City Hall's staged Colonial Manor farce: It was INFORMATIONAL, you see, not COMMENTATIONAL. Deaf Gahan can't help it if voters don't know the lingo.

Last week's sadly shambolic City Hall charade on the topic of Colonial Manor's future proved a confusing, painful and infuriating experience for those community residents who hadn't previously witnessed the ridiculous extent to which power and money have gone straight to an erstwhile veneer salesman's head.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: It's the Colonial Manor video Jeff Gahan didn't want you to see last night.

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

Numerous flabbergasted and angry social media conversations have taken place in the aftermath of the meeting. However this one may be the most unintentionally revealing of all. In it, a Gahan appointee and apologist is shocked ... SHOCKED that Dear Leader would ever squelch public opinion.

Oh, we see it clearly now. Clique semantics explain everything, don't they?

When Mayor-for-Life Jeff M. Gahan presents a public meeting, don't forget to consult the bureaucratic glossary to determine whether it's a public comment meeting or an informational meeting. 

Never mind that the glossary's city web site link probably is broken -- or maybe the link leads to the web sites of Clark Dietz, Jacobi Toombs and Lanz, HWC Engineering -- better yet, all three.

Okay, so it's informational versus public commentational, eh? Well, Jeff Gahan's elite insiders know the difference fairly well, don't they?

Conversely, regular folks living in the neighborhood near Colonial Manor evidently are so naive and pathetically unversed in Standard Gahanesque Gobbledygook that they thought Dear Leader might actually be interested in listening to them -- but it was an informational meeting, meaning the information originates at the top with unelected "fix-stays-in" committees, and then trickles down to the rest of us.

Not only that, but the trickle's about to become even more homogenized and cookie-cutter in nature. Note the timeline and methodology of the city's Colonial Manor development choices:

• Caught by surprise by neighborhood activism, City Hall scrambles to regain control over Colonial Manor propaganda
• An architect from TEG is hurriedly engaged and e-mailed boilerplate sections from the comprehensive plan and updated zoning code
• Hastily produced proposals use these boilerplate sections to restrict the city's gaze to "what our codes stipulate," as though they were Biblical injunctions 
• The future? The city's development "ideas" become increasingly center of the target for the sake of ease: minimum design expense and maximum monetization via the usual pay-to-play "contractual" suspects

Informational sessions versus public comment sessions?

Please, functionaries. Stop insulting the public's intelligence. Yes, we know you believe the grassroots hive mind cannot compete with City Hall's pathological need for top-down power, but New Albany has a genuinely meaningful public comment opportunity coming on May 7, and the informational cue is this:

#FireGahan2019

THE BEER BEAT: "Craft," "quality" and other beer semantics -- but independence genuinely matters to me.

Believe it or not, at one time not so long ago the feds prohibited listing the alcohol content on a bottle or can of beer.

Allegedly this owed to a post-Prohibition fear that posted strengths would lead to competition based on potency alone, although at the very same time, liquors producers were obliged to do the very opposite and clearly indicate the proof.

Whatever the origin, this rule was successfully appealed and disappeared by the mid-1990s. For the most part, during the past 25 years there has been widespread acceptance that knowing the alcohol content is a crucial piece of consumer information, enabling a drinker to understand exactly what he or she is getting into -- assuming the knowledge is desired, and of course for some, it isn't.

One conclusion of Bryan Roth's piece on the beer semantics of craft and quality is that relatively few beer consumers as yet care very much about the ownership of the brewery so long as the components denoted by "craft" are present.

In short, whether the brewery is independent or monolithic/corporate just isn't a consideration because it tells consumers little about "quality" as this concept is applied to the denominator "craft."

Perhaps, but as with alcohol content those many years ago, beer drinkers like me who actually are interested in knowing the destination of our cash -- how much of it stays with an independent producer as opposed to being repatriated to shareholders in Switzerland or Hong Kong -- really want to know.

It's consumer information, every bit as much as alcohol content or hop varieties. Can there be too much consumer information? I don't think so.

By the way, before I turn it over to Roth, there's this essay for anyone in need of a refresher course as to why these considerations matter:

The BS Arguments of Craft Beer Sell-Outs: How Brewery Buyouts Hurt Craft Beer, by Jim Vorel (Paste)

Let me tell you who I care about, in the world of beer: I care about the craft beer industry as a whole. I care about selection and availability of great craft beer, and at night I dream of a world where great beer from independent breweries can be accessed just about anywhere.

That dream is currently under attack, primarily by so-called “Big Beer,” but not entirely. For all of the wrangling and shady dealing that AB-InBev and MillerCoors are conducting in the American beer market, equally disturbing is the propensity of beer geeks and even food & drink publications to rationalize and apologize for the buyouts and practices that are currently driving craft beer into the most dangerous situation it’s faced in more than a decade. In some cases, would-be allies are willingly parroting back the exact marketing copy that AB-InBev would love to place in their mouths. Other times, beer drinkers are simply accepting the bullshit reassurances of just-purchased breweries who have huge monetary incentives to be dishonest.

But don’t take our word for it. We’re not here to simply rant and rave—we’re here to give you specific examples of BS rationalizations you’ll see in the wake of every major brewery buyout. We’re here to point out the logical chasms and blatant hypocrisy that proliferate in the public response to buyouts. And we’re here to point out exactly why these buyouts are so capable of devastating the craft brewing industry ... 

As usual, Roth's work is outstanding and thought-provoking. It certainly provokes my thoughts, primarily because drinking without thinking hasn't ever held much interest for me.

Beer’s War of Wordplay — The Semantics of “Craft” and “Quality” (at Good Beer Hunting)

 ... The constant back-and-forth over objective definitions of what “craft” or “independent” means for beer overlooks the value placed on the terminology pulled from our own dictionaries. Instead of seeing these words as a way to convey particular feelings toward a beer of choice, we’re missing a rather straightforward purpose created over years of marketing by trade organizations and breweries themselves.

As we enter a period where “independent” is set to act as the vernacular de jour for the most in-the-weeds beer lovers, it’s unfortunate that the previous effort surrounding the ideals of “craft” may fall to the wayside. While many words have malleable interpretations, when it comes to sales, the effective message that is relayed to customers through “craft” actually matches up with its intentions: it’s how most of the American public thinks about “quality” ... 

They're not car "accidents. They're car "crashes."

The gist is changing the way we use language, so as to change the way we view reality.

Families for Safe Streets has launched a campaign to get people to say “crash” instead of “accident.” They want to emphasize that many, if not most, traffic fatalities are preventable—not inevitable occurrences.

It would help. It also would be beneficial for our process of issuing drivers licenses to require prospective drivers to walk a few blocks in this or any other city, just so it can be seen how badly we drive. I don't exclude myself from this assessment; I've had my share of lapses. Perhaps it's of less significance in the countryside, where the odds of causing harm to another are less.

But here in the city, speed and recklessness kill. Can we be honest about it with the language we use? And, shouldn't we harness better design to discourage the likelihood of crashes, accidents, and general auto-borne mayhem?

Why We Say 'Car Accident,' and Why We Need to Stop: The term suggests fatal crashes are inevitable and beyond our control—they're not, by Sarah Goodyear (City Lab)

... Most people in the United States are compelled by the design of the places where they live to drive nearly everywhere. They are locked into a system where the car is a required tool for fully enfranchised citizenship—the only sensible and convenient way to get to work, to the store, to the doctor’s office, to school.

Anyone who has driven more than a few thousand miles in his or her lifetime has had the unnerving experience of a near miss. Get going fast enough, which is precisely what cars enable you to do, and even a momentary lapse of attention can have you drifting onto the shoulder, or making an unsafe turn. Drive hour after hour, day after day, year after year, and the potential for error mounts.

On some level, we all know that driving is a dangerous activity, probably the most dangerous thing that the average person does in a lifetime. We know that every time we turn the key in the ignition, we are powering up a machine that gives us a stupendous and potentially deadly power. But most of us are in no position to choose another mode of transportation. Most of us must accept the responsibility of piloting that machine as the baseline price of admission to America.

Equal protection from health department bureaucrats? Just give that wheel a heave.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

The preceding is attributed to the German pastor Martin Niemöller, and whatever its exact wording, stands as a powerful refutation of apathy in the political sphere. I quote this passage today not because it is particularly relevant to PourGate, although it is to some degree, but because I seriously doubt that anyone in the health department (or the higher levels of county "government") has ever bothered reading history ... and the word "history" just might be redundant.

Mangled Semantics Department: Since its vaguely delineated decision in last week's appeals hearing, the Floyd County Health Department now finds itself in the position of insisting all at once that beer is food, and thus subject to control v.v. temporary food serving permits, and yet at the same time magnanimously waiving the fee for such "alcohol-only" permits.

1. Permits are still needed.
2. Void the citation.
3. Suspend fees until further notice. Collection of fees from alcohol-only vendors will be suspended.
4. Inspections are not suspended.
5. No refund of fees.

Thus, beer is food -- except when it isn't, which is to say that beer isn't food when the health department's snapshot perception of Fort Wayne v Kotsopoulos (an Indiana appeals court case that entirely eluded the supposed erudition of health department counsel) is that other regulatory entities seeking to encroach on the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission's historically defined bailiwick may do so sans fees like those sought by Ft. Wayne.

But if beer is food, and fees for alcohol-only vendors are suspended, then what is the justification for continuing to charge vendors who are dealing in actual food?

Wait: Didn't they say beer is food?

Verily, semantics are howling in pain to an extent previously witnessed only within the interior worlds of Eco Warriors, but of course it all depends on what the meaning of food is, and to date, the health department has produced that one solitary e-mail from a state health department functionary as proof that beer is indeed food, only to hedge on the matter when it comes to fees.

The illogical pretzel twists don't stop there. If the fees were improperly applied, then why is there no refund of improper fees already paid?

If the citation is to be voided, how can the permit requirement still be enforced?

And if it isn't about the money, then why are fees being charged at all -- to anyone?

In its zeal to expand regulatory control without the messy expedient of writing actual law, the Floyd County Health Department's own board has further explicated the department's deficiencies by issuing muddle where clarity was sought. It would appear that we'll need to travel elsewhere for relief.

Yesterday: ON THE AVENUES: "Kneel and Kiss My Ring, You Degraded Alcoholic."