(2 of 2): It's been 600 days, and Bob Caesar and the city of New Albany continue to stonewall a legitimate request for Bicentennial Commission records. Can't someone just tell us about the books?

For a more comprehensive survey of what transpired in New Albany during the Bicentennial Year Zero End Times in 2013, go here.

(1 of 2): It has been 600 days since I asked Bob Caesar to show us the Bicentennial accounts, but at last, an entirely unsatisfactory answer has been proffered.

All we really wanted to know is how well those hired-gun Bicentennial books had sold, how many of the 5,000 (!) remained to be sold, and whether Redevelopment's loan was ever paid back. At the time, we were fairly gripped with mercenary gala nostalgia just thinking about it.

I've been trying to make sense of it ever since, and this brings us to the present.

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It was almost exactly 600 days ago when I first asked Councilman (and former Bicentennial Commission chairman) Bob Caesar in public during city council speaking time to see the commission's records.

Specifically, I asked for information pertaining to the commission's showpiece bicentennial book: How much it cost, who paid the bill, how many were sold, and how many remain.

There were follow-up e-mails with Caesar, in one of which he voluntarily acknowledged having these records (below), as well as further public reminders during council meetings. However, the records were never produced.

Circa March 2016, after a year had passed, I brought it up again during a council meeting, and Caesar opted for open evasion. He claimed the records are available on-line (untrue then, as now), and then waved off my reminder by saying I could file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) public record request if I wished.

So I did.

The city's corporate attorney Shane Gibson promptly acknowledged receiving my request, provided an equally timely date for it to be honored, then ignored his own deadline, waiting 21 weeks to act. This prompted me to file a complaint with the Indiana Public Access Counselor.

Last week (November 30), with the counselor's decision imminent, Gibson e-mailed me. He said I could have what he was willing to let me have (tax records and council meeting minutes, for the most part), but not what I specifically requested.

Here's the letter.

Following is the relevant text from Gibson's letter (above), in which he responds to my specific requests item by item. They're my original words from the initial request, with Gibson's replies underlined.

Requested Items:

Details should include all bids, contracts and expenditures for Bicentennial Commission activities, prime among them the process through with the Bicentennial book (“Historic New Albany, Indiana: By the River’s Edge,” by James Crutchfield) was contracted, published and sold, and the status of the Redevelopment Commission’s loan to make publication of this volume possible.

Response: The City does not possess the above referenced items.

As part of this request, I am requesting to know the current status of inventory with regard to these books. If books remain unsold, how many remain, and where are they stored? Also, when a Bicentennial book is given away at a public ceremony, who paid for it? These invoices are to be considered part of this request.

Response: The request for inventory is not a request for public records, however, the City does not possess any such document that details inventory. The City does not possess any of the other above referenced items.

As part of this request, I am further requesting copies of the official e-mail correspondence between Robert Caesar and other members of the Bicentennial Commission pertaining to these plans and transactions.

Response: The City does not possess the above referenced items.

Now, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Gibson would treat my information request in a spirit of spiteful nonchalance. It's what Team Gahan does.

At the same time, strictly speaking, he's probably telling the truth by means of carefully chosen words, and this is something I can at least appreciate. He says the city does not possess the referenced items, not that the referenced items do not exist. Presumably, someone else possesses them, and this certain someone undoubtedly is Caesar himself.

Because: Caesar previously admitted possessing them. Turning back the clock to June, 2015, here is my e-mail question to Caesar, followed by his reply.

Monday, June 08, 2015:
Do you recall a few weeks back, when I spoke a city council and expressed interest in learning about the state of the Bicentennial finances? Consider this my follow-up. So many things are happening that I let it slip, but I was (and remain) serious about seeing these numbers.

Tuesday, June 09, 2015:
None of the financials are on line. They are upstairs under a lot of stuff. I can tell you all bills are paid, and paid on time. All reporting to the state is done. And we did not use all of the city money. There was about 5 to 10K that stayed in the city funds.

That's right, folks.

Not on-line where the public might view them, and not even stored in an accessible public office, but "upstairs under a lot of stuff." Welcome to accountable governance, Nawbany-style.

To repeat, the records I've been requesting for over a year and a half, which detail the activities of a municipally-chartered body, one that by Caesar's own admission made use of at least a portion of taxpayer money to finance its activities, are not available at City Hall, where they should be filed, but "upstairs," perhaps in Caesar's attic, or (at the time) his former jewelry business.

That's incredible.

Consider also that by the spring of 2016, when Caesar sarcastically contended the commission's records were available on-line, he knew there was no way this assertion could be true, as it implied that someone attached to the city had taken the records from their resting place "Upstairs at Caesar's," except this surely didn't happen. If it did happen, and the records were transferred to City Hall to be scanned, why couldn't Gibson find them? What happened to them?

And so on, and so forth. Sadder still, there's no way of knowing if the records aren't currently taking up space in the landfill.

But bicentennial books definitely still exist. What about them?

At the time of the Bicentennial Commission's iron Luddite grip on the city's anniversary celebration, Caesar's own repeated public utterances suggested that 5,000 books were to be produced at a cost of $144,000 ($28 and change per book), and we know that seed money to accomplish this came from the Redevelopment Commission, following a farcical effort to extort money from the Southern Indiana Tourism Bureau.

In fact, Caesar told the council that profits from book sales would help pay for the cost of hiring an out-of-state-freelance writer and other publishing-related expenses. To put it gently, bountiful apocryphal evidence suggests that Caesar's dream scenario didn't come to fruition, which makes Gibson's reply last week even more potentially disingenuous.

Because: While the commission's records may not be within the city corporate attorney's possession, plenty of the books apparently remain in the city's loving reach, to be handed out by the mayor like Halloween candy at ribbon-cuttings and other civic events, as shown in this photo I took in 2015 at Underground Station. Look for the paving stone under the mayor's arm.

Gibson again: "The request for inventory (of books) is not a request for public records, however, the City does not possess any such document that details inventory. The City does not possess any of the other above referenced items."

If so, where is the mayor getting his many copies of the book?

Did he purchase them himself?

Are they stacked at his garage?

Shouldn't the Bicentennial Commission's records explain all this?

Shouldn't those records be available for public perusal, since public money was used to finance the bicentennial festivities?

Why can't just one of these persons -- any one of them, just take your pick -- man up, answer these questions and provide the requested records?

I know nothing will come of this, but by any measure of ethics as applied to elected officials, Bob Caesar's behavior in this instance merits censure by the city council. At the very least, perhaps other council members can help Caesar understand that when he has spent 600 days sidestepping what should be a simple information request, it makes the council look bad as a whole, as well as feeding suspicions that Caesar has something to hide.

Caesar is a self-styled budget hawk, constantly making references "for the record" about the grave necessity of paying close attention to the financials and accounting for every dime of public money.

Except when the jeweler fancies himself a publishing mogul. Below is the ordinance establishing Caesar's personal plaything commission.

BI-CENTENNIAL COMMISSION
§ 33.165 CREATION.
(A) There is hereby created the New Albany Bi-Centennial Commission.
(B) The membership of the Bi-Centennial Commission shall be composed of nine citizen members, five appointed by the Mayor and four appointed by the Common Council. The terms of office of the membership shall be for the period of time commencing with appointment and concluding at midnight on December 31, 2013. The Mayor and Common Council may remove and appoint its members at will.
(C) The mission of the Bi-Centennial Commission shall be to plan, coordinate and implement projects and events to celebrate the city’s bi-centennial. The Bi-Centennial Commission shall work with local citizens, businesses, organizations and institutions to accomplish its mission.
(D) The Bi-Centennial Commission shall adopt by-laws. These by-laws shall address such issues as meeting times and places, rules for the conduct of meetings, and other rules for the efficient operation of an advisory commission.
(E) The Bi-Centennial Commission shall appoint members to an advisory committee that it will work with to engage local citizens, businesses, organizations and institutions to accomplish its mission.
(Ord. G-09-06, passed 3-19-2009; Ord. G-12-01, passed 2-6-2012)

(1 of 2): It has been 600 days since I asked Bob Caesar to show us the Bicentennial accounts, but at last, an entirely unsatisfactory answer has been proffered.

Eight more months have dragged past since my last update on March 14, 2016, which is repeated below. Finally, after 600 days, I've received an answer, which is explained in detail in the second of two posts.

(2 of 2): It's been 600 days, and Bob Caesar and the city of New Albany continue to stonewall a legitimate request for Bicentennial Commission records. Can't someone just tell us about the books?

"The City does not possess the above referenced items."

Why has Bob Caesar (and now Shane Gibson) stonewalled a simple information request from a taxpaying citizen, and for 600 days? The following explanation provides an overview; it appeared on November 2, 2015.

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I'd sugarcoat it if I could, but it isn't possible. If you live in the 2nd council district, you're simply doomed for the next four years in terms of council representation.

Incumbent Bob Caesar vows to do anything possible to rectify street design deficiencies so long as nothing is done to rectify street design deficiencies.

Challenger Irv Stumler agrees, and ups the ante by promising to demolish any unsightly object, because appearances are all that matter.

In short, two well-off elderly white men, vying to see which of them imposes the same vision of anchors-in-place propriety on a fluid situation, with neither of them grasping anything that has occurred since about 1974, as experienced by the rest of us out here in the real world.

And then there's the legacy of our city's Bicentennial celebration two years ago.

Way back on January 7, 2014, we asked:

On the Bicentennial's Crutchfield seat cushions: How many were sold? Was the loan paid back?

All we really wanted to know is how well those hired-gun Bicentennial books had sold, how many of the 5,000 (!) remained to be sold, and whether Redevelopment's loan was ever paid back. At the time, we were fairly gripped with mercenary gala nostalgia just thinking about it.

A pile of these books surely still exist, unsold and destined to be dispersed at every glad-handing political photo opportunity between now and the Tricentennial, as at the dedication of Underground Station in the fall of 2015.

Look under the mayor's arm.

Dig it: Your life savings invested in a local independent business amid the economic development director's incessant protests that nothing can be done by the city to help you, and then when zero hour arrives, they hand you a Bicentennial book and scatter, never to be seen again until the day you drive past the Bob Evans and see all those city vehicles parked there.

But enough of chagrin.

Let's get back to Tiberius Severus Octavian Elagabalus Septimius Augustus Claudius Hadrian, the Protector of Pearl, Deliverer of all Downtown Datedness, Master of the Mercantile, and Guardian of the Gates.

Earlier this year (probably April) I used a portion of non-agenda speaking time at a city council meeting to ask Bob Caesar publicly about the Bicentennial finances in general, and the book in particular.

My question came almost two years after Vic Megenity urged the council to audit the Bicentennial commission, a request swept under the rug as council heads gravely nodded and the Gahan administration  shifted into full retribution mode, subjecting Megenity to the usual Coffey-led ritualistic scourging for daring to differ openly with The DemoDixieDisneycratic Machine.

In fact, my council meeting question to Caesar came at about the same time that the Sanctioned Monument to the Glorious Usual Heroes of the Bicentennial Park Cash Unlimited Uprising was being installed, this being the plaque omitting Megenity's name -- they may not read books, but it doesn't mean they don't know their knee-jerk Orwell behavioral tics.

In April, Caesar said he'd get the information for me. In early June, I realized Caesar had never done so, so I e-mailed him.

Monday, June 08, 2015:
Do you recall a few weeks back, when I spoke a city council and expressed interest in learning about the state of the Bicentennial finances? Consider this my follow-up. So many things are happening that I let it slip, but I was (and remain) serious about seeing these numbers.

The following day, Caesar replied.

Tuesday, June 09, 2015:
None of the financials are on line. They are upstairs under a lot of stuff. I can tell you all bills are paid, and paid on time. All reporting to the state is done. And we did not use all of the city money. There was about 5 to 10K that stayed in the city funds.

Baylor: But surely they are available for perusal? Does it explain the ultimate disposition of the books? And, with whom would I speak with to get a copy? Thanks for your prompt attention.

Caesar: Give me a little time and I'll get them.

Roughly 118 days passed, and I tried again in an e-mail on October 5, 2015.

I was reminded that it's been a few months. Do you have this (book) information yet?

Caesar did not respond, but I saw him at Harvest Homecoming just a few days later and asked whether he received the e-mail. He nodded assent. I told him there was no particular hurry, but I'd love to see the figures. He said okay.

Another three weeks have passed, and the election's tomorrow. I think you know why I haven't seen the financials yet, and won't be viewing them until Wednesday at the earliest.

But Jeff Gahan says he doesn't agree with anyone who believes his team isn't transparent -- and make no mistake, Caesar is on Gahan's team.

So, Bob ... these many months later ... think there's any chance we might be able to view the Bicentennial finances, and learn how many of those books remain unsold?

At some point before the Tricentennial?

Thanks.

My State Street Parking Garage public art dream.

Even better: Hang a Trabi right in the center.

Zoo TV Tour

Breathlessness begets toothlessness as rental property registration begins tomorrow.

Bring out yer slumlords!

The self-congratulatory boilerplate begins in three ... two ... one ...

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Official News and Information about the City of New Albany directly from the Mayor's office. You can also keep up with our full calendar of events by clicking HERE.

Rental Registration Program to Begin December 5th

December 01, 2016

Earlier this year, Mayor Jeff Gahan and Building Commissioner David Brewer urged the City Council to pass a rental registration program that requires landlords to register any properties within the city limits that will be rented to tenants. The Rental Housing Ordinance will increase communication that will help prevent the deterioration of residential housing, assist in compliance of minimum rental housing standards, improve safety for residents, protect the character and stability of residential neighborhoods, and preserve and increase property values throughout the city.

For more information about this history of this ordinance, please see here: http://newalbanycityhall.com/home/2016/3/7/rental-housing-ordinance-a-must-for-new-albany

To view the Rental Housing Registration Ordinance, please click HERE.

Rental Property Registration will begin on Monday December 5th. All landlords within the city will have until January 31st, 2017 to register their properties.

>> Click Here for a Rental Property Registration Form <<

To register a property, please download and complete the form (linked HERE). After completing the form, you can mail the form in or turn it in at the City-County Building. A registration fee of $5.00 will be applied per rental address/parcel.

To mail in your completed rental registration form, please send both the form and $5.00 registration fee (checks only) to:

City of New Albany Building Department
311 Hauss Square, Rm. #329
New Albany, IN 47150

To e-mail your completed application, please send it to RentalRegistration@cityofnewalbany.com

If an application is e-mailed, you will still need to pay your registration fee either in person or through the mail.

"Engineers design streets for speeds well above the posted limit, so that speeding drivers will be safe—a practice that, of course, causes the very speeding it hopes to protect against."

See also: Charles Marohn's "The Five Ways Engineers Deflect Criticism."

The title of this post is explained by Jeff Speck, right here, but before we consider the "questionable applications of data" on the part of traffic (or "transportation") engineers, resulting in streets intended to accommodate automotive speed at the expense of wider societal safety, here is Speck again to metaphorically explain what HWC Engineering has done to his wonderful walkability plan for New Albany.

The relevant passage is in bold.

Speck: Resist the urge to make every street a highway

Urban design expert Jeff Speck -- who has made repeated appearances in Des Moines -- says transportation engineers often see every new street as a chance to build a highway.

That's a mistake in an era when streets need to be designed to meet diverse community needs, including the ability to walk through an area without crossing four to eight lanes of speedy traffic.

Speck, who runs his own consulting firm and teaches at Harvard University, writes in a blog post in The Atlantic: "Even when traffic engineers have the best intentions, too many simply lack the tools to make successful places. In the typical American city, asking a traffic engineer to design a walkable street is like asking a hammer to insert a screw."

Of course, HWC's merry hammering at screws is occurring according to the wishes of a City Hall that brains long ago forgot. Speck's New Albany streets study might as well have been written in Gaelic, insofar as Mayor Jeff Gahan is concerned. Sections applicable to campaign finance beak-wetting were retained for modification beyond recognition, and the rest was flushed.

The result?

Speck's amazing and transformative principles of walkability now have been truncated to achieve entirely unrelated imperatives, like paving envy and federal monies (see "beak wetting," above), as well as abject capitulation to trucking interests; hence the grainy, filler-stuffed sausage, and a two-way street grid plan stripped of most ancillary usefulness -- but just as with the elevation of the Mighty Trumpolini, Nawbanians elected Gahan, and now you get exactly what you want, good and hard, in the form of a city being built according to his atrophied, sleight-of-hand, Mickey Mouse "vision."

That felt great, so back to the point: Here's how traffic engineers knowingly build streets fit only for speeding cars.

Why The Rules Of The Road Aren’t Enough To Prevent People From Dying, by Anna Maria Barry-Jester (FiveThirtyEight)

... In 2013, 32,719 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the United States, and 2.3 million were injured, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Those numbers were down from the previous year, but motor vehicle crashes remain a leading cause of death, and speed is a leading cause of accidents. The NHTSA estimates a $277 billion annual price tag for those accidents, with an additional $594 billion for “harm from the loss of life and the pain and decreased quality of life due to injuries.”

Given the social and economic toll of speeding, one might assume that we set speed limits with careful calculations aimed at maximizing safety. But that’s not exactly how it works, and a history of questionable applications of data is partly to blame.

Umberto Eco on "Eternal Fascism" and fascism's common features.

Simply stated, the late Umberto Eco is a great favorite of mine. To me, writers, intellectuals and thinkers matter.

They matter a lot.

Umberto Eco: “When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.”

This website aims to present all the aspects of the Writer, Linguist, Philosopher and the Man UMBERTO ECO. Eco was born in Alessandria, Italy on January 5th, 1932 and died at the age of 84 in Milano, Italy on February 19th, 2016.

Umberto Eco is still best known for his novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose) which was published in 1980. The book is an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. In 1986 a movie by the same name, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Sean Connery was released.

His 1988 novel Foucault's Pendulum could be described as a "thinking man's Da Vinci Code".

Umberto Eco was President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici, University of Bologna. Additionally he has written a multitude of academic texts, children’s books and essays.

Eco's 1995 essay Ur-Fascism has exploded back into significance.

Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism, by Josh Jones (Open Culture)

One of the key questions facing both journalists and loyal oppositions these days is how do we stay honest as euphemisms and trivializations take over the discourse? Can we use words like “fascism,” for example, with fidelity to the meaning of that word in world history? ...

Let's snip through to the list.

 ... While Eco is firm in claiming “There was only one Nazism,” he says, “the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change.” Eco reduces the qualities of what he calls “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism” down to 14 “typical” features. “These features,” writes the novelist and semiotician, “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

This abridged list (available in full at The New York Review of Books) comes to us from Kottke, by way of blogger Paul Bausch, who writes “we have a strong history of opposing authoritarianism. I’d like to believe that opposition is like an immune system response that kicks in.”

Cities may be able to curb the Mighty Trumpolini, but first, some unsightly trash.

Full disclosure: I'm linking to this article primarily because it's an excellent platform for this "take out the garbage" photo, sourced by the Green Mouse.

The article's pretty good, too.

Can Cities Counter the Power of President-Elect Donald Trump?, by Benjamin Barber (The Nation)

As the federal government turns toward nationalism, local governments will become crucial beacons of pluralism.

The new American reality suggests a very particular role for cities. The dominance of the Trump-brand of Republican party over all three branches of government renders the old balance of powers ineffective. Yet America’s cities and the networks they have forged with cities across the world—in bodies like the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, the US Conference of Mayors, EuroCities, and the new Global Parliament of Mayors—have the weight to contain, and push back against, power.

The clock is ticking. Bridge completion and tolling is coming by the end of December, and Team Gahan is 100% unprepared.

Here's the set:

Now we know when the East End bridge will open (maybe) (Business First)

We have a tentative date for the opening of the East End bridge: the weekend of Dec. 17-18.

And the spike:

So when will tolling begin? Mindy Peterson, a spokeswoman for the downtown crossing and the RiverLink tolling system, told the CJ that a start date hasn't been determined. But she said tolls could be levied on the Lincoln and Kennedy bridges before the East End bridge opens.

That's two weeks, maybe three. What's the short term plan, Jeff?

Nuttin', honey.

 ... Supporters of two-way conversions say the change could help discourage Spring and Elm streets as a Ohio River Bridges Project toll-dodging method. The Sherman Minton Bridge connecting West Louisville and New Albany is one of two bridges that will be toll free at the end of the year.

"They've dragged their feet so much that the tolls are going to happen before they do anything," Mark Sanders, vice president of the (East Spring Street) neighborhood association, said.

It turns out that improv isn't just for comedy clubs any more.

A handy attention-getter: "Want a More Progressive Democratic Party? Stop Donating to It."

Think of it as tough love.

As for Occam's Razor in everyday life: The reason for the gaping leadership void in the Floyd Democratic Party is precisely the absence of leadership, nothingness less, and nothingness more. Meet the new loss ... same as the old loss.

Want a More Progressive Democratic Party? Stop Donating to It, by Lawrence Hess (The Nation)

...  My wife and I are donors to progressive causes and candidates. Over the years we have also given to Democratic Party campaign committees in efforts—along with other progressive donors—to move the party in the progressive direction. Now we are through with that. We will not donate to any of the Democratic Party’s four campaign committees or any allied independent expenditure committees unless and until the party makes meaningful and substantial progressive changes regarding personnel, targeted voters, and agenda. We encourage all party donors, at whatever level, to join us.

Long before the Mightly Trumpolini, New Albany's Genius of the Flood Plain was tossing bales of taxpayer money at departing corporations.

First, the more topical reference.

1,000 Carrier Jobs Trump Celebrates Are Drop in the Bucket of Manufacturing Losses; Indiana alone has lost over 150,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000, by Josh Zumbrun (Wall Street Journal)

But Mayor Jeff Gahan's been there with the corporate welfare, although there were no mud anchor t-shirts to be handed out 22 months ago because Pillsbury was making like the Eagles.

As an aside, On the Border was a fine album in its day -- so fresh and vibrant, as opposed to "crony capitalism" economic development handouts.

From January 26, 2015.

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Information about the Pillsbury "business retention and factory-modernization package."

Two morsels for thought as we await the outcome.

$7 million works out to $3,500 per worker, per year, for five years (based on 400 employees at Pillsbury and Sonoco). From Charlie White's C-J coverage:

General Mills purchased Pillsbury in summer of 2000 from British food company Diageo for $10.5 billion. In fiscal year 2014, General Mills had global net sales of $19.2 billion.

Indiana economic development officials provided General Mills more than $100,000 in incentives in the last 10 years to ensure kept its workforce of about 480. But over the last three to four years, the company shifted manufacturing of some product lines to its more modern operation in Murfreesboro, Tenn., plant. The food giant spent $100 million expanding there four years ago.

Second, there is no reference to the concurrent implications of negotiations between General Mills and the union, as mentioned previously. Is our $7 million in proposed incentives keeping pay as it is, or does it accompany concessions from the union?

In trying to educate myself about these issues, I've been wondering if there's a Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union local in Murfreesboro. If there is, I can't find on-line references to it.

Readers, do you know?

Worth the dough? New Albany may offer $7 million to keep Pillsbury Plant, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — Last week, several New Albany City Council members pledged to diligently work on solutions to keep the General Mills plant open.

On Tuesday, the council will be asked to give its blessing for a $7 million bond package Mayor Jeff Gahan’s administration hopes will stave off the closure, which General Mills announced Jan. 8 could happen within 18 months ...

 ... "We have assembled a business retention and factory-modernization package for our friends at General Mills to consider,” Gahan stated in a news release issued Friday afternoon.

“Our goal is to keep the New Albany facility in continuous operation for as long as possible.”

Top Ten posts at NA Confidential for November, 2016.

No. 1: Him Gentleman's Boutique on Pearl Street.

No. 2: New eats (Lady Trons's) coming to old Little Chef. 

Thanks for reading NA Confidential, where we enjoy burrowing beneath the headlines to offer unique local perspectives. November continued a recent trend in heightened readership, testifying to a keen interest in local stories, perhaps because they're being chronically under-served elsewhere.

The list begins with fifteen "honorable mention" posts, before concluding with the Top Ten, escalating to No. 1. Stats are derived from Google's internal numbers listings.

FIFTEEN HONORABLE MENTION

350

America's "empire of chaos," a cannon now turned inward and pointed at YOU, lord.

353

There is wisdom in NYC restaurateur Danny Meyer’s post-election letter to his employees.

354 (tie)

ON THE AVENUES: Kind-a full-a you know what, but now we're going to find out whether Jeff Gahan has any cattle under his hat.

354 (tie)

Mike Rowe's election analysis: We're trying to lick a cat without actually putting our tongues on it.

357

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: 20 cherished ways to say "you’re fired."

362

One Southern Indiana seeks roadside assistance as "Indianapolis Voters Overwhelmingly Pass Nation's First Income Tax for Transit."

364

True, although Uncle Walt had a better year in 2016 -- and he's been dead since 1966.

372

"The real triumph of (neoliberalism) was not its capture of the right, but its colonization of parties that once stood for everything Hayek detested."

375

Our big fat Hibbardendum emerges fully erect: If all them Democrats got beat, how did they manage this tax increase?

387

When CM Caesar begins praising walkability downtown, you know a space alien has occupied his body.

391

Update: The Bored meets, except for me and my monkey. Can someone loan me a code talker?

402

Georgetown, look not to NA's Bicentennial Park as a harbinger of revitalization. Beak-wetting? That's another matter entirely.

417

ON THE AVENUES: Don't be a Dickey, local Democrats. The verdict is in, and it's time for a change.

431

The next downtown merchant meeting is tomorrow morning (Tuesday, Nov. 15) at Sorg's Sport & Wellness.

437

Rice Bowl Korean Restaurant is a delightful addition to New Albany's diverse dining scene.

453

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode XIII, This Isn’t the Article I Expected to Write.

TOP TEN

477

A Plan Commission docket heavy on lurid construction porn, but isn't hardcore past its prime?

479

ASK THE BORED: This week they're being more secretive than usual. Wonder why?

507

Pillsbury plant purchased; Team Gahan livid at press release snub. In other news, sun set to rise tomorrow morning.

548

As of Tuesday's epic Democratic fail, Gahan's a bigger fish in a smaller pond -- and Dickey's looking for a food taster.

559

Floyd County government and illegal dumping: Who knew, and when did they know it?

600

"For the decent straight men who are angered by a Trump presidency, four things you can do to help us all."

616

Two Way Streets now? Finally? Gahan sets the bar as low as humanly possible and somehow clears it, as BOW opts for a rational street grid.

864

R.I.P. Mick Neely.

3,523

The old Little Chef/Coqui's is the new Lady Tron's, coming soon, with a whole new color scheme.

3,619

Him Gentleman's Boutique grand opening is Monday, November 14.

Not here in Nawbany, but out in the wider world: "Protected bike lanes save lives."

I'd like to have a buck for every time I've endured a "conversation" like this.

Autocentric Artie: (anguished scream) How can THEY take lanes away from cars for bikes? I never see any bikes here!

Me: You don't see bikes because it isn't safe to ride them on high-speed streets. Make streets safe and they will come.

AA: Streets are for cars, not bikes! All bicyclists do is break the law! How am I supposed to drive to the gym?

Me: You know, you're an entitled, coddled, auto-centric half-wit.

AA: Why, thanks very much. Cars get me off, you know. They're better than porn.

At this point the chat usually ends, but let's not forget the moral of the story, as proven every day the whole world over: How did the human race ever manage to survive before internal combustion engines?

Why Protected Bike Lanes Save Lives, by David Dudley (City Lab)

A new study shows how cities with separated cycling infrastructure saw big safety improvements and higher ridership numbers.

Several weeks ago, painted lines and flexible plastic lane dividers began materializing on Maryland Avenue, one of the major north-south arteries that connect downtown Baltimore to the residential neighborhoods above the city. The resulting 2.6-mile route is called a cycle track, one of the city’s first examples of fully protected bike infrastructure. This new two-lane bike highway eliminated a lane of automobile traffic and 15 parking spaces, to the disgruntlement of many motorists who used the rowhouse-lined thoroughfare as a means of bolting downtown. But it’s a been something of a godsend to bikers, especially those (like me) weary of juking through traffic on a narrow, bus-intensive city streets ...

ON THE AVENUES: Once more with feeling, because as the notable American philosopher Moe Bandy once sang, “Here I am, drunk again.”

ON THE AVENUES: Once more with feeling, because as the notable American philosopher Moe Bandy once sang, “Here I am, drunk again.”

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

October 27 was only five weeks ago, though it seems like a lifetime or two, maybe three. It was just before the invasion of the orange electoral body-snatching tsunami from the black lagoon, on a Thursday, when I dipped into the lengthening NA Confidential archive for a sparsely updated look at my first 12 years of blogging.

In other words, a “best of” rehash, blatant stalling to mark a week’s time, this being what happens when inspiration refuses to strike and perspiration fails to incite.

A regular reader subsequently offered this comment:

I would prefer to see a new, original reflection on the 12 years. It's 12 years for us, too.

Fair enough, I thought, and so amid the dying embers of a New Democratic Order poised to perform a graceless non-Hubert Humphrey Humpty Dumpty maneuver, I began writing just such an essay.

Then came the election, and BOOM – immediate column obsolescence. I trashed it, because if all we really need to know we learned in kindergarten, then the children have seized the asylum and re-education camps can’t be very far behind.

Fortunately, our recent trip to Sicily proved somewhat restorative. My mood has improved. It’s time again to mutter epithets, emit sighs, shrug shoulders, pull myself up from the barroom floor, shake off the sawdust and spittle, and resume throwing punches.

Although, in the main, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.

---

I’ve always insisted that the impetus for NA Confidential’s birth in 2004 was my benumbed stupefaction at the reality of a second term for George W. Bush, gradually alchemizing into a fresh resolve to make meaningful shift happen by narrowing my gaze to the interstate-grade streets outside our front steps.

How very quaint this seems today.

Still, the Rise of Mighty Trumpolini and the Fall of the House of Clinton bring the blog full circle. The way forward is all the way back to the past, where I started. Doubling down on localism, grassroots and community is the most rational course available to me, in spite of the eternal complication of my personal identity crisis.

That's because I’ve rediscovered my inner European, and it’s less of joking matter than ever before. I’ve never felt entirely comfortable in my “own” country. A majority of my countrymen (and women) have never made much sense to me, whether they’re residing in Palm Springs, Key West, Juneau or directly across Spring Street.

Now, whether self-identifying as red, blue or purple, they’ve all become batshit crazy, every last one of them -- and no, I'm not exaggerating. Roughly 120 million of them voted for one or the other of the two most disliked political personages in American history. Does this strike you as healthy in any way?

Can’t I escape, and become an expatriate, cozily burrowed inside Sicily’s 33%-of-GDP black economy, living a life of espresso, cannoli and Catanese horse steaks, existing entirely apart from politics, governments and patriotism … reading, studying, learning and enjoying beauty?

Yes, I know. It isn’t possible, and Italy has big problems of its own. Instead, I’m destined to remain a stranger in this increasingly strange land. Accordingly, as my pal Putin's V.I. Lenin famously asked, “What is to be done?”

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know – at least yet.

My thoughts at the moment are provisional and subject to change, and whether you realize it or not, so are yours. Previous rules will mutate, and we’ll adapt to them. I’m down with the challenges and eager to join the resistance if necessary, but I’m also realistic. The fog of battle is gooey and thick. It’s the hardest thing in the world to wait and see, and yet wisest in the short term, and so I fully intend to sandbag the bigger picture until the battle lines can be discerned.

To reiterate, I propose to stay the course and honor the founding epiphany of this blog.

Local engagement remains a more fruitful use of my available time than being emotionally distracted by matters so far beyond my atrophied reach that self-induced alcoholic paralysis is the only likely result of trying to corral them – and when you’re already drinking copiously to only barely cope with the illustrious likes of our Genius of the Flood Plain, Shyster Shane and Pinocchio Rosenbarger, self-care is absolutely imperative.

Localism does not imply restricting or insulating ourselves from a wider world. It never has. The mantra of “Think Globally, Act Locally” provides a solid foundation for confronting the vicissitudes of the planet by seeking functionality right here at home, as elusive as it continues to be.

Yes, of course: The issues and outcomes of a national election campaign matter, but macro begins with micro, and always has. We must start somewhere, and it might as well be here.

---

So, how is NA Confidential looking, 12 years later?

I’m avoiding an answer because frankly, I’ve no idea. I don’t know where to begin searching, and moreover, it isn’t clear to me if I’m even in a position to offer an opinion, or to judge any of it.

It is my belief that the weight of future others – call them posterity – ultimately measures the output of the planet’s pamphleteers, agitators, polemicists, rabble-rousers, provocateurs and maybe bloggers, too, and yet depressingly, posterity itself has become conceptually undependable.

As an aside, speaking from a heart three sizes too small, I’ve spent the past 12 years writing the contemporary history of my town, and to be truthful, it has been a chronically undervalued labor of love, not to mention underpaid, although I never expected to profit from it and never will, because artists are supposed to be impoverished and unappreciated in their own lifetimes, but c’mon!

Is it too much to ask for a nice civic plaque? Just bolt it to an immovable object like Warren Nash?

The biggest problem with “In Posterity We Trust” is that from the vantage point of December, 2016, at a time when we’ve all gone pirouetting through the looking glass, it’s no longer certain there’ll be sufficient agreement about the very nature of factual, objective reality, such that my work – my bile, this artistic expression, these labored stanzas – can be properly assessed.

Furthermore, considering the perennially vacant unresponsiveness of our local leadership-pretend caste, which functions primarily as a chronological extension of the NAHS student council without the teens' vigor and wit, why remain engaged at all?

Over a period of twelve years, we’ve seen the petty, loutish, self-greasing wheels continue to turn. The artist’s mounting despair, frustration and self-doubt can be palpable. Is anyone out there reading? Does anyone even care? Has thinking in Nawbany been outlawed?

I keep writing because of a massive, innate stubbornness. It is a reaction I can control, one remaining within my power assuage, to awaken in the morning and survey the thoughts knocking around in my brain like bouncing baby bingo balls, hammer them into some measure of coherence, and move them down the chute as quickly as possible so other ideas can gestate.

I want my writing to be read, and for the words to matter – to inform, explain, entertain and motivate. However, first and foremost, it’s an itch that must be scratched, and so it goes … and there it is.

This “blogging” must be something worth doing, or I’d choose another pursuit, but the truth is that while I can’t imagine not writing, my sabbatical’s coming to an end.

The time is fast approaching for one of two options: Either get a job, or create one. My preference is for the latter, and after all, whether it’s Pence in ascent or Gahan in decline, we’re going to need a place to congregate, commiserate, drink, eat, conspire and chat our way through it.

I’m working on a few ideas. You’ll be kept posted. Ciao, arrivederci, and damn, that tripe stew at La Terrazza del Patrone was tasty.

---

November 17 and 24: (BYE WEEKS, literally and figuratively)

November 11: ON THE AVENUES: Kind-a full-a you know what, but now we're going to find out whether Jeff Gahan has any cattle under his hat.

November 10: ON THE AVENUES: Don't be a Dickey, local Democrats. The verdict is in, and it's time for a change.

November 3: ON THE AVENUES: It’s our big fat Hibbardendum, and Jeff Gahan is carrying the superintendent across the threshold as Metro United Way tosses rice and One Southern Indiana steals all the liquor.

October 27: ON THE AVENUES: It's NAC's 12th birthday, and the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Has time run out for Good Times? If so, what's next at 114 East Market?

I walked past Vickie's Good Time(s) Bar & Grill yesterday and peeked into the window. Items appear to have been boxed and stacked, as though to be hauled away.

About a month ago, the Green Mouse heard a rumor that the building was being purchased by a local businessman, and judging from the scene today, I'm guessing there is finality to the sale. It will be interesting to see what happens next. The building desperately needs deep cleaning and rehabilitation, so let's hope that's coming.

Here's the Historic Preservation Commission listing for 114 E. Market Street. Note that in the 1965 photo, Love's Cafe is up and running.

This heavily-altered commercial building was once home to Lewis Hammond's 'Yankee Doodle' store, the interior of which is seen below in a photo from about 1917.

The exterior photo, from the collection of the Indiana Room of the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library, shows this building circa 1965, with many of its historic features still exposed.

Are those three windows still somewhere beneath the vinyl? Only time will tell.

Irv declares City Hall null and void: "It's time to make Nawbany Freight Again," declares rebel leader from mountain hideout.

They aren't exactly the Sierra Maestre; then again, New Albany isn't Havana and Irv's clean-shaven unlike Fidel, though Jeff Gahan does a perfectly serviceable Batista. But we make do.

ALL HAIL THE PASS-THROUGH TRUCKING REVOLUTION!

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

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

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

Can They Count?, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

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

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

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

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

Because what really happened was this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Albany Heating and Air presents ...

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

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