New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 71: Neighborhood "quality of life," 80,000 lbs at a time.

This baby was flying.

It's amazing how they can block whole houses. It's more amazing that City Hall still insists there is no truck-through issue worth conceding.

Lots of Fast Tracks coming past lately. I'd guess average speeds are around 45 mph.

Of course, the 13th Tiger Trucking Cut Through Street is heavily traveled. Tiger used to go racing past the house full throttle. Now, we can hear three gear shifts as the trucks pull onto Spring from 13th. Jeff Gahan seems to think this approximates quality of life. Perhaps that's why he diverted these monsters from Main Street, where property values need enhancing -- and who cares about the cost to the rest of us?

How many normal car lengths is that?

Great place to ride a bike, isn't it Mr. Rosenbarger?

BREAKING: Rogar Bayler leaks plan for new city hall at 922 Culbertson.

Duh -- I mean, he left Ceausescu out.

Keep me posted on that public access request, will you?

Change of venue for Wednesday's planning meeting of Two Way Streets Now.

Take note.

Not only are those damned outsiders conspiring against NA's peculiar one-way institution as the mayor blissfully snores and Warren Naps, but so many residents are interested in Two Way Streets Now's meeting that the venue has changed.

Due to a larger than anticipated crowd - the meeting this Wednesday January 21 at 7pm will be moved to SEW FITTING 156 East Main Street. I anticipate short (30 minutes or so) informational and planning meeting with the goal of establishing talking points, enlisting volunteers, compiling an email list of attendees, rallying support and scheduling follow up meetings. I expect after adjourning the meeting, those that would like, could meet us at a local watering hole to get to know each other better. Please share!

Meanwhile, the best and most succinct comment yet on the topic of the streets comes (as usual) from our dear friend Ted.

I'm supportive restoring 2-way traffic in New Albany. The Speck study is a good document. It's all really just common sense. In fact, it was common sense 10 years ago to slow traffic and remove our one way drag strips. I'm confident the brain trust at the city understood this perfectly. But maybe a connection was lost between brain and balls. Alas, we will fight the fight for what we shouldn't really have to fight for. To be honest, all I really want to know is the implementation schedule. But we will do a little dance for a year or so. It's all a tad frustrating.

An absence of brain trust balls surely has been a recurring feature of life in New Albany, and I share the frustration. Isn't it regrettable that we must outwork both whacked-out opponents and city hall itself,?

But there it is, and we must. Yesterday Jeff Speck himself posted these two photos on Twitter.

That's right: It is a view of Quills, and the two-way signs I was hoofing about, placing in windows, in October of 2013 -- two years after candidate Gahan said he'd do something about the streets, and one and a half years prior to the mayor's present coordinates in his down low bunker, hiding from the issue he formerly claimed was his.

Balls. Where?

ESNA's signs started popping up early in 2014, placing it well ahead of the typically timorous political curve. Oddly, as someone noted recently, the local Democratic Party mentions the word "walkable" in its official platform ...

 ... although to find it, one must be prepared to endure music that sounds like it was borrowed from the restroom audio at Disney World. That fantasy land approach seems to pervade the party's customary stance of non-action. Wonder why?

In truth, there will be a price if local politicos don't take ownership of this issue, but even if they awaken and do so, they're only borrowing ownership because we're allowing them to do so. That's because this issue, and the streets themselves, belong to residents -- and the residents have been on top of it for a decade or more.

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 70: BOW takes a bow as Warren Naps.

On Monday morning, there were three Tiger trucks this size on the street between 3:00 a.m and 3:30 a.m. I'm starting to feel them later in the evening, and earlier in the morning. The one above was spotted in early afternoon Monday. He was coming from Vincennes, and took a turn so wide that he was almost on the sidewalk on the southwest corner -- and not far from that parked car's ass.

Isn't he a beauty? 80,000 lbs loaded, and no longer plaguing the waking and sleeping hours of Main Street residents in desperate need of having their property values raised by Mayor Jeff Gahan, even as residents of other streets cope with the diversion that doesn't exist, according to a City Hall well versed in Orwellian fabrications.

And there he goes, a couple of blocks down to take the now customary left turn onto 13th. He'll be back in a bit, coming back out from 13th onto Spring. Refresh my memory: John Rosenbarger lives on Main Street, doesn't he?

See that Fast Track Mack? See those parked vehicles? See Doug England's half-hearted bicycle lane? Does that look like a safe place to be riding a bike? Could this be why ever since the two bike lanes were drawn, and Hizzoner declared victory over a tanker truck of red wine, most adult bicyclists are riding on the sidewalk?

One after the other, as Warren Naps and the Bored of Works listlessly rubber stamps the mayor's back alley directives. That's New Albany. Had enough of it yet?

A belated goodbye to A Costumiery.

In January of 2012, Dale Moss (then still writing for the C-J) wrote about the owners of A Costumiery, who were having a very hard time of it.

Trouble hard to mask for New Albany costume shop (paid archive only)

Jean Crook struggled for the best way to sum up her predicament.

"I'm stuck," she said softly, eyes downward. "I truly am."

Along with husband John, Crook operates A Costumiery in what was built long ago as a grocer's mansion on Spring Street in New Albany. There, the elderly couple lives, and there a business dies. Not one customer came calling during my recent visit. At least no bill collector did, either.

A Costumiery was always there, ever since we moved into the neighborhood, just a block down the street. I saw Dale's piece and got the chills, because wasn't this every independent small business owner's nightmare? The Crooks were well past retirement age. Their business was dead in the water. They could afford neither to carry on, nor to quit. The house was falling part before their eyes and ours, and they were still living in it ... stuck.

It was so very sad, and maybe that's why I filed it in the anxiety closet and forgot. Some demons are too close to home, both literally and figuratively.

I've walked past the old grocer's mansion several hundred times since then. Until last weekend, I didn't even know that John Crook died in March of 2013, or that Jean Crook was ill and had moved away to live with family. Late last week, a small "Yard Sale" sign was out in the yard, and we began seeing items big and small being carried out -- couches, gowns, U-Haul boxes. We stopped in on Saturday to see what was left, and there was a lot.

Someone asked what would happen to the rest of the business inventory and personal items once the yard sale concluded. "I suppose into the trash," came the answer. We ran into Dave Barksdale, and he observed that although the house (once emptied) needs love, the bones are good. The house itself probably has seen this process a few times; if walls could talk.

The former grocer's house and costumery is for sale; there's a phone number on the door. I took photos to remember A Costumiery as a business, and perhaps also for comparison's sake, some day, when it has been renovated and is being showcased during the annual Historic Home Tour.

The PC: Ripped straight from the pages of an Onion satire: “13 white males not really so eager to discuss issues like racism and sexism.”

I don't always use space at NAC to tout my beer writing at Potable Curmudgeon, but today is an exception. The column appears on Mondays. You may or may not agree, but in any event, thanks for reading.

The PC: Ripped straight from the pages of an Onion satire: “13 white males not really so eager to discuss issues like racism and sexism.”

 ... I’ve changed my mind many times when presented with persuasive evidence contrary to my previous assumptions. I used to be satisfied drinking Stroh’s – then I wasn’t. My mind and my tastes evolved, and an immensely enjoyable 30-year journey through the world has followed. Changes in latitude could not have occurred without changes in attitude.

BREAKING: Proposed yard signs for the new "There's Only One Way to NA" anti-Speck group.

I'm told the first organizational meeting will take place in Clarksville, the second one in Floyds Knobs, the third ...

Damned outsiders conspiring against NA's peculiar one-way institution as mayor blissfully snores.

When John Smith first divulged his status as an outsider in Stay Inside City, he was greeted with the predictable pleasantry from a New Albany lifer (paraphrasing):

Why don't ya go back to Lanesville if you don't like our indigenous neighborhood interstates?

At least there were no obscenities. That's progress.

Meanwhile, there'll be a Two Way Streets Now planning meeting on Wednesday, because owing to persistent public expressions of quaking fear and non-committal indifference on the part of city officials who can't be seen supporting a study they (supposedly) instigated, proponents of the Speck proposals are going to have to do every bit of the heavy lifting, and they might as well get started.

One influential vote already has been cast: The band Houndmouth posted this on Facebook:

Fellow New Albanians and Southern Indiana folks, what do you guys say about getting some Two Way Streets downtown? Needs to happen. This Jeff Speck guy nailed it.

Here's the News and Tribune piece.

Notice how Gahan consistently cannot bring himself to publicly reference any other aspect of Speck's study beyond what is needed to cope with tolling pass-throughs.

Do we even trust them for just that?

The word on the street is, New Albany group to hold meeting, by Daniel Suddeath

 ... “I want to emphasize this is just a study,” Gahan said. “(Speck) brings up some really good points. Our job now is to make sure we’re prepared so that the tolling doesn’t have a negative impact on our downtown.”

Proponents of the study believe converting streets to two-way traffic will make downtown safer and help businesses.

With city elections to be held this year, Smith stressed the issue isn’t partisan, but added there’s support from many in the community for a candidate who would back changes to the street grid.

“Quite frankly if Republicans are intent on using their momentum from last election to challenge in the city election, this is an issue they should jump on,” he said.

Dr. King, Pa Hibbard and some Public Enemy.

With characteristic tone deafness, several Southern Indiana school systems (including NA-FC) are using MLK Day as a snow make-up day. I can't think of a better reason to skip class.

The Meaning of The King Holiday, by Coretta Scott King

I had no idea that conservatives are now taking to claim Dr. King as one of them. I can't think of a better reason to cringe.

Why conservatives call MLK their hero, by John Blake (CNN)

"We must keep moving. If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving."

Ditching the fatalism and pushing for change in politics. Is it time?

A second Sunday link from the Guardian, but only because it makes sense. Granted, the context is British. However, the content applies very much to the United States in general, and to New Albany in particular.

2015 general election: enough of the fatalism. It’s a great time to push for change in politics, by Armando Iannucci

Politicians are fearful, the electorate is confused, but let’s harness the ideas and passion alive in the country

It really says a lot about the state of British politics that the televised leaders’ debate I’m most looking forward to is the one between Russell Brand and Al Murray. The way things stand, it looks more likely than a Cameron v Miliband debate. It also looks the more interesting.

A Brand/Murray smackdown would be hugely serious and relevant since it would go to the heart of what ails the UK’s democratic condition today: whether voting in elections is worth bothering with at all. Russell Brand has spent the past six months arguing the party system is so busted that true and lasting change can only be achieved by turning our backs on it and, come election day, staying at home in droves. Al Murray, on the other hand, embraces the political process by choosing to stand against Nigel Farage as the Pub Landlord, in effect saying that voting counts because it can take real power away from those whom you fear or mistrust.

Taking power away from those we fear or mistrust. Think about that.

Politicians have always been protective about their brand, but a collective caution seems to have overwhelmed them. It’s difficult, despite the policy reviews and speeches, to know precisely what Labour is in favour of. Which spending budgets will they protect and which ones will they abandon to the fires?

Think of this recent summary of local "Democratic" platform principle: "Being physically cleaner, financially stronger, and fundamentally better." What does it really mean? Has any of it been accomplished? Has the candidate who pronounced it in 2011 been willing at any point during the past three years to seriously examine the words, to place them into context, and to do so in the company or real people, as opposed to unelected back alley boards?

Conversely, NA Confidential has been exploring platform planks for 10 solid years. There is more genuine content here in a month than the local Democratic Party has mustered since FDR's final term. The trick is learning from it, linking it together, and being able to clearly explain it.

On the Tory side, we know they’ll give us a referendum on Europe but won’t say which side they’ll take. Nor will they supply us with any basic indication of how the laws of maths can deliver us from debt by taking more money from the poor than from the rich.

Will local Republicans even contest this year's races?

Then there’s the real imponderable: devolution, regionalism, constitutional reform, English votes for English laws. Call it what you will, the stark fact is that on this most fundamental of issues – what form our future democracy will take – we only have vague suggestions from everyone. All the parties want to run the country but won’t say what country it is they want to run.

These, too, are the questions being ignored in New Albany: What kind of city do we want this to be? Is it a pass-through or a stay-awhile? Is it a place to make omelettes, or spend another 200 years staring at the rotting eggs for fear of breaking one?

No doubt policies are up and viewable on websites somewhere. But the stupefying reality is we still don’t feel we know. They’ve had months, years even, to prepare and mighty budgets for media spend, and yet we feel so little the wiser. You get the impression they’d love their manifestos to go out encrypted.

That's breathtaking. Iannucci has not been to New Albany, and yet he has descended the labyrinth of "Get Smart" hatches, conveyors and secret elevators, all the way into the down-low bunker, where the mayor receives information from the outside world via Maalox the Younger and the Rasputin of Redevelopment.

Can holograms be encrypted?

Is encryption the very nature of the hologram?

Why shouldn’t we abandon our political masters and stay at home? Looking at the polls, no one knows how this thing is going to end up, so why bother? ...

... I would argue the opposite, that now is the best time in a generation to go out and vote. With such a fragmented system on offer, nothing is inevitable. Uncertainty may create instability, but it can also generate churn and change in a way that doing nothing never can.

The truth is, we haven’t been abandoning politicians – they’ve been abandoning us. The main parties have run recent elections focusing on smaller and smaller tribes of supporters in the hope that the bare minimum will squeeze them through.

It might be different if there could be a platform one favors, as built from substance of the sort one might cast vote to endorse, without feeling the need to bathe afterwards. That's why I cannot favor either of the two local political patronage dispensers, and it's also why it seems to be the right time to take a stab at such a platform.

The enduring local received political wisdom in New Albany is that voters will reject genuine substance. At the same time, it has not ever been attempted. 2015 strikes me as the perfect opportunity. Vote for the platform, vote against the generator of mistrust, or do both, simultaneously. The strategy works, or it doesn't.

And at the very least, we will have tried.

Voting: Financial security, illiteracy and moral framing.

Frequent reader S introduces the topic of voting (and non-voting) patters of the financially insecure with this comment.

This probably says a lot about New Albany. It surely affects local elections even more, I would guess. Perhaps a different kind of "Get out the vote" campaign strategy is called for ...

Perhaps the most noteworthy revelation to be drawn from the survey is the very existence of Americans who feel financially secure.

Study: Financially Insecure Americans Less Likely to Vote (Associated Press)

Less financially secure Americans lean toward the Democratic Party, but are also less likely to vote, especially in midterm elections, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

The survey released Thursday by the nonpartisan Washington-based research group looked beyond income to measure economic security, instead considering such factors as whether people are employed, have difficulty paying bills or possess a retirement savings account.

Those who Pew ranked as the most "financially secure" were almost certain to be registered to vote, with Pew classifying 63 percent as likely to vote in November. But among the bottom 20 percent, only 54 percent are registered and only 20 percent were likely voters in the midterms.

In this excerpt from Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, Henry Giroux takes it a step further: Illiteracy isn't just about being unable to read words on a page. Rather, it describes the loss of a filter by which one translates "private troubles to broader social issues."

The Spectacle of Illiteracy and the Crisis of Democracy, by Henry Giroux (Moyers and Company)

Wright Mills argued 50 years ago that one important measure of the demise of vibrant democracy and the corresponding impoverishment of political life can be found in the increasing inability of a society to translate private troubles to broader public issues ...

... It is not that we have become a society of the spectacle — though that is partly true — but that we have fallen prey to a new kind of illiteracy in which the distinction between illusion and reality is lost, just as the ability to experience our feelings of discontent and our fears of uncertainty are reduced to private troubles, paralyzing us in a sea of resentment waiting to be manipulated by extremists extending from religious fanatics to right-wing radio hosts. This is a prescription for a kind of rage that looks for easy answers, demands a heightened emotional release and resents any attempts to think through the connection between our individual woes and any number of larger social forces. A short list of such forces would include an unchecked system of finance, the anti-democratic power of the corporate state, the rise of multinationals and the destruction of the manufacturing base and the privatization of public schooling along with its devaluing of education as a public good. As the public collapses into the personal, the personal becomes “the only politics there is, the only politics with a tangible referent or emotional valence,” the formative educational and political conditions that make a democracy possible begin to disappear. Under such circumstances, the language of the social is either devalued, pathologized or ignored and all dreams of the future are now modeled around the narcissistic, privatized and self-indulgent needs of consumer and celebrity culture and the dictates of the allegedly free market. How else to explain the rage against big government but barely a peep against the rule of big corporations who increasingly control not only the government but almost every vital aspect of our lives from health care to the quality of our environment?

Depressed yet?

Let's not neglect George Lakoff, whose work was considered in this space a few weeks ago. Added to a variable consciousness borne of financial insecurity, and illiteracy as launching a crisis of democracy, there's the familiar but now modeified "illiterate and impoverished chicken who when bothering to vote at all opts for Colonel Sanders," owing to unconscious "strict father morality.

Lakoff: " Poor conservatives vote their identity as conservatives, not their lack of material wealth."

... George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, has been working on moral frames for 50 years. In Communicating Our American Values and Vision, he gives this precis: "Framing is not primarily about politics or political messaging or communication. It is far more fundamental than that: frames are the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality – and sometimes to create what we take to be reality. But frames do have an enormous bearing on politics … they structure our ideas and concepts, they shape the way we reason … For the most part, our use of frames is unconscious and automatic."

Unless the school corporation referendum brings out municipal voters in May, there'll almost certainly be another historic low in turnout.

Who'll be the ones pulling those metaphorical levers?

"Faithophobia: Add it to the list of my crimes."

Sunday is the week's best day for reconsidering religion, don't you think?

Add faithophobia to my crimes: I have no respect for religions that have little respect for me, by Suzanne Moore (Guardian)

... Last week I asked for us to continue in our disrespect and I meant it. Why must I have respect for religions that have little respect for me? That seek to curtail the rights of women? That find me unclean? I am not just talking about Islam here, but pretty much all religion. So there is some equal opportunity offence for you. Faithophobia. Add it to the list of my crimes.

I don’t have to go back to seventh-century texts to find faiths in which women are not seen as equal to men. This is from the founder of another religion: “A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on the way out.” That’s L Ron Hubbard for you. And you can satirise Scientology all you like.

Next meeting of downtown businesses is Tuesday, January 20, 8:30 a.m. at Louis Le Francais.

Notice courtesy of Kim Johnson. 

In November, David Duggins attended with the obvious intent of squelching discussion of Jeff Speck's impending street network proposals.

In December, the mayor himself emerged from the down-low bunker to encourage struggling merchants to gaze into a halcyon distance offered by the Regional Cities Initiative, something that may never even happen.

Since then, the Speck study has been released, Pillsbury has announced its closure, and the parent company of Horseshoe has gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. There is quite a lot to discuss, and so I'm guessing the city will send one of its attorneys bearing a muzzle.


Happy New Year! We hope that yours is off to a great start. Our next meeting will take place Tuesday morning (January 20th) at 8:30 a.m. Louis Le Francais is graciously hosting our meeting. (Below) you will find a brief outline of minutes from our last meeting.

December 2014

Holiday
Group wants to work on growing the Jingle Walk event. This is a big day for many downtown merchants. Addition of carolers or even Christmas skits by local high schoolers. Folks walking through the downtown in Holiday related costumes

Tourism
Suggested that events are advertised with hand-outs instead of posters

Ed Clere
Attended the last meeting and stated that if anyone has any issues with the state to please contact him

Mayor Gayan
Spoke about the Regional City Initiative. A study is being conducted in the state of Indiana to determine strengths and weaknesses. Clark and Floyd Counties working together to bring quality of life to this area. More information can be found at indianaregionalcities.com

Next Meeting
Tuesday January 20th at 8:30 am at Louis Le Francais

"Impure thoughts about suburbia" and New Albanian corridors.

It's interesting reading about "the virtues of America's aging inner ring suburbs."

The topic was raised by Diane Benedetti at Thursday's council meeting, pertaining to the area around the Colonial Manor shopping center on Charlestown Road. It's also something Scott Blair and I have discussed, given that we're both property and business owners on Plaza Drive off Grant Line Road.

These are not far-flung suburban areas, but they're the oldest suburbs within the enveloping ring of I-265. Often I've decried the absence of economic development planning closer to the historic city core, but there are no plans for these corridors, either.

My business has a footprint in both, and I am interested in improving both. With downtown as a reference point, State Street is the Hospital Corridor, Grant Line Road the IU Southeast Corridor, and Charlestown Road the Purdue Center Corridor. In the real world, the first step in making sense of these categories would be consistent public transit options.

We live in New Albany, though. Plan B, anyone?

DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE SPRAWL (SORT OF), by John Sanphillippo (New Geography)

I’m a longtime advocate of walkable, mixed-use, mixed-income, transit-served neighborhoods. But lately I’ve been having impure thoughts about suburbia. Let me explain.

Indianapolis firm being paid to inventory city's decrepit street signage.

A friend reports:

Something called VS Engineering has been inventorying signs around the city. I know some in our neighborhood and today they are in yours/mine. Putting serial numbers on some (all?) street signs.

I spotted one of the workers and asked him. All he could say is that his firm is inventorying New Albany street signs to be compiled in a data base. He didn't know why. Perhaps Warren Naps does, given that this project probably emanates from the Bored of Works.

Then there's this:

Beeler & Spring has a new street sign with the city's crest on it. They're pretty full of themselves. 

Why yes, they are, but I haven't had the chance to walk over there and examine. Was it an inlaid variation of this popular recent design?

Or maybe this? After all, it's an election year.

Duct tape.

It makes the city fundamentally better, doesn't it?

New city council game of chance: Horseshoe Party Affiliation Roulette.

Last night, city council president Pat McLaughlin once again appointed 6th district Independent Scott Blair to serve with John Gonder on the Horseshoe Foundation board.

This is important, given that much of New Albany's economic development planning centers on politely demanding money from the Foundation.

My, how we miss Guido. He could have rocked that one.

In the past, the foundation has insisted that only real Democrats and genuine Republicans can attend its meetings, seeing as these are the only two parties legally allowed in God's own America, with the council expected to send one sub-species of each, meaning that the sole GOP choice for eight years running has been Kevin Zurschmiede, the council's sole Republican.

In 2013, it went down like this:

McLaughlin thanks Benedetti for her servitude, challenges Horseshoe Foundation to do something about it at year's first council gathering.

As it transpired last night, Blair's appointment in 2015 comes with a delightful, new berry twist.

McLaughlin (read: council attorney Matt Lorch) has determined that Indiana state law defines one's political party identity as being derived from the individuals's chosen party ballot in the previous year's primary election, and Blair having voted Republican in May of 2014 ... voila!

The Independent is magically a Republican for the purposes of the Horseshoe Board.

Recalling that former GOP party chairman David Matthews once told me that he used this very same standard of past primary voting identification to vet potential Republican office seekers (Blair himself might recall this trait), it should be evident that Blair's GOP primary vote last May was undertaken with an explicit shared understanding of its future usefulness when contriving Horseshoe-inspired political performance art to be performed during appointments in January, 2015.

And maybe this is why Diane Benedetti was angered last night that McLaughlin's letter via Lorch to Horseshoe explaining Blair's ideological transformation was mailed without copies being provided to other council members, which McLaughlin explained as a regrettable oversight owing to the time-sensitive need to expedite his explanation as a last-minute courtesy before Horseshoe's January meeting.

Of course, he might have done it on any of the 220-odd days elapsing since the plot was hatched in the 2014 primary, but I digress. Dan Coffey promptly declared that while communication and transparency are always good, they're not anywhere near as compelling when Benedetti suggests them, and so let's all consider this recent factoid about the company that owns and operates Horseshoe Southern Indiana:

The parent company has posted losses for each of the last four years, and its total liabilities have climbed to $28.2 billion.

Most of the debt stemming from the buyout is concentrated in Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., the unit expected to file for Chapter 11 protection.

With all eyes (rightly) turned toward Pillsbury ...

(Thanks to A for the link)

Mayor 2015: Two or more Republicans for the price of one?

There'll be a Republican candidate for mayor in the fall. According to the News and Tribune's Daniel Suddeath yesterday, it will not be councilman Kevin Zurschmiede.

Had expected to hear back from GOP by today for mayoral candidate. Was told Councilman Kevin Zurschmiede declined after consideration.

Recently the Green Mouse was told it won't be Mark Seabrook, either.

Businessman David White, a nominal Democrat, is challenging incumbent Jeff Gahan in the May primary. There is nothing in White's platform to indicate any interest in what we'd view as ideologically-framed Democratic social issues; rather, he freely describes himself as a fiscally conservative Democrat.

If the GOP cannot find a credible mayoral candidate (why would it bother until after the primary results are posted?), would David White as mayor be entirely objectionable to the Republicans?

After all, the one thing about which White, Chris Lane and I can all agree is a burning desire to have Jeff Gahan return to the respectable private sector vocation of veneer sales. Speaking personally, I'd dearly love the opportunity to campaign against two Republicans for the price of one.

An elegiac Pillsbury evening in the council chamber.

As the reporter White points out, the union's contract with General Mills stipulates discussions in the event of a "decrease" in production.

At last evening's city council meeting, somewhere between 75 and 100 Pillsbury workers were in attendance to support a resolution of municipal solidarity authored by CM Bob Caesar. For the first time in months, Mayor Jeff Gahan was present as a council meeting. The resolution passed unanimously, and a joint committee was formed.

Perhaps as befitting the long odds of inducing a corporate climbdown, the atmosphere leaned toward the funereal. I choose this analogy on purpose, because funerals are where people gather to lament the passing, while celebrating the life of the deceased. Probably everyone in the room last night understands that whatever Hail Mary might occur to maintain jobs and production at Pillsbury, there will be no turning back the clock to the era of good unionized jobs.

After all, the gist of statewide economic policy in Indiana is to discourage these sorts of good union jobs, and has been for years. Insofar as local elected officials have appealed to the state for assistance, the help (if any) is likely to come primarily in the form of "retraining" or "outplacement" services. There'll be other companies negotiating to resume work at Pillsbury -- with the explicit acceptance of a non-union labor force.

It would be easy to bash the city for not paying attention, but I won't. None of us were. In the end, we're all dealing with decisions taken far away, with local ramifications that matter very little to the decision-makers. That's the problem. Perhaps in the future, there can be a better way.

Bakery union to talk with General Mills in Feb., Charlie White (C-J)

Discussions are tentatively scheduled early next month between General Mills and the union that represents 335 workers at its Pillsbury plant in New Albany, as well as 80 workers at neighboring Sonoco Products whose jobs also could be jeopardized if the plant closes next year.

Roger Miller, president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 33G, said Thursday he also plans to meet Friday with Sen. Joe Donnelly, who contacted him after hearing the news of General Mills' plan last week to close the plant.

Miller has also received calls from Rep. Todd Young and state Sen. Ron Grooms, both of whom he hopes to meet with soon about the plant, Floyd County's fifth largest manufacturing employer.

SCOTUS Friday: "Historic day for gay rights?"

It was one of my favorite stories from last year.

Pence takes to his bunker as Indiana's gay marriage ban is ruled to be unconstitutional.

More recently, IL's Joe Dunman set the stage for SCOTUS.

Dunman: "Supreme Court should approach same-sex marriage issue from a contemporary constitutional perspective."

Now we'll see.

Conceivable outcomes causing the Pence Shirts to squirm are the best ones, aren't they?

Historic day for gay rights?, by Lyle Denniston (National Constitution Center)

Sometime Friday, probably before noon, the Supreme Court is due to have a conversation about gay rights, discussing whether to open what could be the final judicial chapter on same-sex marriage. The Justices will not be deciding that question; rather, the issue before them tomorrow is whether it is now time to decide.

Green Mouse says: Randy Smith to contest 5th district council race ...

... as an independent.

In 2011, running as a Democrat, the Bookseller came tantalizingly close (less than two dozen votes) to snatching the seat away from Diane Benedetti.

In 2015, as we declare independence from DixieDemoDisneyism, Randy would be a valued independent presence on a cleansed council. Alas, it's only a rumor ... until it isn't,