Meet the Candidate: "Oh, boy -- is this great!"

The Meet the Candidate Show on WNAS-TV is airing at 10:00 a.m., 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. The mayoral candidates lead it off, with Kevin Zurschmiede first, followed by Jeff Gahan and then The Pirate (me). As noted earlier today, my segment runs a wee bit long.

Can I help it if I have a lot to say?

The WNAS station manager may wish to turn off his cell phone before retiring, as the mayor has a nasty habit of intemperate late-night berating. Thus far, you must tune in to watch, but we're doing what we can to snag a copy.

Remember that "WNAS Radio and TV will again have live Election Night coverage on November 3 at 6:30."

Dickey bolts upright in a cold sweat: "THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO IGNORE HIM!"

Dickey bolts upright in a cold sweat: "THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO IGNORE HIM!"

I'm taking great care to record screenshots, given that every past action suggest there'll be an orgy of deletions later this morning.

The topic to which the chairman of the Board of Public Works and Safety speaks (below), as joined subsequently by the usual sycophants' chorus, is my "Meet the Candidates" segment on WNAS-TV.

My recollection is a suggestion that it be kept to 5 - 8 minutes, but there was no hard and fast rule. I did not rehearse, but read my outline aloud, and it came to about 8 minutes. When finished in the studio, it was remarked that my presentation was a bit lengthy, and if there were any problems, I'd be informed.

I haven't even viewed it yet, but evidently the relevant guidelines were met, seeing as the segment is being aired. I'll get a copy as soon as I can, and share it -- because sharing, not suppressing, is my preferred mode of modernity.

Perhaps it isn't the length of the segment that is of most concern to Team Gahan's resident censors, but the content.

Perhaps they might divert a portion of the incumbent's $180,000 nest egg to purchase mirrors, which are said to assist in the process of self-examination.

However, their record of shamelessness "suggests" this suggestion won't be followed. Are they finished yet? We'll see in nine days.

Take it away, Warren.

The Baylor for Mayor meme, October 25: Truth and circumstances.

From October 12, 2015:

Commentary worth repeating: Gahan's "balanced budget" claims are bogus.

Name That Boondoggle Episode 1: The apartments at the Coyle site really should be called ...

Team Gahan Boondoggle Name: The Breakwater.

Roger's Boondoggle Name: Break Wind Flats ... or The Lofts at Duggins-Down.

Your Boondoggle Name: ???

Indicate your choice in the comments, either here or at Fb. The winner receives absolutely nothing except plaudits for cleverness amid the Gahanshima (from the Romanian word Ceaușima, explained here).

(Video) Show Me the Money: Gahan's campaign contributors ... or, how to buy and sell a city.

Published on Oct 24, 2015, by Randy Smith.

A slideshow version of the campaign finance disclosure of the Committee to Elect Gahan, Abigail Gardner, Treasurer. This CFA-4 form was filed on October 16, 2015 on behalf of Jeff Gahan's run to be elected mayor of New Albany, Indiana.

The Baylor for Mayor meme, October 24: There's a fundamental difference.

From October 5, 2015:

Transformational vs transactional, and why Gregg Popovich invited John Carlos to speak but Mayor Gahan never would.

Your Saturday morning Coffey. I'll have mine black, like his record.

But my, how our DemoDixieDisneycrats love Dan's natural political orientation as one capable of harvesting votes from the seniors.

Mailer Wars '15: Speaking of $$$, Gahan will spend more $$$ on mailers alone than you'll earn in a year.

This one cried out for doctoring. Here's the original, which constitutes invasive surgery on the truth.

Except for the parts of town that aren't safer, aren't cleaner, and aren't better.

Maybe he's saving those for another mailer?

C-J: "Roger Baylor 'certainly serious' about candidacy."

Yes, I certainly am.

Lexy Gross is the Courier-Journal's new Southern Indiana reporter, and I think she does a fine job distilling an hour of chat into this candidate profile.

The piece features a photo of me at Bank Street Brewhouse, and I think this association is fitting and proper. After all, it forms the basis for yesterday's column: My career as a double naught capitalist.

Roger Baylor 'certainly serious' about candidacy

... Baylor understands why it might be difficult for some New Albanians to consider him a "normal" candidate. He doesn't really fit into what people in the community consider a Democrat to be, and he's "never been a Republican."

Dallas Moore makes his West Coast debut tonight.

Photo credit: Dallas Moore Band page at Facebook.

It may not surprise readers to learn that as genres go, outlaw country is not my go-to music.

However, there's a very special place in my range of musical tastes for Dallas Moore, with whom my friend Bob Rutherford has played seemingly forever. What's it actually been, 16-odd years?

It's because Dallas is both well-rounded and utterly authentic, and what I've learned from knowing him is that these two qualities are not mutually exclusive. Dallas and the band are real. The older you get, the more you appreciate it.

Best of luck this evening.

Outlaw cult hero Dallas Moore sits content outside the mainstream, by Jonny Whiteside (Los Angeles Times)

The Outlaw country movement, codified in the early 1970s by a shaggy posse of Nashville rebels, is archetypal Americana. Dark, complex, self-possessed and self-destructive, always struggling to rectify sin and salvation, it's a rich genre that continues to thrive.

When Outlaw cult hero Dallas Moore makes his West Coast debut at Burbank's Viva Cantina on Friday, Oct. 23, expect a high-velocity, double-barreled blast of rousing, defiant music.

A long-haired redneck who studied classical and jazz guitar at Northern Kentucky University, Moore's 25-year career and relentless touring (he averages a staggering 300 shows a year) has gained him a formidable reputation in the hard country underworld.

The Baylor for Mayor meme, October 23: Gandhi on campaign finance.

From August 6, 2015:

ON THE AVENUES: Money is the ultimate bully.

The deal-killing Phipps postcard: "Two Way Streets, where feasible."

Greg Phipps (D) is the incumbent 3rd district councilman. His challenger is Dale Bagshaw (R), who was his party's nominee for mayor in 2011.

Dale was reading a few weeks ago when I expressed support for those council candidates openly supporting two-way streets.

For what it’s worth, and speaking only for myself, my votes in the forthcoming election will go to those city council candidates who have publicly advocated for two way streets. First-time Republican at-large candidate Al Knable is one, along with Democratic incumbents John Gonder (at large) and Greg Phipps (my own 3rd district).

Since then, John has circulated a questionnaire omitting any explicit mention of two-way streets (I've since learned that the omission was a printing error and was rectified) and now there's this card of Greg's, as harvested from its resting place on an Elm Street sidewalk.

Let's hope Al remains on board.

Dale knew what I'd written, and in spite of it, he still came to my door two nights ago while walking the neighborhood. We stood on the porch for twenty-five minutes, talking local issues, among them two-way streets. Dale said that while streets must remain accessible to commerce, he has started to see the merits of complete streets.

That's demonstrable forward movement on Dale's part, and as we all learned in childhood, the opposite of forward is backward, bringing us to the underlined passage on Greg's card. Time and again, Greg has stated publicly that he'd stake his political career on two-way streets.

Now, with an election looming, he has affixed a disclaimer: "Where feasible."

One candidate is moving forward, openly and honestly, and the other backward in a Gahan-induced pea soup fog.

In July, I attended a meeting of the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association, during which Greg Roberts indicated there would be an ESNA candidate forum prior to the election. Supposedly the candidates all would have a chance to be heard, but the forum never took place, and when I asked Greg Phipps about it last week via Fb message, he didn't recall such an event ever being mentioned even though he was present at the same meeting I attended.

Dale told me that he asked Greg if the two of them might arrange a 3rd district candidate forum, only to have the idea dismissed out of hand by the incumbent. When I asked Greg about this, the conversation abruptly ended.

Returning to my words in September:

Yes, at times I’ve been disappointed with both Gonder and Phipps. However, I believe they’ve been sullied and bullied by Jeff Gahan’s egotistical toxicity and the formless intellectual vacancy of the reigning Democratic Party leadership, and are deserving of another chance and another dance with a mayor who, at long last, actually “gets it,” which I do.

Dear reader, if you were me, what would you do?

A house divided against itself cannot stand, and intellectual honesty still matters to me. It matters more than just about anything else, but there's also consistency, transparency, and simple decency. Throughout my campaign, I've continued to stress the dignity of conscience, and I've parsed every possible combination of these factors in search of a way that might allow me to be cognizant of Greg's position.

But: Occam's Razor.

Perhaps I'm trying to hard, and the simplest answer is the best.

Perhaps conscience, transparency and intellectual honesty are my issues, not theirs, and what I'm seeing in this town right now -- paranoia, fear and cowardice foremost among them -- is exactly as it appears.

Perhaps Team Gahan has poisoned this civic well so thoroughly that Kool-Aid flows from every tap, into every overflowing storm water receptacle.

By all rights, Greg Phipps and I should be comrades in arms. But it's Dale Bagshaw who came to my house and asked for my vote. It's Dale, not Greg, who has listened, conversed and interacted.

My vote isn't about whether I like Greg and Dale, because I like them both. It's about sleepless nights, of which I've experienced a few since 2011, when I voted for Jeff Gahan. It's a mistake I won't ever repeat, and right now, a vote for Greg Phipps is a vote for Jeff Gahan, irrespective of bullying, moon phases, Kool-Aid, spin the bottle or any other extraneous excuses I might deploy to alter fundamental reality.

I simply can't do that, and whether it hurts my mayoral campaign or helps it by saying so publicly matters less to me than being honest. I know Greg and I as yet agree on numerous issues, but in the absence of transparency -- without two-way communications -- we cannot build on what I'm otherwise sure exists. I'm not playing this game any longer. I never was very good at it, anyway.

Dale's got my vote.

"What a human and wonderful thing: to be able to walk down the street and feel like you're a first-class citizen."

Photo credit

Remember when the ORBP's commission was prattling about mobility solutions, and concluding that a massive road-building project was the only one worth considering?

Seeking a corrective for such autocentric foppery? Click through, and get a sense of how modernity operates.

Oslo just declared that it will become the first major city to ban cars, by Leanna Garfield (Tech Insider)

Cars are no longer welcome in downtown Oslo.

Oslo plans to ban all cars from its city center by 2019, Reuters reports.

It will also build more than 35 miles of bike lanes by 2019 and invest heavily in public transport.

The permanent ban will affect the 350,000 or so car owners in the Norwegian capital.

Oslo's car ban is the largest of its kind, says Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an organization that supported New York City's Citi Bikes and advocates for car-free cities.

"The fact that Oslo is moving forward so rapidly is encouraging, and I think it will be inspiring if they are successful," he tells Tech Insider.

The car ban in Oslo will reduce pollution and make it a safer city for those on foot.

"We want to make it better for pedestrians, cyclists. It will be better for shops and everyone," Lan Marie Nguyen Berg, lead negotiator for the Green Party in Oslo, tells Reuters.

ON THE AVENUES: My career as a double naught capitalist.

ON THE AVENUES: My career as a double naught capitalist.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

"(Roger’s) never done anything in a positive manner to help the city of New Albany”
--Jeff Gahan, during the mayoral debate at Silver Street Park

During the opening phases of Rich O’s Public House during the early- to mid-1990s, with Oasis and Nirvana playing in the background, we often pointed to Kentucky license plates in the parking lot as proof of things working out just as we had hoped.

Back then, apart from South Side Inn and a downtown liquor store or two, New Albany wasn’t much of a draw for residents of the Commonwealth. Fortunately, we were ahead of the curve in terms of better beer, and it was encouraging to know that “location, location, location” was bunk.

Niches and knowledge mattered, too. Aversions were overcome. How often did I read or hear comments like this one?

"It’s a really great place … and believe it or not, it’s in New Albany!"

25 years after drifting into the food and drink business, primarily on the strength of knowing more about beer than most other hospitality biz people did at the time, it’s a bit easier for me to be philosophical about the hardscrabble beginnings. There were far fewer epiphanies than daily, upward slogging.

In 1990, I’d worked at a package liquor store, and occasionally bartended, but didn’t have any food service experience. My objective was for us to be a world class beer bar in a locale where very little was aligned to accommodate such dreams. Like so many other aspects of life, we got by, learned by doing, and built gradually for a better future.

From the outset, it already was clear that pubs were my favored habitat, and usually the only truly comfortable places for me outside home and hearth. What I learned was that working in one is edifying, too – especially the sort of establishment evolving according to a particular, highly personalized plan.

Moreover, there is a fundamental honesty to preparing and serving meals and drinks for public consumption. Most of the time, the gratification is immediate. You know the customer liked it, or didn’t. When they return, it’s a wonderful feeling.

The television series Cheers had it right. We humans look for third spaces, these places where everyone knows your name. Social media is a way of connecting, but breaking bread and drinking beer with other people, all seated at a table in a room filled with others who are pursuing precisely the same goal, bring forth the possibility of genuine bonding.

They’re the days we’ll always remember, and do.

---

In a space this brief, it would be impossible to recount the many life lessons I learned during the past quarter-century, though one springs to mind: When business life is good, the employees get the credit, and when there are problems, it’s all on the owners.

The rank and file, and the workers on the shop floor – cooks, servers, dishwashers and staff members – do the heavy lifting and define the atmosphere. They’re the face of the business, and its esprit de corps. The job of the owner is to organize and manage them so they can thrive, and in turn, so the entity can succeed.

Yes, naturally there are exceptions. Firing someone isn’t fun, though occasionally it must be done. Employees make mistakes, and so on. The point to me is that so many of them, the vast majority, have been top-flight individuals, both before and after working for NABC.

We’ve had our share of teachers, media professionals, artists and musicians working as part-timers, supplementing their income with shifts. With IU Southeast just down the street from the original Pizzeria & Public House locations, there have been hundreds of students receiving W2s as they worked their way through school.

Just think of the local multiplier effect, for more than 25 years.

What’s more, so many of them have gone on to solid careers. If we had an NABC Alumni Association, it would include doctors, writers, sailors, lawyers, real estate moguls, gardeners, bar and restaurant owners, chefs, entrepreneurs, brewers, entertainers and distillers.

I see many of them on social media, raising their families and living their dreams. I’m pleased as punch to have played a part, however brief, in their formative lives.

In fact, seeing as I’m transitioning from company ownership into the “former” category of fogey datedness, I believe we should have such an NABC alumni organization.

Depending on the outcome of the election, I’ll get right on it come early November.

---

Being a democratic socialist does not imply being a non-capitalist, and while I may have chafed at the term in the past (hi, Mark), it isn’t something I bother disputing.

For the past 25 years, I’ve been engaged in capitalism of the local variety, this being the business of making waves: Starting with tiny ripples by serving a beer here and a pizza there, then accepting payment from generally satisfied customers (otherwise, we wouldn’t still be in business), and finally repeating these actions until they added up to a greater whole than the sum of their parts.

Independent local businesses of numerous stripes, engaging in every conceivable form of commerce, follow the same pattern as NABC. It is reckoned that one-third of the business activity in America is generated from enterprises like these with fewer than 50 employees.

In New Albany's historic downtown business district and the neighborhoods immediately surrounding it, this percentage is likely far higher. These are the businesses widely understood to have done the most in sustaining the city’s core during the lean years, and then boosting the revitalization of a formerly moribund area with a fresh wave of food, drink, retail and service businesses to complement the survivors of a previous era.

Not chains, not Flaherty and Collins, and not the Disney Corporation. Rather, local independent businesses, which keep a higher percentage of money in the local economy, do the capitalism thing, and grind it out all year long ... not merely during special occasions.

The pizzeria was founded in 1987, so I can honestly say that since the Reagan administration, NABC’s owners and employees have been privileged to serve hundreds of thousands of regular folks. We’ve paid taxes, dispensed wages, brought visitors to town, filled bellies and created memories.

Granted, while much of the volume has come from functioning as an on premise restaurant and bar, our two breweries, while small-scale and artisanal, also constitute manufacturing. We take raw materials, assemble them, pay taxes, and sell the finished product outside our immediate vicinity.

It’s nice having friends in other places, too.

---

Soon I'll be leaving NABC. For 25 years, I’ve wondered what I might do when I grow up, and at 55, it may at long last be time to find out.

There are a few hands I might have played differently, and decisions that were questionable in retrospect, but in the main, I'm proud of what we've achieved.

Speaking for myself, I put every bit of skin I possessed into this game, and I busted my ass in the process. What I get back from the business monetarily will be only a fraction of what was put into it, primarily because we’ve always reinvested proceeds, and refrained from extracting value.

I’m serene about NABC’s future. New blood and fresh ideas will step to the fore, as they usually do. The business itself will continue doing what it's always done, in as positive manner as humanly possible, fully contrary to the mayor’s somewhat uncomprehending utterance at the debate.

These folks involved with economic development at the municipal level ... have any of them actually ever owned a business?

Yep.

Didn't think so.

---

Postscript: According to community economics advocate Michael Shuman, mainstream economic development today is a scam.

---

Recent columns:

October 19: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Courtesy bicycle to the Hotel Silly (2010, 2013).

October 15: ON THE AVENUES: To the New Albanians, each and every one.

October 8: ON THE AVENUES: There’s an indie twist to this curmudgeon’s annual Harvest Homecoming column.

October 1: ON THE AVENUES: No more fear, Jeff.

September 24: ON THE AVENUES: Almost two years later, Mr. Gahan has yet to plug in this clock, and so it's time for him to clock out.

September 17: ON THE AVENUES: Dear Neighbor: If you’re tired of the same old story, turn some pages.

September 10: ON THE AVENUES: Lanesville Heritage Weekend comes around again.

September 3: ON THE AVENUES: When even Mitt Romney can run to the left of New Albany’s Democrats, it's a very big problem.

Seriously, the "luxury" apartments at the Coyle site will be called The Breakwater. No, really.

Fiction simply can't keep pace with Team Gahan's content providers. The name is real. My description is satirical:

Break YOUR wind at The Breakwater, New Albany's chic millennial-friendly housing for luxury-loving millennials who prefer their champagne on a PBR budget. Which is to say, how hard must we work to arrive at such consistently awful names for bright, shiny, TIF-bonded objects?

Consequently, and not unlike an anchor ...

... which keeps a boat firmly in place, we have yet another piece of water-based symbolism.

Breakwaters are generally shore-parallel structures that reduce the amount of wave energy reaching the protected area. They are similar to natural bars, reefs or nearshore islands and are designed to dissipate wave energy.

How very, very depressing, though it could be worse. You could be the police chief going door to door for the mayor's re-election in New Albany, the city dignity forgot.

The Baylor for Mayor meme, October 22: Job losses, water parks and sheer delusion.

From September 27, 2015:

This is New Albany's economic development challenge: "Developing the Cure for Corporate Welfare."

From August 9, 2015:

Reader question: "Is there a plan to attract new employers?"

Animal Shelter finances: So, what else is Jeff Gahan unwilling to tell us?

Last week, NAC mapped it.

Secrets that they keep: Team Gahan to be sued for non-transparency in county records request.

The county pays its share of animal shelter upkeep to the city, which deposits the money and pays the bills. But the agreement as written is vague as to percentages of the tithe versus actual expenses, and there isn't a dedicated bank account. County money disappears into the city's general fund.

All (Scott) Clark seems to be asking is to see the record of expenditures.

On the third floor, as ever, the wagons are circled. I was among those in favor of the parks department split, on the grounds of county non-support. However, doubts have long since crept into the narrative, and not only because of Team Gahan's TIF-fueled parks spending spree (entirely unmentioned during the 2011 mayoral campaign).

The county has a convincing case in the animal shelter funding imbroglio -- and Gahan's refusal to release information merely enhances it.

Meanwhile, the newspaper's reasoning is impeccable.

OUR OPINION: Turn over shelter finances (News and Tribune editorial)

... We're not disputing that the controller's office is a busy place. But "we're busy" isn't an acceptable response for delaying or denying a public records request as basic as this one.

We contend that without a clear financial picture of the NA-FC animal shelter, determining how it will be funded moving forward will remain cloudy.

Zirin on "Louisville Basketball and the NCAA’s Political Economy of Misogyny."

Former University of Michigan and NBA star Jalen Rose, as quoted in the Detroit Free Press on the topic of college athletic recruitment:

"Yes, there is drinking. Yes, there is members of the opposite sex that are present. Remember, they're trying to woo me to the campus ... and as a 17-year-old kid, first off, if I'm not getting laid, I'm not coming. I'm not signing. I'm not coming."

At times like this, as the fanatics rush to decry and defend the coach, I take a deep breath and remind myself that we're about the only country in the world to confuse sports with education.

In this, it's helpful to know that Dave Zirin is out there somewhere, writing about sports and those aspects of it embracing genuine significance. Zirin warns against moralizing and cynicism, and hits the center of the target.

Louisville Basketball and the NCAA’s Political Economy of Misogyny, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

 ... both of these reactions miss the most urgent issue—the NCAA’s political economy of misogyny. There’s a lesson in this scandal if we’re willing to learn it. It starts with Louisville Basketball, whose use of transactional sex as a method of recruitment produced results and made a small number of people very rich. Louisville has now been at the top of Forbes Magazine’s list of most valuable NCAA hoops programs for four consecutive years. Pitino won an NCAA title in 2013 alongside a new contract that pays him well in excess of four million dollars a year. The connective tissue before us between the political economy of amateurism and misogyny has been written in a neon script. It also shines a harsh light on how the use of women as currency links many of the public relations crises that plague sports and the psychological pain that plagues ex-athletes.

Coffey ain't gonna like "Atheists in Foxholes."

Photo credit: Freedom from Religion Foundation.

It takes all kinds of people to fill a foxhole. The question we might occasionally ask: Why are they in the foxhole in the first place?

'Atheists in Foxholes' Are Honored With Monument in Wisconsin: The old saying gets a rebuttal carved in granite, by Sam Blum (Inverse)

A new monument in Madison, Wisconsin contradicts an old jingoistic slogan that proclaims no secular person could, or would, give their lives on the battlefield in the name of the United States.

The old aphorism “There are no atheists in foxholes,” has served to spark the ire of the Freedom From Religion Foundation time and time again, so foundation members say they decided to erect a monument in front of its Madison, Wisconsin, office that offers a rebuttal.

Precedent suggests Duggins should have offered Sonoco roughly $1.33 million to close AFTER the election.

We interrupt our usual discussions of political chicanery with an economic dishevelment bulletin from David "Boilerplate" Duggins.

Seems it is official: Sonoco will join Pillsbury, Indatus and StemWood as prominent businesses leaving New Albany or ceasing to exist during Duggins' watch.

May we surmise that a completely imaginary relief package, similar to the $7 million pretended to be thrown at Pillsbury's moving vans by Duggins and Mayor Jeff "But Water Park" Gahan, as part of crass political theater believed by absolutely no one in town not named Pat McLaughlin, is being devised for Sonoco as we speak?

Sonoco to close New Albany plant (Courier-Journal)

Sonoco is permanently closing its packaging plant in New Albany, Ind., and laying off all 76 employees in the process....

In a letter to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, a human resources manager said the company has confirmed the decision to close the plant at 705 Pillsbury Lane. The plant is expected to close by the end of August 2016 and employees will all be laid off by Jan. 2, 2016.

More than 400 employees of the adjacent General Mills-Pillsbury plant are facing layoffs, after plans to close it were announced in February. Sonoco was contracted to make the paper and metal cans for dough products and deliver them by conveyor to the Pillsbury plant. Pillsbury is also expected to close by mid-2016.