Conjoined Councilmen wear boogie shoes, seek help in VCR programming.

Councilman Dan Coffey (heatedly, finger wagging): “Jack, I’ll put my business knowledge up against yours any day.”

Councilman Jack Messer (shrugging): “You’re a lawyer, then you’re an engineer; I just can’t keep up.”

---

With little business on the agenda for last evening’s city council meeting, and neither the right hand-picked crowd on hand nor a truly suitable opportunity to engage in the sort of self-aggrandstanding that forms the prime reason for the Conjoined Councilmen’s political existence, Dan Coffey and Steve Price were faced with a vexing dilemma.

Go quietly into the night and let others do the same, or waste more precious legislative moments rehearsing their respective routines for use during next year’s pivotal election campaign.

Accordingly, both reverted to shuck ‘n’ jive stereotypes bare moments following the overture, and the predictable result was a moderately entertaining spectacle that nonetheless reminded observers that you simply can’t craft silk accessories from rock salt, place your pet ferret in the control chair down at the nuclear power plant, or get all the way through a council meeting without a malevolent floor show.

The Conjoined Councilmen’s roles are distinct, yet complementary. Both evidently derive their personas from deep and largely undisguised reservoirs of anger, frustration and annoyance with a modern world that won’t slow down long enough for them to catch up, but their respective approaches to airing their grievances are different.

As anyone who has spent five minutes at a city council meeting will attest, CM Coffey almost always plays the braggart first, and when, inevitably, he isn’t taken seriously by people who always know better, he becomes the gesticulating, posturing bully. His sense of irony is so woefully underdeveloped that he has no more use for the reflective qualities of a bathroom mirror than your garden variety vampire, although at least the latter comes by his invisibility honestly.

During the course of the past three years, we have listened to CM Coffey publicly state that he knows more about construction than builders, more about drainage than flood control specialists, more about the legal code than lawyers … and the list continues, ad nauseam, as was the case Monday night when CM Coffey was unable to produce a single specific example of a corrupted TIF zone to justify his calculated personal criticism of Redevelopment Director John Rosenbarger.

Meanwhile, amid the incessant bluster, there has yet to be offered substantive proof that any of these wide-ranging skills on the part of the councilman exist outside his own eternally insecure and confrontational character.

CM Price, however, is increasingly willing to assume the role of the shambolic court jester. Whether intentionally mispronouncing Rosenbarger’s name in the fashion of a junior high school slight, or struggling to comprehend simple mathematical explanations desperately offered him by friend and foe alike in an effort to spare him from steadily compounding embarrassment, CM Price has now pole vaulted past the point of self-parody, belly-flopping instead into a bubbling tub of bile and bathos.

Amazingly, last evening’s meeting found CM Price professing his inability to fathom the type of average salaries that are paid to college graduates in numerous fields in all sectors of the American economy – all of whom know far less about their professions than CM Coffey – and concluding plaintively that this slowness and incomprehension is to be expected because CM Price comes “from the poor side of town.”

Unfortunately, Price neglected to close his remarks with a syncopation of the quaint “Do-doo-doo-wah shoo-bee-doo-bees” that are a timeless hallmark of Johnny Rivers’s 1966 chart topper, from which the councilman pinched his pitiful punch line – itself surely destined to become the councilman’s sole flag-draped platform slogan during the forthcoming 3rd district campaign.

“Poor like you and keeping it that way. Vote Price.”

In turn, CM Price’s rough hewn log cabin hardscrabble childhood poverty reference unintentionally shines a considerable spotlight on perhaps the most enduring feature of his narrow political worldview, one shared by CM Coffey:

There’s only one pie. It is the same size now and always. We can do nothing to increase our personal share by making it bigger. Therefore, it is futile to even try. Gimme back my taxes.

Ultimately the political, social and cultural gospel of Steve Price can be summarized in far fewer words than the councilman customarily expends to explain why he, like fellow Luddite Coffey, neither understands the modern world nor intends to try any time soon.

“We can’t.”

I disagree, and emphatically so. Perhaps Steve and Dan can’t, but we can, and we will.

As time goes by, the Conjoined Councilmen’s act is wearing increasingly thin, and even the dyspeptic duo seem to be sensing a changed landscape. They’re punching wildly at targets that no longer exist, as CM Price did last night with three separate, obviously embittered jabs at Scribner Place. They’re flailing at shadows, as CM Coffey, in a chillingly McCarthyesque turn, did while insisting that the necessary information could be found on a list that no one produced.

Anyone seen those garlic cloves I had wrapped in the council agenda?

Let the tailgating vigil begin: Council meeting tonight.

Steel band in the distance
And their music floats across the bay
While American women in muumuus
Talk about all the things they did today
And their husbands quack about fishing
As they slug those rum drinks down
Discussing who caught what and who sat on his butt
But it's the only show in town.

--Jimmy Buffett, “Cowboy in the Jungle”

The first of two December city council meetings kicks off tonight at 7:30 p.m., and there are almost enough intriguing storylines for a Robert Altman film – who would the director have cast in the role of New Albany’s resident Joe McCarthy clone Dan Coffey, or the ever unctuous and scheming Slippery Larry Kochert?

Alas, now we’ll never know. Rest in peace, Bob.

(This just in: 3rd district councilman Steve Price votes “no” to the mayor’s “tax ‘n’ spend, rest in peace motion,” citing a lack of hope that the pie will ever get bigger.)

Later today, the evening’s council agenda will be posted here at the city clerk’s web site, New Albany City Government.

In terms of council business, there’ll surely be another dollop of ambulance chasing, with CM Coffey either completely positive that he knows more about driving an ambulance than any other person in attendance, or entirely lacking sufficient information to decide whether his driving license is in his pocket, or lying atop an “antique” dresser at the auction house.

(Another bulletin: After long deliberation over generic cornflakes – the ones recommended by Dave Ramsey for debt as well as hunger relief – 3rd district councilman Steve Price votes “no,” citing a lack of 2% milk.)

CM Price, who in the past has vigorously defended the denizens of local legion halls against intrusion by big government federal agents seeking to confiscate video poker machines, going so far as to play the “N” (for Nazi) card, surely is uncomfortable with 4th district CM Kochert’s forthcoming anti-smoking ordinance, but with hints dropped and press coverage instigated, the crowd now occupies a position somewhat to the front of the chamber’s folding metal chairs.

When will His Oiliness put forth the proposition that second-hand smoke is more deserving of the council’s attention than 4th-hand rental housing deficiencies?

In fairness, and for equal time, CM Kochert’s viewpoint is supported and echoed in this letter to the Tribune from longtime local anti-smoking advocate (and superb musician) Jamey Aebersold.

(Straight across the wire: 3rd district councilman Steve Price votes “no” to our decision to cite Aebersold’s letter, citing Price’s persistent inability to play those insane jazz licks with a guitar – although George Benson’s free to try it if he prefers, so long as the taxpayer isn’t unduly burdened.)

The council’s 2007 electoral rumorama currently has Democratic 5th district councilwoman Bev Crump declining to run for second term and Republican Dick Bliss, whom CM Crump defeated last time out, coming back in a bid to reclaim his seat.

In another comeback sequel, longtime 3rd district councilman Maury Goldberg seems set to challenge nominal fellow Democrat and incumbent Price, who emerged victorious from a three-way primary split in 2003 and has gone on to become the council’s most transparently Luddite voice against human progress.

(According to carrier pigeon dispatch from Dewey Heights, 3rd district councilman Steve Price votes “no” to former councilman Goldberg’s decision to run, citing a desire to continue in office and finish his work on behalf of the litt … ghg …le …ked … pl .. hey, CM Coffey, put down that diet coke!)

At the last council meeting, 2nd district councilman Bill Schmidt was quoted by the Tribune as having issued a tongue-in-cheek threat to move Up Knob if the city’s drainage problems don’t abate. Look for more details from the Gang of Four News Agency, and keep your eyes on our legion of real estate agents.

Meanwhile, 4th district resident John Alton has spoken of the possibility of challenging the unclothed imperial CM Kochert.

There is no word as to whether opposition to the 1st district Wizard of Westside’s reign will develop, as the area remains isolated, and it has proven an effective strategy for CM Coffey to jam the television and radio signals of Radio Free Westendia, and hold frequent “Die! East End Neighborhood Associations” rallies on his favorite street, the Champs d’Ward Heeler.

The future plans of 6th district councilman (and council president) Jeff Gahan, a Democrat, are unknown, although it’s worth noting that his precincts leaned strongly against progressive Democratic commissioner candidate Randy Stumler, and for Republican Mark Seabrook, in the recently contested 2006 general election. Was it a favorite son vote, or a GOP trend in CM Gahan’s hood?

Of more immediate impact, here’s the latest word from Saturday’s Tribune on the disposition of departing at-large councilman Seabrook’s lone Republican seat on the council: Seabrook will be replaced Friday; Several interim council candidates expected at GOP caucus.

New Albany Republicans plan to meet Friday night to choose one of several candidates to serve the fourth and final year of County Commissioner-elect Mark Seabrook’s City Council term …

… Conversations with several party members have consistently centered on three names: builder and real estate agent Kevin Zurschmiede, former Councilman Kenny Keilman and retiree Harry Harbison.

At-large Democrat Jack Messer is rumored to be considering non-council political objectives, and it is uncertain what fellow at-large Democrat Donnie Blevins will be doing.

It’s confusing, it’s entertaining, and all we know for sure is that when it comes down to the last available cliché, we can depend on only one thing in this voyeur’s life.

CM Price’s “no” vote – the plaintive wail, the mangled chord, and the admission of defeat in this struggle to reclaim a city.

An angel steps forward: First Harrison to restore the Yenowine-Nichols-Collins House.

There is encouraging news for a victimized historic property in Georgetown.

Embattled Floyd County historic home to get new owner; Disputed house site to become First Harrison branch, by Joseph Lord (News and Tribune).

First Harrison Bank is planning to make a home of the Yenowine-Nichols-Collins House, a circa-1932 building gutted last year in a blaze.

The bank on Friday announced plans to move its Edwardsville-Georgetown branch, along North Luther Road, into the Collins House. If realized, the bank’s plan would end years of battles over the house’s condition.

The home’s exterior would be restored and the bank would add office space to the rear of the structure, said Bill Harrod, chief operating officer for First Harrison and president of the bank’s holding company …

… On Halloween 2005, much of the Collins House interior was destroyed by arson, (Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana regional director Greg) Sekula said Friday. Since then, it’s sat in ruins …

… The foundation had in recent years won a court order to restore the exterior of the building after the building had fallen into disrepair, Sekula said. The house was owned by Charles and Linda Meyer, The Tribune reported in 2005.

The Meyers could not be reached for comment.

First, institutionalized neglect and open contempt for the rules of the game. Then, a mysterious torching. Now, a third party steps in to make the best of a bad situation, and this is something to be applauded by responsible, respectful citizens. Too bad it's come to this.

Readers, were there ever any leads as to the source of the torching? I don't recall hearing of any. Another cold, cold case.

Meanwhile, previously at NAC: Duh.

Leadership Southern Indiana welcomes ... huh?

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., serves as the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary-the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world.

Dr. Mohler has been recognized by such influential publications as Time and Christianity Today as a leader among American evangelicals. In fact, Time.com called him the "reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S".

-- From the biography at www.albertmohler.com

Here is a random selection of items pertaining to Dr. Mohler’s positions.

From 1999
Item: Mohler preached to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in Louisville, Kentucky. He prefaced his remarks, in part, by saying "As a citizen of Louisville, I'm so glad to have a Presbyterian group here that doesn't have a gay and lesbian caucus."

From 2000
Item: The president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has called the Roman Catholic Church "a false church" that "teaches a false gospel."

Appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live," Al Mohler was speaking on Pope John Paul II's pilgrimage to Israel and his recent apologies for the past sins of the Catholic Church. While stopping short of calling the Catholic Church a "cult," Mohler said the Catholic hierarchy is unbiblical.

"As an evangelical, I believe the Roman church is a false church and it teaches a false gospel," Mohler said. "I believe the pope himself holds a false and unbiblical office."

From 2001
Item: As officials continue searching for answers to the horrific terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, God is using the tragedy to humble America and remind the nation of its complete dependence on him, R. Albert Mohler Jr. said on a radio program the afternoon of the tragedy.

From 2004
Mohler: “The Scripture does not even envision married couples who choose not to have children. The shocking reality is that some Christians have bought into this lifestyle and claim childlessness as a legitimate option. The rise of modern contraceptives has made this technologically possible. But the fact remains that though childlessness may be made possible by the contraceptive revolution, it remains a form of rebellion against God's design and order.”

From 2005
Mohler: Those who love the gospel learned again that Islam rejects Christ as the incarnate Son of God and the cross as the atonement for our salvation. There can be no reconciliation between the claims of Christianity and the claims of Islam. The enemies of the cross know this full well.

From 2006
Mohler: “Christians must have the cultural maturity to know that many of the most famous and influential producers of cultural materials, whether in literature, art, or entertainment, have been homosexuals.

This does not mean that we cannot enjoy their music, art, or performances. Christians start from the presupposition that all humans are sinners, and that every artistic endeavor is marred by sin in both its conception and its demonstration.”

----

On December 13, Dr. Mohler will be the speaker at Leadership Southern Indiana’s breakfast series at Kye’s II in Jeffersonville. According to the LSI web site:

Leadership Southern Indiana, a non-profit organization in Clark and Floyd counties, is proud to have a role in valuable networking and leadership training.

Mission: To improve the quality of life in Southern Indiana by identifying, informing, and motivating community leadership in Floyd and Clark Counties.

My only question: Will gays, Catholics, the childless, Muslims and artists if all marred stripes actually be allowed to attend this questionable exercise in the enhancement of their "quality of life" by means of the theocratic version of “leadership?”

Just curious.

It might get you fired, unless of course the job wasn't yours from the start.

Seeing as the professorial poseur over at Freedom to Screech seldom sees any need to attribute the scattershot snippets from the hard work of others that she routinely purloins from the Internet (which in itself would lead to her dismissal from any responsible teaching position in the reality-based world, as opposed to her native habitat of Fantasy Island), kindly permit NAC to provide the sources for her posting today.

We’re happy to do it.

The borrowing begins with a poem called “I Own All of Me,” written by David Kearney. It can be found in its original form here.

The next lines, “Here (sic) essence was that of Love, Her inspiration was that of hope!,” comes from another poem by Brandon Ross Abernathy entitled “Cathy,” which also can be read at thebody.com.

And finally, completing a fruitful nocturnal session of plagiarism from the very same web site, Doc Erika’s final thought is lifted from an essay by Walter Holland, PhD: "A Poetry of Crisis, A Poetry of Witness," except that in typical fashion, she omits the word “poetry,” without which the passage makes no sense whatsoever.

The FOS posting’s title, “The Value of Her Insight,” undoubtedly refers to the fact that all three filched sources were written by men.

If one ventures into the casino and begin throwing money at those nice men dealing cards, he or she is advised to take a brief stab at learning the rules of the game – or risk taking a bath. In like fashion, blogosphere or not, proper attribution of sources is not an option – it’s a requirement, at least for any writer wishing to be taken seriously.

Halloween has come and gone, doc. How about changing back into civvies?

(Photo credit: www.amazon.com)

12-letter words & flag burnin': Unless, of course, the whole thing is a joke.

After many apathetic years, the letters section of the Tribune is again showing signs of becoming the entertaining, edifying spectacle it used to be during the halcyon days of “Cap” Sterling and Nola McDaniel.

Here’s an example from yesterday’s edition (note that the date, November 29, was erroneously listed as November 24 in the newspaper’s on-line archive).

Nov. 29: Reader not impressed with big words

I’d like to respond to a recent letter in the Nov. 9, 2006, edition of The Tribune referencing values.

No. 1. The lady, being from the Northeast, is trying to impress us by the use of 12-letter words? As a suggestion, if you’re writing to the average citizen, use average citizen words so that we can better understand what you are trying to say. I learned that at Penn State.

No. 2. I’m from the east and there is no question that Hoosiers and Kentuckians appreciate our past, present, future and our country’s traditional family values and our customs and our heritage better than those from the Anything Goes, It’s OK you’re OK, If it feels good do it Northeast.

Burning our flags and same sex marriage is not only against our traditions, our heritage, our customs and everything else “American,” they are also against the Bible and should be outlawed by Constitutional Amendments. Maybe you should move back to New Jersey. They’d “love” you there.

Frank Criss, Floyds Knobs

The object of Mr. Criss’s acidic lesson in value-determinant geography is the writer who previously penned this:

Nov. 9, 2006: Reader sick of values being used incorrectly

“Values, Values, Values.” I am so sick of hearing about “values.” What exactly does “values” mean? It means an abstract concept of morality. At best ambiguous, at worst, delusional.

“Hoosier values” means what? I am from New Jersey. Does that mean my “Jersey values” are better, worse or the same as “Hoosier values?” Somehow, I believe, that in some people’s eyes, they are worse.

Since, I believe that the Constitution serves to provide protection for our freedoms, the frivolity of a Constitutional Amendment to protect an institution that already allows the freedom of a man and woman to marry is ludicrous. Does that make my “values” evil?

I also don’t believe in adding a Constitutional Amendment to protect the flag from flag burning. It’s a matter of the Bill of Rights. You know the provision of freedom of speech. Like what I’m doing. Wow, I’m doing really bad in someone’s idea of “values.”

Using hot button, totally irrelevant issues to push an agenda is demagoguery. To decide for me what my “values” should be and to deride me when I don’t agree is odious.

My point is that the use and abuse of the word values is wrong and only serves to isolate people. However, since politicians are abstract, ambiguous and delusional, the word may work for them.

Karen Van Hauter, Jeffersonville.

Looking more closely, we see that Mr. Criss’s reference to “trying to impress us by the use of 12-letter words” is far funnier than he intended. The only 12-letter word to be found in Ms. Van Hauter’s letter is the noun “Constitution.” It may have seemed to him that “demagoguery” surely falls into the dreaded 12-letter classification. Properly motivated spelling bee winners know that it has only 11.

In Ms. Van Hauter’s letter, there is the adjective “Constitutional,” which has 14 letters. But wait – Holy Hypocrite, Batman! – in his response, Mr. Criss also uses the adjective “Constitutional,” and yes, it again has 14 – 14! – letters.

What’s he trying to do, impress us?

“Constitutional” must be an “average citizen” word when he uses it, but not when it is purloined by atheist pinko moral relativists.

The space and time continuum also poses certain difficulties for Mr. Criss’s, agonized, plaintive wail (I shan’t dignify it with a short, 8-letter word like “argument”), as in the case of his insistence that the Bible specifically teaches against burning an American flag that wasn’t initially sewed until 2,000 years after the Good Book was misinterpreted for the first time.

Apparently he learned these argumentation techniques in value-determinant geography while employed as a custodian at Penn State, although he is unclear on this point.

Encouragingly for the future chortle value of the Tribune’s opinion page, the November 29 missive wasn’t the first time that Mr. Criss has donned his Floyd R. Turbo hunting cap to allege, “Hoosiers and Kentuckians appreciate our past, present, future and our country’s traditional family values and our customs and our heritage better.”

He also did it on November 26, while lauding departing legislator Mike “Big Wheels” Sodrel for his win in Floyd County:

With so many Left-Wing Liberals in the district, who are unaware of our heritage, our customs, our values, our traditions and our Judeo-Christian beginnings, it looks like a brighter future for Floyd County. Yes, Sodrel lost the election, but we are apparently beginning to emerge from our dismal past when Floyd County mainly supported good ole boy Dem’s regardless of their qualifications.

That’s a fair volume of pus to ooze from one place, but I’m a glutton for punishment when it comes to the outer limits of nuttiness, so I’ll bite. This grouping of “our” – who are you speaking of, Mr. Criss?

The native born, as opposed to the infidels from New Jersey? Or maybe the properly indoctrinated ones, and not those succumbing to the dreaded virus of book learnin’?

Seems I was born and raised right here in tradition- and value-laden Floyd County. I ran in the woods, played basketball, was rejected by all known cheerleaders and watched Hee Haw. I’ve lived here in this bastion of the Judeo-Christian ethos my whole life, and today, I couldn’t disagree with you more strongly if I were Osama bin Laden, Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore, all rolled into one.

What, then, was the source of the unpatriotic, pagan, foreign contagion in my case?

Did I get it during an illicit bout of unprotected readin’?

Perhaps there can be a Constitutional (14) amendment (just 9) against that, too.

Verily, disgust is the only proper reaction. There is no populated corner of this planet that is without some measure of ignorance, and yet in no part of the civilized world is it as enduringly fashionable as right here in the good ol’ USA. Keep up the good work, Mr. Criss.

Side-splitting laughter is one fine and suitably aerobic way for me to shed pounds on my diet.

(An edited version of the preceding has been sent to the Tribune for consideration as a letter to the editor)

World AIDS Day is Friday, December 1.

World AIDS Day is Friday, December 1.

By coincidence, the recent weeks leading to this year’s World AIDS Day have witnessed much household discussion about the AIDS pandemic, owing primarily to Mrs. Confidential’s current University of Louisville grad school class project. She’s been studying the decade of the 1980’s and analyzing attitudes at the time toward America’s gay community, both in societal and cultural terms, and specifically pertaining to her chosen career of social work.

Our many open-ended conversations about these and related topics have unexpectedly succeeded in exposing a great deal of repressed anger and indignation on my part.

Imagine that.

There are numerous references I might cite that would help explain my lingering outrage, but this guest opinion piece, published in San Francisco in 2004 on the occasion of President Reagan’s death, serves nicely.

Reagan's AIDS Legacy: Silence equals death, by Allen White.

A significant source of Reagan's support came from the newly identified religious right and the Moral Majority, a political-action group founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. AIDS became the tool, and gay men the target, for the politics of fear, hate and discrimination. Falwell said "AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals." Reagan's communications director Pat Buchanan argued that AIDS is "nature's revenge on gay men."

It’s true that the phenomenon of self-serving bigotry, thinly veiled hatred and crass stupidity routinely spewing from the well-fed mouths of those imagining themselves as paragons of morality isn’t exactly new in the historical experience, but perhaps my witnessing it during impressionable youth provides a deeper, more indelible impression within the consciousness.

I can think of no single occurrence that better illustrates the mean-spirited poverty of compassion, the flaunting of insensibility and an alarming absence of basic human decency on the part of “God-fearing American Conservatives” than the reaction of Falwell, Buchanan and so many others of the bilious ilk to the advent of the AIDS pandemic during the 1980’s.

My disgust with this reaction is a very large part of why I am a humanist, why I am an atheist, why I am a liberal, why I am a contrarian, and why I am implacably opposed to whatever mystically religious or basely political forces that connive and fester in the diseased heart of such institutionalized and calculating callousness, and it is why that incredibly tired bromide about the liberalism of youth yielding to the conservatism of advancing years doesn’t apply to me and never shall.

As though to say that as one grows older, the imperatives of human and civil rights fade into an appreciation of nothing so much as money and personal comfort. Quite frankly, the notion makes me want to retch.

Gay, straight, red, pink, black, white – too many people died then, and too many suffer now. We’re a quarter century into AIDS, and there remain people – right here, in this community – who are more concerned with the haughty assertion of their own “moral” superiority than with tending to and healing the sick, and more importantly, than upholding the dignity and equality of all men and women, whether under the watchful gaze of a supreme being or that of the Blue Speckled Hungadunga.

World AIDS Day is Friday, December 1. Kindly take note. 

Another Barbie for Prof. Erika ...

... looks like she forgot one (see AGING BARBIE at her FOS anonymous rant blog).

Jump ball: A platform for 2007.

In a comment yesterday, SBAvanti63 wrote:

The platform for 2007 is an easy one. Bluegill mentions clean up, revitalization, preservation and economic development. Add in public safety and there's plenty with which to work, especially as it relates to the current council. The trick is finding the candidates willing to run for each seat and then funding them, as it's likely that Dem. or Rep. party funds will support incumbents over new candidates. I'm new enough to New Albany not to know who these potential candidates might be, but the neighborhood associations are certainly one place to start identifying possibilities. I suspect that some of the readers/responders to NAC would be good candidates. Is anyone willing? Now is the time to get started. It's going to take a grass-roots effort to make the sweeping changes necessary and that won't come easily.
--Posted by SBAvanti63 to NA Confidential at 11/27/2006 08:49:32 PM

Good thoughts, indeed.

Readers, assuming such candidates might be found, how does such a platform fit within the confines of the still Democratic-leaning two party system here in New Albany?

Emperor Kochert’s newly progressive anti-smoking clothes -- and their utterly striking invisibility.

The C-J’s random New Albany and Floyd County news coverage generator gyrates furiously again today, with reporter Dick Kaukas emerging from behind Door #3 to offer a solid snapshot of the city council in mid-ponder over councilman Larry Kochert’s belated decision to take part in the life of the community by means of an impending proposal to institute a smoking ban.


Smoking-ban proposal likely in New Albany; Council member gauging support, by Dick Kaukas (Courier-Journal).

The New Albany City Council probably will be asked to consider a comprehensive smoking ban in the next few months.

But Councilman Larry Kochert, who backs a ban, said he has decided not to press for an immediate vote on the issue.

"I don't see it coming up before the first of the year," he said in an interview last week. "I'd rather wait a little bit, because from what I can see right now, the support's not there" for extensive restrictions.

With the chins of our council members being rubbed raw (by the way, has Dave Ramsey taken a position on tobacco, Steve?), onlookers might be forgiven for asking CM Kochert, whose personal inclination probably lies in the general direction of the draconian, exactly what he plans to do to increase the level of “support” for extensive smoking restrictions between now and that future day when the stars blessedly align, the tea leaves adhere to form the words "I have something resembling a dream, too," and CM Kochert plunges into the smoking ban scrum.

Meanwhile, the benign indifference to everyday realities of CM Kochert and the council’s other longstanding timeservers continues to resonate in the city’s reform-proof Slumlord Protection Program, Main Street crack houses and proliferating rat populations.

NAC finds it well beyond amusing, and veering into that most un-American realm of irony, that the councilman’s touching concern for the health of citizens has not been manifested with action toward the day in, day out living conditions of those many residing in substandard properties.

Now that I've vented, see the preceding for our regularly scheduled Monday post: CM Kochert's council legacy? One clue: It won't be a smoking ordinance. 

CM Kochert's council legacy? One clue: It won't be a smoking ordinance.

Regular NAC readers know that New Albany’s approaching “to ban or not to ban” smoking debate has inspired deep ambivalence on the part of the senior editor, who owns a business that may or may not feel the effects of such an action, but personally has no objection whatever to a smoke-free planet.

After all, I’m used to being put out.

For many years, smokers and non-smokers alike have been telling me to take my cigar outside, and until you’ve experienced the surreal scene, there’s really nothing like a GPC cigarette-wielding chain smoker complaining about the objectionable odor of my $15 Havana (believe it) to summarize an entire issue – and the hypocrisy therein – quite so well.

Nevertheless, I’ve been agonizing over the implications, dreading the divisiveness such discussions engender, and trying to imagine the excruciating ordeal being played out in a city council chamber that customarily digresses into bi-monthly anarchy at the incessant demand of its less luminous right-tableside time servers, among them the very councilman who’s set to propose the smoking ordinance.

But see, that’s it.

All along, the answer’s been staring me right in the face, and I failed to see it until I read Christopher Drake's Nov. 24 letter to the Tribune, reprinted below.

The answer?

We should proceed to enact the most stringent ban on public smoking ever seen in the United States, because given the city’s abysmal track record on ordinance enforcement, there’s actually no chance at all that we’ll be held to it.

In fact, you can bet your Christmas bonus check on the roulette wheel at Caesar’s … or take far better odds toward the likelihood that the same council persons supporting CM Larry Kochert’s anti-smoking ordinance will spin on a dime (your dime, that is) and begin chewing the scenery in full grandstand mode, demanding an immediate audit along with the resignation of every elected and appointed official in City Hall, if they’re so much as handed an estimated bill for enforcing a non-smoking decree.

We’ve seen them do it before, and on multiple occasions, so why would this instance be any different?

If Slippery Larry is intent on making smoking legislation the sole proactive legacy of a profoundly reactive career on the city council, then by all means permit him to do so.

He’s sure to find that the council’s tradition of impotence and non-intervention, one that he’s done so much to hone, will be a weight far too great for the current dysfunctional body to bear just to bring a personal crusade to fruition.

Meanwhile, here's Mr. Drake's letter, and it's a fine one.

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Smoking-ban debate approaches

Larry Kochert has recently proposed an ordinance prohibiting smoking in public areas such as restaurants and bars.

Mr. Kochert, If you truly were in touch with your constituency in the district that you represent, I think you would find that an issue such as this ranks very low on the priorities of the citizens that you work for.

Take a good look at our city Mr. Kochert, look at the rampant spread of run-down disgraceful rental houses where the absentee landlords are able to continue this practice with little or no consequences for degrading many neighborhoods that would otherwise be nice. Take a good look at the most of the streets in the city where pot holes and patchwork repairs make one feel as if they are on an off-road adventure.

Take a close look at your own district Mr. Kochert, where Floyd County solid waste has every intention to place a hazardous waste collection facility in the middle of a residential neighborhood. In fact, I do not believe that we have had the pleasure of your attendance at any of the neighborhood association meetings, or Solid Waste District meetings championing the health, safety and well being of your district.

I understand that smoking bans are the new politically correct band wagon to be on, and there are many political kudos to be given out by anti-smoking groups.

But the reality is the City Council’s time would be more efficiently spent tackling the real negative issues plaguing not only the health of New Albany’s citizens, but their well being and sense of community.

— Christopher S. Drake, New Albany

No better day than Sunday to be a gadfly.

The following is modified from a letter originally published in the Tribune on November 19, and as yet not archived on line.

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A few weeks back, as Tribune syndicated religion columnist David Yount wrote carefully erected a straw man out of atheism before predictably and delightedly bashing it to bits, he ventured, “It is no more credible that there is no God than that God indeed exists.”

I submit that this statement is at best an example of logical sleight of hand, and at worst, downright nonsensical.

If I were to write, “It is no more credible that there is no Blue Speckled Hungadunga than that a Blue Speckled Hungadunga indeed exists,” it is quite likely that any rational person would demand an immediate definition of a Blue Speckled Hungadunga in order to proceed with the discussion.

Moreover, lacking persuasive proof for the existence of the Blue Speckled Hungadunga, there would be no need for further debate, and subsequently no need for a syndicated religion columnist to utter a statement that is at base invalid, for it assumes the existence of a conjectured entity, then uses this assumed (and as yet unproven) existence to impugn the allegedly faulty perception of those who insist in pointing to the obvious nature of the theist’s logical fallacy.

In fact, atheists don’t “believe” there is no God; rather, they are absent such a belief. As with the Blue Speckled Hungadunga, the responsibility for proving the existence of God lies with the one advancing a positive belief in the conjectured deity, not with the one who has no belief.

Atheists offer no positive claims with respect to knowledge presumed to derive from outside the realm of human experience and perception. As Yount correctly notes, some atheists go a step further and proselytize in the manner of the religionist, but it’s a very safe bet that during the past two thousand years far more people have been asked to convert to religion at the point of a bayonet, and died as a result of their refusal, than have been forcibly converted to atheism.

After all, if religious belief really remains a matter of heart and soul, isn’t it impossible to “convert” anyone to atheism? Outward symbols and pageantry are superfluous with regard to inner feeling, aren’t they?

In my experience, atheists generally just want to be left alone, and prefer that religious belief remain a matter of private conscience and not a public policy stick. We respect a separation of church and state and take such a division at face value precisely because we’ve studied history, and we know against whom that public policy stick inevitably is wielded – against us, to be sure, but far more often against other religionists who believe in their variant of the supernatural entity just as much as the ones shooting at them from a nearby trench.

The result is a sad continuation of the war, violence and strife that has accompanied religion throughout human history.

To summarize, atheism is a negation in the absence of verifiable evidence, and it is the theist who is obliged to prove that God exists – not the other way around.

With apologies to the Tribune’s youthful, periodically published “natural law” guest writer: “It is no more credible that there is a necessary higher power than such a necessary higher power does not exist.”

Looks like a worthy cause.

 

REWIND: Sometimes it's embarrassing to be an American.

America's frenzied pop culture vultures have dubbed today Black Friday, and analysts will be poring over sales figures and tea leaves in an effort to determine if holiday season retail sales will be sufficient to float our collective boat for another year.

Today in the local newspapers there'll be other stories just like the one linked below, from an NAC posting dated Nov. 26, 2005. Change the dates, change the names -- but Pavlov's dog salivates just as predictably.

At least this year I get (downsized) turkey sandwiches before work, courtesy of Mrs. Confidential ... and yesterday's Vietnam Kitchen meal of a rice cake/fried egg appetizer with main course of the legendary K-8 spicy noodles was simply outstanding.

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Up at 4:00 a.m. -- to go shopping.

Shoppers beat sunlight to find bargains, by Kyle Lowry (New Albany Tribune).

“At 4 o’clock there were two great big lines up to the doors,” Mayfield said. “Now, there are lines around the entire store to check out. It’s pretty crazy.”

Unbelievable, but then again, materialism being the true faith of our fathers ...

Thanksgiving tradition?

Curmudgeons like to remind people unaccustomed to recalling ancient history that ultimately, someone had to pay for the inspiring story of the Pilgrim meal – and that “someone” was the notion of Native American culture.

I'm one of 'em. Curmudgeon, not Native American.

But apart from uncomfortable truths, a holiday built around sheer gluttony isn’t such a bad thing, even if you’re on a diet and must cut out a dessert.

Although she's a card-carrying vegetarian, Mrs. Confidential surprised me by fixing a turkey … and I’m having some of it for breakfast. She gets stuffing, cranberries and perhaps tofu of some variety. In other words, bird food. The type I've been eating for the past month.

My mother thoughtfully excused us from Tommy Lancaster duty this year, but she’ll be bringing pecan pie to accompany coffee and chit chat in the early afternoon.

I said cut out a dessert -- not all of them.

The high point of the day will follow later in the day when we motor to the South End and visit Vietnam Kitchen for the day’s real feast. I’d rather bring it home for an NBA game; sadly, none are scheduled on a Thursday filled with (yawn) football.

Of course I’m thankful: To Asian immigrants who keep their restaurants open on holidays like Thanksgiving.

Templates, tags, levels and extreme impatience.

My overt hostility toward reactionaries and Luddites of various stripes is fueled in large measure by the knowledge that there by the grace of simple good fortune might I yet flail and wail.

Could you tell?

The simplicity of black and white is an alluring Medusa perched atop an outcropping somewhere atop a lobe, and it is one to be resisted at all costs. The world is complex and painted in shades of gray, and ambiguous with sensations of pain and pleasure wrapped together. Quite simply, you can’t go home again.

In turn, this knowledge helps to explain the motif of the moment, during which the senior editor is struggling mightily with computer technology and software that he still only tenuously understands in an effort to simultaneously reassemble the contents of the home PC following both major and minor crashes, while learning the nuances of Macromedia Dreamweaver so as to seize the skill and autonomy necessary to avoid ever again the necessity of bowing and scraping, hat in hand, before the adjacent third-grader who grasps more of web site construction than this 46-year-old adult has managed to absorb.

Though the kid might work cheap … no, the point remains a newfound recognition that to do it the way I want, I have to do it myself – and that means learning how to do it myself. So, it's back to school in a manner of speaking.

You may be seeing a spate of “rewinds” and “reruns” at NAC the next few days, and this is something I regret, as one of the ulterior motives for the blog is to compel me to write each and every day.

At the same time, although NAC’s numbers are healthy in terms of readership, the once thriving local blogosphere outside our gates has steadily contracted. Perhaps you won’t notice if I engage in some slacking this extended holiday weekend, and expend the energy instead on computer literacy, self-training and the usual work-related obligations during busy season.

Through it all, sincere thanks for reading.

Is the Great New Albany Smoke-Out coming down the pike?

NAC touched briefly on this item Sunday:

Smoking ban approaches in New Albany, by Eric Scott Campbell (News and Tribune).

New Albany could ban smoking in all enclosed public spaces and workplaces as early as January, using a model similar to Jeffersonville’s and Louisville’s new laws.

Councilman Larry Kochert plans to propose such a law once legislators overhaul budget and staffing for the city’s two ambulances.

Cynics might suggest that the key word in this passage is “once,” and that CM Kochert's anti-smoking law might well have to wait until Doomsday to see introduction, much lass passage, given the council's chronic inability to act decisively and CM Dan Coffey's probable absence (he'll be mugging for the cameras while pushing gurneys down State Street or posing behind the wheel of an ambulance wearing a fire hat and a vintage Joe McCarthy sneer).

Council president Jeff Gahan hasn’t seen enough of the ordinance to form an opinion yet, though his “initial impression is that we may need to ... consider additional exceptions.” He declined to elaborate on what extra exceptions he’d support before the council debate begins.

“The evidence is there that secondhand smoke is harmful, and it is something that we can’t ignore, but tobacco is not an illegal substance,” Gahan said.

Campbell's article notes that none of the current sitting council members use tobacco, suggesting perhaps that in spite of previous signals to the contrary, local anti-smoking advocates view their prospects as warmer now than after the elections of 2007 usher in a shiny new class of contestants. At the same time, recalling the rancor and divisiveness inspired by the smoking issue in surrounding communities, CM Kochert's prospective push may be nothing more than a tactical trial balloon.

For more, see also: Another incremental gain for local anti-smoking advocates.

The at-large city council rumorama wheel ...

... is spinning, and today it says that Kevin Zurschmiede may be interested in the at-large seat to be vacated by Mark Seabrook at the end of the year. The Green Mouse says he was spotted in deep discussions with CM Seabrook at the last council meeting.

I'm assuming this is the same Kevin Zurschmiede who has worked for many years as a realtor, developer and property manager, and who owns the building at the northeast corner of Pearl and Market where the GOP headquarters was located during the most recent election. If so, it sounds like a good choice.

It may even be the same Kevin Zurschmiede who participated here at NAC during the early months of the blog's existence, and much to my enjoyment at the time. The last posting I can recall him contributing comments about was this one (in February, 2005):

Potpourri: NBA vs. college; how NA cooduh beenuh condenduh; Ward Churchill; and good beer writing.

Kevin, if you're still reading, perhaps you might return and let us know whether this rumor has legs?

UPDATED: Open thread: What qualities should we expect from our city council representatives?

Sunday morning update:

It's now official: We have a Democratic primary race in the 3rd council district.

Former 3rd district councilman Maury Goldberg, who held the seat for two decades prior to declining a re-election bid in 2003, placed three paid ads in Sunday's Tribune high school basketball preview supplement. It is unclear whether Maury's New Albany Today blog will go the way of John Yarmuth's LEO column during his bid for office.

It also is not known whether the Luddite incumbent, Steve Price, will seek to hold his seat, but if so, aficionados of instant gratification now can look forward to only the smallest of entertainment gaps between the recently concluded 2006 general election and the forthcoming primary campaigns, which will decide candidates for city offices, including what shapes up to be an epic mayoral slugfest.

Meanwhile, today's Tribune news coverage is subtitled, “A World Turned Upside Down,” with underachieving council reactionary Larry Kochert announcing the advent of a smoke-free New Albany, work scheduled to begin on our portion of the Ohio River Greenway, and publisher John Tucker advancing the unfashionable but spot-on viewpoint that a casino would not be the most profitable smart growth option for downtown Jeffersonville.

If you haven't read the Tribune for a while, pick up a copy of the Sunday edition, and see just how much has changed (well, ignore the spelling goof on the front page and the slothful web updates -- I'm referring to content here).

Contrast it with today's barren and uninspired Indiana Section in the Courier-Journal, which recently seems to have settled on New Albany and Floyd County coverage by a rotating committee of disinterested reporters, and see what is possible when a local paper finally starts playing aggressively.

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Item:
“After what New Albany has endured over the last four years, it will be fun to watch who New Albany choses for their new council people. I hope the cumulative I.Q. is more than 70! It takes smarts and problem solving skills to run and make decisions for a town (YOUR town, MY town).”
-Anonymous blog comment.

Item:
“You're allowed your opinion, but our family sure does like Councilman Price. Have you ever even tried working with him on an issue? His tenure is lookin' fine to us! Any others, though? We'd probably be in agreement on, ya gotta think, at least one?"
-Anonymous blog comment.

Item: After several members argued about drainage system repairs, (councilman) Donnie Blevins spoke up: “I’d like to say something, if you guys are done seeing who can pee the farthest.”
-Quoted in the Tribune.

In 2007, New Albany's city council seats will be contested. From its inception in 2004, NA Confidential has observed snippets of magic, extremities of pain, moments of statesmanlike vision, and endless hours of self-aggrandizing bilge emanating from the current aggregation, and if you've been watching this space for any length of time, you probably have a vague notion of what we're looking for in a city council representative – and which present members have come closest to the ideal.

A clue: As seated in the meeting room facing the council, look to the left and begin counting to five. Stop with the council president, who is in the middle. Those four on the right? Best change the topic.

Subject to the NA Confidential Community's usual rules for comment identity, i.e., screen names and pseudonyms are permitted so long as the senior editor knows who you are in real life, here's the chance for readers to weigh in on the question, “What qualities should we expect from our council representatives?”

Feel free to elaborate -- but let's keep it clean.

Barring an unexpected news item of significance, I'll leave this thread on the marquee until Monday afternoon.

Anyone for a viewing of "Iraq for Sale?"

It's been a year since our memorably frigid "Wal-Mart bites" movie screening at the Farmers Market in downtown New Albany. The movie's director, Robert Greenwald, has been hard at work, and his most recent cinematic muckraking exposition seems deserving of a showing -- perhaps indoors, at our meeting facility at NABC?

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Iraq for Sale is the story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war. Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.

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Here's an e-mail from the filmmakers.

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Dear Brave New Supporters,

When we started in January, war profiteering was a subject that desperately needed attention. It was a story that wasn't being told and the issue cried out for exposing. And then this past Sunday November 12 the issue was front and center on page one of the New York Times and all over the news. In different and various permutations, the headlines all read that there will be hearings, there will be oversight, questions will be asked. The profiteers will be exposed.

Is amazing too strong of a word? It is a result of all your efforts. Your support of Iraq for Sale and the issue of war profiteering has been remarkable.

So, thank you to the volunteer researchers who worked in secret to get us key information.

Thank you to the thousands of screening hosts who made over 4,000 official screenings happen.

Thank you to the Patriots Against War Profiteering who donated 8,500 DVDs to libraries, schools, and military installations around the country and around the world so this film can be seen by as wide an audience as possible. Read some responses from folks who received the film, like that of Army Medic Dan Walsh who wrote to us while serving in Iraq “This stuff needs to be known by the average American."

Thank you to Senator Dorgan, his staff and the Democratic Policy Committee who hosted hearings in DC on this issue- and invited people in Iraq for Sale to participate and share their stories. You can watch video of the hearings at the DPC website.

Thank you to the elected officials like Senator Harry Reid, Senator John Kerry, and Congressman James Clyburn who used the film to call attention to the issue and the need for oversight and accountability in the war.

Thank you to all the candidates who ran for office in last week's election - like Jim Webb, who saw the film and immediately agreed to introduce it at our DC premiere and then organized over 100 screenings in Virginia- and candidates across the country like Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders who used the film in their campaigns and urged voters to choose a new path.

Thank you to the folks at UNITE HERE who hosted hundreds of screenings across the Mid-West and reached thousands of union members with the film.

Thank you to the heroes and heroines in the military, like Sergeant Jon LaCore who wrote to us after watching the film in Iraq. In his letter he said, "I'm anxious to see if a change in the House and Senate will bring about a change here in Iraq." And, looking at the Sunday paper, it looks as though he may get to see change happen.

A deep heart-felt thank you to all the families and patriots who participated in this film. Your bravery in sharing your stories has touched millions. You have brought about real change and for that we are all grateful.

And finally THANK YOU to the 3,000 of you who contributed 50 dollars or more to make the film happen. We want you to know the front page of the New York Times would not have read the way it did, if all of you had not made it possible to begin the work on the film with your generous contributions.

Each and every one of us at Brave New Films sends our great appreciation, respect and deepest thanks for an amazing job. We celebrate the critical raising of this issue, we salute those who have stepped forward to tell the story at great personal sacrifice. We grieve for those whose lives have been sacrificed to profiteering. And, we look forward to the work ahead to make sure the profiteers are stopped.

Come January we look forward to getting your ideas on what's next for Brave New Films.

Yours sincerely,

Robert, Rick, Jim, Jimmy, Sarah, Tracy, Devin, Paris, Lissette, Jesse and everyone at Brave New Films