"As long as we continue to fail to question the world economic system, our conditions will only worsen."

Because, you see, it's best to follow the money and get to the heart of the matter.

If the Economy is So Good, Why are Wages Flat?, by Pete Dolack (CounterPunch)

We are supposedly seven years into a “recovery” from the global economic collapse that commenced in 2008. The latest evidence offered to promote this oft-peddled mantra is that U.S. gross domestic product showed a strong uptick for the second quarter of 2018, an annualized rate of 4.1 percent, nearly double that of the first quarter.

Coupled with the ongoing decline in unemployment (although standard unemployment rates greatly underestimate the true rate of employment), orthodox economists, conservative propagandists and apologists for the Trump administration would have use believe happy days are here again.

So why aren’t our wages increasing?

Leap to the conclusion.

These reports, although doing a fine job of quantifying how screwed we are, tend to conclude with pleas for better government policies. Surely there should be. But although positive reforms would be welcome, the problem is that reforms can, and are, taken away when mobilizations fade. The hyper-competitive nature of capitalism, under which our labor is a commodity, can’t be altered; at best through massive effort reforms can be achieved until the next wave of attacks commences. As long as we continue to fail to question the world economic system, our conditions will only worsen.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Vandals strike Asheville brewery: “No more breweries” and “**** Beer City.”

My initial thought upon reading about "anti-brewery vandalism" in Asheville was something on the order of: "Just their luck the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is still alive and kicking."

Indeed, the prohibitionists remain extant, drastically weakened but forever persistent. However, it's doubtful the WCTU is taking the war to Demon Craft Beer at night, clad in dark attire, masked and with spray paint in hand.

Here's the story.

Asheville’s One World Brewing Responds to Anti-Brewery Vandalism, by Jess Baker (Craft Beer Dot Com)

It’s been a frustrating week for One World Brewing, a small and independent craft brewery in Asheville, North Carolina. The brewery, which originally opened four years ago in downtown Asheville, was busy prepping to open its new location in the West Asheville district when vandals hit the brewery as well as surrounding local businesses.

The vandals scrawled messages in black spray paint on the front of the brewery’s white brick building at 520 Haywood Road: “No more breweries” and “**** Beer City.”

The vandals’ anti-brewery messages are stinging words for the Asheville beer community, a city where independent breweries are considered a major driver for tourism.

“We will not be deterred from doing what’s best for our employees and our community,” One World Brewing wrote on its Facebook and Instagram pages Thursday. “We are a homegrown, local, independently owned brewery that does so much more than just brew beer. We use beer as a platform to support so many other aspects of life that we are passionate about.”

The Asheville brewery, like many local breweries, is invested in supporting its employees as well as the community. The brewery used the incident to flip the script and talk about their strong bond with Asheville ...

Beer writer Bryan Roth, who shared the preceding link at Twitter, commented.

"anti-brewery messages" is a new one to me.

Not for Richard Florida, who mentioned the "g" word (gentrification) in a CityLab piece late last year -- or Athena Hobson, from London, two years ago.

During a shameless binge watch of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, I couldn’t help but notice all the references to gentrification (or in simpler terms – places becoming more trendy and modernised, which drives up the costs of living in that area, meaning poorer residents may be forced to relocate).

Hobson expands on her thought.

Don’t Blame The Brewers: Craft Beer And Gentrification, by Athena Hobson (Cultured Vultures)

First-time business owners are taking advantage of run down areas to set up shop and driving up the cost of living for local residents.

Understandably, it is gentrification that is largely responsible for provoking a deep hatred of the craft beer trend, but to what extent can we actually blame the brewers? Had it not been about beer, it may have been bubble tea cafés or ‘soul cycle’ studios. The aforementioned Cereal Killer Café has been under attack of petty vandalism as well as keyboard warriors since word spread of its opening – but would they be so successful if we weren’t so willing to buy into what they’re selling? After all, what is business but seeing a need and providing the product or service?

When you hand over your money to a company, however much or little that may be, you are funding their objectives ...

Regular blog readers residing in New Albany hardly need this reminder, but it's always better to be explicit, so kindly note that Mayor Jeff Gahan's 2017 seizure of public housing, with a stated objective of reducing the number of units by half, is an exercise in socio-economic cleansing -- and this displacement is not being conducted in a conceptual vacuum.

In fact, Gahan's war against the working poor is the logical consequence of our "success" in resuscitating downtown. It's part and parcel of gentrification, and as a "Democrat," the mayor illustrates that callous measures directed against the most vulnerable cannot always be blamed on right-wingers. 

Thanks in large part to food and drink businesses like my own brewery, with which I'm no longer involved, the historic core of the city has experienced a decade of substantive reinvestment.

The result has been an increase in "upscale" thinking, as opposed to those cross-cultural core retail stores operating downtown long ago prior to suburbanization and white flight.

As a corollary, the local political dialogue continues to narrow; either we explore ways to expand the "upscale" developments already in progress, or we do nothing at all. The ensuing shock waves are hitting those community members least able to cope economically, in part because the powers that be in New Albany view gentrification as a social phenomenon of unqualified and unquestioned good.

Few wish to contemplate the consequences, and most are willing to encourage even more of it with measures that gradually have crept beyond those designed somewhat modestly to encourage investment (as with loosened alcoholic beverage licensing in riverfront development areas), to ones like the public housing putsch that actively push social engineering, or the recent proposal (likely inevitable) to spend $8.5 million on local government wants (a new city hall) rather than affordable housing needs for a growing segment of the populace.

Back to the point. Why would someone vandalize a small brewery?

Probably for the same reason that residents of my city greet the news of another new bar or restaurant ...

The former Comfy Cow location will become a bar, but we have no further details.

Downtown NA restaurant and bar scorecard: one new location, two openings and four coming soon.

... with predictable but perfectly plausible questions like these.

Seriously, another bar?

How many downtown restaurants and bars are enough?

Will we be able to afford to eat at these latest and greatest places?

These questions have short-term answers: yes, it's too early to tell, and it's complicated.

Alcohol licensing exists to regulate drinking for the ostensible purpose of societal good, although maximum tax harvesting comes closer to the truth.

Indiana's riverfront development area mechanism is a legal construct expressly designed to "open" a delineated geographical area to licensing with fewer restrictions.

Riverfront permits have the effect of making a demarcated area slightly more free than before, because it provides a framework for licensing outside the customary allocation. It greatly reduces the overall cost of a permit, and opens the market to more participants.

As long as there is available money, and entrepreneurs are eager to spend it, there'll be contestants entering the game. We'll know when there are too many bars and restaurants when more establishments are closing than opening.

As for the pricing, this is a difficult topic somewhat outside the scope of these thoughts. I'll add only that there are fewer disparities in pricing than might appear to be the case among independent and chain/franchise when their menus are comparable, and while I'd never suggest that operators don't look for ways to squeeze a few cents more from any mark-up, it's hard to base a business model on $3 burgers and $6 beers.

There are other questions and answers, but I have no glib conclusions to offer about any of these potential digressions. I've agonized over them for years, and will continue to do so.

At the same time, there is another complementary Pandora's Box to be broached, this being the junction of morals, wages, costs and benefits pertaining to "craft" breweries as workplaces.

I've referenced work by Dave Infante on a couple of past occasions, and he's at peak provocation here.

Infante's piece raised a tremendous din in the usual beer discussion portals. About all I can do is shrug and say two things: Welcome to capitalism ... and I'm happy not to be tormented by these considerations any longer. The economics at a bar stand to be much simpler than those at a brewery.

Craft Beer’s Moral High Ground Doesn't Apply to Its Workers, by Dave Infante (Splinter News)

Scott Timms is taking a break from brewing beer. At 35, he’s been at it for 13 years, most recently having worked at Falling Sky Brewing, a popular brewpub in Eugene, OR, that regularly appears on “best of” lists in the state.

Brewing beer commercially can be hard, thankless work. “It’s a back-breaking job, lifting a hundred 50-pound bags” of ingredients and carrying them up stairs to be added to the mash, Timms says. And it can be dangerous: “You’re dealing with boiling liquids and pretty harsh chemicals that can definitely injury you…It’s not a safe job by any means.” At small breweries, where OSHA visits are unusual and procedures are unstandardized, the “outlook towards safety” can be “laissez-faire” verging on “lackadaisical,” he says.

For his work as a production manager at Falling Sky overseeing a team of brewers and working up to 65 hours a week, Timms made what came out to a little over $40,000 a year. Frustrated, he quit his brewing job in early 2018, convinced that craft brewers were getting shorted across the U.S. beer industry. “There are people making money here,” he says, “but it’s not us.”

In 2017, Lauren Michele Jackson wrote in Eater about the rise of “craft culture,” a food and beverage market that “fetishizes the authentic, the traditionally produced, and the specific [and] loathes the engineered, the mass-produced, and the originless.” Craft beer—made by brewers like Timms at more than 6,000 small, independent breweries across the country—has been a standard-bearer for this progressively infected, anti-commodity eating and drinking movement for more than two decades. Its staggering economic success has spurred an explosion of products in other food and drink categories marketed to like-minded customers. Walk the aisles of your closest Whole Foods and craft culture surrounds you.

But even as sales of craft-culture products steadily rise, the conditions for workers that make and serve those products vary widely. The labor is often physically demanding. Specialized workers are asked to “wear different hats” to make up for understaffing, and gladly answer calls for extra hours because they genuinely care about the products they’re making. Owners, either unwilling or unable to spend on quality executives, take on management responsibilities for which they have no training. The workforces are often small, giving rise to a much-touted familial intimacy that in turn can bring a distinctly familial dysfunction of favoritism and manipulation. Wages and benefits are inconsistent across industries and even within individual companies.

But craft culture is growing, and it’s bringing in a lot of money ...

Kindred and Yum make the list of low-wage employers.

You know, there's an outside chance that wages like these are a significant part of the problem. Now back to your regularly scheduled distractions.

Two Louisville-based companies are among the country's lowest-paying employers, by Carolyn Tribble Greer (Louisville Business First)

Two Louisville-based companies are among the worst-paying employers in the U.S., according to a new report.

24/7 Wall St. identified the 25 large U.S. companies that pay employees the lowest wages. For comparison, the national median hourly wage is $17.81.

No. 18 on the list is Kindred Healthcare Inc. (NYSE: KND), where the typical worker at a continuing care facility earns $11.94 an hour, according to the report. The company has about 100,000 employees.

And coming in at No. 20 is Yum Brands Inc. (NYSE: YUM), owner of the KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut chains. Average wages at common positions at the company’s restaurants rarely exceed $10 an hour, according to the report, and go as low as $7.55 for Pizza Hut delivery drivers. The company has 90,000 employees.

No. 1 on the list is Wal-Mart Stores Inc., followed by Kroger Co., McDonald's Corp. and Target Corp.

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.

Excellent point: "Louisville should not spend tens of millions for a soccer stadium unless it creates better jobs."

Last evening the first step was taken toward a soccer stadium in Louisville.

The Fischer administration made a successful appeal to council members Tuesday saying the public-private partnership, which would erect a 10,000-seat facility, is a good use of taxpayer money that will put acres of underused land to good use.

After a nearly two-hour discussion in the council's Budget Committee, members voted 4-1 to approve the bond.

Investors said they need to move swiftly on a new home field to stay in the professional United Soccer League. Since its inception three years ago, Louisville City FC has played at the Louisville Slugger Field baseball stadium.

Earlier there was an insightful commentary in which the authors refrained from opposing the pump-priming required to build a soccer stadium, but rather explored the implications of it, and suggested positive outcomes of the sort that Greg Fischer rarely acknowledges.

This is precisely the thinking needed whenever local officials propose tethering development to TIF zones. For instance, the jobs generated by New Albany's aquatic center are seasonal and low-paying.

Shouldn't the benefits be more expansive than that?

Louisville should not spend tens of millions for a soccer stadium unless it creates better jobs, by Richard Becker and Bryan Trafford (Insider Louisville)

Richard Becker is co-chair of Kentucky Jobs With Justice. Bryan Trafford is on the executive committee of Jobs With Justice, works at an area casino, and is a member of Teamsters Local 89.

To move forward, Louisville needs to create more jobs that pay enough to support a family. Right now, too many working families in our city feel like they are falling behind, no matter how hard they work. A low-wage floor holds down household spending power, which holds back our local economy.

As Louisville grows and puts taxpayer money into new development projects, our elected representatives should make choices that help paychecks get bigger and neighborhoods get stronger across the city.

Metro Louisville government has a chance to get this right with a major new project. The owners of Louisville City Football Club want as much as $60 million in state and local taxpayer money to help build a stadium, hotel, offices and retail stores on a parcel of land near Butchertown.

The owners of the team want Louisville taxpayers to get a $30 million loan to buy the land where they would own and operate the development. The owners apparently also plan to ask for approximately $30 million in additional taxpayer funding from the state through a “Tax Increment Funding” financing mechanism.

The development has been portrayed as a done deal, with the team saying it expects Metro Council to rush to a vote in two weeks.

But so far, there has been almost no public discussion about whether spending so much of our money on this project will help raise wages and improve the quality of jobs in our city. The members of Metro Council need to slow down, ask questions, and find ways to use this kind of major investment to create better jobs.

"We must now rebuild America’s middle class by turning service jobs work into higher-paid, family-supporting work."

Which topic does one overhear being discussed with greater fervor, the weather or the quality of "service" recently experienced at a restaurant or retail business?

Some Southern Indiana restaurants struggle to find workers in saturated market, by Danielle Grady (Hanson Goes to Yahweh)

Other employers combat issue with high wages, opportunities

SOUTHERN INDIANA — May was the last time Cheryl Koetter had to fire someone.

The employee was abusing drugs and a liability around Cricket’s Cafe’s meat slicer. It wasn't the first incident of its kind at the Sellersburg restaurant, but not because of the drugs. Koetter's employees are often quitting unexpectedly or being fired. She's also struggling to find workers to hire.

“I’m okay right now, but I’ve been short-staffed for years,” she said grimly.

Koetter primarily blames the issue on the local workforce being unwilling to, well, work. But as the unemployment rate in Clark and Floyd counties decreases and more and more restaurants open, many, but not all, service industry employers are dealing with a smaller pool of hires.

I posted a link to the preceding on the Facebook page of the New Albany Restaurant and Bar Association, and these two comments stood out.

"They don't want to work?". Maybe they're tired of their morale being mitigated by low pay and a customer always right attitude that ensures employee dissatisfaction.

The answer to her problem is to pay more. Talent goes where the money is.

Did you know that "service workers" overall make up 45% of the nation's workforce?

Here's a view of what must happen next. Spoiler alert: it has to do with money.

The Service Class Deserves Better, by Richard Florida (CityLab)

Our nation’s future depends on our ability to provide the largest segment of our labor force with stable, family-supporting work.

More than 65 million Americans toil in precarious, low-wage service class jobs, preparing and serving us our food, assisting us in stores, supporting our office and professional work, and taking care of our kids and aging parents. The service class is the largest class of Americans by far, making up about 45% of the entire workforce. In terms of the jobs they do and the economic functions they serve, in many ways, its members represent the 21st century analog of the old blue-collar working class. And just like we upgraded those once dirty, dangerous, and low-paid manufacturing jobs during the postwar years, we must now rebuild America’s middle class by turning service jobs work into higher-paid, family-supporting work.

A new report released today by me and my Martin Prosperity Institute colleagues, Karen King and Charlotta Mellander, entitled Building 65 Million Good Jobs, outlines the size and scope of America’s service class, and describes how we can begin to upgrade their jobs.

"Dufrene said low pay is tied to lower rates of educational attainment."

Lower wages are tied to lower rates of educational attainment, and yet in general terms, one needs money to be educated. A bit of a conundrum, though $87 million in bricks and mortar should ... help?

I really need to attend one of these, some day. How much of the forecasting deal with grassroots indie business development, as opposed to the boilerplate public subsidy erotica that lulls One Southern Indiana to a restful sleep each night?

IUS Economic Outlook 2017 panel talks uncertainties of Trump ... regionally, economy expected to grow, by Elizabeth DePompei (News and Tribune)

... The labor force is expected to grow too. But anecdotal evidence shows employers are having a hard time finding skilled, educated workers, which (Uric) Dufrene tied to the region’s lower pay averages.

Southern Indiana ranks toward the bottom for weekly pay averages compared to other metro areas in the state, Dufrene said. Average weekly pay in Southern Indiana is $709, as opposed to the $853 national average.

Dufrene said low pay is tied to lower rates of educational attainment. According to 2010-2014 U.S. Census data, less than 20 percent of people 25 years and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher in Clark County. That number comes in at just over 24 percent for Floyd County.

“We will not be able to attract and grow higher paying jobs if we don’t grow or attract a more skilled and educated work force,” Dufrene said. “It has to be a key piece to the long-term economic development strategy of the region” ...

In case you were wondering how much it costs for the city to hire quality bands ...

From the minutes of last week's Board of Public Works and Safety meeting.

Make no mistake: The Crashers are top-flight, and musicians should be paid when they perform. Too often, they're not.

I merely dream of the day when a fraction of the money being spent by City Hall on temporary downtown entertainment facilities is devoted to investing in amphitheater infrastructure.

Essential reading: "The 'middle class' myth: Here’s why wages are really so low today."

According to Oil Can Eddie, "Class consciousness discourages office workers from unionizing."

I'd guess that something quite similar prevents neighborhoods and small businesses from organizing. Again and again, one points to Benjamin Franklin's famous utterance ...

"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

... and listeners nod, while continuing their lonely determination to fight heroic and mostly losing battles, all by themselves.

That clinical definition of insanity. It's New Albany's proud motto.

The “middle class” myth: Here’s why wages are really so low today

Want to understand the failures of the "free market" and the key to getting a decent wage? Here's the real story.

By Edward McClelland (Salon)

Let me tell you the story of an “unskilled” worker in America who lived better than most of today’s college graduates. In the winter of 1965, Rob Stanley graduated from Chicago Vocational High School, on the city’s Far South Side. Pay rent, his father told him, or get out of the house. So Stanley walked over to Interlake Steel, where he was immediately hired to shovel taconite into the blast furnace on the midnight shift. It was the crummiest job in the mill, mindless grunt work, but it paid $2.32 an hour — enough for an apartment and a car. That was enough for Stanley, whose main ambition was playing football with the local sandlot all-stars, the Bonivirs.

Stanley’s wages would be the equivalent of $17.17 today — more than the “Fight For 15” movement is demanding for fast-food workers. Stanley’s job was more difficult, more dangerous and more unpleasant than working the fryer at KFC (the blast furnace could heat up to 2,000 degrees). According to the laws of the free market, though, none of that is supposed to matter. All that is supposed to matter is how many people are capable of doing your job. And anyone with two arms could shovel taconite. It required even less skill than preparing dozens of finger lickin’ good menu items, or keeping straight the orders of 10 customers waiting at the counter. Shovelers didn’t need to speak English. In the early days of the steel industry, the job was often assigned to immigrants off the boat from Poland or Bohemia.

Mike Ladd: 17 months to receive 2 weeks pay, and other shovel-ready Ethics Commission topics.

Where to begin?

Michael C. Ladd, former  executive director of the New Albany Urban Enterprise Association, has written a letter to the News and Tribune documenting the "payment due" shambles following in the wake of his March, 2012 dismissal. The gist of all this is simple to the point of eloquence:

Why have an Ethics Commission if not to consider such matters?

Of course, eloquence seldom plays well in a town that doesn't read. For those who do, there is ample background for this story right here at NAC. The words are mine, except Nick Cortolillo's.

Rare sighting of the city's Ethics Commission returns focus to Ladd's UEA 2012 "norwooding" ... "Let me phrase it this way: If you lost your job owing to allegations of malfeasance, and there was an opportunity to set the record straight, wouldn't you prefer future employers to view your past record as it was, not as unsubstantiated insinuations have continued to depict it?"

Ethics Commission receives shovel-ready complaint ... "Make no mistake: I'll go to my grave denouncing the third England administration's grubby treatment of Mike Ladd, borne of its desire to grab whatever money it could, while there still remained non-transparent time to do so and a handy nearby ATM. It sickened me then, it sickens me now, and I'm prepared to debate any one, any time, who argues otherwise."

Nick Cortolillo on "politically motivated interference" with the UEA ... "The city of New Albany wanted unlimited access to the enterprise association’s revenue and Ladd was in the way."

UEA decapitation: Different tactics, same desired outcome, and still just as wrong as before ... "How can history’s lessons be understood and heeded, and its mistakes avoided, by collective amnesia? Mr. Duggins has assured me that in this brave new UEA world, the coercive errors of the England years will never be repeated, and I believe he’s being sincere. And yet, without publicly discussing what the errors actually were, do we even know what we’re referring to?"

ON THE AVENUES: A decapitation, coming tomorrow ... "I do not agree that pre-determined outcomes are truly representative of what consultative, democratic government should be."

Ladd's letter follows. I've chosen to publish the original version, not the edited version which appears in the newspaper.

Former UEZ director: checks were long overdue

Editor’s note: Michael Ladd, former executive director of the Urban Enterprise Zone Association, is referring to a story published by the News and Tribune that ran in the Aug. 31, 2013, edition titled “New Albany: A highly ethical city?” He is referring to David Duggins, director of economic development and redevelopment for New Albany.

To the Editor:

"Duggins said the UEZ attempted to mail two checks to cover the $1,875 for two weeks of pay they believe he was due, but they were returned and not cashed.

We do feel like he was entitled to the remaining two weeks of his contract."

It took 17 months for the UEZ to send the above referenced two checks and then only after the Indiana Department of Labor (IDOL) suggested I sue the NAUEA after three attempts to contact Duggins and the UEZ failed to elicit any response at all. Also, there have been at least five attempts by local attornies to contact Duggins specifically and the UEA through its board president and other officers about the same matter over the same seventeen month period. It was only after the IDOL recommended I sue that the UEA (through the civil city attorney) responded. The email is dated July 17 and reads . . .

Dear Michael Ladd:

The Indiana Department of Labor has been investigating the above-referenced wage claim. We made several attempts to contact New Albany Urban Enterprise Association, but received no response. As there was no information provided by New Albany Urban Enterprise Association, we have made the following determination:

Indiana wage & hour law generally requires an employer to pay an employee who has separated from employment all wages due at the next regularly-scheduled payday. (See Indiana Code 22-2-5-1(b)).

Since New Albany Urban Enterprise Association failed to respond to this claim, the Department of Labor is unable to determine whether the wages claimed are actually owed. If this determination is believed to be in error, Michael Ladd may wish to consult with private legal counsel. As a courtesy, we have provided Michael Ladd with a list of attorneys in Indiana who have acknowledged that they will assist with Wage Claims.

If you have any questions or concerns about this determination, please contact us via e-mail at wageclaims@dol.in.gov or by phone at (317) 232-2655 option 1.

Sincerely,

Wage and Hour Division

Following this recommendation, on August 1, 2013, I found in my mailbox a letter signed "Shane L. Gibson Corporate Counsel". In it were a cover letter and two checks from the UEA. The checks were dated March 15, 2012. I had written them myself. Seventeen months old, eleven months out of date. Checks have a shelf-life of six months. Therefore, the checks were uncashable. Of course I returned them. They were no good. Five days later I received newly issued, cashable, checks.

"We do feel like he was entitled to the remaining two weeks of his contract." But only after seventeen months of stalling, numerous efforts by attorneys to contact them, and after attempting to pawn off two checks that were no good. Duggins is good at parsing his words and uttering sentences that leave a reader or listener with a mis-impression of actual circumstances. It is only after looking behind the curtain that you learn the truth.

There is only one point on which I can say I agree with Duggins: I too would be "happy to discuss" these issues with the Ethics Commission. If they ever get created and actually meet.

Michael C. Ladd

"What will it take for the Floyd County Council" ... whoa, just stop there. Divine intervention, maybe?

In the corridors of Floyd County elected government, satire and reality are so closely intertwined that's it's forever challenging to tell the difference between a unassuming whopper and sage legislative abdication. After all, it's the legacy of Heavrinism amongst the cowardly.

Heavrin "leaves big shoes to fill," and Morris rushes to shine them.

More of the same: Republicans gather to praise a departing "conservative Democrat" whose congenital obstinacy was to creativity what Bud Light is to pet shampoo.

More power to employees without a cost of living increase since Bill Clinton stalked White House closets, but of course they (and we) know that this county council's sole aim is to regulate the rate of starvation, not act in any pro-active way to defy the likes of Dave Matthews' tea party junta out in the walled compounds of Greater Greenville.

In fact, I can hear Ted's longtime right-hand lube man Larry McAllister now: "I love helping people, so long as they're not working for me. So can't you just shut up and get a part-time job at Wally World? Thank Allah they're both gone, but their successors ... sheesh.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Sept. 28-29, 2013

— Floyd County employees plead for raises

Once again, the employees of Floyd County must sit back and watch another year go by without a raise.

For the past 14 years, the employees of Floyd County have not gotten so much as a cost-of-living increase in wages or salaries, all while watching as offices are remodeled and jobs created. What will it take for the Floyd County Council to recognize the employees who have been passed over time and time again? What can we do to stand up and be counted?

This is the question that the employees and servants of Floyd County ask daily ...