Portsmouth--Ohio's Opioid capital

Here is a link to a Canadian perspective  on opioid addiction in Portsmouth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmJEY1CTgKg

Derek Allen Fired Again!

Friday, November 06, 2015

The Carpetbagger: from Piqua to Portsmouth

     [A reposting of a 2015 post on the occasion of the firing of Derek Allen as Portsmouth's city manager on Monday, November 18, 2017.]

WANTED

       The opening sentence of a report in the Portsmouth Daily Times (PDT) by Frank Lewis posted online on 6 November 2015 states, “Portsmouth City Council will take action to authorize Portsmouth City Manager Derek K. Allen to begin to advertise for bids and to enter into contracts with the lowest and/or best bidder for required supplies, materials and services for 2016.” According to the report by Lewis, “Yearly requirements include such items as manhole rings and covers, asphaltic concrete, uniforms for police and fire departments, chemicals for water filtration, police department radio maintenance and other equipment and services.” Lewis then details the costs of the new breathing apparatus the Fire Department needs. “The estimate from Breathing Air Systems lists the original price of $11,842, showing a 16 percent discount, bringing the cost to $9,947.28, less $1,000 for the trade-in of their existing unit, the new price is $8,947.28. Allen said there is an additional cost for shipping and installation of $819 and he is requesting an additional $1,000 for contingency.” Lewis then explains why the present breathing equipment is obsolete, an explanation which is even more complicated than the financial breakdown, so I won’t reproduce it here. 

       What I will emphasize here is that  one of the important details Lewis failed to mention, even in passing in his report, is that our carpetbagging city manager  who will put out for  bidding all services and materials that cost $50,000 or more, as required by state law, was himself guilty of violating state law regulating the purchase of materials when he was the assistant city manager in Piqua, Ohio, where he continues to  make his home, though his high paying job is in Portsmouth, which is why I call him a carpetbagger. Not only did Allen ten years ago break the law in purchasing $160,000 worth of gravel for a bike path without putting it out for bid, but he compounded his crime by lying under oath when he testified about the gravel purchase. (See the Celina Daily Standard report at the end of this post.) On the basis of his testimony, Allen was convicted of perjury and received a fine and a suspended jail sentence. Shouldn’t Lewis in his story on contract bidding at least have alluded, if only in passing, to Allen’s failure to follow state law about the bidding process in Piqua, where they probably would not hire him now as dogcatcher.  Because of the PDT's soft pedaling  of Allen's controversial career, as many as nine out of ten Portsmouth residents may have no knowledge of his criminal record, nor of his  inability to hold on to a job. Unlike honest investigative PDT reporters who lost their jobs when they reported something they shouldn’t have, Frank Lewis is a master not only of omission but also of innuendo. He knows not only whose toes should not be stepped on but also whose toes should be on behalf of the crooked clique. 

       For example, on November 4, in reporting on the results of the Portsmouth elections the day before, Lewis did not limit himself to reporting on Tom Lowe’s decisive victory in the Sixth Ward city council race; Lewis also alluded, as he had in the past,  to the alleged ganging up by Lowe and Shawn Stratton on the Sixth Ward incumbent Jeff Kleha in the primary election. “Stratton and Lowe were at the center of a controversy in the May Primary,” Lewis wrote, “when they seemingly teamed up to defeat incumbent councilman Portsmouth attorney Jeff Kleha, leaving him as the odd man out. It was that election in which the Scioto County Board of Elections allowed Sixth Ward voters to vote for two instead of one as had always been the practice of the city in previous elections.” The so-called “controversy” arose primarily not because of past election practices but because Kleha had been a political rubber stamp for  city manager Allen, who hated to lose him. Because Allen has a history of not being able to hold a job, he needs every city council member in his corner. It was not Stratton and Lowe but the voters in the Sixth Ward who made Kleha “the odd man out,” but Lewis does not see it that way. In reaction to Kleha being voted off city council, there will be an amendment on the March 2016 ballot to outlaw elections in which electors  can vote for more than one candidate. That amendment has Allen’s fingerprints all over it. The amendment serves  the purpose of further calling into question the legitimacy of Lowe sitting on the city council. The politics of Portsmouth are even dirtier under the city manager form of government than they were under the mayoral form of government. If only there was a Breathing Air System for readers of the Portsmouth Daily Times whose use of smoke and mirrors to mislead Portsmouth residents about the political corruption in one of the dirtiest drug-addicted cities in America.

       Tim Loper was elected to city council as a candidate who was strongly opposed to the city’s costly plan to renovate the decrepit Marting building into the new city hall, but once elected  as reformer, Loper became a tool of the corrupt clique that controls Portsmouth. The corrupt clique valued Loper so much that they provided him with a sham address in Ward One to allow him to continue on council even after he and his wife moved to another ward. Allen is a far more valuable tool to the corrupt clique than Loper ever was, and the PDT and Frank Lewis in particular will be careful not to step on Allen’s toes at the same time that they will be reminding residents that Lowe, should he continue to act  like a trouble-making reformer, had "seemingly" resorted to electoral chicanery to get on city council. If Lowe for any reason does not finish his four-year term, Kleha will be waiting in the wings to be appointed to the city council by the city council, which is how he got on council in the first place. Those foolish four-year terms  for city council are what enable the game of musical chairs to be played over and over again. Will we ever have a city council that will allow for the return of two-year terms, which will make recalls and musical chairs a thing of the past? Not when we have the likes of Jim Kalb and Jo Anne Aeh and the convicted perjurer like Derek Allen as city manager. I will end this post by reproducing a story from an Ohio newspaper that, unlike the PDT, does not use smoke and mirrors to protect convicted carpetbaggers.

From the Celina Daily Standard

Elegy for Christine Keeler

         Christine Keeler (1942-2017)

                       1

        

Rest in peace, Christine Keeler,

far from the razor and potato peeler,

far from the drugged drug dealer

far from the groper and feeler.

You deserve a Shelley or Keats,

not  a yours truly who bleats

like some sore shallow throat 

who only gets one’s  goat.

Always a bridesmaid, always confetti,

always a male Christina Rossetti,

I dearly wish I had known you

and in the crisis could have phoned you.

I wish that I had been your friend,

and had been there at the end

to tell you what I wanted to say:

“Christine, have a great day!”

                       2

Rest in peace, Christine Keeler,

far from the weasel wheeler-dealer,

far from males who cheat,

far from gigolos in heat,

a poor, pretty party girl

caught up in the  social swirl

of London’s libertine  nightlife—

the bane of the pimp Profumo’s  wife,

an uncut diamond in the rough,

no lipstick, no powder puff,

no glutinous make-up

to get dry and cake-up,

no stiletto heels to kick up,

no husband after whom to pick up.

Your complexion was as clear

as a baby’s pampered rear,

as white a heavenly cloud 
as the drab London sky allowed.

  Keeler striding chair, c. 1963         

HIV/AIDS

The main reason I an not voting for Kevin W. Johnson for First Ward council is that he has HIV/AIDs. His partner  died apparently from complications from that disease, and it is possible Johnson himself may die or at least be incapacitated by it.  If that happens the City Council will choose someone to complete his four-year term.

Too often council members for one reason or another do not complete their terms. If terms were for two years, instead of four, voters would have more electoral control. Having council members with HIV/AIDS gives the  council rather than voters the decisive voice in city government. HIV/AIDS is a threat not only to individuals but to democratic local government. Electing those with HIV/AIDS to city council borders on political suicide.

ForeverSpin

It's an apt symbol for our civilization.

It spins round in circles forever,

like the earth about the sun. 

Not only patriotic, it’s clever. 

And not only that, it’s metal,

hard, irresistible and glistening,

as bullets are frequently fatal

and ears are designed for listening.

Listen, listen closely, can’t you hear

it spinning, spinning, spinning?

"In God We Trust, have no fear.

We’re  winning, winning, winning."

Our deliverance is heaven sent.

It’s the Second Amendment.

Vote Against Property Tax Levy

Below is a copy of a letter Jane Murray sent to the Portsmouth Daily Times with her recommendation to vote against the proposed property tax levy on the November ballot.  I heartily endorse her recommendation.
                                                               Robert Forrey

October 06, 2017

Letter to the Editor

Portsmouth Daily Times

I urge all voters to vote AGAINST the proposed property tax levy on the November ballot. It is to fund the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board of Adams, Lawrence and Scioto Counties.

Why should we property owners pay for this? As far as I can determine, this Board merely contracts with other organizations to provide services. Those agencies are able to write grant proposals for drug addiction. The funds available are ever growing. The function of this board has been superseded by the Counseling Center and others so ADAMH should cease to exist – not ask for funds from property taxes.

We property owners who pay our taxes in Scioto County should not be asked to pay for drug addiction services. The former Executive Director of the Counseling Center, Ed Hughes, stated in a public meeting that his agency brings drug addicted people from around the state to our little community.

Vote AGAINST the proposed property taxes that will cost $100 on $100,000 assessed value per year.

Jane Murray

The White House

The Elden House, built 1853

                                      The house has a secret

                                      that it cannot tell,

                                      a secret that, if revealed,

                                      would break the spell

                                      cast when it was built 

                                      in eighteen fifty-three,

                                      north of the Mason-Dixon,

                                      in the era of slavery.

                                      The dark secret skulks 

                                      behind a white exterior, 

                                      a secret that’s never

                                      been revealed before,

                                      and never will as long

                                      as the color line persists

                                      and as long as this historical

                                      white house poetically exists.

The Conniving Councilman, the Perjured Puppet City Manager, and the Sociology Professor

Conniving City Councilman Kevin W. Johnson

It is reported in the Portsmouth Daily Times that Portsmouth City Manager Derek Allen (below), a convicted perjurer, claims he is swamped by his work load and needs an assistant.  Is he telling the truth? If he lied under oath in Piqua, what whoppers might he tell in Portsmouth where he is not under oath?  I have previously pointed out that Allen  is really a part-time city employee who lives a couple of hours drive away from Portsmouth in Piqua, Ohio. If he moved to Portsmouth full-time, maybe he would have more time to devote to his job . He was previously the city manager of Piqua until he lied under oath and was fired. How in the world did a convicted perjurer from Piqua end up as city manager of Portsmouth?

Derek Allen in a trash selfie

Because the conniving Portsmouth city councilman Kevin W. Johnson is the kingpin of Portsmouth politically, it is he more than anyone who turned Allen into a puppet city manager. As long as  Kevin W.  is the councilman for the First Ward, and Donald Trump is the president of the United States, the devil is  well represented at the local as well as the national level. But registered voters in the First Ward, of which I am one, have a choice in the next city election. Sean Dunne (below),  a First Ward resident and a sociology professor at Shawnee State University, is challenging the convicted perjurer Allen. Without the conniving Kevin W. to back him, Derek will be done and Dunne will be First Ward city councilman.

Sociology professor Sean Dunne

Statues of Limitations

The controversy connected with Confederate statues and memorials recently erupted in violence at Charlottesville, Virginia, where a woman died and a number of others at a rally were injured after being hit by an automobile driven by a twenty-something reportedly white racist male who is being held without bail. We have had for many years what is known as "road rage," but the Charlottesville fatality resulted more from what could be called "race rage."

Located on the northern side of the Ohio River, which unofficially marks the boundary between the vaguely defined northern and southern United States, Portsmouth, Ohio,  has one prominent statue, erected in 1879, which commemorates the first Union soldier from Scioto County to be killed in the Civil War. The Portsmouth statue, on a pillar worthy of Caesar Augustus, stands high over Tracy Park, near downtown Portsmouth, facing the Ohio River and Kentucky, which may be just a coincidence.

As a so-called border town, Portsmouth had southern sympathizers and the Ku Klux Klan, as I pointed out before in River Vices, was active in the town well into the twentieth century. Hell, the KKK was thriving in northern Ohio for a time. KKK membership was not limited, to use another racial stereotype, to rednecks. It seems very unlikely that the Tracy Park Union statue is in any danger of being pulled down. But we live in an increasingly rapidly changing, some would argue, alarmingly deteriorating times. Some towns in the South and possibly elsewhere, according the New York Times, have already passed ordinances and provisos that prohibit the removal of statues and memorials from public places, offering some legal protection for sacred carved cows.

Who could have imagined just five years ago a Donald Trump, a psychopathic narcissist, as he has been analyzed,  perhaps in part because of his flamboyant blond wig, being elected president of the United States? I still wake up some mornings thinking it's just a bad dream. The possibility, as hard as it now is to believe,  is that there might someday be a statue of President Donald Trump in Tracy Park, and in hundreds of other American parks and  plazas. It's within the realm of possibility, particularly if, like President Lincoln, he becomes a victim of "race rage."

Lili St. Cyr

The crush he had on Lili as a kid

he kept secretly to himself.

He kept her photo hid

up on his closet shelf,

where it was long forgotten,

until now, an old man,

by time downtrodden,

he dreams of her behind her big fan.

For the Wikipedia entry for St. Cyr, click here.

Truculent Trump

      I recently perused A Book About Words, published in England in 1865. The curious latter-day Calvinistic thesis of the book is that words, reflecting the evil proclivities of human nature, tend to become negative and consequently “degenerate.” It occurred to me that at least one fairly common word, trump, may be undergoing an accelerated degeneration because of the the controversial career of Donald J. Trump, the truculent, dysfunctional 45th president of the United States.  

        The noun trump has as one of its meanings, according to the Third Edition of the International Merriam-Webster Dictionary (1968), “a dependable and exemplary person.” “He’s a trump,” are words of praise. But that sounds like the antithesis of what Donald J. Trump has unfortunately proved to be. It is trump as a verb that seems more appropriate for our president. Trump. As a transitive verb, to trump means to get the better of, or to override, as a trump card can in cards. To trump also means, more specifically, to get the better of someone, which might be described as Donald Trump’s modus operandi.
        Trump tried to get the better of the reading public by claiming to be
the co-author of The Art of the Deal (1987). Trump’s putative “co-author” Tony Schwartz claimed—and he was backed up by the publisher—that Trump had nothing to do with the writing of The Art of Deal. Trump continues to claim he did. Since lying is an integral part of “the art of the deal,” Trump naturally would lie about his part in the writing of the best selling book. One does not have to have a Ph.D. in psychology to see that the Donald is as incapable of writing a book as he is of thinking straight. If “the Donald” exemplifies anything, it is mindlessness. Trump acquired that nickname earlier in his loopy career. The word donald is not listed in Merriam-Webster, so I’m not sure why the nickname “the Donald” has stuck, though it might in part be because of Trump’s resemblance to Donald Duck, particularly in that cartoon character’s temper tantrums.

"Who sez I colluded with the Russkies?"

Tobacco

I’m here to tell you, of this have no doubt,

smoking becomes what your life is about:

smoking in bed, before sex or after,

in the throes of tears or peals of laughter, 

smoking while soaking in the tub,

at a party or on the potty,

whether broke or rolling in clover,

at midnight or next day, hung over.

Of this, please, entertain no doubt:

that’s what smoking is really about.

You may be happy and photogenic,

but tobacco is carcinogenic.

Pixelated

                The back of a Google Pixel

Each morning, in foul weather or fair,

I still walk down to the river

to make doubly sure it’s still there,

still flowing resolutely east to west,

dividing Ohio from Kentucky,

the liberal North from the conservative South

as far as my bleary eyes can see,

and even farther for the hawks on high.

When I’m assured nothing’s changed,

that no tug’s pushing four long barges

against the flow, as if deranged,

I turn to the business at hand:

my Google Pixel, with messages

that tell me what the day presages.

There was an Old Woman

Who in their right mind wants

to bring a child into this world

in which not only tropical fish

but coral reefs are imperiled,

in which global warming

is dismissed as fake news,

like when “the experts” predicted

Trump would definitely lose?

Have mercy on your grandchildren

by not having children of your own.

What did Eve need with progeny

when she already had a crazy bone?

And why didn't that woman in the shoe

cook all her kids in a mulligan stew?

Golden Shower

"An uncorroborated report circulated by U.S. intelligence alleges Russian security agents watched Trump engaging in perverted sexual acts.”                                                                                                                           News item

                               He’s a joke from Berlin to Beijing, 

                               this fool who’s our president,

                               who’s persistently pissing

                               into, not out of, the tent,

                               which is not surprising.

                               Not only does he not know

                               Berlin from Beijing

                               but his ass from his elbow;

                               and it may happen now and then

                               that he not only gets (ahem)

                               pissed off at bloody women
                               but gets pissed on by them.

Our Smiling Shitty Manager

What is Portsmouth's shitty manager, surrounded by trash, smiling about?

Portsmouth’s Shitty Manager, Derek Allen,  is in the news again (click here), not for perjury in Pequa but for attacking the homeless on his  Facebook page. Allen has put his foot in his big mouth dissing the poor and homeless as lazy panhandlers living in a tent city in Portsmouth. The story includes what might be the most telling photo (above) of Allen's career in which he beams stupidly, surrounded by the trash of tent city, posing in a selfie like a happy pig in a heavenly sty in the sky. Et tu, Porky?

The Double-edge

The double-edge of old age

is that you forget so damn fast.

You no sooner turn the page

than you forget what you read last.

The novel renews itself 

by escaping from the past.

Books put in their place on the shelf 

decline politely to be typecast.

It’s as if you can live

life over, barely remembering,

as if memory’s a sieve,

flowing, not dismembering.

You see, you can relive the best

and bury the very worst,

pass the hardest test

and stand not last but first.

Your heirs might sadly think

that you’ve lost your mind,

or taken clandestinely to drink,

wondering if your will's signed.

It’s really none of the above.

You still have all your marbles.

Your heart sings like you’re in love, 

but your brain sometime warbles.

It’s not that you’re breaking laws

which old age is absently abetting.

It’s that the past’s not what it once was

and needs a hell of a lot of editing.

Avocado Cantata

          Still Life with Apple and Avocado by Dan Haraga

I had my first avocado in Las Vegas 

around 1953 when I was hitchhiking 

from Boston to sunny San Diego.

I had just turned twenty-one as I recall.

I was a college student in Vermont

majoring in English literature.

I’d never seen an avocado before

having grown up blue collar in Boston,

nominally Irish-Catholic,

I had eaten potatoes aplenty

until they were coming out of my ears—

boiled, baked, mashed, sliced, fried—“variety

was the splice of life,” my queer uncle said.

Not that he’d ever tried avocados

or anyone else in my family.

My reaction to my first avocado

was that it had no taste at all, nothing.

You had to develop a taste for it.

At least that’s what i told myself at first.

It was like chewing a lot of nothing.

I thought of it as “Vacant and voluptuous.”

That was the English lit major speaking.

What kind of poem might Keats have written 

about the avocado? “Hail to thee, 

Alligator Pear, puzzling forbidden fruit!”

Adam would have decried its tastelessness, 

Eve snickering at the sour face he made

when he bit into it for the first time.

I developed a taste for them that summer

in San Diego where they were a staple,

Mexico being the world’s major source. 

An avocado afficionado, 

I moved to San Diego with my B.A.

from Middlebury in Vermont

to pursue a Ph.D. at U.C.S.D..

writing my dissertation on 

“Keats’ Unconscious Craving for Avocados.”

I credit my advanced age to exercise and diet—

of which avocados were the staff of life.

“I’m eighty-seven going on nine-hundred,” 

is what I say when asked how old I am. 

But the truth is avocados and age

became much too much of a good thing.

I regret living as long as I have

and being crazy about avocados

from which I want an eternal vacation.

Even without any major illness,

life in the end is a pain in the ass

and I refer not just to hemorrhoids.

Global warming is now a reality,

not just a stark, hellish hypothesis.

The shelf life of picked avocados is brief

in contrast to which apples are Methuselahs,

but in global warming an avocado

is like a snowball in hell or a popsicle

in a pizza oven in Pensacola.

A peeled avocado is fresh as long

as a firefly’s flash lasts, which is about,

roughly speaking, 0.76 of a second.

The edibility of peeled avocados

can be lengthened with refrigeration

and polyethylene food wrap.

But what’s the point of it all?

Of life I mean, which will become

intolerable in the lives of our children,

which I thankfully have had none.

It’s a small consolation but I don’t

have to think about progeny

roasting in Canada and Siberia

which will be crowded with refugees

and where avocados will be sold

on street corners because in

tropical climates they will grow

profusely as fruit on trees,

which is what they can’t help being.

                        Robert Forrey

Somersaults

She was so unlovable the birds

would stop singing when she was near,

parrots be at a loss for words,

and blue skies would turn drear.

Spring  would come late as possible,

and summer seem so very far

and winter even more terrible 

than March in Antarctica.

Personally she was a wet towel

who was rarely ever in fashion.

Her smile was more a scowl

and worst of all she was never fun. 

But I loved her madly, for all her faults,

which I proved by doing somersaults.

Structure and Meaning

                                  selfie         

Thinking a lot about suicide

gives his life meaning and structure

separates the ephemeral from the puncture

that caused the crash fifty-two years ago

that killed his mother and brother

but left him unscathed with hardly

a scratch, just an inane ability

to recall the moment of impact

his VW bug colliding head-on 

with the fucked-up scrap iron truck 

that was in the wrong lane

because of the puncture

that caused him to lose control

with only one headlight

which made him think he was about

to hit a stupid motorcyclist

when normally he was trying

to refrain from swerving into

some unlucky son-of-a-bitch

who woke up that morning

without any inkling that somebody

namely him, who felt thinking a lot

about suicide gave his life

structure and meaning, was going

to crash into someone without blinking.