Conservatives to Padgett: "The heaviest road users are the ones who get the biggest subsidies."

Narcissus, still gazing at that pesky erection.

Wanna know what's really funny?

The Padgett-led heavy trucking coalition seeks to sue the city of New Albany for failing to maintain city streets suitable for their interstate-grade vehicles.

And yet, when it comes to overall maintenance of roads in this nation, note the disparity.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that trucks already cost the public as much as $129 billion annually more than they pay in road user fees.

Whoa! That's a lot of TIF bonds.

But wait, because here's the punch line: In the article below, which explicates "asphalt socialism" in our autocentric nation, the air is being let out of the truckers' tires not by liberal leftist pinko fags, but by the Padgett Political Action Committee to Elect Republicans' very own beloved conservative element.

That's rich, indeed. The hypocrisy flies over their heads as quickly as the dump trucks speed down Spring.

I'm reprinting the entire article here, because it's just too good to excerpt.

House Republicans’ Asphalt Socialism, by Joe Cortright (The American Conservative)

The House of Representatives has hit on a clever new strategy for funding the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund: raid the Federal Reserve. Their plan calls for transferring nearly $60 billion from the profits earned on the Federal Reserve’s operations—basically fees paid by member banks—to bail out the Highway Trust Fund.

For years, many macro economists have been urging the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy by using its power to effectively print money in the form of a “helicopter drop”—simply crediting every American with a certain amount of extra dollars in their bank accounts. The idea has been suggested as a way to jump start consumer spending in a moribund or deflationary economy by economists of some stature, including Ben Bernanke and Milton Friedman. The idea was advanced as a way of accelerating the sluggish growth we’re currently experiencing in an article in Foreign Affairs. But while it might make theoretical sense to economist, it was simply politically impossible, because as The Economist intoned, the idea of a helicopter drop would be anathema to Republicans.

But when it comes to a helicopter drop for highways, there’s no such problem. Remarkably, the proposal to tap the Federal Reserve’s funds comes not from radical Keynesians, but from the Republicans in the very conservative House of Representatives. And apparently, the same people who preach personal responsibility in almost every other field of endeavor want to insulate automobile drivers from paying the costs of the roads they drive on. While they may espouse the virtues for the free market in almost everything else, this position makes them “asphalt socialists” when it comes to transportation.

The best estimates are that drivers now pay only a tiny fraction of the direct costs of building and operating roads, not to mention causing huge externalities in the form of crash-related injuries and deaths and pollution. As we’ve noted before, the heaviest road users are the ones who get the biggest subsidies: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that trucks already cost the public as much as $129 billion annually more than they pay in road user fees. And a report from TransitCenter and the Frontier Group recently detailed the $7.3 billion in parking tax subsidies drivers get every year as well.

(Even with these subsidies, however, increasing fuel efficiency and the decline in per capita driving have pushed down revenues for the Highway Trust Fund, and contributed to the current crisis.)

While this latest chapter of dysfunctional public finance and ideological hypocrisy is playing out at the federal level, it’s equally prevalent in the way states and localities treat driving, too. Local governments have parking requirements that drive up the cost and drive down the supply of housing to subsidize car ownership. In Seattle, parking requirements add something on the order of $250 a month to the price of a typical apartment.

The new transportation bill will favor cars in other ways, too. Local highway projects will get an 80 percent federal match, but transit projects will get only 50 percent. Meanwhile, important sources of funds for transit, pedestrian, and bicycle programs, including TIGER grants and the Transportation Alternatives Program, were cut or imperiled.

While advocates of the road system regularly cloak their arguments in the rhetoric of choice and the free market, our transportation system is actually characterized by heavy government intervention on behalf of private vehicles. Massive, taxpayer-supported subsidies effectively bribe people to drive, and insulate them from the financial consequences their choices impose on others.

Drivers want more roads—as long as they don’t actually have to pay for them. The fact that there’s no stomach for increasing the gas tax—even though gasoline prices have fallen by more than a dollar a gallon in the past year—shows that when put to the test of the marketplace, there’s actually little demand for more transportation.

The irony, of course, is that transportation is clearly one policy area where traditional free market principles would put a serious dent in the problems of traffic congestion, air pollution, and safety. If car users faced anything close to the actual costs of building and operating roads (and mitigating or preventing the injuries and pollution effects), we’d see much less driving, and much less demand for additional capacity.

City Council Thursday: These are your luminaries. Cherish them.

Incoming 5th district council person Matt Nash on Twitter:

He's referring to lone Republican council member Kevin Zurschmiede, though it's worth noting that nominal pretend-Democrat Bob Caesar voted against recycling AND the homeless.

It even rhymes: "You folks in District 2 ... my, my how YOU'RE screwed." 

Read all about it: New Albany joins homelessness coalition, by Jerod Clapp (That Jeffersonville Newspaper).

Meanwhile, of the last 25 tweets at the News and Tribune's Twitter account, 17 dealt with locales in Clark County or were links to columnists.

Of the 25 tweets, four were devoted to New Albany and/or Floyd County.

And another four were about ex-chain restaurant spokesman Fogle's sex crimes.

Linda Gugin and Jim St. Clair to talk about their book "Indiana's 200" on Dec. 3 at Destinations Booksellers.

Follow the link and read all about it. Maybe I'll bring some growlers of Pay Packet Ale.

(that's an inside joke, folks)

Gugin, St. Clair Book Talk Dec. 3

Historians Linda Gugin and Jim St. Clair will be at Destinations Booksellers on Sunday, Dec. 13, at 2 p.m. to present Indiana’s 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State, their latest collaboration as editors of Indiana history.

ON THE AVENUES: Beer, farthings and that little-known third category.

ON THE AVENUES: Beer, farthings and that little-known third category.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

On being a writer, Ernest Hemingway suggested leading with truth.

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

Much later, Stephen King elaborated.

“Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”

The summary already had been offered by Mark Twain.

“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.”

These thoughts are prompted by a question many of you have asked me.

“Now what?”

Well, if you figure it out, let me know. Just remember that we’re speaking personally, not in the municipal sense.

The political aspect of the query has been answered for now, although it bears repeating that during the mayoral campaign, I always sought to remind listeners that politics at the local level isn’t about “me,” but about “us.”

Will any of “us” remain here after four more years of Gahanism?

Conversely, and in vocational terms, what comes next is highly individualized, because it addresses what I’ll be doing with the rest of my own life. Chapters are closing and eras coming to an end. Like most other facets of one’s journey through this world, the future is overwhelmingly gray, and as yet amorphous.

Throughout the year, I’ve said that I’ll be selling my share of ownership in NABC to my business partners. This statement of general intent remains accurate.

However, it should surprise no one that the process for doing so always stood to be prolonged, and it is quite likely to take a while. There are nuts, bolts and legalities to be sifted through. Disentangling may well become a full-time job, and unfortunately, this position is pro bono – at least until it isn’t.

Consequently, for perhaps the only time in history, allow me to summarize my innermost condition with words penned by Southern rock legend Charlie Daniels:

“They’re my troubles; don’t let ‘em worry you none. When I signed on to be a man, I figured I was gonna have some. Like I say, either way – go or stay – you ain’t gonna change my life.”

About my high school listening habits … yes, they were a bit different back then. The world changes, and so must we.

---

Obviously, business matters eventually will come to rest, and there’ll be a resolution. Meanwhile, it would be helpful for me to determine what I intend to do after leaving a quarter-century-old sinecure, large chunks of which are of my own creation.

In fact, the possibility that I might choose to grow up some day has occurred to me from time to time, and I’ve frequently joked that one’s marketability isn’t necessarily enhanced by being the undisputed best-ever person to perform a job you designed for yourself.

Or, put another way, working long enough for yourself can make you unemployable. I’m about to find out if this is true. So it goes, come what may, and dial your own cliché.

I always wondered what this would feel like, and now I know. Sans the stereotypically abrupt, earth-shattering epiphany, it’s something that transpires over time. Your consciousness evolves. You become aware that one reality has passed, and another awaits. The feeling is daunting and liberating all at once, and it’s a bit scary at times.

What does it all mean?

Honestly, I don’t know.

Looking in the metaphorical mirror, I’m no less entrepreneurial in disposition than before, and remain zealously committed to the same principles of economic localism and independent local business advocacy which have served as motivation throughout my career.

As for beer, it’s been a big part of my life, though never the only part. I believe there’s still a place for me in it. However, the simple fact is that I’m not very interested in owning another beer (and food) business. I’d rather help other such businesses, perhaps through education, training and organization.

This is why I’m bullish about the future prospects for the New Albany Restaurant and Bar Association as a professional trade group. Unity among the purveyors of shared interest stands to lift the segment and take it to a higher level. I’ll help NARBA in any way I can.

Of course, I’ll also continue to write. In the end, writing is non-negotiable.

---

For me, writing is both compulsion and sublimation. I often wonder how it came to be this way.

Why is it necessary for me to unburden myself of thoughts, feelings, venom and delights, along with any other notions humans find themselves in need of releasing to the world at large, through this demanding medium of the written word?

It probably goes back to being a reasonably intelligent only child, and trundling off to the first grade with two bad legs requiring bulky exterior braces, as well as a speech impediment, one subsequently addressed with corrective therapy. Neither of these conditions was painful physically, but psychologically they were burden. In retrospect, these and other childhood health issues made me feel inferior.

On top of all that, we lived outside of town, and there weren't many other kids nearby. My social skills were stunted, and it would be an understatement of colossal dimensions to merely say “he was shy.” Rather, it was a crippling, oppressive and introverted shyness. Literally, I didn’t know what to say.

My father was a profane and outspoken extrovert who viewed potential human redemption exclusively as a function of team sports, and he meant well, but if I'd have been able to communicate and cooperate with others playing games, there'd have been no issue in the first place.

Books were my solace. What I liked to do most of all was read, and it was through reading that I gradually learned the merits of writing as a means of being able to express what I couldn't manage to say aloud.

It was only much later, when I got into the pub business, that I finally learned how to speak, and to address people directly with thoughts previously reserved for pen and paper.

By now, most readers know that my interest in better beer brought me into NABC. It was opportunity, circumstance and serendipity, not an MBA or previous management experience at a chain restaurant. After a few years behind the bar, it all started to make sense.

And yet speaking remains hazardous and always will. There is no "cure" for shyness. Your brain continues to work as before, while you ceaselessly and remorselessly treat the daily symptoms.

Learning to interact with others made me a better bartender and informed my writing. Moreover, it was a way of breaking out of my inner little boy’s ongoing prison and finding common ground with fellow humans.

People?

They can be almost as interesting as words … at least some of the time.

---

So, now what?

Insofar as I can control my future progress, perhaps a bout of personal discovery, as prompted long ago by Michael “Beer Hunter” Jackson’s astute observation: “The pursuit of the perfect pint should last a lifetime.”

Words may be substituted for “pint” according to your own tastes and disposition.

Is there money to be made by following my writing muse? Will I become a greeter at Wally World? Is another political campaign likely down the road? Who was better, Charlie Parker or John Coltrane?

So many questions, so few answers. Then again, Beer Zen 101 always held that it’s less about the destination than the journey, precisely because the only finish line we share is the one marked Death, which always comes into view soon enough. It’s time to find another path less traveled, and get with it.

I’ll close with a request of the sort I seldom make: Please wish me luck – and as always, thanks for reading.

---

Recent columns:

November 12: ON THE AVENUES: The mayor’s race was about suburban-think versus urban-think. The wrong-think won.

November 5ON THE AVENUES: Confusion, exile, ignobility and resistance.

October 29: ON THE AVENUES: A year later, the backroom politics of pure spite at Haughey’s Tavern still reek.

October 28: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: How many businesses already have died because of City Hall’s street grid procrastination?

October 26: ON THE AVENUES EXTRA: Gahan says speeding sucks, but street safety can wait until after he is re-elected.

October 22: ON THE AVENUES: My career as a double naught capitalist.

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.

Video: Lazy River Redux at Binford Park.

"Binford Park, New Albany, where the folks in charge recently spent $1,000,000 largely on grading and grass. It's not as if they weren't warned or didn't know that this happens there a lot. This is what monetization of the local political process buys. Rest assured, the contractors made campaign donations."
-- Jeff Gillenwater

Mayor Gahan should add New Albany's name to Cities United for Immigration Action.

As Kevin Zurschmiede pointed out repeatedly during the mayoral campaign, New Albany is losing population. Given City Hall's perpetual silence and Jeff Gahan's idea-free career in politics, we've no idea whether he acknowledges this as a problem, although a case might be made that massive public subsidies for luxury apartments constitutes recognition.

A weak case, but still.

Amid the clamorous anti-immigrant idiocy fertilizing social media like so many native madrasas, and the perpetual conniving of Republican intellectual terror cells, there are American mayors speaking sensibly.

Cities United for Immigration Action

Let’s strengthen our cities by keeping families together, further growing our economies, and fostering additional community trust in law enforcement and government. Pledge your support as we work with cities nationwide to implement the president’s executive action.

Yes, most of the mayors and executives adding their names to this list hail from large cities. But Haledon, New Jersey (population 8,318) isn't.

They're not all located in "red" states, either; Salt Lake City and Travis County, Texas are represented.

The only Indiana city is Gary. There are none from Kentucky, although Kentucky Refugee Ministries and Louisville Catholic Charities are moving ahead with programs to assist refugees.  There are others, so please append them in the comments section.

I know: There is nothing in the city of New Albany's 200-year old stunted and underachieving genetic sequence to indicate interest in immigration-borne revitalization, and I can think of perhaps two elected officials here likely to be even remotely acquainted with the subject matter, although I'm sure Dan Coffey could speak at length about the voting patterns of dead Democrats.

Call me crazy, but Gahan should add his name to the list at Cities United for Immigration Action. He won't, because doing so would be like expecting one of my cats to perform trigonometry, and yet as a progressive citizen, I expect my mayor to have a pulse and do more than pander to money.

Perhaps a council resolution authored by John Gonder, who's already been kneecapped by Team Gahan. They can't hurt you any longer, John. Please allow us the pleasure of  watching as Caesar and Blair squirm in their nice suits and padded chairs.

Let it fly, and let's see who votes against it.

Governors Should Listen to Mayors on Syrian Refugees, by Kriston Capps (City Lab)

The deadly attacks in Paris may be shaping the debate over immigration in the U.S. Since Friday, a number of governors from across the U.S. have pledged to do what they can to stop Syrian immigrants from relocating within the borders of their states, despite the fact that Syrians are fleeing the same kind of violence that was visited upon Paris and Beirut last week.

Meanwhile, mayors from some of the largest U.S. cities are welcoming Syrian immigrants with open arms. It’s another example of the growing gulf between city and state leaders on civic priorities ranging from climate change to the minimum wage.

"The Modern Moloch": When cars were viewed as child-eating gods to be appeased.

Those are corpses on the platter. Photo credit: 99 Percent Invisible.

Reader DG suggested this link after viewing yesterday's video: Video: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime."

It's a podcast, and it's a "must listen" for advocates of safe, complete two-way streets.

Episode 76: The Modern Moloch, by Roman (99 Percent Invisible)

On the streets of early 20th Century America, nothing moved faster than 10 miles per hour. Responsible parents would tell their children, “Go outside, and play in the streets. All day.”

And then the automobile happened. And then automobiles began killing thousands of children, every year.

Much of the public viewed the car as a death machine. One newspaper cartoon even compared the car to Moloch, the god to whom the Ammonites supposedly sacrificed their children.

Pedestrian deaths were considered public tragedies. Cities held parades and built monuments in memory of children who had been struck and killed by cars. Mothers of children killed in the streets were given a special white star to honor their loss.

The main cause for these deaths was that the rules of the street were vastly different than how they are today. A street functioned like a city park, or a pedestrian mall, where you could move in any direction without really thinking about it. The only moving hazards were animals and other people ...

... If a car hit someone, the car was to blame. From the New York Times, November 23, 1924:

The horrors of peace appear to be appalling than the horrors of war. The automobile looms up as a far more destructive piece of mechanism than the machine gun. The reckless motorist deals more death the artilleryman. The man in streets seems less safe than the man in the trench. The greatest single lethal factor is the automobile. It left shambles in its wake as it coursed through 1923.

Automotive interests banded together under the name Motordom. One of Motordom’s public relations gurus was a man named E. B. Lefferts, who put forth a radical idea: don’t blame cars, blame human recklessness. Lefferts and Motordom sought to exonerate the machine by placing the blame with individuals ...

"I can attest to the idea that we do not trust someone else to tell our stories."

The author is a professor at the University of Missouri. Recent events there are summarized adequately at Wikipedia: 2015 University of Missouri protests.

Mislán's article caught my attention because of her digression about journalism and "white media." It's something our local Jeffersonville newspaper might be interested in examining.

At Missouri, 'right now, we are facing the backlash', a commentary by Cristina Mislán (PRI's The World)

 ... First, let’s understand that the First Amendment does not only cover journalists. Both journalists and the students demonstrating against the institution had a right to that public space. The student activists, who have been vulnerable since they first planted their feet on campus, attempted to create a safe space so that they could manage how they would tell their own stories. They simply wanted respect and safety, two rights that they have not received on campus ...

 ... Since my scholarship directly relates to media activism and social movements as they pertain to race, gender and class, we need some context about the mistrust communities of color have of journalists. The reality is that many communities of color do not trust the mainstream media. Historically, marginalized voices have sought to create their media due to the consistent inaccurate portrayals of their communities and issues. The mainstream media, sometimes perceived as the “white media” by some, is known to produce stereotypical representations that continue to reinforce the idea that brown and black individuals are angry and violent.

As someone whose father has often told me that the media lie, I can attest to the idea that we do not trust someone else to tell our stories.

Civil rights and LGBT? Indiana Republicans vow to keep us barefoot, stupid and mean-spirited.

Fundamental change, just so long as nothing fundamentally changes. It sounds almost like a Gahan campaign promise.

Indiana legislators foreshadow LGBT rights battle, by Maureen Hayden (CNHI via N & T)

INDIANAPOLIS — Any speculation that state lawmakers would wait until after the November election to debate civil rights for lesbian, gay and transgender Hoosiers is gone.

On Monday, state Senate President David Long, Fort Wayne, said legislators will soon see what he called a “comprehensive” bill that may extend anti-discrimination protections while allowing people to also claim religious freedom to deny those protections ... Long, a Republican, refused to give details of the proposed measure that will be filed when lawmakers return to the Statehouse for their short, 10-week session in January.

Even the Chamber of Commerce is urging the GOP to be rational. The House Speaker apparently sees bigotry as the state's biggest growth industry, with final word reserved for the Minority Leader.

House Speaker Brian Bosma, meanwhile, said the Legislature won’t be “bullied, badgered or blackmailed” into passing a measure that isn’t supported by most Hoosiers.

At the chamber’s legislative preview Monday, Bosma promised a civil debate would ensue, but he admitted it could be difficult.

“This is clearly the toughest issue of the session,” he said, "maybe the toughest issue of our [legislative] careers.”

That’s not how his Democratic counterpart sees it. House Minority Leader Scott Pelath said legislators could simply pass a bill that adds four words: “sexual orientation, gender identity” to the state’s civil rights law. And then move on to other pressing issues like road funding.

“My advice,” he said, “is to get it over with.”

When the facts change, do you change your mind?

This one's verified.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

The case of origin is at the Quote Investigator, but it's the sentiment encapsulated by the quote that has caught my attention.

Do you change your mind, or follow the lemmings off the cliff's edge?

When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?

John Maynard Keynes? Paul Samuelson? Winston Churchill? Joan Robinson? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: John Maynard Keynes was an enormously influential economist, but some of his detractors complained that the opinions he expressed tended to change over the years. Once during a high-profile government hearing a critic accused him of being inconsistent, and Keynes reportedly answered with one of the following:

When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?

Because there are so many different versions of this rejoinder I was hoping you might determine if any of them is real. Is there any truth to this anecdote?

Video: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime."

"The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" is from Adam Conover's Adam Ruins Everything, which is devoted to a worthy goal: "It shines light on popular false impressions and trends, debunking false ideas in society."

Come to New Albany, please. We're beset with 'em.

Thanks to Mr. B for the link, and his kind words. Previously at NAC:

Walking is not a crime: Dunman and others on the scourges of jaywalking in auto-erotic America.

From PPS: "Walking is Not a Crime: Questioning the Accident Axiom."

Paris: We cannot defend values by abandoning them.

Photo credit: The Nation

I'm a cosseted white male American who has traveled a bit, just enough to understand that he doesn't know much at all about the wider world, and as such, intends to think about matters a while longer before spouting glib, ignorant gibberish on social media.

I'm a human with a brain, not Pavlov's mutt. Salivate at the ring of ISIS's bell, and it wins. Yes, I favor crushing terrorism, but not through emulating the methods of terrorists.

These three essays encapsulate my point of view, as stated far better than I'm capable at the moment. Take a moment, read and think.

The Guardian view on the Paris attacks: amid the grief, we must defend the values that define us (The Guardian)

To Defeat ISIS, We Must Call Both Western and Muslim Leaders to Account, by Laila Lalami (The Nation)

Paris: You Don’t Want to Read This, by Peter Van Buren (Common Dreams)

"How our government helps investors profit from neighborhood decay."

Wow.

Investigative journalism really does exist.

Blight Inc. -- How our government helps investors profit from neighborhood decay, by Brian Eason (Indy Star)

 ... The story of urban blight is all too familiar. Indianapolis is pockmarked with 6,800 abandoned homes that stunt property values, attract crime and destabilize neighborhoods. But one of the primary causes is mostly hidden. And it is, in large part, enabled by our own government.

An Indianapolis Star investigation has found that, increasingly, the empty house next door is not owned by a bank or an individual, but by one of many investors, often from out of state, who are enticed by the prospects of cheap homes that can be purchased — sight unseen and in bulk — at government tax sales.

Jackie Green: 'I am not a scofflaw.'

Face it, Jackie; all of us who dare to challenge the established disorder are scofflaws.

scoff·law

ˈskôfˌlô,ˈskäf-/

noun

NORTH AMERICANinformal

1. a person who flouts the law, especially by failing to comply with a law that is difficult to enforce effectively.

Speaking only for myself, I embrace it. In fact, just last week I contested a parking ticket for blocking the street non-sweeper.

The Resistance, Jackie. The Resistance.

Biking advocate: 'I am not a scofflaw', by James Bruggers (C-J)

If there's a bike lane, bicyclists better use it, or they may find themselves in jail.

That's the message a Louisville Metro Police officer gave to bicycling advocate and former mayoral candidate Jackie Green on Friday in the form of a double citation for blocking traffic and running a red light.

Police spokesman Dwight Mitchell said bikes are expected to follow traffic laws and that means respecting stop lights and stop signs. He also said cyclists in Louisville generally must use bike lanes when they are available unless they need to be in another lane to make turns.

David Thrasher's alley cats and blockheads.

Paint.

It's the future,

Another walker in Louisville killed, this time by a tow truck -- but of course, it was her fault.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if we cared enough to analyze patterns of speeding among commercial vehicles traveling the city of New Albany's streets, tow trucks and wreckers would easily be identified as the fastest moving.

Dump trucks and box trucks would come second. The former might be more dangerous owing to the loads they carry.

This city tolerates anti-social traffic safety standards. Why is that?

Police Tow Truck Driver strikes and kills a person walking on Southside Drive, by Branden Klayko (Broken Sidewalk)

On Monday evening, a Louisville woman was walking along Southside Drive. At about 6:30p.m., she was crossing the street at or near the intersection Tenny Avenue when a motorist driving a Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) tow truck struck and killed her. The woman’s identity has not been released.

The usual reports came from WDRB, WAVE3, WLKY, and WHAS11, with LMPD spokesperson Dwight Mitchell making the usual victim-blaming statements about the person not glowing in the dark.

Dude: City Hall sure soft-pedaled that mayor's prayer breakfast this year, didn't it?

FFRF debuts first-ever ‘atheist marquee’

In 2014, the Mayor's Community Prayer Breakfast was a big story, primarily because someone tipped off the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and our quaintly indefensible local ritual went national.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2014: Pesky church-state issues: The Freedom from Religion Foundation investigates the Mayor's Community Prayer Breakfast.

I'd dearly love to take credit for being the snitch, but alas, it wasn't me. However, the furor alerted me to the existence of the FFRF, which the Baylor household promptly joined, and renewed just last week.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2014: "Government officials can worship, pray, and participate in religious events in their personal capacities. But they are not permitted to provide credibility or prestige to their religion by lending a government office and government title to religious events."

In retrospect, City Hall's reaction to the FFRF's scrutiny (even the News and Tribune got in on the fun, for once) was a precursor to the scene just before the League of Women Voters "debate" in 2015, with the mayor trotting out Linda Moeller to explain that the prayer breakfast doesn't actually occur on the taxpayers' dime because people like her are able to separate time on the clock from time off it, and never mind the location at a public high school because we factor in the gas and electricity, or something like that.

As Jeff wrote:

The space used for planning meetings is publicly funded. Having a meeting at 7 a.m. doesn't change that. The same is true of the event space. The City's marketing is easy enough to see as well. Normally, a group would have to pay or otherwise provide those things via private means. In this case, the citizens of New Albany are paying for them.

In the aftermath of last year's down home camp meeting, the mayor was sufficiently flummoxed to omit the very mention of the reason for rising so early.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014: The Mayor's Minute, missing words: "I had a wonderful time at the 46th annual mayor's breakfast last Saturday."

No community, no prayer -- just pancakes and delightful company. In 2015, the prayer breakfast was yesterday. The city spent less time (an money?) proselytizing the event, but what I wrote last year remains true.

The real core answer here is that we do it the way we do it because no one's ever thought about what it would mean to do it differently -- this as well as so many other examples of peculiar institutions existing in a vacuum outside the realm of modernity.

The more things (don't) change ...

Alice Cooper on the classical composers: "These guys were out of their minds."

Alice Cooper and Keith Moon. None were as crazy as Moon the Loon.

It probably depends on what the meaning of "crazy" is.

These classical writers were insane, when you think of how crazy they were. These guys were out of their minds. They were just eaten by this music, they were mentally insane over it. They were the rock stars of their time. But I think they would have been a lot crazier than we were.

Alice Cooper may have been an alcoholic, now long since dry, but I'm not sure he ever was crazy. When I saw him perform in Louisville, circa early-2000-something (the time before that was 1977), he seemed to me the last of the vaudevillians. Not that I doubt his sincerity in promoting classical music; as he makes clear, the quality of timelessness hops genres, and constructing memorable music spans them.

Alice Cooper: 'These classical composers were crazier than me!', by Tom Service (The Guardian)

Alice Cooper has been many things in his time: a rock god, a chicken-chucker, a guillotine-operator, a welcomer of nightmares – and now, it seems, a dewy-eyed advocate for the teaching of classical music in schools. Seriously. In a recording studio in central London, Cooper is embarking on one of the most unlikely projects of his half-century tenure as the world’s shock-rocker-in-chief: he’s providing the narration for a new recording of a Prokofiev classic, although his version is called Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood.

Now available: A digital archive of tin foil, wax and plastic cylinder recordings.

Photo credit: UCSB archive (below)

How could I have missed this?

Otto von Bismarck's voice.

I foresee melancholy winter evenings at home, with beer, sardines and voices from 1895. In short, the center of my psychological target.

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Independent local businesses walk a high wire without a net.

Most of these words were written in 2012, minus an ill-advised reference to corporate gift card swaps, and although I'm currently transitioning away from independent local business ownership, there is an "indie-anonymous" aspect to the process of disengagement.

On one hand, the better "craft" beer biz is my natural milieu. On the other, as presently constituted, it's a scrum of fear, loathing and Philistinism, one I'd rather take a break from trying to influence from the inside until things shake out, and the pendulum swings back around.

In fact, I'd far rather act to influence the pendulum from a different perspective, as color commentator of sorts. Will there be other independent business opportunities in the future? I don't know. Start-ups are a young person's game, and perspective usually easier for the ones with ample scar tissue and time to think.

As any of this pertains to local independent business prospects in a place like New Albany, only one message continues to ring true through the passing years: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin said it, and it applies to New Albany's indie business community in the year 2015 just as much as when Franklin uttered it during revolutionary times.

You may or may not enjoy this snippet of where "my head was at" three years ago. How much has changed?

That's the question, isn't it?

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It’s simply a fact of life that almost every single working day during each calendar year, independent local businesses walk a high wire without a net.

Engorged corporate franchise teats for suckling? We have none.

Massive federal bailouts, available as soothing stress relief? Not exactly.

But hardly a week passes without various levels of government merrily providing subsidies for the very same multinational monoliths best placed to decapitate the independent business segment, as procured by the same lawyers and lobbyists we cannot afford.

On and on it goes. Money inexorably hemorrhages out of the local economy, until it reaches terminal gravity at whichever offshore tax havens offering the best terms to the coddled white-bread one-percenters of our era.

But you know what?

Digressions, rants and bitterness aside, I’m generally firm in the belief that most indies wouldn’t have it any other way.

The only true bottom line for me is moral justification. Getting out of bed each morning, safe in the knowledge that whether or not I get it right 100% of the time, I can still go back to sleep with my standards and integrity intact … well, that’s always been enough in my world, and enough for many others, too.

We sink, and we swim. We win and we lose. Often we’re too exhausted to know the difference. Bruised and battered, arrogant and triumphant, and every conceivable emotion falling between these extremes; small business people have felt them all, and the adrenaline rush we cherish when all the cylinders are hitting is enough to overwhelm those pesky, nagging problems – a Band-Aid here, another digit in the crumbling dike there.

And while I’m at it, this independent local business roller coaster ride has very little to do with money, at least in my case. We’ve always rolled most of the scant profits back into the business in an ongoing effort, admittedly scattershot, to continue improving it.

In personal terms, whenever I’ve had money, I’ve just gone and spent it, and usually had a whale of a time doing so, because I shan’t be taking it with me when I die, anyway. Personal financial gain is barely relevant, and most of the best things aren’t really that expensive, anyway: Books, music, a bicycle and a BLT when the local tomatoes are in season.

The real point in life is to beat both the bad odds and insufferable bastards stacked against you, and to do so as often as you possibly can before crawling back to the table to spin the wheel yet another time. It’s addictive that way.