Field of Schemes

Layout of proposed athletic complex

On 16 July 2007, the Portsmouth City Council took one step closer to once again selling out the public, in this instance by approving the construction of an athletic complex in the economically broken heart of Portsmouth, the same broken heart of town that we have been told for years only a shopping mall could possibly mend. According to the mythology that passes for Portsmouth history, in 1980 several Evil Councilmen stopped the construction of a shopping mall. These Evil Councilmen put such a curse on Portsmouth that for twenty-five years no shopping mall was built. Even the most hallowed emporium of downtown Portsmouth, Marting’s Department Store, which was supposed to become the heart of the downtown shopping mall, went out of business.

Then, twenty-five years after the Evil Councilmen had prevented Portsmouth’s Sleepy Downtown from being awakened by the kiss of City Manager Barry Feldman, plans for another downtown shopping center were drawn up by Neal Hatcher, Portsmouth’s controversial real estate developer. In his usual bumptious manner, using his political stooges in city government and the threat of eminent domain, Hatcher began acquiring property in the heart of Portsmouth for his shopping mall. He acquired on John St. alone 22 pieces of property. Several years ago, I talked to a family on John St. who told me they believed Hatcher had deliberately neglected the property he acquired in the John St. neighborhood to drive the value of property down so that he could then buy what remained at depreciated prices. The family held him responsible for the drug addicts and prostitutes who gravitated to the wasteland he had turned John St. into. The John St. properties he acquired by previous street numbers, are as follows: 9, 630, 636, 638, 640, 702, 704, 708, 712, 714, 715, 718, 722, 802, 810, 811, 815, 816, 820, 918, 924, and 928.

A Hatcher property at 702 John St., 2004

Hatcher acquired many other properties that now are in the area designated for the athletic complex. On Moulton Place he acquired numbers 619, 623, 637, 641, 643, 645, and 647. On 8^th St. he acquired numbers 1003, 1011, 1014, 1016, 1017, 1113, 1115, 1119, 1123, 1125, 1129, 1138, and 1140, all now within the athletic complex area. On 9^th St. he acquired 1004, 1006, 1008, 1012, 1018, 1022, 1024, 1112, 1114, 1116, 1128, 1130, 1136, and 1140, also now within the athletic complex area. On Gallia St. he acquired numbers 1015 and 1021. On Findlay St. he acquired numbers 724 (the Workmen’s Compensation building), 816, 916, 918, 920, and 1026. On Waller St. he acquired number 423. On Gallia, Findlay, and 9^th Streets, which presently define the southern, western, and northern limits of the athletic complex, he acquired properties on the other side of the street that presumably are outside the complex limits, but if any expansion is needed in those limits, he would be in a position to wheel and deal.

Most of the houses in the athletic complex area are gone, as is the Selby factory. Where once it had stood, employing thousands of workers, nothing remains but massive stone slabs piled up like corpses, which have been an eyesore for years. The acres of property Hatcher had acquired for his shopping mall lay devastated, like a London neighborhood that had been leveled by a German V2 rocket in the Second World War.

Hatcher’s critics accuse him of letting property he acquires fall into such disrepair that adjacent property values plummet and pressure is put on people to sell and move out. Take a look at the former Workmen’s Compensation building, at 724 Findlay St., a haunted hulk with creeping landscaping that Hatcher has owned for some time. That building has been gathering bird nests in its hair for years, the better to drive down property values and qualify the neighborhood as blighted. When neighborhoods are classified as blighted, it is easier to eminent-domain and tap into public funds for their “renewal.” I think of 724 Findlay not as the Workmen’s Compensation building but as the Real Estate Developer’s Compensation building, because we can count on Hatcher being paid “fairly” for it, even though it is worth next to nothing commercially in Portsmouth’s current real estate market.

724 Findlay: Hatcher's Decrepit Workmen's Comp Building

Something went wrong and Hatcher’s shopping mall never materialized. Like the shopping mall of 1980, Hatcher’s mall was a castle in the air. The Prince of Eminent Domain was faced with the prospect of a huge financial loss on all those acres he had bought. However, in accordance with the principle of No Building Left Behind, no Portsmouth property owner with political connections ever has to take a loss on any thing, whether it be a 126-year-old mummified department store, a leaking contaminated cable TV building, or acres of devastated land in the center of the city. All that is required is that somebody dream up some public use for the otherwise worthless property. Then sell or give the property to the city. So the location of new public projects are determined by where a business has failed or where a house or building belonging to a politically influential owner is falling apart. That is Portsmouth’s version of urban planning. And what makes it even worse is that those failing businesses provide the initial motivation for a public project. It is not the needs of the community that come first; it is the need of someone with influence to get rid of property that comes first. The future of Portsmouth gets tied to and is fueled by its failures. That is not a formula for success. It is a vicious cycle. Crooked politicians lobby for a new city building because Marting’s goes under; when Marting’s causes a firestorm, another site is found for a city building, the worthless Singer property on Washington St. When Kenrick’s goes belly up, we get a Welcome Center. Now, after Hatcher’s mall went kaput, we get an athletic complex. When asked why he robbed banks, Willy Sutton allegedly answered, “Because that’s where the money is.” If Kalb was as honest as Willy Sutton, when asked why the city builds its public projects where it does, he would answer “Because that’s where the over-privileged own property they want to unload on the public.”

It was probably one of the over-privileged, possibly the Prince of Darkness himself, tossing restlessly in bed late at night, who figured out how to unload twenty or so acres of devastated land that Hatcher was stuck with. What the center of the city needed was not a shopping mall but an athletic complex, not shoppers but athletes, and not professional athletes, either, but high school athletes, teenagers who could be portrayed in a public relations campaign as deserving kids as well as the economic saviors of downtown Portsmouth. Grammar school students were enlisted in the fight for the shopping mall back in 1980, but now high school students are now being enlisted in the campaign for the athletic complex. The argument is that “for the sake of the kids,” we need a massive athletic complex. “Gentlemen,” the high school football coach Skip Hickman told the the City Council at the July 16 meeting, “We’ve drug on for nine weeks. We need your help. Do it tonight, because it’s the right thing to do for the kids.” How has the city ever been able to get away with neglecting the kids for as long as it has? No wonder drug abuse has drug on as long as it has, and that teen pregnancies and academic underachievement have plagued our teenagers. Those of us who never had to play in Spartan Stadium or the baseball stadium should thank our lucky stars. That Howard Harcha IV played in both stadiums and went on to achieve the success he has is incredible. He deserves a mural on the flood wall. That a stadium that had been good enough for an NFL franchise should be good enough for a high school team, or that what was good enough for player-coach Jim Thorpe should be good enough for Skip Hickman – these are the arguments of nay sayers, like those evil Councilmen back in 1980, who stood in the way of the shopping mall. The scandal of letting kids play in Spartan Stadium has to stop. We have to turn the neighborhood that Hatcher had turned into a haven for prostitutes and drug dealers into a field of multimillion dollar athletic dreams. Ten million dollars is just the beginning, as anyone knows who wasn’t born yesterday.

Proposed site of PHS athletic complex

But if you build a multimillion dollar athletic complex, will they come to watch high school football and basketball games? Will they in such numbers and often enough to revive the center of the city economically? Or is that just one of the pie-in-the-sky economic predictions Supt. of Schools Broughton has made. This woman apparently will say and do anything to expand her bureaucratic empire, never mind what it is going to cost taxpayers. To believe her, the athletic complex will transform Portsmouth into a City of Prosperity. Some will probably disagree with the Shawnee Sentinel, which declared last November that “Since her appointment [as Superintendent of Schools] Jan Broughton has become embroiled with the most evil, mendacious, greedy un-elected wealthy gangsters in the City of Portsmouth.” The Sentinel has been proven right too many times to ignore. What sounds outrageous now, may be all too true down the road. We’ve got a Wall of Fame on the river side of the floodwall. What we need is a Wall of Shame. The athletic complex may be the deal that guarantees Broughton a place on that wall.

The athletic complex is not a Field of Dreams. It is a Field of Schemes, conceived in deceit and dedicated to the proposition that not only should Hatcher not have to pay a dime for his business mistakes but that he should be compensated “fairly” for them, to borrow Broughton’s term for how the property owners in the athletic complex area will be treated. According to school officials, Hatcher owns, about 70% to 80% of the less than hundred parcels of property in the proposed site of the complex. By my count, made on the County Auditor’s website, Hatcher owns 68 pieces of property in the area designated for the complex. If the relatively large area occupied by the Second Presbyterian Church is omitted from calculations, which it should since it is not going to be torn down, Hatcher’s 68 pieces constitutes at least 90% of the property. So, when Broughton talks about treating property owners “fairly,” which would be a first, what she is really talking about is treating Hatcher fairly. The city and the school system must not take advantage of him and drive a hard bargain, which is of course is what would happen if we were talking about free market economics instead of Portsmouth corporate welfare economics. If Portsmouth had a competitive, free enterprise economy, Hatcher would pay dearly for his mall folly. But it doesn’t and Hatcher won’t. The public will pay.

The best argument against the athletic complex, perhaps the only serious argument, is economic. The “kids” will be playing their games on untaxable fields and untaxable field houses that will cost the city millions in taxes to build and maintain. Not only are those facilities not going to make a profit, they are not even going to pay for themselves. The city already has an athletic complex – a historic football stadium with an adjoining practice field, a decent baseball stadium, and several Little League and softball fields, located near the river front, in an easily accessible area not far from downtown Portsmouth, an area where an upgraded athletic complex could be conveniently and more economically built, if a new or upgraded athletic complex was what the city really needed most. But of course a new athletic complex is not what the city needs most, not given the hidden costs associated with it.

"It Ain't Worth Anything"

Leave it to Marty Mohr to be the one to let the cat out of the bag. “It ain’t worth anything,” he said famously of the Marting Building to a Columbus Dispatch reporter back in June 2004. That was before he saw the light in Clayton Johnson’s office, recanted, and supported the Marting’s purchase. Mohr let another cat out of the bag, at the July 16^th council meeting, when he said less succinctly but a little more grammatically, “All the developments in our community seem to be non-taxable developments. They might be supplying jobs, but there’s no property taxes there. What bothers me the most is the schools thrive on property taxes. You would think they’d want to generate more property taxes.” The only property taxes that Portsmouth high school and Broughton are going to generate are from the property owners of Portsmouth, who are going to be paying taxes through the nose. That’s the bottom line on this whole athletic complex scheme. This is a game, and the outcome is fixed: the public will pay.

One of the great benefits of high school athletics, in addition to the exercise it provides, is that they promote the competitive attitude in young people that makes them as adults willing to work hard and strive. Athletics help make the US the strong nation it is. But the irony is that competition is just what is lacking in the Portsmouth economy. What we have is the equivalent of fixed games in which our public officials are the crooked referees. Our Portsmouth business and professional classes don’t compete with each other; they collude with each other. We recall how Hatcher and the city colluded to turn the 3^rd St. neighborhood into a blighted area to facilitate his construction of student dormitories. The deal Hatcher worked out on those dormitories was a no-lose deal in which the university, a public entity, takes most of the risk and Hatcher almost none at all. That’s the only kind of economy the over-privileged of Portsmouth are willing to take part in, one in which risk is removed from any project they undertake, no matter how risky or hare-brained it is.

I have heard that the only way the King’s Daughters Hospital got a foothold in Portsmouth was by acquiring the property on the Scioto Trail without revealing that they were the real purchasers. If the Portsmouth establishment, and the CEO of SOMC in particular, had known, they probably would have found a way to block the move. I don’t know if this is anything more than a rumor, but I do know that the County Auditor’s website shows that the TPA Land Company of Ashland, Kentucky, bought the property at 2001 Scioto Trail in April of 2006 and TPA is still listed as the owner on the Auditor’s website. Competition is the last thing those who control Portsmouth’s economy and city government want. Instead of spending millions of advertising dollars to saturate local media with the claim that “Very good things are happening here,” SOMC should put those advertising millions into making SOMC better able to compete with King’s Daughters. When it comes to hospitals, King’s Daughters is the team to beat in the tri-state league, and competing with, not excluding it, is the surest way to make very good things happen for the people of Portsmouth.

Always willing to advise wealthy widows on their wills and bequests, our local foundations have found benefactors willing to give millions to the new athletic complex. These millions are not outright gifts; they provide tax benefits for the donors. Foundations sometimes launder money that might otherwise end up in the form of taxes in public treasuries. Many wealthy people would rather leave it up to a foundation, rather than the government, to decide how their money will be spent. And who can blame them? But there are foundations and there are “foundations.” What we have in Portsmouth are “foundations,” like the Marting Foundation. It is untrue that the athletic complex will not cost the public plenty of money, both up front as tax breaks for philanthropists and down the line in the form of taxes on property owners. That the athletic complex is a cost-free project that the citizens would be crazy to turn down is an argument fostered by those, like Hatcher and Broughton, who stand to gain by promoting it. Just look at the hidden costs to the city, financially and municipally, of Dr. Singer’s donation of his commercially worthless Washington St. property. With the revenue the athletic complex will not generate over the next twenty-five years, with the flood of traffic that will not come across the Bridge to Nowhere to see high school athletes play, we could finance a renovation of the existing athletic complex by the river that would do the city proud. Instead, we have to trash the past.

Trashing the past

Clayton Johnson is quoting as saying the athletic complex will attract families to Portsmouth. What might attract the kind of families the city needs is not a multi-million dollar athletic complex and state of the art school buildings but a reputation for academic excellence. If the Portsmouth city school system ever had a reputation for academic excllence, it has long since lost it. The city schools need first-rate teachers and first-rate students more than they need first-rate athletes. The money that has been poured into school buildings and will be poured into an athletic complex would have been better spent improving the working conditions and salaries of teachers and the strengthening of academic programs.

Broughton boasts that the city is successfully marketing the new athletic complex and new high school. You don’t judge the quality of school system by the look of its campus any more than you should judge a person by his or her clothes or automobile. It would be far better for the future of the city if Portsmouth High School had a reputation as one of the best scholastically in the state. I know from my experience at Shawnee State that pouring millions and millions of public dollars into new buildings and a new campus is no guarantee that a school will not have a reputation as not only one of the worst in the state but in the nation, as was the case with SSU in the 1990s. SSU got its horrendous reputation in part because Clive Veri was president during the 90s. Veri had a vision for the university that came straight out of a Hollywood musical of the 1930s. Semesters, fraternities, and football were his remedy for what ailed the university. He got the fraternities, and his designated successor, de facto president Stephen P. Donohue, got the semesters, but the football program fortunately never materialized. It was not that football was bad, anymore than semesters were bad. It’s just that they were not right for SSU at this stage of its development. Now Clayton Johnson, Neal Hatcher, and Jan Broughton are doing for Portsmouth High School, big time, what Veri fortunately failed to do for SSU. Portsmouth will live with the fiscal and educational consequences of their greed and deceit for many years to come. And we will all be losers. Let the games begin!

Cashing In

Since I posted my last blog, “No Building Left Behind,” I have learned more about the history of the property at 807 Washington St., usually referred to as the Adelphia building. It would be more accurate to call it the Singer building, since Dr. Herbert I. Singer, of Los Angeles, owned it and Adelphia was only leasing it from him.

What I have learned is that Mike Mearan may be an even bigger shyster than I thought, and Dr. Singer may be one of his victims.

I have learned that Mearan bought the property at the southwest corner of Washington and 9^th Streets on 31 Dec. 31 1984 for $740,000. Two months later, on 1 March 1985, Mearan then sold that same property to Dr. Singer for $835,000. So Mearan owned the property for only two months before selling it to Singer for a profit of $95,000. Who was Singer relying on for advice about Portsmouth real estate if not Mearan? It is not likely Singer knew he was paying $95,000 more for the property than Mearan had paid for it just two months earlier. Singer should have been told by Mearan back in 1985 that the Washington St. property was not a good investment. By 1985 it was apparent that Portsmouth proper was not a good place to invest in commercial real estate. Portsmouth’s best commercial days were far behind it.

The steady decline in the appraised value of the Washington St. property since 1985 confirms that it was not a good investment. As of 10 Oct. 10 1997, the property was assessed by the County Auditor at $305,130. That’s much less than Singer had paid Mearan for it in 1985. As of 1 Jan. 2004, the assessment figure for the property had dropped all the way to $111,940, which is only 13% of what Singer had paid for it. So, in about twenty years, from 1985 to 2004, the appraised figure for the property had plummeted from the $835,000 Singer had paid for it in 1985, down to $111,940. Usually, property increases in value, but not in Portsmouth.

In representing Singer in the donation of the property to the city, Mearan may be cashing in on his relationship with Singer one more time. Mearan is taking advantage of somebody who reportedly had never been to Portsmouth, and somebody who now may be in his dotage. Singer showed poor judgment in paying as much he did for the Washington Street property, but he showed even worse judgment in hiring Mearan to represent him.

In addition to learning Mearan had paid $740,000 for the property on 31 Dec. 2004, I learned Mearan had bought the property from Jeffrey Albrecht, who now owns the Ramada Inn. It was Albrecht who sold the property in 1984 to Mearan for $740,000. Since Albrecht has been rumored to be one of those interested in acquiring the site of the present City Building, in Portsmouth, which is located directly across the street from the Ramada Inn, you can begin to appreciate the folk wisdom of the saying, “What goes around, comes around.” If Albrecht were ever to come into possession of the City Building site, things would have come full circle. The City Building would be torn down at the same time a new city building would be rising on the corner of Washington and 9^th Street, which Albrecht once owned. The circle would be really complete because Albrecht and Mearan would be in the thick of the monkey business, as they were over twenty years ago on Washington Street.

I did not put any credence in the rumor that Albrecht was interested in the site across from the Ramada Inn, because who would know better than Albrecht, captain of “The Queen of the Rust Belt,” as his motel has been nicknamed, that the area is not “prime real estate,” even though our dunce mayor repeats that it is. But maybe the mayor is right. If the Washington Street property was worth $835,000 in 1985, and the Marting building $1.9 million in 2003, then the land across from the Ramada may be worth $10 million in 2010, or whenever gambling comes to Portsmouth. And now that Mearan has been appointed to the City Council, and has insinuated himself deep into the body politic of Portsmouth, like a trichinella worm in pork, anything is possible. Then he will be cashing in on all of us, not just Dr. Singer.

Mearan made a quick $95,000 on this property

No Building Left Behind

Southern Ohio Museum: Original No Building Left Behind

     The good news is Marting’s won’t be the site of the new city building. The bad news is the Adelphia site will. Why is that bad news?

      Remember that the first principle of Portsmouth real estate is that no over privileged private party or corporation should ever have to take a loss on a building or piece of land, no matter how worthless or hazardous it is, as long as there are public funds that can be tapped into to bail the owner out, or as long as there is a tax break that can be derived from donating the property to the public, and letting the city deal with the headaches and expenses associated with owning and dealing with the property. This first principle of Portsmouth real estate could be called the No Building Left Behind policy.

      Instead of being free to build from scratch on the best site possible, city planners must start with a building and site that has been unloaded on them with the connivance of corrupt public officials. The City Building Committee Final Report (11 Dec. 2006) listed as the first and presumably most important reason for locating the new City Hall Complex on the so-called Adelphia building site is that the city owns the property. It is like the old days, when ATT had a total monopoly of the telephone industry, including the manufacture and sale of telephones. The policy of ATT back then was you could have any color phone you wanted provided it was black. Under the No Building Left Behind policy, the city or county can erect a new public building or city hall complex anywhere they want provided it is an undesirable site or building that the city has paid too much money for or has accepted from a donor who has stipulated the site or building must be used for a public purpose so that the donor can get a tax write-off.

      Consider the following examples of Portsmouth’s No Building Left Behind policy at work, beginning (1) with the earliest one I know of, the 1977 sale of the obsolete Security Central National Bank building to the city, which then leased it to the Southern Ohio Museum Corporation for one dollar a year for a period of twenty years, with the city, as lessor, having major responsibility for maintaining and insuring the building; (2) the empty and virtually worthless department store that the Marting Foundation illegally and infamously unloaded on the city for $1.9 million; (3) the nearly bankrupt Travel World Agency, which three well-connected Portsmouth businessmen, with Clayton Johnson as their lawyer, “donated” to Ohio U., as a tax write-off; (4) the empty Thatcher house, on Franklin Blvd., for which SSU paid the politically connected Thatchers much more than it was worth and which SSU later sold to a doctor at a $50,000 loss to the taxpayers; (5) Dr. Rooney’s house, on Camelot Drive, the remote and parking-less money pit that SSU paid top dollar for and, with the meter still running, now serves as the slipping and sliding home for SSU president Rita Rice Morris; (6) the empty and otherwise worthless Kenrick’s department store that was taken off George Clayton’s hands with county and federal funds and converted into a Welcome Center; (7) the “sale” of the Temple B’Nai Abraham to SSU for an ungodly sum; and (8) the “donation” to the city of the misnamed Adelphia property, which should be called, the Singer property. Adelphia never owned that property, having only leased it instead from Dr. Herbert Singer, of Los Angeles.

The No Singer Building Left Behind

      The history of the Singer property bears a depressing similarity to all the other shady real estate deals of the last thirty years. Just as you would not know that Martings is really three very old buildings beneath a faux brick façade, the Singer building is actually two old buildings hidden behind a rusting metal façade. What became the Singer property was once the site of an automobile dealership, but after things went kaput in Portsmouth, that dealership and others on Washington Street went out of business. While the history of the building and the date of its construction is something of a mystery, which even the crack consultants of Ameresco Corp. could not unravel, what we know for sure is that at one point local shyster lawyer Mike Mearan owned the so-called Adelphia property. Then, in 1984, he sold it to Dr. Herbert Singer, of Los Angeles. Following his purchase of the property from Mearan, Singer then leased the building for twenty years to Adelphia Cable. I have heard that Adelphia was paying Singer a sizable rent each month. [I was subsequently told by an employee of Adelphia Cable that it was paying $12,000 a month rent, which over the 20 year lease would be $2,880,000 dollars.]

      Because of the massive fraud perpetrated by the family that owned the Adelphia Corporation, that company went bankrupt and the larcenous founder, John Rigas, went to prison. Because of the protections afforded to bankrupt corporations, Adelphia apparently did not need to meet the obligations of the final year of its twenty-year lease with Singer. I was puzzled when Adelphia hastily moved out of Singer’s building to a smaller less conveniently located site. Because commercial property in Portsmouth is notoriously hard to rent, I wondered why Adelphia hadn’t used its leverage to negotiate a new lease for Singer’s building, at better financial terms. Subsequent events would make clear why Adelphia wanted out of the Singer building as fast as possible. First of all, how would you feel as a tenant if the building you were paying good money for had been neglected for some time, and had leaky room in which there was asbestos in the decking? How would you feel, furthermore, if your absentee landlord lived in Los Angeles, over 2500 miles away?

      Following the flight of Adelphia Cable from Washington Street, Singer was stuck with an ugly building that had virtually no financial or architectural value and no prospect of being rented by another tenant. His curiosity getting the better of him, Singer finally made his first visit to Portsmouth to see the property, but only after Adelphia had moved out. At some point Singer hired the controversial real estate agent-developer Neal Hatcher to handle the property. Months turned into years and the Singer building sat on that decrepit southwest corner of Washington and 9th Street, unattended and leaking, like so many other empty commercial buildings in Portsmouth (think Marting’s, think Kenrick’s). The Singer building was almost as bad as many of the buildings that Hatcher owns and neglects.

      Singer was responsible for city taxes on the decrepit property, but in deadbeat fashion he stopped meeting those financial obligations. This was not very civic-minded of him, but what did he have to lose, way out there in California, in stiffing the taxpayers of Portsmouth? But he still needed to find some way to unload the property. Because Hatcher could find no buyer foolish enough to buy the property, Singer hired Mike Mearan to come up with a plan to stick the public with it, and Mearan, a gifted con artist, did. Mearan knows the winding and dimly lit corridors and courtrooms of the City Building and the County Courthouse of Portsmouth the way a proctologist knows a cancerous rectum or Jean Valjean, in Hugo’s Les Miserables, knows the sewers of Paris. What Mearan advised Singer to do was donate the worthless property to the city, stipulating that in accepting the property the city would have to commit to using it for a public purpose. That was an all-important stipulation, because only then would Singer be able to claim a tax write-off from the IRS. Another stipulation that Singer put on the “donation” was that he would not have to pay the $23,000 back taxes he owed on the building. At the City Council meeting 13 Feb. 2006, the council approved a motion from David Malone to excuse $5,707.50 in taxes due on Singer’s property. This was in addition to excusing Singer of the $17,000 plus taxes he had already failed to pay. Councilman Malone,whose math is notoriously fuzzy, is usually accorded the honor of making motions that bilk the taxpayers. The scheme Mearan came up with was to propose to the city that the building Singer was offering be converted into a police station, which clearly met the definition of “public use.”

“Wonderful Idea”

      The public first learned of the Singer-Mearan donation scheme when Hatcher, acting as Singer’s real estate agent, appeared at the 13 Dec. 2004 City Council meeting with Tanner and Stone smoke-and-mirror architectural plans to convert the Adelphia building into a police station. I was at that meeting and I remember that the architectural drawings made the renovated Singer building look like the Gingerbread house in “Hansel and Gretel.” It looked good enough to eat. Who paid for those architectural plans? Singer? Hatcher? Mearan? Or did Tanner and Stone donate their time in anticipation of future fees? According to the minutes of the 13 Dec. 2004 Council meeting, “Mr. Hatcher said he felt it would be a wonderful idea and provided drawings showing the Adelphia Building as it exists and how it might look if converted into a Police Station. . . . Mr. Hatcher suggested an ordinance accepting the building should include an amount not to exceed $500,000 to 600,000 for improvements. He noted the advantages would include parking for the police. He said he felt this to be a good opportunity for the City of Portsmouth . . .” Not wanting to hog all the glory, Hatcher pointed out that the plan was the brainchild of Mike Mearan.

      At the Council Meeting 10 Jan. 2005, Kalb urged members of the City Council to visit the Adelphia building and judge for themselves if the building was worth accepting from Singer. Kalb claimed that someone else was interested in the building if the city wasn’t, which is the familiar tactic that is used in real estate negotiations to get a reluctant party to buy. The same tactic was used by George Clayton to justify raising the price that SSU paid for the Mooney house on Camelot Drive. Playing the role of a political pimp, for which he is well suited, Kalb was in effect saying, “Hey, there are other guys interested in this gal if you ain’t.”

Shyster Lawyer

     Mearan appeared at the 14 March 2005 City Council meeting, identifying himself as “an attorney representing Herbert Singer who is offering the former Adelphia building to the city . . . the intent of Dr. Singer is to give this property to the City for the City to use.” Mearan went on to admit that Singer’s “intent” in offering the building to the city was really not philanthropy but to get a tax write-off, and he could only get that if the property was used for a public purpose. As the minutes of 14 March 2005 state, “Mr. Mearan said that in order for Dr. Singer to take advantage of certain IRS regulations the City could not sell or lease the building because that would set a value on the property and would restrict the amount Mr. Singer can claim as a donation to the City.” The next sentence of the 14 March 2005 minutes reveals how little philanthropy had to do with Singer’s donation. “Mr. Mearan stated that with the understanding that the City would accept the property and use it for City purposes, with a restriction of ten years after which if the city wants to get rid of the building or do whatever they want with the building they could do so.” Do whatever they want with it? In other words, after ten years of public use, which would qualify Singer for the full write-off, the city could shove the building as far as Singer or Mearan was concerned. Once Singer got his tax-write off, he didn’t care what happened to the property, just as he hadn’t cared what happened to the property when he owned it, as long Adelphia paid the rent. Singer had squeezed all he could out of it.

      The City Council bought into the Singer-Mearan-Hatcher scheme and passed an ordinance at the 14 March 2005 meeting "Authorizing the Mayor and the City of Portsmouth, Ohio, to accept a deed to real estate generally known as 807 Washington Street, Portsmouth, Ohio, said property to be used for city-related purposes for a minimum period of 10 years." Kalb reported at the Council Meeting 23 May 2005 that he had met that morning with Mike Mearan, who showed him the deed that signed the so-called Adelphia building over to the city.

      The city’s acceptance of the Singer building was the first step down a long and expensive road for taxpayers. There are some things that are not only not worth the asking price, they are not even worth accepting as a gift. Failing to look the gift horse in the mouth, failing to look for mold and asbestos in the building, the city accepted Singer’s offer. The result was the city ended up paying through the nose for a nag that was fit only for the glue factory. If the Singer building had been a horse, the humane thing would have been to shoot it. Instead, the City Council accepted the building from Singer and, following Mearan’s stipulation about public use, agreed to turn it into a police station. The close examination of the building was made only after the city accepted the building. That examination showed that beneath the rusting metal façade, the Singer building was unsalvageable. The leaking roof was leaking worse, making that asbestos problem even worse, and the moisture was creating black mold, also known as toxic mold, which for a building is like AIDS. The Singer building was an incurably sick building. It was not safe to convert into an outhouse, let alone into a police station. Why hadn’t the city council and mayor made a close examination of the building before they accepted it from Singer? Because too many of our city officials are in office to do the bidding of those with big bucks. They dare not not ask embarrassing questions or try to get at the truth. The truth about the Singer building was the last thing they wanted. So the city was stuck with yet another decrepit old building with asbestos and mold.

No Oxycontin Left Behind

     Did this mean that Singer was going to lose his tax write-off? Did this mean he was going to have to pay the $23,000 in taxes after all? There was little likelihood of that, especially after Mearan became a member of the Portsmouth City Council. Mearan became a member of council not the democratic way, by running for office. Here is how he got on council: After I filed a complaint with the County Board of Elections, charging Tim Loper was not living in the First Ward, which the city charter requires, he was removed from City Council. Mearan was subsequently appointed to replace Loper by the City Council. The City Council did not stop there, because next it appointed Mearan to the City Building Committee. Howard Baughman and the City Council did not stop there, because then they appointed Mearan to chair that committee. Mearan's first act as chair of the CBC was to assign his drug-addicted employee Heather Hren (shown left in photo at work for CBC ) as its stenographer, a position she held until she was arrested for transporting oxycontin from Columbus to Portsmouth in a car Mearan had rented for her. In addition to No Building Left Behind, we have No Oxycontin Left Behind.

      So Mearan was not only appointed to the Council and appointed to the CBC, he was appointed chair of it. In what other city could such a brazen conflict of interest take place without so much as a peep from the press or local law enforcement officials? An attorney representing a client who would get a tax write-off if his “donation” was used for a public purpose, such as a police station or city building, chairs a committee that is considering locations for a new police station and a new city building. What do you think the odds were that the City Building Committee, with Mearan as chair, would recommend the Singer property be used for a police station? And what do you think the odds were that the CBC, once the Singer building was shown to be unsalvageable, would then recommend that the building be torn down and that the site be used to build a new police station and city building? Pretty good chance, I would say.

“Improvements”

      What follows is a list of the improvements that the Building Committee acknowledged would have to be made to the so-called Adelphia building to convert it into a police station. (1) Installation of communications and data cabling; (2) Installation of new emergency generator; (3) Modification of existing electric distribution system; (4) Installation of new Heating-Ventilation-Air Conditioning systems; (5) Installation of new plumbing piping and fixtures; (6) Floor cutting, concrete patching, and tile for new locker rooms; (7) Cleaning of wall studs, walls and floors to remove mold residue; (8) Painting of structural steel in older section of building; (9) Painting of all interior walls; (10) Removal and replacement of all interior doors and hardware; (11) Removal and replacement of all flooring materials; (12) Removal and replacement of all of the existing ceiling tiles; (13) Removal and replacement of 50% of insulation above the ceiling; (14) Removal and replacement of 50% of existing drywall; (15) Installation of new energy-efficient windows and exterior doors; (16) Installation of new roof for entire building; (17) Exterior work including replacement of metal siding and painting of masonry; (18) Site work including resurfacing of parking lot and landscaping. These eighteen proposals should have been replaced by one simple proposal: Remove this contaminated building forever from the face of the earth and let the negligent landlord pay for at least part of the removal.

      Why in the world would any public official agree to spend as much money as these improvements would cost to convert an old building in terrible condition when a new one could be built for the same price? Why resuscitate a corpse when you can have a new baby? You can bet the cost of converting the so-called Adelphia building was going to be much more than the $500,000 to $600,000 Hatcher originally estimated. That estimate was so much fairy dust tossed in the eyes of a gullible public. And notice that one “improvement” that seems hardly worth mentioning, removing mold residue, proved enough to scuttle the whole project.

      If Singer had not neglected his building as much as he obviously had for as long as he had, maybe the building would have been worth saving. I say maybe. But why should the public pay for the neglect of an absentee landlord who allowed his property to deteriorate so badly? Because that is a feature of No Building Left Behind. After all the profit has been wrung out of a property and a business, the owner turns it over to the state, county, or city government to let it deal with the consequences. When rail passenger traffic was no longer profitable, turn it over to the government and complain about how inefficiently the government runs things. When the Marting’s department store can no longer turn a profit, sell it to the city government for one last profit squeeze of $1.9 million and let the empty building become a festering political and financial problem for years.

Black Telephone

      The City Building Committee tried to pass off the Singer property, which it was led to by the nose, as the best site for a new city complex. What the CBC decided is the equivalent of saying that a black phone would have been its first choice even if there were fifty-seven other colors and shades available. The corner of Washington and 9th Streets is about as good a site for a new city complex as John Street would be for a convent or the Scioto River for a surfing competition. What is there about that corner that suits it for a city complex? There’s not much to be said for that location. Instead of a view of the Ohio River and the bridge, the only thing you can see from the corner of Washington and 9th is the steam escaping from that crooked smoke stack on the roof of the the Osco factory. If the city had not been hornswoggled into accepting a building that should have been condemned as a health hazard, where might the new city building have ended up? We will never know for sure, because the No Building Left Behind policy dictated that the city building and the police station was either going to be in the Marting’s building or on the Singer property. That is like giving a condemned man the choice between the noose or the electric chair.

      But the Singer site is the lesser of two evils, because no one is any longer trying to claim the Singer building is salvageable, whereas there are still die-hards who will still tell you the Marting building should be converted into a city building. At least on the Singer site the city can start from scratch instead of having to renovate a decrepit 125-year-old department store. The City Building Committee was under a lot of pressure to choose the Marting building for a city hall, but Clayton Johnson had succeeded in making that building so politically radioactive that there is now no chance of his original scheme ever being carried out, even with his obliging tools Kalb and Baughman backing it.

      The best site for a new city building would be the site of the present City Building. If the City Building is going to be razed, then a new one should be raised on the same site. Why? Because it is the most convenient, the most time-honored, and the most scenic spot. And it is downtown. Being downtown was supposedly a major advantage of the Marting building. But city officials, and above all Mayor Kalb, have been angling to make the site of the City Building available to a developer for years. It is too valuable, Kalb says, to be wasted on a mere city hall, on the house of local government. The phrase that gets repeated is "prime commercial property." The CBC even uses that phrase in explaining why the current site of the City Building should not be wasted on a city hall complex: it is prime commercial property. If it so valuable commercially, why has the Ramada Inn, directly across the street, been a financial basket case ever since it was built. The Ramada Inn has survived by housing university students and as a half-way house for people with drug-related problems. The Ramada Inn survived by mooching off the public sector, and we are supposed to believe the land across the street is too valuable to waste on a new city complex?

      The single most important truth about No Left Building Left Behind policy is that we wouldn’t have had any of the shenanigans and headaches and scandals associated with the Marting building and the Singer building if Kalb and his cronies had not been conspiring for years to systematically neglect the City Building with the intention of eventually tearing it down in order to sell the site to some developer. The anticipated tearing down of the City Building was what made the Marting and the Singer rip-offs possible.

      When it comes to saying just which developer is interested in the City Building site, Kalb has been like a coy stripteaser, revealing just enough to pique the public’s curiosity, but not enough to reveal who that developer is. Who is Kalb protecting, who is he hiding? Which developer is it whose name would create a firestorm if it were known he was the one waiting to get his hands on the City Building site? Which developer is it who is ultimately responsible for where the City Building and the Portsmouth Police Station apparently will end up? Whoever ends up on whichever site, keep in mind that all the shenanigans are really the result of the No Building Left Behind policy, according to which a building that has architectural and structural value, such as the Train Depot and the City Building, will be torn down while many millions will be squandered acquiring property and buildings that are actually liabilities, not assets. This is the way things are done in Portsmouth. The question is will things ever change?

Evanjekylls

Paris: About to be born again?

For those unbrainwashed readers who might not know who Scott Rawlings is, he is the envangelical (or “evanjekyll” to use the local pronunciation) pastor of Christ’s Community Church, in Portsmouth, Ohio, and his shtick is the holy-hip-hick. If you want to know why slick glib evangelical preachers are distrusted as much as used car salesmen and lawyers, consider the case of the Reverend Rawlings, and check out his collected wit and wisdom in Hear It Now! and also in his monthly column in the CCC newspaper.

In the May 2007 issue of the Scioto Citizen, the right-wing political-religious newspaper he publishes as an insert to the Christian Citizen USA, and is sending to Scioto County residents at bulk rate through the U.S. Mail, Rawlings joined Chief Police Horner and councilman Marty Mohr in calling for a crackdown on the internet and the “mean-spirited, even evil people [bloggers] who abuse our constitutional rights.” Constitutional rights? Based on the wit and wisdom of Pastor Rawlings in Hear Me Now!, which I quoted in an earlier blog, I doubt very much that he has either the knowledge or intelligence that would enable him to understand the Constitution well enough to lecture anybody about it.

The reason America’s Founding Fathers wanted a separation of church and state when they drew up the Constitution was that they understood from their knowledge of European history and of English ecclesiastical history in particular, the potential threat to human liberty that exists when the church and state are virtually one. When there is an official state religion, those with different beliefs become targets. It doesn’t matter much whether that religion is Hebrew, Catholic, Protestant, or Islamic, because if any group thinks they are God’s chosen people, if any group thinks their opponents are “evil” and agents of the devil, it doesn’t make much difference what else they believe, the results are the same: the loss of liberties and perhaps of life for those who are considered enemies of god and agents of the devil.

The Devil In Massachusetts

Why is Massachusetts the most liberal state in the United States? Because it began as the most intolerant religious colony in America and has been trying to atone for that embarrassing legacy ever since. When religious fundamentalists have complete control of a society, as the Taliban did in Afghanistan, they do not hesitate to humiliate, harass, imprison, or behead their opponents. The New England Puritans were the Taliban of their time. For lesser offenses, they put people in stocks. They made adulteresses wear the letter “A” and drunkards the letter “D.”They clipped the ears off and cut out the tongues of those who persisted in believing something different from them. They hanged Quakers who would not leave the colony. Those suspected of witchcraft but who would not confess to being in league with the devil were crushed to death. If you admitted you were in league with the devil and promised you would stop, you were set free. If you were a person of deep conviction and valued truth more than life, and continued to maintain your innocence, you were crushed to death. You became a victim of a witch hunt. A witch hunt is what Horner, Mohr, and our hip hick holy parson are trying to stir up against those “evil” people who dare to write blogs and who dare to come to city council meetings and ask questions the politicians not only don’t want to answer but don’t want to hear.

Progress in western civilization can be measured by the degree to which the stranglehold of religious fanatics on government and public institutions has been broken. One of the great days in American history was when the free-thinking Ben Franklin fled from Boston and headed to Philadelphia. Boston in the early 1700s was still in the grip of Puritanism and controlled by England. Philadelphia, which became known as the City of Brotherly Love, was where the liberal beliefs of the Quakers prevailed. When religious fanatics completely control government the results have been catastrophic. Look at what the faith-based Bush administration has done not only to this country but to the Middle East. Many thousands of deaths, renditions, torture, and at home trashing the Constitution. Look what’s happened to the principle of justice in the U.S. Dept. of Justice, which is infiltrated by graduates of the kooky Pat Robertson’s Regent Law School, whose professed purpose is to “provide Christian leadership to change the world.” Sure, like they are changing Iraq. Monica Goodling, one of Regent’s graduates who was appointed to an important position in the Justice Dept., took the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination in an attempt to avoid testifying before a congressional committee. Are graduates of Regent U. are going to Christianize the world, by subverting justice?

Rawlings in the May Christian Citizen USA/ Scioto Citizen gnashed his teeth over how many people read local blogs. “It is amazing,” he complained, “the number of people who read and often believe what is written . . .” Really! They not only read but they believe what these evil bloggers write? Amazing! Where do they think they are? In America? There is no law against my writing and others reading River Vices. Not yet anyway.

Rawlings in the May Christian Citizen USA/ Scioto Citizen rails against Imus in the Morning, but not against Anus in the Morning (Steve Hayes), against Dan Rather but not against Bill O’Reilly, against Katie Couric but not against Ann Coulter. He rails against the “convicted felons” who he claims almost took over the city of Portsmouth, but not against the crooked right-wing politicians, his Bible-thumping, lapel-flag-flaunting ideological cousins, who did take over the executive branch of the U.S. government but whose corruption, greed, and incompetence have already made a number of them, with more to come, “convicted felons.” He also rails against Rosie O’Donnell. If part of his hatred of Rosie O’Donnell is that she’s a lesbian, what is Cheney’s daughter? At least O’Donnell has not made a mockery of God’s law and the laws of creation by unnaturally inseminating herself, or isn’t that the way evangelicals would look at if her father was a Democrat?

Why is it that a right-wing Republican lesbian doesn’t quality for Rawlings’s hate list but Rosie O’Donnell does? The reason is that Christ’s Community Church’s real business is not righteousness but right-wing politics. I don’t watch Couric, so I don’t understand Rawlings’ rage about her or why she is on his hate list. Does she expose her pubic hair in public and shave her head, the way the Bush-backing Britney Spears did? Does she videotape her blow jobs as Paris Hilton did? Incidentally, it appears Paris Hilton is on the verge of being born again. That’s the way celebrity sluts and ex-felons recycle themselves and their careers, by being born again. Like Chuck Colson. In the lawbreaking footsteps of Oliver North, will Paris Hilton hit the lecture circuit, maybe speaking at the CCC and being interviewed in the Christian Citizen USA/ Scioto Citizen?

The Christian Citizen USA/Scioto Citizen reflects the views of the radical right of the Ohio Republican Party and of defeated gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell in particular. One of the issues the desperate Blackwell campaign resorted to was accusing his liberal Democratic opponent Ted Strickland and his wife of being homosexuals. The Christian Citizen USA/Scioto Citizen published a cartoon with that message just before last November’s election. And then, in the May issue of Christian Citizen USA/Scioto Citizen, the sanctimonious Rawlings wrote, “Bloggers have written harmful things when they know it to be either partially or totally untrue.” “Partially or totally untrue.” Are the stories Ohio evangelicals and the Christian Citizen USA/ Scioto Citizen spread about the Stricklands’ sexual orientation partially or totally true? If so, where is either the total or partial truth of this charge? One of the incriminating circumstances about the Stricklands that Ohio evangelicals whispered about was “They do not have children.” Bob Dole and his wife Elizabeth have been married for thirty-five years but have no children. They have had separate careers, both professionally and politically. Have they been accused of being homosexuals in the Christian Citizen USA/ Scioto Citizen? If not, why not? Because they are both conservative Republicans. That two-faced evangelical Christians should condemn anybody sexually is preposterous, given their own track record. Historically, many of these holier-than-thou folks have turned out to be hornier than thou, and greedy to boot.

The O’Falafel Factor

Why doesn’t Rawlings condemn the remarkable number of pious patriot wingnuts who turn out to be horny creeps? I am thinking not only of the evangelical Rev. Ted Haggard with his male prostitute boyfriend and Republican congressman Mark Foley and his passion for pages. I am also thinking of Catholic Bill O’Reilly. A female producer of the O’Reilly Factor show charged him with harassing her by talking frequently about “phone sex, vibrators, threesomes, masturbation, the loss of virginity, and other sexual fantasies.” She accused O’Reilly of having an obsession with falafel (chick peas ground up into a ball) and using it to rouse her sexually. He was accused of telling her, “So anyway I’d be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples really hard, kinda’ kissing your neck from behind . . . and then I would take the other hand with the falafel thing and I'd just put it on your pussy but you’d have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business . . .” Is this the O’Falafel Factor? The producer’s case against O’Reilly was settled out of court, which presumably cost the Fox network or some insurance company plenty. Never has falafel cost so much. If the falafel ever hits the fan at the CCC, you’ll probably read about it first on some blog.

Speaking of hypocrites, does anyone else remember the pious Republican Billy James Hargis, the Tulsa evangelical and globe trotting anti-Communist crusader, who toured the Free World back in the 1950s and 1960s, with a teen-aged choir known as the All-American Kids? According to Wikipedia, Hargis is considered to be a father of the Religious Right. “Hargis preached continually on the evils of sex education, communism, Catholicism, and liberalism and urged the return of prayer and Bible reading to public schools long before the modern Religious Right.” (Quoted from Wikipedia.) When two of Hargis’s All-American kids got married and confessed to each other on their honeymoon that they had both been sexually seduced as kids by Hargis, it turned out they were not the only kids Hargis had deflowered, and that was the end of Hargis’s big-time operation, though he continued to publish the Christian Crusade Newspaper, which should not to be confused with Rawlings’s Christian Citizen USA: Scioto Citizen. Surely, if Hargis had lived into the age of the internet, he would have denounced bloggers just as he at the same time might have been prowling in chat rooms and on MySpace, preying sexually on teenagers when he was not praying with them. Billy James Hargis II inherited his father’s ministry, and carries it on, the way a son might any family business, a not uncommon inheritance among Republican Evangelical ministries and Mafia families.

The Axe

“I predict the axe will sooner or later fall on the fear mongering bloggers,” Rawlings wrote in the May Christian Citizen USA/ Scioto Citizen. “I pray that it will be sooner.” This is not idle axe talk. This is prayerful axe talk. When they are not fantasizing about falafel, religious fanatics fantasize about chopping off the heads of the enemies of God. Beheading is the Muslim fundamentalists’ favorite way of killing infidels, as opposed to the Christians’ burning heretics at the stake. Axing infidels has been going on for a long time. The Taliban in the Middle East consider it such a holy obligation to behead God’s enemies that they will do it even if all they have at hand is a jackknife. In Portsmouth, evangelicals will have to settle for fantasies of cutting off the heads of evil bloggers.

I do not know whether the rumors of Rawling’s extramarital affairs are, to quote his curious phrase, “either partially or totally untrue.” I had not heard those rumors until John Welton mentioned them in his blog, but I have heard the rumors about the cash cow that Christ’s Community Church represents to Rawlings. The Christ’s Community property, owned by Rawlings is officially valued by the County Auditor at $2,348,330, making it a virtual den of equity. Of course, the $2.3 million price tag on the CCC building is chicken feed compared to the kind of real estate that convicted felon televangelist Jim Bakker accumulated. Just recently, I read that Bakker is at it again, with a new TV ministry, minus Tammy and the mascara, but with a new younger wife. He is asking for forgiveness for his sexual and financial misdeeds and praying for a fresh start in the highly competitive salvation business. I also read that James Dale Guckert, alias Jeff Gannon (see photo below), a right-wing blogger who was given passes to attend presidential press conferences, had recently resurfaced in Washington. He participated in National Prayer Day, with bowed head, representing the International Bible Reading Association. I don’t know if he’s bothering to ask for forgiveness. It was not the mainstream media, incidentally, but what Rawlings would consider “evil” “dirt-digging” bloggers who first discovered that in addition to being given access to White House press conferences in order to toss softball questions to the president and press secretary, Gannon was also a $200 an hour prostitute with his own call-boy website: hotmilitarystud.com.

Evangelical Male Prostitute

It was also bloggers who recently outed Eric Linden, a Columbus, Ohio, native and an online pornographer who used to strut his stuff on a now deep-sixed website called BedroomAcrobat.com. In a Garden of Eden scene (see below) from a video shown at the new $27 million dollar Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Kentucky, Linden played the part of Adam. A report on the front page of the June Christian Citizen USA/Scioto Citizen had the following ironic headline: “Creation Museum Opening Bigger than Organizers Expected.” Given Linden’s pornographic experience, and the proclivities of some evangelicals, can we be sure no pun was intended?

Adam: Acrobat in Bedroom?

Is Linden evil? Is Gannon evil? Is Haggard evil? Is Mark Foley evil? Is O’Reilly evil? Was Hargis evil? Apparently not by Rawlings double-standard, according to which to even begin to qualify as evil you must be a liberal. The old adage about an evangelical being born every minute needs to be updated: there’s an evangelical born every second.

Like the window of the empty Marting department store, Rawlings latches on to every worthy cause he can find, from vandalized graveyards to the war on drugs. The June Christian Citizen USA/Scioto Citizen focuses on the drug war and includes a photo of Chief of Police Horner. I suggest that any sincere war on drugs in Portsmouth should begin with a public apology from Chief Horner and his son for his son’s drug activities in Portsmouth. What Chief Horner has done instead of apologizing is claim that bloggers have crucified his family by making public not only that his son was convicted for drug activities but that he also has had his conviction expunged from public records. For revelations such as these, which would otherwise be unreported, and for seeking the recall of elected or appointed officials, Horner has condemned bloggers and political activists as “domestic terrorists.” What does Horner or Rawlings have to say about a Portsmouth City Councilman renting the automobile that a young female addict in his employ was arrested in for transporting drugs from Columbus to Portsmouth? So far the city government has been much better at waging war on its critics than on drugs.

The Christian Citizen USA/Scioto Citizen advertises that “Christ’s Community Church exists to Evangelize the Lost, Edify the Saved, Minister to the Needy, and be a Conscience in the Community.” I say that Christ’s Community Church exists to Provide a Comfortable Living for the Rawlings Family, to Support the Right-wing of the Ohio Republican Party, to Brainwash the Ignorant and the Naïve of Southern Ohio, and to Fearmonger about Devils, Death and Damnation. The Christian Citizen USA/ Scioto Citizen sends unsolicited copies through the U.S. Mail to people who never asked for it but who do wonder who is financing this operation. I am one of the growing number of people on their mailing list. I do not send River Vices to anyone; it is there on the internet for those who want to take the trouble to find it. If you have read this far it is because you are a free citizen in a country and in a county where hypocritical religious fanatics and corrupt politicians don’t yet determine what you can read and write on the internet. Don’t take that freedom for granted. Beware of the evangelicals of the type that Rawlings represents. Imagine living in country where the only news you got was from publications like the Christian Citizen USA/Scioto Citizen. Lord help us!

Midsummer Madness

Look Deeper or Deep End?

         It is only the end of May, but it feels like mid-summer madness. The Chamber of Commerce has just awarded the Hatchers the Outstanding Citizen Award, Donnie R. Lee, the pastor who gave the invocation at the Portsmouth City Council meeting last April, has been busted for child pornography, and a computer virus who calls himself Look Deeper spoke at the last council meeting and allied himself with Chief of Police Horner and those other creatures of darkness who are trying their damnedest to remove councilman Bob Mollette from the City Council.

     If you fail to understand this, you fail to understand a fundamental fact of Portsmouth politics: Bob Mollette is the most serious obstacle to the continued control and corruption of this city by the Chamber of Commerce and its Frankenstein creation, the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership. As long as Mollette is on the city council, representing not just the Third Ward but also integrity and efficiency in government, he stands as an embarrassing reminder of what the present city government might be if it had a few more people who could not be bought. Mollette asks questions no other council member would dare ask. He digs deeper into issues and problems than any other council member is willing or able to do. Be sure to visit his website to see what I mean. His opposition to the city’s purchase of the Marting building, which has cost him and his wife Teresa many hours and potentially many thousands of dollars in legal fees, is one of most heroic civic acts of the last quarter of a century. His pressure on the city government to televise city council meetings is the only thing that gives us hope that the city government will stop blaming citizens for creating disturbances when it is members of the city council who create the disturbances by insulting and gaveling down any concerned citizen who dares to criticize any member of city government. At the present time, Bob Mollette is all that stands in the way of the complete control of the city government by the well-heeled con artists who have contempt for representative government and for the intelligence of the average citizen.

     Because Mollette represents all that is best in local government, the over-privileged are determined to drive him from office, an office he was elected to, and then they will appoint someone in his place who will do their bidding, like Howard Baughman, Jerrold Albrecht, and most recently Mike Mearan, who were all first appointed rather than elected to office. The over-privileged are using the media – the newspapers and station WNXT, and specifically disk jockey Steve Hayes – to campaign against Mollette. Since he as a public official is above reproach, attacks against him usually take the form of attacking his wife, Teresa, who is very active in the community and has created an extremely valuable and informative website, Portsmouthcitizens.info, which brings sunshine into the darkest depths of city government. It is Teresa Mollette, who obviously does not know what a woman’s place is, who serves as the surrogate Mollette for those who want to remove her husband from office.

Deja Vu

     The campaign against Bob Mollette should be put in a historical context, for this is not the first time the over-privileged of Portsmouth have found themselves in the unusual position of having someone on city council who dares to act as if he or she is not there to act on their behalf. Back in 1980, there was not one but three councilmen, Andrew Clausing, Mark Price, and Harold Daub, who dared to defy the over-privileged, who had the rest of the city council and the city manager, Barry Feldman, in their pocket. To remove the three councilmen from office, the Portsmouth Daily Times, the local radio stations, and the Chamber of Commerce conducted a campaign of vilification and intimidation that had support from almost every public agency in the community, including the school system. School children were enlisted in the unholy crusade to remove the three from office. The whole community was incited against the three, who were accused of standing maliciously in the way of progress by not agreeing to a proposed mall, which the three councilmen believed was a scam perpetrated against Portsmouth by the over-privileged, who had no intention of allowing any business competitors within city limits. (Just think of Neal Hatcher for the most recent example of the mall scam.) When it comes to the means that were employed – the rallies, the parades, the constant drumbeat in the media – the only parallels to the 1980 campaign against Clausing, Price, and Daub that I can think of are the witch trials in Salem and the Ku Klux Klan rallies that took place in most Southern and some Northern states, including Ohio, in the century following the Civil War. That one of people involved in the 1980 campaign was Jo Ann Aeh, whose husband had ties to the Ku Klux Klan, may be one of the things that brings that organization to mind. If there is one thing the Klan can do it’s organize a rally. Aeh got her start in Portsmouth politics in that 1980 Ku Klux Klan-like campaign and so did Ann Sydnor, both of whom have been on the public payroll ever since.

     One important difference between the 1980 campaign against the three councilmen and this one against Mollette is that the over-privileged no longer have the kind of monopoly over information and images that they once did. The Daily Times, the Community Common, and now the Scioto Voice still listen to their master’s voice, which is to say the Chamber of Commerce, but there are other voices now on other avenues of communication that were undreamed of back in 1980. There are blogs and chat rooms and email exchanges where concerned and, yes, angry citizens can express their views and where thousands of readers can find an alternative to the kiss-ass editorials and slanted stories of local newspapers. Times have changed. The Times is a shadow of its former self, and the radio stations are far less influential politically than they once were. Local telewannabe pastor Scott Rawlings says he is amazed at how many people read blogs and how much they believe what they read. When the alternative is reading and believing the kind of Taliban-like political nonsense Rawlings publishes in his newspaper, is it any surprise that the unbrainwashed would look elsewhere for information and ideas?

Deep End

     It remains to be seen where Look Deeper will end up, but right now he is smack dab in the middle of the madness, flailing and emailing, telephoning and jawboning, appearing at meetings to make disjointed charges of the plots against him and of the defamations of his character by his various enemies, but particularly by the Mollettes, though I don’t think Bob Mollette has ever said a word about him. I have heard that someone, not the Mollettes, has brought charges of harassment against him because of a flood of unwelcome phone calls and emails. I have also heard that Look Deeper is being encouraged in his attacks on the Mollettes by members of the city government. It is possible Look Deeper is getting aid and comfort from city officials, and that he is allying himself with Chief Horner in treating the Mollettes and others as “domestic terrorists.” But Look Deeper’s problems go deeper than that. When I first met him about four years ago, he already seemed to be handicapped by some personality disorder. I am not a psychiatrist, but my undergraduate minor was abnormal psychology and I worked while I was an undergraduate in a public and later in a private mental hospital as a psychiatric aide. I think I was able to see that Look Deeper was someone who had problems relating to people in a social context. He has a desperate need to connect to others, but because his computer skills are so much more developed than his social skills, he preferred to relate to others electronically, through emails and the internet, rather than interpersonally.

     He started a blog and urged people, including me, to read it, but it was a failure because very few found it interesting. Then he turned to chat rooms, where people relate to each other anonymously and often aggressively. He took the name Look Deeper, which was his parasitical capitalizing on Doug Deepe, a legendary name in local blogs. Not having been able to make a name for himself, he took advantage of a name that was well known, implying that he was even better at investigative reporting, looked deeper, than Doug Deepe. Being the squirrelly character that he is, at first he tried to keep his personal identity secret, but he was eventually outed and most people now know who he is, even if they wished they didn’t. People who do him the courtesy of exchanging emails with or talking to him discover that he delusionally hears only what he wants to hear and responds only to what he thinks he heard. He begins by flattering but ends up by infuriating people.

     His account in the long disjointed document he is currently widely circulating electronically of what took place at the May 12, 2007 meeting of the CCG is an example of one of his delusional renditions of reality. “On May 12th, I attended a CCG Meeting. The CCG President Robert Forrey expressed his views that he never wanted the CCG to be on the internet foruras [sic] in the first place. I assume for the very reasons I brought to this CCG meeting.” He assumed! In other words, he assumed I was as bonkers as he was on the subject of Teresa Mollette, who was working the night of the meeting so couldn’t defend herself. What I said at the meeting was that I thought the CCG Roundtable was a very useful forum, and I would hate to see it disappear, but that from the start I had been opposed to the CCG sponsoring any forum. He assumed my statement meant I agreed with him about Teresa Mollette.

     Look Deeper succeeded in disrupting the May 12 meeting by turning it into a compulsive tirade against Teresa Mollette, with whom he was obviously obsessed. Somewhat in exasperation, I told him that Teresa Mollette was not the problem: he was the problem because he was not letting us conduct our meeting. I decided afterwards that as long as I was acting president of the CCG that was the last CCG meeting he was going to disrupt. I am concerned not just about following the agenda of the meeting but about the safety of those who attend the meetings. Look Deeper is so much more disturbed than he was three of four years ago that I wonder what he’s going to be like in another three or four years, or even three or four months.

     Look Deeper has been called Look Creepier and Deep Shit, but I think of him as Deep End, for he is someone who has gone over the edge. How did he get there? He appears to be programmed, like a computer virus, to insinuate himself into social groups, primarily by electronic means, to create havoc. He doesn’t do it maliciously, because he really doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t see himself as a virus. He sees himself as a seer, as someone who has the spiritual gift of looking deeply into things. He’s the Dalai Lama of Moe’s Forum. But the cruel truth is he’s just another computer nut. Instead of engaging in constructive political action either in Portsmouth or Westerville, he sits on his ass, in another area code, far-far away, complaining about Doug Deepe, the Mollettes, and everyone else who has rejected his delusional take on reality.

     If Bob Mollette, simply by acting rationally and ethically, can drive some people bananas, think of what another councilman like him could add to city government. It begins to help me understand why, back in 1980, Portsmouth went berserk with the caskets and the parading school children and the denunciations from the press and pulpit when it had not one, not two, but three members of council who would not act like rubber stamps. As next November’s election draws near, watch for a flood of dirty tricks against some candidates, like the health hazard citation against Wayne Nichols. Above all, watch for ever more desperate attempts by the over-privileged and their political pawns to drive Bob Mollette from city government, using every weapon at their disposal, including a virus.

For more on Look Deeper, click here.

Rich White Trash Talk

Cat's-paw Catnapping?

As I approach my twentieth year of living in Portsmouth, I thought I had outlived the capacity to be shocked by what those who control this city politically will do to hold on to power, but the story that appeared in the Portsmouth Daily Times (PDT), on primary election day (May 8) about Wayne Nichols, proved I still have something to learn. Wayne Nichols is a candidate for Portsmouth City Council from the Fourth Ward. He is also a recycler, or what used to be called a junk man. His alleged offense is that he has too much recyclable material on his premises, at 2018 8th St. The PDT reports that “The city first received a complaint of trash and vermin on Nichols’ property at 2018 Eighth St., beside Star Cleaners on March 6.”

Nichols' house: Is this a public health hazard?

The PDT article continues, “Inspectors visited Nichols’ house six days later and found recyclables [emphasis added], scrap wood, scrap metal, etc., in Nichols’s yard and on his porch.” Now notice, “the trash and vermin” someone complained to the city has morphed into recyclable material. The point is, one man’s trash is another man’s recyclable material. The Portsmouth Health Dept. subsequently gave Nichols a final deadline for cleaning up his premises. The deadline was May 8, which just happened to be the day of the primary election in which Nichols was a candidate. Is it just coincidental that Nichols had announced his candidacy for the council seat before March 6, when the complaint against him was made? Is it just a coincidence that the PDT published this story on election day, even though it had not reached Nichols to get his side of the story? Is it unfair to suspect that the PDT published this story on election day because it knows if it is going to continue good relations with the Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership it better continue to find ways to show it is grateful? (Remember what the Chamber of Commerce did when Rick Greene, a former editor of the PDT, did not toe the line?) What better way to show gratefulness than sabotaging whatever chance Nichols might have had of being elected than portraying him as the “White Trash Candidate.” Is it just a coincidence that, in unusual display of judicial activism, city health official Peggy Burton determined that Nichols’s last request for more time was an act of defiance? Is it unfair to suspect that a city official, such as a health inspector, especially in Portsmouth, might be acting politically in carrying out his or her responsibilities? Is it just a coincidence that the elderly councilman Nichols is running against is Jerrold Albrecht, who was appointed, not elected, to Portsmouth City Council, and who has been a cat's-paw for those who control the city, the same people who will do anything to see that he stays on the council?

Typical Hatcher property

Like Mayor Kalb, councilman Albrecht appears at times to take catnaps during council meetings. So, it is not surprising that Albrecht, waking up, occasionally appears confused about which way to vote, but his buddy councilman Mohr helpfully reminds him of how he is supposed to vote on any given issue. Because Albrecht is of advanced age, his chances of finishing a four-year term on council are probably less than fifty-fifty, although health experts say taking naps during the day is a good way to achieve longevity, so maybe the odds of him finishing a term are better than fifty-fifty. While no one would wish Mr. Albrecht to become incapacitated, the powers-that-be will be quite ready with another candidate for the city council to appoint as his replacement.

I am not taking a position on whether Nichols should or should not be on city council. I am not saying I would like to have him as a neighbor. I am saying he has every right to run for city council, but it appears the city and the PDT are working together to see that he doesn’t get elected. Nichols’ most serious offense, I believe, is not his procrastination in cleaning up his premises but rather his attending city council meetings and speaking up in those periods set aside for citizens to address the city council, periods that councilman Mohr has tried to restrict and do away with. Though he is disabled, a veteran, a homeowner, and someone concerned about the city, Nichols, in addition to being cast as “The White Trash Candidate,” probably qualifies as one of those “domestic terrorists” Police Chief Horner has warned against. And what is the fine for Nichols’ offense, which was serious enough to make the front page of the PDT? $25! That’s less than City Council President Howard Baughman was fined by the state for election violations. (Baughman, it should be remembered, like Albrecht, and like our First Ward councilman Mike Mearan, was originally appointed to the city council. That’s how some of our worst council members first get their foot in city council chambers, by being appointed by the rest of the city council, some of whom themselves were originally appointees. Appointed public officials are very prolific and reproduce like cockroaches. It’s a vicious cycle and it will probably continue until the current four-year term for council members is reduced to two.

Why was Nichols cited when Portsmouth has so many much worse houses that could be cited by the Health Dept. Most of the property Neal Hatcher acquires becomes condemnable if it already isn’t when he acquires it, and it just sits for years getting worse. It makes you wonder why Nichols gets a deadline of election day to clean up his property while those violators Bob Mollette has called the city’s attention to are ignored.

One of many houses Mollette asked action on

I think what this whole Nichols’ business amounts to is no more than Rich White Trash Talk on the part of the city and PDT.