GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Why does City Hall demand financials from the county parks department when it eternally refuses to divulge its own River Run Gahan Water Dome numbers?

Hypocrisy much?

The Green Mouse reports that City Hall's "corporate" attorney Tom Hagen ...

 ... wait, make that Shane Gibson -- has filed a “Freedom of Information Act” request with the Floyd County Park Department asking for an accounting of all monies spent for Kevin Hammersmith Park.

Actually, hypocrisy may be too mild a word.

For those readers with impossibly long memories, the River Run Family Water Park (colloquially known as the Gahan Dome) opened on June 26, 2015 -- just in time to serve as a centerpiece of the mayoral re-election effort. Daniel Suddeath covered the debut for the local chain newspaper.

Water slides, splash pads and a lazy river await inside the park, which was completed as part of Mayor Jeff Gahan’s $19.6 million quality-of-life improvement plan ...

 ... The $19.6 million bond floated by the city footed the construction of the aquatic center, Silver Street Park and upgrades to Binford Park. In April 2014, the redevelopment commission accepted Krempp Construction’s base bid of $6.89 million to construct the aquatic center.

The commission approved an alternate provision for the construction in a build-out of the concessions area, which was expected to be added by officials. The project saw just one more change order, which brought total construction to about $7.5 million.

Mamas, don't let your grandchildren grow up to be saddled with Jeff Gahan's debts.

From this day forward, we've been eager to see the financials of the aquatic center, which after all is open for business only 2-3 months a year and has been noteworthy for providing gainful summertime employment for some members of the mayor's immediate family.

To the Green Mouse's knowledge, the city has steadfastly resisted releasing the financials of the water slide for four years, almost surely because they're not pretty, or contain buried land mines; for instance, how is the aquatic acreage connected with the new fire station's monthly disbursements?

Following is the closest thing we've seen to a spread sheet in four years. It's the parks director Alicia Meredith's comments to the Board of Works on December 26, 2018.

Warren grills her good and hard, just like Sam Waterston on that television show.

The Green Mouse ruminates.

Now the question is, did this come up because City Hall thinks they didn’t get enough hospital money? Interestingly enough, the paperwork for the FOIA request was filed by Hagen Gibson the day after Mark Seabrook held his fundraiser/mayoral announcement at Covered Bridge -- and one thing Seabrook mentioned at the fundraiser was his hope of putting the parks system back together.

NA Confidential says: Let's compromise!

Howzabout every governmental entity shows us the financials pertaining to projects like Hammersmith Park and River Run Family Gahan Dome, without making their release tantamount to raiding the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh?

Isn't 100% transparency the best for everyone ... even outside the immediate family?

At redevelopment meeting, Dickey touts heroic soil testing piffle even as the Moser Tannery dies just as slow and painful a death as being forced to listen to Adam's touts at redevelopment meetings.

The Green Mouse had been under the impression that Tuesday's redevelopment commission meeting would be the occasion for David Barksdale to learn why his new pals at City Hall have allowed the Moser Tannery to sit unattended for two years, with the roof now caving in.

Since yesterday, as three more stately trees succumbed to the Tree Board's deforestation fetish, the remainder of the "neglected" structure by the wetlands has started observing the laws of gravity.

Look what the great historic preservation savior Jeff Gahan has done to the Moser Tannery building.

Well, we can't blame the Schmitt Family for THIS purposeful dilapidation. Maybe Barksdale's Reisz Mahal fawning bootlicker bonus included a handy gag order for the eventuality of a quid pro quo, but at any rate, the newspaper's reporter seemed only to notice bravely bold Sir Adam, recording the DemoDisneyDixiecratic chairman's canned pieties about soil testing.

New Albany to test soil at former Tommy Lancaster, Market Boy sites, by Brooke McAfee (Tom May Scrolls)

... Redevelopment Commission Vice President Adam Dickey said this is a step that will help the city return the property to a productive use that fits the community.

"This is us as a city doing the right steps and doing our due diligence to make sure it's safe," he said. "We don't want to create a site that years later we determine we didn't do an effective job cleaning up."

Even as Dickey spoke, the Moser Tannery was crumbling. Our pillars are big wankers in a tiny and fast evaporating puddle, each and every one of them.

Not a single tree in this city has a chance so long as David Barksdale and Jeff Gahan wield the chain saws, and Freud would have a field day with the phallic symbolism.

In truth, Gahan's public housing putsch is an assault on working people -- and Floyd County's Democrats OWN it.

The older and whiter the New Albanian, the more enduring the corrosive mythology: "All that stands between New Albany and world dominance is the existence of public housing, and people inhabiting it."

It's complete and utter bunk, but for as long as I've been cognizant of chemical processes masquerading for rational thought in New Albany, I've heard variations of the preceding.

It should come as no surprise that irrespective of religion or party affiliation, a vast majority of Mayor Jeff Gahan's peer group accepts this assertion without question.

Broadly speaking, it's a generational phenomenon. While by no means a scientific observation, fewer millennials seem to have accepted the veracity of the "public housing as mortal threat" doctrine.

Perhaps that's because younger people have more direct experience with (un)affordable housing than their parents and grandparents. 

To repeat, for a C-student in New Albany of Gahan's demographic not to equate public housing and malaria in terms of progress through eradication would be the truly unusual development, so taking it a step further, from where did Gahan borrow his ham-fisted methodology v.v. the putsch -- his hostile takeover of public housing, the annexation of public housing properties to city control, demolition and useless vouchers, and calculated indifference to human suffering?

The latter can be explained by Gahan's worsening paranoia and agoraphobia. My guess is that the remainder has been lifted to lesser or greater extent from the plan of operation in Louisville these past few years. Gahan isn't capable of strategic planning of this magnitude, so it's a given that he's copying the answers from another mayor's test paper -- and he idolizes Louisville's mayor Greg Fischer. 

If you're a New Albanian seated to the left of the aisle, you'd naturally look to the Floyd County Democratic Party to fight on behalf of social injustice, to protect working men and women (90% of public housing residents are employed), and to advocate solutions (affordable housing, a living wage) to problems afflicting those both inside and outside our public housing units.

Pins drop and crickets chirp.

It can't be said that the party is frozen by the incoming headlights, because this implies standing erect in the middle of the road, and when spinelessness occurs, a better analogy is a blubbery heap oozing fear atop the center line.

In short, until the party emits a pulse on the issue of Gahan's putsch, it plainly owns the doctrine. Gahan isn't just one of the few (supposed) Democrats left standing; he's Adam Dickey's shining star and the party's sole great (pasty) white hope. Until the party's officeholders and candidates indicate otherwise, Gahanism is its real platform -- and Gahanism is neither upper case Democratic, nor lower case democratic.

No single plank of Gahanism better illuminates the local "democratic" party's quandary than the mayor's assault on the residents of public housing. Amid the deafening silence of wannabe progressives, the hypocrisy and cowardice mount.

Just as the Inuit possess dozens of words to describe varying manifestations of snow and ice, so are the many subtle shadings of Let's Pretend We're Democrats® finally revealing themselves for our edification.

Consider it a voting guide for 2019 ... and, for that matter, 2018, too. It's shameful, but Gahanism is all about shamelessness.

Where are the Democrats?

Spare us: Both Grooms and Gahan, putting themselves and corporate interests ahead of Hoosier Families.

There assuredly are a few local Democrats who can write, but unfortunately, they're not writing on the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party's website or social media pages.

Rather, we get by-the-numbers political template drivel, which might have been composed by a DNC Bot rather than a human being, such is the sad absence of a pulse.

Still, let's take a look at two sentences, beginning with the header.

Grooms out of touch as he seeks third term

Fair enough. It's true that Ron Grooms' record is dismal. He's never met an oligarch he wouldn't fluff, or a theocrat he'd fail to enable. Local, state and national chambers of commerce undoubtedly will see to it that Grooms never pays, ever again, for his annual suite in Branson.

It's the subheading that matters.

Record reflects putting himself and corporate interests ahead of Hoosier Families

Remember this sentence should Jeff Gahan reverse course and decide to challenge Grooms.

Also remember it if Gahan chooses to run for a third term as mayor.

Has any local politician in recent decades been more aptly summarized by party scribe Dickey's "putting himself ahead" than Gahan? Grooms may be a corporate shill, but so is Gahan, and at least Grooms doesn't have his portrait in every barber shop.

The chairman's batting below the Mendoza line. Doesn't this mean it's time to be called up to the big leagues as shoeshine contractor for Tom Perez?

Let's summarize 2017 with a Gahan and Floyd Democratic Party meme and a few essential links.

Because: What you permit, you promote.

If you're a Democratic voter busily denouncing Trump's power grab in national terms, stop and take a deep breath. Look around you. Your local Democratic Party leadership is revealing itself to be just as undemocratic and morally bankrupt as those GOP leaders you love to hate, and the mayor is busily amassing as much personal power (and a great deal of campaign finance) as he can manage while you're busy looking the other way.

There are many courses of action that might help restore balance to the world, but must raging hypocrisy be one of them? If you're against it when Trump's doing it, mustn't you also oppose it when the perpetrator is Jeff Gahan or Adam Dickey?

Or it somehow different then?

New Albany city council public hearing regarding wastewater rate change and the implementation of consumer price index is February 6.

Four things you should know about Jeff "Dead Inside" Gahan's public housing hostile takeover and land grab.

ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

ON THE AVENUES: For New Albany’s Person of the Year, the timeless words of Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey hand the orb and sceptre to Dan Coffey. All Coffey wants to do is outlaw people like Greg Phipps. Anyone seen Connie Sipes?

Mayoral paperwork filed, Zurschmiede suddenly becomes aware of human trafficking.

Of course, it is disturbing that Indiana's attorney general must acknowledge the prevailing Hoosier theocracy by expressing opposition to human trafficking through the safe haven of religious organizations (it's a faith issue, not an enforcement issue -- right, Greg?), but still, as an unexpected means of exposing spa landlord Kevin Zurschmiede's ongoing ethical confusion (see photo above), the article is quite simply priceless.

Zoeller urges unity against human trafficking (N and T)

INDIANAPOLIS — Religious organizations in Indiana and across the globe will recognize Sunday, Feb. 8, as the first-ever International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking ...

... (Indiana Attorney General Greg) Zoeller said Indiana communities are not immune to human trafficking. State, federal and nonprofit agencies investigated more than 100 human trafficking tips in Indiana last year. The average age at which children in the United States first become victims of sex trafficking is 12 to 14, and 83 percent of sex trafficking victims in the U.S. are U.S. citizens.

“For too long these horrific crimes flourished largely unnoticed by the public, and thankfully that is starting to change,” Zoeller said in the release. “We now know that human trafficking is happening right here at home, and its victims are our most vulnerable citizens. Being aware of these crimes, knowing the warning signs and refusing to tolerate the commercial sex industry that fuels trafficking are all critical to this fight.

Zurschmiede's hypocrisy was considered at length earlier this week in two NAC postings:

ON THE AVENUES: Got spa? Time for CM Zurschmiede to reel in the years.

Amanda Beam's column about human trafficking and the sex trade, and Kevin Zurschmiede's spa denial.

Meet Lee Ann Wiseheart and Danita Burks. They'd like you to vote them to the public school board. Their kids attend Christian Academy.

Roger: We have a new beer called Nan Brown. It's really good. Want to try it?

Customer: Sure (takes a drink) ... but this is Elector with a different name!

Roger: Precisely. Our next new release is called Amy Adams.

---

Meanwhile, for those keeping score (as you should be, alibi-ridden partisan apologists), this makes two weeks, two columns, and two majestic upper deck home runs by Amanda Beam.

Last week, she popped the deceptive lid on local identity dysfunction, and NAC felt the chill of so many ghostly "conversations" past.

Those "phantoms of Facebook" have quite the pedigree -- right, Amy?

... All was fine and dandy with dear, sweet Nan (Brown) until she decided to reply to a post I had written a few days back about an upcoming school board race. The lovely lady disagreed with my opinion, which wasn’t a big deal. But when I asked her about being a teacher and if she had children, her answers didn’t match up with her profile identity. A quick search online revealed that, for all intents and purposes, Ms. Brown didn’t exist ...

... A couple of these accounts posted in other mediums too. Amy Adams enjoyed commenting on the News and Tribune’s website frequently these past few years on all sorts of political topics. Another young gal even said no good columnists wrote for the paper anymore. (Insert evil laugh here).

This week, Beam's bat meets ball -- again: "To me, if you choose not to send your child to a public school, then you shouldn’t be making fiscal and policy decisions for those of us who do."

BEAM: The power of choice

 Most of us can agree parents have a right to send their children to the schools of their choosing. Some select private institutions, whether for a parochial education or specialized ways of teaching, and pay out of pocket for the tuition. Others home-school.

Both are fine alternatives to public schools. Notice I didn’t say they were in any way better than the public offerings, just different.

That’s the parent’s choice.

But what if those parents decide to run for a position on a public school board?

Here’s where the situation becomes a bit hairy.

Let's face facts.

The current school board isn't exactly a shining symbol on the Grant Line Road knoll, but Lee Ann Wiseheart and Danita Burks plainly represent a theocratic view of the world, one that has no place in public school decision-making.

While we're at it, the superannuated Don Sakel also is undeserving of a seat, although for entirely different reasons.

Me?

Yes, I actually did vote, though not for very many, and firmly against a couple. The object was to view the process, because the 2015 insurgency will be here quite soon. In the balloting for school board, I voted for Jan Anderson, and that's it. She makes sense and is always responsive.

Thanks to Amanda Beam for her last two News and Tribune columns, and to Daniel Suddeath (and Jerod Clapp) for their reporting. They've restored a dollop of faith in the ability of the local newspaper to make a difference. More, please.

Amid the stench of hypocrisy, fiscal turnstiles begin spinning as Redevelopment awards sports complex bid.

Most of us have joined the chorus of cheers from the Hoosier Panel neighborhood with respect to the recreation complex. It's the $9 million aquatics center project at the former Camille Wright facility that strains credulity.

New Albany panel awards $5.08 million bid for sports complex; Project is at former Hoosier Panel site, by Grace Schneider (C-J)

Appropriately, my favorite passage from Grace's article is this:

Neighbors had complained for years that the property is an eyesore and a drag on property values. Most have cheered the city’s plan to clear the site and create park and green space where factories and modest homes share streets around the rail tracks.

Not coincidentally, New Albany's 1960s-era one-way arterial streets (Market, Spring, Elm) also are a drag on property values for those living and investing in homes on or near them. One-way streets also tend to contradict the aims of money spent on neighborhood stabilization and revitalization.

Thus, we see the city spending money to improve property values in the Hoosier Panel neighborhood, and also on Main Street with its impending corridor improvement project, which will have the effect of diverting even more traffic to one-way streets already serving as colossal impediments to property values and quality of life.

And yet, when midtown residents voice precisely the same concerns to the city as those of these other areas, the only sound being heard in response is the muffled shuffle of foot-dragging.

Feet can be good, as when they're deployed toward enhanced walkability. One-way streets compromise walkability. They compromise safety, property values and QOL. It's a no-brainer, Scott, David ... Jeff.

With a new year approaching, isn't it time the city got its act together?

Wouldn't some semblance of a plan be of assistance?

I'll be asking these questions well into 2015, won't I?

Durgee Road causes Bush, Seabrook to get their knickers in a twist, and that's funny.

The News and Tribune had the story on Saturday.

“How can the city close a county road? I have a big problem with that,” Commissioner Mark Seabrook said. “They built it without telling us, now they’re closing it without telling us?”

Today it's in the C-J.

... (County planner Don) Lopp said Durgee Road questions boil down to communication. “The county commissioners obviously have an interest,” he said. “They just want more information on the plans.”

I obviously have an interest in knowing when the health department decides to change its permitting procedures on a whim, and from no discernible statutory precedent, but neither Seabrook nor Bush thinks it's important for me to be informed about THAT.

But if a funeral home regulator walked into HIS business and did what the health department did to NABC and others in June, Seabrook would begin chewing the scenery. Bush wants to be sheriff, and he can't be bothered with the law as it pertains to a lowly, atheistic beer slinger.

Read these words carefully: I hope you both choke on Durgee Road.

That is all.

(photo credit ... www.panda.org)

Separate but equal but not really (wink, wink).

The City of New Albany has recently spent an amount on Spring Street Hill Road nearly double the state's total $1.2 million annual TARC outlay to fund transit in the whole of Southern Indiana.

That poorly located, two-fifths mile of engineering accident serving a very limited but very specific population was deemed a high priority necessity for all the goofy reasons Bob "adverse and disproportionate are good, right?" Caesar and a handful of well placed others could muster.

But cut multiple bus routes on which other parts of the city depend for work, groceries, trips to the doctor, etc.? Shucks and shrugs all around. Sorry about your luck.

Given that we're about to spend another million or so on Governor's Balls and the like patting ourselves on the back for 200 years of ongoing something or other, isn't it about time we address the blatant, class-based attitudes that fuel our politics as much now as they did when Washington C. DePauw owned our government?

Shambolic NA: Big ticket jewelry and lower-income tax credits.

As the excerpts here illustrate, rental housing owner Kevin Zurschmiede voted both ways while wearing different hats, putting him into position to tie King Larry's all-time flip-flop record by abstaining the next time it comes up ... and the developer did not fail to notice it. The administration took no public position until after the state declined credits. Councilman Caesar, who has contributed no known plan for assisting downtown revitalization beyond opposing two-way streets, outsourcing Bicentennial projects to out of state mercenaries and enabling condos-for-the-wealthy-some-time-way-down-the-road, was able to blithely rationalize his contempt for the less well off by waving a mimeograph of the tax code.

Fiction is dead and buried in New Albany, because everyday life is so consistently entertaining ... and so enduringly futile in a political sense. Do any of these people have a better idea for how the Reisz Building might realistically be used any time soon? Is it that we just couldn't run the risk of poorer old people living that close to Mr. Bobo's champagne-sipping penthouse dwellers? Doesn't Sterling actually have the money to do what they propose, and some semblance of a track record that might hint at an ability to succeed in doing it? If the answer to the last two questions is yes, shouldn't we give them the parking garage, because that way, at least something might get built?

Legacy at Riverside not dead yet in New Albany; Mayor Gahan disappointed that low-income tax credits weren’t awarded for developments, by Braden Lammers (Hanson Compendium of Pop Ups and Roll Overs)

Councilman Kevin Zurschmiede voted in favor of that resolution while on the redevelopment commission, but sponsored the measure opposing the developments for the council.

“We did have support unanimously [from the redevelopment commission], and then to find out after the fact in the new year that we might not have support I guess we were a little confused and not sure what was going on,” (John VanMeeter director of development for The Sterling Group) said.

(Mayor Jeff Gahan) said the Legacy at Riverside “would have given a dilapidated city block $12 million worth of development. The seniors that would reside there could have visited our downtown restaurants and shops, and contributed to the local economy in a big way.”

The administration estimated the property tax base would have risen from about $10,000 to $40,000 annually on the lot due to the Legacy at Riverside project. However, Councilman Bob Caesar estimated the city would lose millions of dollars in property taxes over the life of the developments if they received credits when he voted in favor of the opposition resolution.

Focus on jobs? Really?

I'm not quite sure what the fundamentalism-inspired attack on Planned Parenthood has to do with jobs. Seeking the decapitation of teachers' unions and "Public Education Gutting for Ideologues" drive? Confused by that, too.

In fact, precious little of St. Daniels' 2011 Falangist platform for aspiring higher office seekers has to to with jobs, but Ed Clere says it was all about jobs, and according to Ms. Armageddi, he's up in Indy working for us. In the absence of a local newspaper, perhaps NAC's the only news outlet in town willing to stand up and call his bluff. And so, we will.

CLERE: Focus on jobs was part of getting the job done (OSIN)

We told you so: On Tuesday, you voted in favor of tolls. Kerry Stemler thanks you for it.

Two days after the election, the Bridges Authority has held its scheduled meeting, and guess what?

WAVE-3 sez: Get ready to pay up to cross over. Tolls are part of the plan to pay for the Ohio River bridges. That was the latest on the toll controversy Thursday from the Bridges Authority Finance Committee.

As we've been telling you almost daily since summer, local politicians like Ed Clere and Ron Grooms, eager to justify the endorsement by their pro-tolls paymasters at the Republican political action entity known as One Southern Indiana, always were seeking to avoid the pure reality of lying outright to the voters by their dissembling, deleting, ducking, covering and evading any semblance of straight talk on tolling existing bridges to pay for the bridges boondoggle.

Clere and Grooms kept saying we must wait, and it was too early to tell. It took all of two days, and Kerry Stemler -- 1Si's chief puppeteer, who (of course) donated to both of them, was the one to gently break the news while brandishing the KY-Jelly.

Like I said, we told you so.

Clere to Tribune: Do as I say, not as I do.

I suppose we'll be told that one standard of free speech applies to Facebook, and another to print journalism.

Today in the Tribune, State Representative Ed Clere expresses unhappiness at being denied free speech.

Communication will continue, by Ed Clere, Local Columnist.

He writes, "As an advocate of free speech, I always prefer more speech, not less," and "I always appreciate constructive feedback."

I wonder what he thinks about tolling for the bridges project? Shall we ask him? But wait ... we did ask him, and such is his commitment to free speech that the questions were deleted, and the member list was purged. I didn't do it. This blog didn't do it. Progressives didn't do it.

All of this is so very senseless.

I am not the enemy, never was, and never intended to be. Then, why am I being treated like the enemy? If there is some need to put me in my place, can there be an explanation of why I'm a threat to established order? I'm not running for office, and have not endorsed a candidate; in fact, this blog probably expresses more reservations about local Democrats than Republicans, but although the Democrats usually don't pay very close attention to our recommendations, they don't censor us, either.

Is this a set piece? The Twilight Zone? What gives?

By the way, there'll be a column of mine appearing on Thursday. Care to guess the topic?

I call this team "Blame the Victim."

A purely hypothetical situation:

Let's say that a school board member and GOP candidate for higher state office advances the notion that there are cuts that can be made that might forestall school closings.

Let's say that these cuts primarily have to do with reducing health insurance benefits to teachers and employees.

What would I say to that?

I'd say that is doesn't surprise me when the same people fighting tooth and nail against universal health care in America regard it as a wonderful idea to cut health care benefits and help "solve" the problem they've done so much to create.

I'd say that if I could find a Bible passage to illustrate this, I would. Oddly, I'd probably be able to find substantiation in Marx, Engels, or both -- but as a capitalist pressed to the wall, there's no time for that.

That's what I'd say. Since the situation is only hypothetical, I don't have to.

Rewind to Dan Coffey on blogging, circa 2005: "Anyone can hide behind the keyboard."

Here's the scorecard so far over at The Coffey Corner, councilman Dan Coffey's newly minted blog.

Total posts: 2
Comments made by me: 5
Comments of mine erased: 5
Comments and erasures of others: 1 (the second at any minute)
Comments agreeing with Coffey, therefore not erased: 1

Hmm. That looks, feels and sounds like a small-time tinpot censor hiding behind a keyboard -- but wait, didn't Coffey himself once ... yes, he did. Read on. I doubt the links work, although they really aren't the point, are they?

---

NA Confidential vs. NA Incontinent at Monday's City Council meeting (February 8, 2005).

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
-- Author Ray Bradbury

“What are you reading?”

As opening lines go, this is a fairly innocuous one. Most of us regard it in the same manner as other common greetings, like “how are you?” and “what’s up?”

How is it, then, that a seemingly harmless supposition with respect to one’s view of the act of reading is transformed into an offense, a provocation, a seeming challenge to one’s masculinity?

Mention the words “NA Confidential” to New Albany Councilman Dan Coffey, and you’ll find out what those of us who grew up on a farm have known since childhood.

Wild skunks spray as a defense mechanism when they perceive a threat.

At least one beleaguered local politician has now been observed to display similar characteristics.

At last evening’s City Council meeting, I took advantage of the time allowed for public comment to speak briefly on three matters:

(1) To restate NA Confidential’s opposition to the further expenditure of public monies to fight a losing battle against the 1st Amendment in the New Albany DVD case,

(2) To encourage the mayor (who was absent) and the council to consider setting up public forums for discussion of matters not reserved to the weekly Board of Public Works and Safety meetings, and

(3) To support the March 2 Public Affairs Symposium, "New Visions for Downtown New Albany."

NA Confidential regards these statements as general in nature, fully in keeping with the “respect” factor and time limitations enforced by President Jeff Gahan, and certainly not directed toward any single individual on the City Council.

But Dan Coffey’s immediate, visceral and jarringly defensive reaction was as indicative of an ill-tempered, anti-progressive mindset as one is apt to find without running to the library for transcripts of Senator McCarthy’s 1950’s-era witch hunt hearings in the US Senate.

These hearings might be available on video for the benefit of those who feel threatened by the act of reading.

Coincidentally, Dan Coffey does not read Blogs because “anyone can hide behind the keyboard,” but by means of osmosis or the Vulcan mind meld, he purports to know exactly what is written in NA Confidential.

Dan Coffey, who sits as part of an elected body known as the “city” council, which is charged with matters pertaining to the city as a whole, sees no need to speak with anyone outside his own district, where he holds public meetings six times a year ... and ... hey, you ... outsider … you don’t live here, do you? … well, congratulations, you’ve just been invited not to attend!

Dan Coffey emphatically and abrasively possesses not the slightest intention to attend any town hall, public forum or revival meeting that is not organized by himself in the safety of his own fiefdom, especially if he’s invited only to listen to the taxpayers throughout the city who pay his salary (and whose money he spends) rather than speak himself.

That’s because Dan Coffey, red-faced and sermonizing, is in fact gravely insulted at not being consulted.

By his own admission, he doesn’t read, but also by his own admission, he is one of the select group able to understand the money, who controls the purse strings of the city, who knows how things get done, who certainly doesn’t need the advice of mere "complainers" who should know their place in the back of the cosmos bus or else get up off their laggard butts and run for office – as if there were no other way to participate in the political process in this city.

The meeting room was quiet as the Wizard of Westside self-destructed.

Then, having encapsulated the most virulent form of New Albany’s native disease in far more eloquent fashion than has been attempted in NA Confidential or any other repository of the written word, Dan Coffey ceased his diatribe.

Ten minutes later, Dan Coffey nodded in assent as fellow Councilman Bill Schmidt produced the results of personal research indicating that neither he nor Coffey, or for that matter, anyone else on the City Council really knows how much money the city has borrowed or if it has been paid back.

NA Confidential earnestly hopes that Dan Coffey’s outburst last evening was the result of the stress and strain that doubtless accompany the task of sifting through New Albany’s current budgetary woes. The Courier-Journal’s and Tribune’s coverage of the meeting make clear the extent of the crisis.

But extenuating circumstances aside, Dan Coffey’s performance cannot be allowed to pass without comment.

His narrow parochialism with respect to the responsibilities of elected public representatives is sadly indicative of the discredited “ward-heeler” school of political “thought,” once the norm but now utterly incapable of providing the unifying vision critical in a world increasingly reliant on the very qualities of communication and inter-dependence that Coffey regards with open contempt.

And, for the record, I’m reading “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,” by John Barry.

Volunteer Hoosier's essay "Contrapunction" analyzes the February 7 City Council meeting

New Albany budget questions put vehicle requests on hold, by Ben Zion Hershberg of the Louisville Courier-Journal

Outstanding loans force delay in possible purchase of city vehicles, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor

It's official.

With his letter to the Tribune yesterday, local GOP chairman Dave Matthews becomes the single biggest hypocrite in Floyd County. That's no mean feat, folks. He'll now advance to the national quarter-finals against Rush Limbaugh.

Go Dave!

I’m sorry, Ms. Wright, but everyone can see that your opinions merely represent the standard tactics of “lie and distract.”