. I hear Pat Harrison's planning a public immolation.

Wouldn't want to miss it ...

Campaign Diary, Chapter 9: Because it's the mayor of NEW ALBANY, not the mayor of HARVEST HOMECOMING.

Harvest Homecoming (Version 2015) has ended, and probably will be remembered for an unfortunate though apparently random gunshot more than this more important fact worth noting: While as yet imperfect, the festival's efforts in recent years to incorporate "here all year" businesses seem to be bearing fruit.

Matters are not ideal, but they're surely better. Good weather always helps. Let's recognize incremental progress and hope the momentum continues. There's always a element of "Kremlin watching" at play here, but Harvest Homecoming as an institution apparently understands there'll be a new variable in coming years, namely a larger and expanding cohort of downtown residents. It will be interesting to see how the festival reacts to these challenges, and evolves into its next phase.

It's the sort of process an activist mayor can help steward, seeing as his or her mandate is to consider the interests of the city as a whole, year-round.

Meanwhile, permit me to recap a weekend conversation. I wrote this on Saturday morning at Facebook.

In so many ways both great and small, Harvest Homecoming is a mass community exercise in selective collective memory. This isn't a pejorative, merely an observation, and having noted such -- so, how was the Swill Walk yesterday?

I was blithely confident that even casual observers would know that by including the words "this isn't a pejorative," my intent would be obvious: Not directed against Harvest Homecoming as an entity, since we all know the institution doesn't sanction the debauchery attached to it, but aimed at wretched beer in general.

As noted later on the same day, I detest bad beer of the sort that immerses and envelops Harvest Homecoming -- not every now and then, but every day. It neatly (and ironically) reverses my campaign staple of "every day, not every now and then."

But reader DL wasn't having any of it.

Why does this man want to be mayor? Does he realize that the Harvest Homecoming does not support or endorse an official beer walk, or "swill walk" as he chooses to refer to it? Does he realize that his consistent disdain for the city's largest and most popular festival only makes him look like an ass? With everything I've read, heard, and now seen for myself, I don't understand why this man wants to be mayor.

I'll answer DL's questions in turn.

He wants to be mayor to run the city more efficiently and introduce modernity to the decision-making process.

He knows Harvest Homecoming does not support the non-family-friendly aspects of the festival, and has spent much time ruminating on the legal framework, both state and local, in which the attendant "swill walk" culture thrives in spite of Harvest Homecoming's misgivings. A municipal open container ordinance, anyone?

He is willing to be perceived as an ass if his advocacy contributes to progress in helping Harvest Homecoming become aware of the "here all year" businesses inconvenienced by its temporary footprint, and is happy to report (see above) that this situation is improving. Kudos to any and all responsible for furthering an atmosphere of reform.

He gently suggests that what you've read, heard and seen probably emanate from sources with bones to pick, but having said this, he wouldn't think of restricting comments or freedom to exchange ideas. In fact, he believes it's important for a mayoral candidate to be completely open and transparent, and is happy to reprint subsequent messages (with DL's explicit permission).

Roger: Sorry, can't reply publicly (on your Fb page) owing to settings, but I will privately when there is time.

Roger: First, you can feel free to comment anywhere on my social media. Unlike Team Gahan, I don't censor. Second, I know quite well that the swill walk isn't HH's idea. I'm in the craft beer business, and it's swill I hate, not HH. Finally, I've been working with HH on worthwhile projects, summarized below. Cheers.

DL: Thanks for your concern over my sharing, however none of this answers my question. Also, I'm aware of how you deal with HH because I have family that is very active with the festival, my mind has been made on that issue. If you can honestly answer why you want to be mayor without attacking the incumbent, or large groups of NA voters, I'd be happy to adjust my settings so you could respond directly on my post.

Roger: When the incumbent runs on his record, it is fair game to critique the record. This I have done, and also added quite a lot of points of my own to it, most recently at the link below. As for my critiques of HH, the fact that the fest has begun to change the nature of its presence downtown in response to "here all year" businesses is proof of the accuracy of these critiques, and also indication that HH can be engaged -- which I've thanked it for. Pragmatism and compromise are good things. No need to change your settings if your mind is made up. I'd merely point out that when I was younger, my mind was made up about many things ... until it was unmade, which happens often when one's mind is open to other points of view. Cheers.

DL: "When the incumbent runs on his record, it is fair game to critique the record." You have a record of nit-picking everything the HH festival does. You offer nothing new from what I've read from what you have provided. It's nothing that the average New Albany voter will care about. You ran a great business and I appreciate and support that business as I consider myself a beer-snob as well, mostly from your beer, by the way. However, you or your supporters have given me any hope of a more positive, friendlier New Albany. Has the Gahan administration done everything I agree with? No. But I know that they absolutely have everyone in this city's best interests at their central focus and from everything you've provided me, I cannot say that about your candidacy. Cheers as well.

Roger: Fair enough, and that's why we have elections; let's just not confuse city government with HH. Both are about politics, but different politics, and over a period of almost 50 years. Politics is about power: Who has it, how it is used, who benefits, and so on. HH's recent reforms, like adjusting booths to provide alignment with year-round businesses downtown, seem to be having good outcomes. Far fewer of the "here all year" businesses are unhappy, as opposed to three years ago. HH has communicated better, and there has been improvement. That's why I said almost nothing this year save for the Fb comment you picked up on -- and that was about bad beer at root, not HH.

Most of us have good intentions. It doesn't mean that what we're doing doesn't have another whole set of options attached to it, and whether it's an election or HH, those who see it differently must have the opportunity to join the process in a pluralistic society. This I've done, and will continue to do. Thanks for chatting and exchanging views. BTW, do you mind if I blog your post and this conversation? I support transparency and openness, even when someone disagrees. I'd use only your initials. Thanks.

DL: I don't mind because I would like to do the same.

Roger: Excellent, and full reciprocity. Thanks.

Gonder on Coyle sitecapades: "We need new rules, special rules, to guide the use of public/private partnerships."

Jeff Gahan's governing clique of down-low Reaganites will be working even harder now to unseat a dangerous dissident such as John Gonder, who actually thinks aloud, for attribution, a quality so often absent from Democratic ruling circles locally. Thanks to John for thinking, although they'll probably unseat him from Redevelopment to preclude any chance of it happening again.

What's next? Someone differing with the time-honored ritual of cash-stuffed envelopes?

By the way, did I tell you that Baylor for Mayor's theme in the Harvest Homecoming parade will be the proper use of wooden stakes and garlic cloves?

First John's link, then a prime comment.

New Rules, by John Gonder at Gonder for New Albany At-Large

... We need new rules, special rules, to guide the use of public/private partnerships ... there's a nagging voice in my head that keeps saying something about "privatizing gain while socializing loss." A hopeful voice adds a third way, "democratizing vision".

Just like always, NAC's co-editor Jeff Gillenwater summarizes the Coyle site debacle with the following incisive remark.

Partnership implies sharing risks AND rewards. That's not the case here. It rarely is in public/private "partnerships". In this case, the public has taken on over half the total investment risk while giving up any claim to profits. This development won't even contribute to our property tax base for a couple decades if it ever does. The only thing transformational here is that others in the district will be required to give up the sorts of shared, public improvements that could have been funded with the same money while facing the possibility of higher taxes themselves if the project is "successful". Ethical lapses aside, that's just a dumb investment, public or private. Good for you for having the good sense to say "no".

Warren Naps while Marohn testifies: 'Our urban streets need to be safe for everyone."

What do you think, Larry Summers?

Will your boss's political cabal allow you to speak for attribution, or is the down-low indicative of City Hall's permanent address?

CAN YOU BE AN ENGINEER AND SPEAK OUT FOR REFORM?, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

 ... I’ve long opposed the American Society of Civil Engineers. They don’t represent me and they should not be allowed to speak for this profession unchallenged. Their stands on how our country should be developed are frequently cited, despite how stunningly radical they are. American prosperity is not simply a function of how many roads, pipes and hunks of metal we can construct. Our infrastructure investments must work to support the American people, not the other way around.

I’ve also been an outspoken critic of the Move MN coalition and their version of success. I’ve had professional colleagues suggest to me that I’m on the wrong side here, that a more lucrative path for me and this organization would be to get on board and advocate for more taxpayer money for expanding the current system. I’ve been told privately that I’m not a “real engineer” if I don’t support more funding. That's just wrong.

Most importantly, I’ve been critical of how the engineering profession approaches safety within our cities. I coined the word “stroad” to describe the industry’s standard approach of over-engineering America’s urban and suburban streets as if they were high speed, high-capacity roads. The current variant of the engineering profession gained prominence in the era of highway building, but that knowledge set does not apply to complex places where people exist outside of automobiles. It is malpractice to suggest otherwise, a term I will not back down from using.

Our urban streets need to be safe for everyone, whether in a car, on a bike, in a wheelchair or simply walking. Today they are not and that is unacceptable.