Yes, We Can!

When I woke up this morning, January 20, 2009, Presidential Inauguration Day, with all the hopes and dreams it embodies, writing anything about it was the furthest thing from my mind. Because Washington seemed so far from Portsmouth, and so different. There is so much hope in Washington, so much faith in change, and so little in Portsmouth. The contrast between Washington and Portsmouth was too much to think about, never mind write about.

No, We Can’t

The feeling in Obama’s Washington today is “Yes, we can!” The feeling in Portsmouth is “No, we can’t!” No, we can’t stop our chief executive officer, Mayor Kalb, from doing anything, and I mean anything, that isn’t half-assed, like his aborted firing of our Captain Queeg police chief, Charles Horner. No, we can’t clean up the incompetence and the corruption in city government. No, we can’t stop Kalb and his cronies from being the lapdogs that they are, or stop them from continuing to try take the worthless Marting and Adelphia properties off the hands of the Marting Foundation and the absentee landlord Dr. Singer. No, we can’t stop our devious City Auditor from enabling the sailors-on-shore-leave spending of Kalb and council members Malone, Albrecht, and Mearan. No, we can’t stop City Solicitor Mike Jones from paying more attention to political conniving than he does to the City Charter. No, we can’t stop Second Ward councilman David Malone from acting as if the election of Barack Obama means Malone is going to be our next mayor. (As if most of us don’t know the mathematically and ethically challenged David Malone is definitely no Barack Obama.) No, we can’t stop the delusional Mike Mearan, who was appointed not elected to the city council – we can’t stop him from trying to convince not only the voters of the First Ward but also apparently himself that he is a philanthropic Good Samaritan and not, as I have heard for years, a drug-dealing pimp. No, we can’t stop the Portsmouth Daily Times from cravenly serving the interests of the crooked lawyers and developers who control the city politically and economically, and we can’t stop the Daily Times from firing reporters who make the mistake of thinking that they can mention anything in a story, and I mean anything, such as where someone arrested for drug dealing happened to be employed, that might embarrass in the least the businessmen without whose advertising dollars the Daily Times could not survive.

Yes, We Can!

But then, after I heard on the radio and read the accounts from Washington about the beginning of Inauguration Day, and then President Obama's speech and the hope it was inspiring, I thought, wait a second. Yes, we can, too! Yes, we can, even here in Portsmouth. Don’t forget the blogosphere! It helped elect Obama and it has made a tremendous difference in Portsmouth. The media no long monopolize the news. Just last November 4 the attempt to foist the Marting building and the Adelphia property off on the citizens of Portsmouth was defeated decisively, as had happened in a previous elections, in 2006, in spite of the deceptively named Progress Portsmouth Committee and other proponents of the ballot measure spending lots of money and resorting to the usual dirty tricks to get the measure passed. The Marting/Adelphia ballot measure was defeated decisively in spite of the support of the Daily Times and its supine, since-departed unctuous Managing Editor Arthur Kuhn. And even before that recent November 4, 2009, election victory, two honest candidates, Bob Mollette and Rich Noel, had been elected (not appointed!) to city council and there is a good possibility that the next elected mayor will be someone who is not a lapdog of the rich white trash. One line of President Obama’s Inaugural speech can be applied, I believe, to Portsmouth: “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history . . .”

And, yes, we can, and will, find someone in the First Ward to run against Mike Mearan, because even a yellow dog could defeat him, and if we don’t find someone I will run against him myself and let me tell you, as this post and others I have written might indicate, I will wage one hell of a campaign. Yes, I will.

Shadow Government: Update

Home of Portsmouth’s Shadow Government

[No posting I have made since I began River Vices back in July 2004 strikes me as more relevant and timely, in view of the recent economic crisis, and the discrediting of the financial elite, than “Shadow Government,” which I wrote back in May 2006. I am reposting it now, with a few minor changes and additions.]

It has happened gradually and unobtrusively, without most people being aware of it, but over the last half century, important functions of Portsmouth local government have been privatized. The result is that we now have a powerful shadow government, the origin of which can be traced back to 1964.

To quote from an earlier River Vices posting, “in March 1964, the Portsmouth City Council made a momentous decision. In a resolution, numbered unlucky #13, the council turned much of the economic control of the city over to a private ‘non-profit’ corporation named the Portsmouth Area Community Improvement Corporation (PACIC). In Resolution #13, the Portsmouth City Council granted PACIC an extraordinarily broad mandate. The mandate of this private corporation, consisting mainly of businessmen, bankers, and lawyers, was no less than ‘To promote the health, safety, morals and general welfare of the inhabitants of the community . . .’ In the following year, 1965, the Ohio state legislature passed a law allowing municipalities to designate community improvement corporations, such as PACIC, as their agent. As if PACIC hadn’t already been granted extraordinary power in Resolution #13 . . . the Portsmouth City Council passed another resolution (#30), designating PACIC as the city’s official agent, or legal representative.” PACIC eventually morphed into the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, or SOGP.

Working with other community improvement corporations (CICs) and with other unelected quasi-public officials, the SOGP has come to do the heavy financial lifting in our municipal affairs. A shadow government has evolved in the Portsmouth area made up of a bewildering array of acronyms, not only SOGP but GPEC (Greater Portsmouth Enterprise Community), CAOSC (Community Action Organization of Scioto County), SOPA (Southern Ohio Port Authority), etc.

Through pork projects and abatements, the SOGP has choked the tax base of Portsmouth, weakened initiative, encouraged collusion, and stifled the local economy. The worse it got in Portsmouth, the more pork the SOGP could rustle from state and federal government.

Porkman

To finance its activities, our shadow government depends not directly on taxes, as our city government has to do, but on streams of pork dollars from public and quasi-public sources. One of the largest sources of pork for Portsmouth and the SOGP, ironically, is the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), but there are many other sources. Under the arrangement that has evolved in the last half century, our usually inept and subservient city government handles the small change, relatively speaking: the SOGP handles the big bucks. For example, the 2003-2004 records of the SOGP lists over $20 million in “bank investments,” some of the recipients of which are current or past members of the SOGP. The SOGP has handled hundreds of millions of dollars. The city government, by contrast, is left to squabble over whether the mayor should get a new automobile or whether there is money to fix the leaky roof of the Municipal Building. Portsmouth’s real city hall is not the Municipal Building but the new Welcome Center, where the SOGP has its headquarters. It was USDA pork, and Representative Rob “Porkman” Portman, now positioning himself to run for governor of Ohio, who made the construction of the Welcome Center possible.

“It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Rob Porkman!”

Given the limitations of local government, it was to be expected that in the evolution of local and county government an alternative to the traditionally ineffective, subservient, and corrupt local government would arise. The number of Bob Mollettes have been too few and far between in city government. The vehicle for this new non-elective, shadow government are “community improvement corporations,” the CICs. To quote from a handbook for county commissioners, “A community improvement corporation (CIC) is a nonprofit corporation organized under the provisions of Chapter 1724 of the Revised Code for the sole purpose of promoting, advancing and encouraging the industrial, economic, commercial and civic development of the area.” In a report on CICs, the Columbus Dispatch (2/6/95) quoted Mike Shannon, a lawyer who had served as state community improvement corporations coordinator from 1985 to 1988. “They[CICs] can do everything from street beautification to economic and industrial development.” Shannon added, “They [CICs] can make loans to businesses or partnerships under certain conditions; acquire property by such means as purchase or eminent domain; and assume control of businesses in financial trouble.” Mary Bearden, Dublin Ohio’s economic development coordinator, told the Dispatch that CICs “have the rights and provisions by law to act as developers, to buy land and develop property, but at an arm's length away from bureaucracy.” What Bearden means by bureaucracy is local government, local elected officials, or what we might generalize and call the vestiges of local democracy. That is what has to be kept at arm’s length.

The Business Model

In other words, CICs privatize local and county government; they turn government, and especially the financial aspects of government, into a business. “It’s hard for cities to function like a business,” Shannon said. It’s hard for cities to function like a business principally because there are all those bothersome details of the democratic process to deal with, like voters, elections, and public accountability. CICs members are not elected, they are appointed and therefore are not subject to recall. They are not subject to open records laws requests either. They are required to make only annual budget reports, and the reports of the SOGP can be very hazy. For example, in a SOGP bare budget report for 1997, of $314,000 allotted for something called a Small Business Education Center, $252,861 had been spent. Just what was the Small Business Education Center that SOGP had spent a quarter of million dollars on? In a letter dated May 6, 1997, Wally Leedom on behalf of the Shawnee Sentinel requested a detailed breakout of the budget and a clarification on the Small Business Center. There is no indication he ever got a response. A shadow government, run like a business, can stonewall in such a situation, as I have discovered several times when I tried to get information. CICs like the SOGP can get away with, well, if not murder, at least highway robbery, as the folks at Enron did.

What happened in Portsmouth was that responsibility for the economic growth of the area was taken out of the hands of the local and county government and put into the hands of a private, putatively non-profit corporation that was made up of the influential and wealthy individuals in the community, mostly lawyers, bankers, and business people, most of whom had never sunk to running for public office but who were only too willing to serve on a community improvement corporation. Why were they so willing to serve on CICs? To adapt the famous remark of Willy Sutton, because CICs are where the money is. Before there were CICs, the greedy businessman actually had to get his hands dirty and run for local public office. Not anymore, not when there are CICs.

Monkey Business

Many people have been led to believe making government more businesslike is the best possible thing that could happen. But is it? Business people and chambers of commerce would have us believe businessmen are a blessing and the heros of the American economy. That's not the lesson I derive from American history. The famous investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens wrote early in the last century, “There is hardly an office from United States Senator down to Alderman in any part of the country to which the business man has not been elected; yet politics remains corrupt, government pretty bad, and the selfish citizen has to hold himself in readiness like the old volunteer firemen to rush forth at any hour, in any weather, to prevent the fire; and he goes out sometimes and he puts out the fire (after the damage is done) and he goes back to the shop sighing for the business man in politics. The business man has failed in politics as he has in citizenship. Why? Because politics is business. That’s what’s the matter with it. That’s what’s the matter with everything—art, literature, religion, journalism, law, medicine,—they’re all business . . . The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle . . .”

President Calvin Coolidge said the business of America was business. That was before the stock market crashed catastrophically in 1929 (and again in 2008), and Americans suffered economically for nearly a decade. The head of General Motors infamously said that what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Tell that to the auto workers who are losing their jobs and their benefits. Thoreau said, “I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.”

From the Bible to Thoreau’s Walden to Das Kapital, we are warned that money corrupts, and a lot of money corrupts absolutely. Everybody who is in the business of making money, every business person who seeks to increase his or her profits, runs the risk of being corrupted by the process. Even people from humble religious backgrounds, as Enron's son-of-a-preacher Ken Lay claimed to be, are not immune to becoming corrupted by money. And it is not just supposedly pious Christians but supposedly pious Jews, such as Jack Abramoff and Bernard Madoff, who can not resist the lure of staggering profits. Everyone seeking to maximize profits, to making as much money as possible, which is another side of being businesslike, is a potential liar and crook. Money, like atomic energy is tremendously powerful and capable of doing much good, but it is also capable of doing great harm, especially in the hands of the sanctimoniously unscrupulous.

The recent convictions of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, along with the earlier convictions of other corporate culprits at Tyco, Adelphia, HealthSouth, WorldCom, etc., offer a history lesson about businessmen that Portsmouth can learn from. But this lesson will not be taught in Portsmouth schools or churches or discussed in the local media because our shadow government, with its financial impact on and influence over the local government, media, and education, will not allow it. That’s why the founding of the Shawnee Sentinel in 1995, at Shawnee State U., was an important event in Portsmouth’s history. The Sentinel is far from perfect, and may not always be diplomatic or grammatical, but it has relentlessly exposed our shadow government and their accomplices and stooges in the city government.

Devious: The "No New Taxes" Scam

Progress Portsmouth's postcard was "devious," says Chuck Calvert.

Underpaid reporters and managing editors come and go at the Portsmouth Daily Times, like Portsmouth's transient $5 dollar hookers, but that newspaper’s mission of misleading the public on behalf of the crooked clique that controls Portsmouth economically and politically continues. The report by Frank Lewis in today’s Daily Times (January 9, 2009) on yesterday’s state Elections Commission hearing in Columbus is a good example of why that newspaper, with its steadily declining circulation, is sometimes called the Prostitute Daily Times. Instead of sending Lewis to Columbus to sit in on the hearing, the Times preferred to keep him in Portsmouth, sitting on his ass, where he could write a story without making any direct observations of the event himself. He didn’t bother to quote one word of the statement Harold Daub had prepared, which reads as follows: “In the view of the Ohio Board of Elections, the postcard that the Progress Portsmouth Committee mailed to voters about the City Center ballot issue was misleading. The Chair of the hearing, Chuck Calvert [shown above] went so far as to call the postcard ‘devious.’ But the commission unanimously agreed that the Progress Portsmouth Committee could not be held accountable because a public official, the City Auditor Trent Williams, in an August 6 public letter, had provided the information that the committee drew upon for the postcard, and there is no proof that the committee knew that information was misleading.”

The infamous postcard

Williams’s August 6, 2008, letter, which was entered in as evidence in yesterday’s hearing in Columbus, gave the Progress Portsmouth Committee the legal cover to spread the lie via postcards that a vote for the City Center/Justice Center projects would not require an increase in taxes. What the Progress Portsmouth Committee did yesterday, through its lawyer, was pass the buck to Williams, who, in his rambling answers, tried to pass the buck to the city solicitor. The argument of the Progress Portsmouth Committee in the hearing boiled down to this: Don’t blame us, we were only passing along what the city auditor had publicly stated, and what Williams’ argument boiled down to was, Don’t blame me I was only following the advice of the city solicitor. Since neither Williams nor the city solicitor was the object of the charges Daub had brought, the Commission was not empowered to render any judgments about the legality or veracity of what the City Auditor or the City Solicitor might have said or done.

City Auditor Trent Williams

In his August 6 letter, Williams had stated that the City Center/Justice Center projects would not require “any increase in property taxes above the current budgeted level.” This is the devious heart of the scam that Williams and others in and out of city government had concocted: they had raised the 3.1% mill for a fire truck in the jerry-rigged budget with the intention of continuing that 3.1% increase for another 30 years to pay for the City Center/Justice Center projects. That 3.1% would be a continuation, they tried to convince us, not an increase. That was the scam Williams laid out in the August letter and that’s the scam the Progress Portsmouth Committee parroted in its postcard.

The scam Williams helped concoct and that Progress Portsmouth parroted in its campaign is very small potatoes compared to the enormous scam Williams may currently be engaged in, which is the claim that in the current national and state financial meltdown the city of Portsmouth somewhat miraculously has no serious financial problems, and can afford to continue with its $13 million dollar (and counting) plans to build a new city hall and courthouse-jail, and to buy yet another fire truck, and to provide Mayor Kalb with a new car commensurate with the dignity of his high office, and do all this without any apparent need to cut out or cut back or postpone any of the plans or perks currently in the works. Williams may come out of all this, to my way of thinking, as either The Miracle Worker or Portsmouth’s Own Ponzi. Charles Ponzi, was the devious crook who cooked the books and ended up, well, in a not very nice place.

Charles Ponzi

River Vices 2008: Year in Review

January

"Golden Wazoo," Jan. 13, 2008. "What are political campaigns but vast marketing exercises? What are candidates promoting if not variations of the two dominant brands, Republican and Democrat? What is religion in America today but a fierce struggle of varieties of the dominant brand, Christianity, for customer loyalty? What are the most successful brands of Christianity? The ones that promise the biggest bang for your buck. Do you remember councilman David Malone's 'Portsmouth: City of Prosperity' campaign, something he borrowed from the Ministry of Truth movement?"
Slashings & Rip-Offs," Jan. 22, 2008. "My thesis, which I apologize for taking so long to state, is that the difference between Sweeney Todd's London and Mayor Kalb's Portsmouth is that in London the people get slashed and in Portsmouth they get ripped off."ToxiCity," Jan. 30, 2008. "Whether or not the Viaduct is toxic chemically, and I repeat that I think it probably is not, it certainly is politically and financially toxic."

February

"Shady Acres," Feb. 11, 2008. "One of the striking similarities between the Marting and the Route 23 Viaduct scam was the way in which Bauer hurried up the sale of the property on the grounds that there was an emergency."
"Hillary, Ted, and Neal," Feb. 15, 2008. "For him [Strickland] to have accused Iowans of being undemocratic was not only untimely but somewhat hypocritical, because Strickland's home base is Portsmouth, which happens to be one of the most corrupt and poorest excuses for democracy in Ohio, if not America.""Go, Bucks," Feb. 25, 2008. "So, there was Bill [Clinton] on Febuary 25, in blue-collar Ohio, in down-and-out Portsmouth, speaking for the party of the working man, and, in the process of criticizing Republicans, revealing that he and Hillary are more or less somewhere in between being loaded and filthy rich. 'Go Bucks!' might be the Clinton campaign slogan for Ohio."

March

"Strickland Country," March 2, 2008. "The Bill Clinton rally in the Athletic Center might be described by rephrasing lines from a famous poem of William Butler Yeats, 'Slouching toward Bethlehem': 'Things fall apart; the Athletic Center will not hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon Portsmouth.'"
"Theyre B-a-a-a-c-k!" March 10, 2008. In spite of repeated public resistance to the Marting scam, the mendacious Mayor Kalb, with the assistance of the salacious Mike Mearan, a criminal lawyer who has been appointed, not elected, to public office, the City Council is once again trying to revive the Marting's Scam." Portsmouth's Mr. Spitzer," March 13, 2008. "Mearan emerged from the sewers of Portsmouth after Timothy Loper was removed from City Council and Mearan was appointed to replace him. Appointed, mind you, not elected. Mearan has had the last umpteen years to run for City Council, but he didn't, and for good reason. The lecherous notoriety he has achieved would have made him unelectable, even in a city as corrupt as Portsmouth.""Prostitute Daily Times," March 17, 2008. "The two most experienced and respected reporters in Portsmouth, Mike Deaterla and Jeff Barron, were both fired by the Prostitute Times not too long ago. The last thing the SOGP wants are reporters who might present both sides of a controversial issue like the Marting building.""Selling Out," March 21, 2008. "I was in Stapleton's the week before it closed, and talked to employees. It was a sad occasion, but Stapleton's understood the time had come to get out, something that proponents of reviving downtown refuse to recognize. The Marting Foundation is trying to con everyone into believing downtown can be revived, as it once was, as if dinosaurs can be replicated by DNA, as in Jurassic Park.""Rocks," March 29, 2008. "Strickland's public statements on the Indian Head Rock controversy should be enshrined as the classically mealy-mouthed political fence straddling that they are."

April

"Marting Madness," April 4, 2008. "Clayton Johnson is not leading the city forward. He is leading the city backward, all the way back to 1883, when the Marting department store building was erected. He is leading the city backward to more turmoil, to more referenda, to more litigation, and to more delay."
Scams: 1980 and 2008," April 11, 2008. "It is instructive to compare the Marting Scam of 2008 with the Shopping Mall Scam of 1980. . . . The differences between the two scams and the differences between 1980 and 2008 are also worth noting. The nine blocks that were supposed to revive downtown Portsmouth in 1980 have been reduced in 2008 to one pathetic building that is supposed to revive downtown Portsmouth, the 125-year-old leaking and unwanted-by-anybody-else Marting Department store.""Packing the Meeting," April 17, 2008. "The meeting of Portsmouth City Council on 14 April 2008 illustrates what can be done when Democrats and Republicans put their heads together to screw the taxpayers of Portsmouth. The corruption in Portsmouth is as deep and pervasive as it is because it is bi-partisan.""Conventional Folly," April 20, 2008. "A survey conducted by SSU students found that about half the people interviewed thought downtown Portsmouth was ugly and unsafe.""Kalb's Confession," April 28, 2008. "At the City Council meeting on August 9, 2004, acting Mayor Jim Kalb made a remarkable confession. He admitted publicly that the sale of the 125-year-old Marting building to the city had been a fraud."

May

"Fart-Free Portsmouth," May 2, 2008. "The champion of the Fart Free movement in Portsmouth is Police Chief Charles Horner who launched the crusade for a Fart-Free Portsmouth on April 28, 2008, when he gave a stern warning to a retired Christian minister and recovering colon cancer patient who farted at a meeting of the Portsmouth City Council."

"Marc Dann: Marked Man,"May 11, 2008. "Once again, Gov. Ted Strickland is in the ironic situation of insisting on high ethical standards for others while the standards that prevail in Scioto County, now called Strickland Country, are scandalously low."

"Horner's Last Botched Drug Bust,"May 23, 2008. "The bizarre events on the corner of 4th and Market Street on Wednesday May 14 and Chief Charles Horner's equally bizarre account of those events in the Portsmouth Daily Times on May 22 tend to confirm the suspicion that we have as chief law enforcement officer in Portsmouth a man who appears to be not only incompetent, but to be psychologically as well as morally unfit for the important position he occupies."

"Land Scams," May 31, 2008. "In 2001 the city of Portsmouth sold almost 8 acres of land next to Route 23 to Portsmouth developer Elmer Mullins for the minimum asking price of $60,000. The price Mullins paid per acre, therefore, was about $7,500. In 2006, the county of Athens sold a little over 4 acres of comparable land on East State St. to developers for $2.3 million. The price per acre the developers paid in Athens, therefore, was about $510,000. In other words, the county and therefore the taxpayers of Athens county received a half a million dollars more per acre for public land on East State St. than the city of Portsmouth received per acre for public land on Route 23."

June

"Mearan's Conflict of Interest," June 19, 2008. "In his actions as a member of the Portsmouth City Council and as chairman of the City Building Committee (CBC), City Councilman Michael Mearan appears to have violated Sect. 160 of the Portsmouth City Charter, 'Oath of Office,' and Section 161 of the Charter, 'Financial Interests in Contracts, etc.,' which states, 'No officer or employee of the City shall have a financial interest, direct or indirect, in any contract with the City or be financially interested, directly or indirectly in the sale to the City of any land, materials, supplies, or services except on behalf of the City as an officer or employee.'

July

"American Dreams, American Nightmares," July 10, 2010. "Merriam-Webster defines a shyster as 'a person who is professionally unscrupulous especially in the practice of law or politics.' Since Mearan is both a lawyer and a politician, I can't think of a better word for him. In my opinion, Mearan is a shyster."

"Dirty Deeds," July 16, 2008. "As a result of her son's appearance in court on that date [Feb. 9, 2006], Mrs. Craft would lose her home. She lost it, she and her son claim, through trickery and deceit on the part of Mike Mearan. Mrs. Craft and her son do admit to signing, in the court hallway, the hastily drawn up hand-written 'contract' on Feb. 9, 2006 . . . But they deny vehemently signing any 'deed' that day."

"Loan Shark?" July 31, 2008. "But the mistreatment of the 70-year-old Karol Craft and her son in the county, state, and municipal courts raises the suspicion that in Ohio it is the Halls of Injustice, not the Halls of Justice, that sometimes prevail."

August

"Kalb's Brain," August 16, 2008. "It may say something about where this country is headed that the chief executive officer, at both the national and local levels, both the President of the United States and the Mayor of Portsmouth, appear to suffer from a very serious handicap: like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, neither of them appears to have a brain."

"Nuts Over Blogs," August 22, 2008. "Being police chief in Portsmouth is a highly stressful occupation. Working for a mayor who learned nothing in trade school except how to be a tool can be a demoralizing experience."

"Sidewalk Shenanigans," August 28, 2008. "[Larry] Justice followed the well-worn path down which the not too bright, the not too ethical, and the not too successful find a refuge in city government, where they advance by serving the interests of the kind of rich, clever, and overprivileged people they themselves are obviously not: think Bauer, think Kalb, think Baughman, think Mohr, think Loper, and think Malone."

September

"Our Jughead Mayor," September 1, 2008. "If you do find Kalb in his office, chances are, when he is not stewing over the inadequacy of the salary he is receiving for being the city's part-time mayor, he's stewing over the indignity of having to drive a city automobile that is not commensurate with his importance as the chief executive officer of Portsmouth."

"Shyster," September 12, 2008. "On July 7, 2008, a First Set of Interrogatories, a Request for Production of Documents, and Requests for Admission were served to Mearan via U.S. Mail. [One of those interrogatories was], "Admit that Attorney Michael H. Mearan has, within the [last] 10 to 20 years, within the City of Portsmouth and/or Scioto County earned a reputation for engaging the solicitation of prostitution, the use and/or sale of illegal drugs and/or participation in illegal gambling."

"Stop SLAPPing!" September 20, 2008. "SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. To quote Wikipedia, SLAPP 'is a lawsuit or a threat of lawsuit that is intended to intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the costs of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. Winning the lawsuit is not necessarily the intent of the person filing the SLAPP. The plaintiff's goals are accomplished if the defendant succumbs to fear, intimidation, mounting legal costs or simple exhaustion and abandons the criticisms.'"

"Kalbanomics," September 25, 2008. "There is so much political baggage, so much bitterness, so much dishonest shit attached to the moldering Marting building/City Center that it is like a cancer metastisizing in our community."

October

"Three Little Pigs and the Fire Truck," October 10, 2008. "Once upon a time there were three little pigs who were trying to waste millions of dollars of public money converting a decrepit 125-year-old department store in a City Center."

"Gutter Politics: Update," October 14, 2008. "Here in Portsmouth, supporters of the City Center (Marting's) and Justice Center (Adelphia) projects are resorting to gutter politics. Clayton Johnson was reportedly overheard saying at the now defunct William's Restaurant, where Mike Mearan owned the liquor license, that maybe it was time for another campaign like the one in 1980, when most of the city was mobilized by Johnson and others, including the newspapers and radio stations, to harass and intimidate three councilmen who wouldn't play ball on the Downtown Mall Scam."

"The Two Centers Scam," October 17, 2008. "On Thursday, October 16, 2008, in Columbus, Ohio, in a face-off between Harold Daub, representing the reform-minded citizens of Portsmouth, and Austin Keyser, representing the Progress Portsmouth Campaign Action Committee (PPCAC), the Ohio Elections Commission voted unanimously in a preliminary hearing that Daub had just cause, which is to say he was justified in charging that Progress Portsmouth is not telling the truth in ads that claim that the $12 million dollar cost of the City Center and Justice Center (the 'Two Centers' I will call them) will not require an increase in property taxes."

"440%," October 19, 2008. "The current 2008 property tax in Portsmouth is .7 mills. If the voters approve the City Center/Justice Center projects on November 4, the property tax will increase to 3.8 mills. That is more than a 440% increase, and that increase will continue for 30 years, from 2010 to 2040."

November

"Lies! Lies! Lies!" November, 2, 2008. "It comes down to this on the weekend before Tuesday, November 4: Is the Progress Portsmouth Committee (PPC) going to get away with the lies it has been telling about the Marting and Adelphia property for months?"
"The Morning After," November 5, 2008. "In 2004, Mayor Bauer was recalled by a large margin; in May 2006, by a nearly 3-to-1 margin, voters rejected the Marting building; and in last night's 58% to 42% defeat of the new Marting-Adelphia scam, by a margin of over a thousand votes, the concerned citizens have proved they are in the clear majority, that they are not just a disgruntled minority.""The Last Poster," November 7, 2008. "And then the citizens rose up, on November 4, 2008/ Like angry peasants, and drove a democratic stake/ Through the heart of the unrenovated monster,/ The leaking department store, the running sore . . .""Gambling," November 26, 2008. "Getting out of the economic hole that Portsmouth has been sinking into for almost a half century is going to be very hard, and there is no guarantee that it will ever get out of it, but what Portsmouth needs to give up is the illusion of finding prosperity through gambling."

December

"Miracle in Portsmouth," December 27, 2008. "Listen, America, and the world, an economic miracle is occurring right here in, Portsmouth, Ohio, on the banks of the polluted Ohio River, if you will only pay attention. Though it is portrayed by the outside media and by a few local naysayers as a hotbed of drugs, prostitution, and political corruption, Portsmouth, in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, is forging ahead with expensive new projects, including an extensive new high school athletic complex in the heart of the city, with new privately owned dormitories for the local state university, with a new city hall and police station, and with a new red hook and ladder truck for the fire department to go along with the new red fire truck the city council recently passed a tax increase for. And did I mention the new red Dodge Charger the mayor, who buys his cigarettes across the river in Kentucky, has ordered for himself to replace the Ford Victoria that runs fine but has cigarette holes in the front seat and a threadbare carpet?"

Miracle in Porksmouth

Mayor Kalb being sworn into office by Ted Strickland

Listen, America, and the world, an economic miracle is occurring right here in, Portsmouth, Ohio, on the banks of the polluted Ohio River, if you will only pay attention. Though it is portrayed by the outside media and by a few local naysayers as a hotbed of drugs, prostitution, and political corruption, Portsmouth, in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, is forging ahead with expensive new projects, including an extensive new high school athletic complex in the heart of the city, with new privately owned dormitories for the local state university, and with a new city hall and police station, and a new red hook and ladder truck for the fire department to go along with the new red fire truck the city council recently passed a tax increase for. And did I mention the new red Dodge Charger the mayor, who buys his cigarettes across the river in Kentucky, has ordered for himself to replace the Ford Victoria that runs fine but has cigarette holes in the front seat and a threadbare carpet?

“What me worry?” is Kalb’s slogan and why it isn’t the slogan of the rest of the world is hard for any of us in Portsmouth to understand. Get with the program, world! Kalb is also planning a multi-million dollar convention center that will be built on the site of the present city hall, right next to the recently completed $38 million dollar bridge over the Ohio, which the naysayers have called “The Bridge to Nowhere.” The Portsmouth Convention Center, a shovel ready project, will be begun just as soon as the city hall can be torn down, because you see our visionary mayor wants to be ready for gambling when it is legalized. State Senator Sherrod Brown was recently in Portsmouth for a public meeting, and our mayor reportedly had one word for him. Not "plastics," not "bailout," but "gambling!"

This morning’s Washington Post (27 Dec. 2008) published a grim story about the economic crisis in Ohio. The Post reported, “In Ohio, which has shed 100,000 jobs in the past year, Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and his budget team spend a lot of time delivering bad news to constituents and plotting ways to wring money from the federal government. He announced $640 million in cuts for the budget year ending June 30, for a total of $1.9 billion since the economic crisis began.”

Gov. Strickland should know better. He is, after all, a local boy, born and bred. Which is all the more surprising, because he has completely capitulated to the doom and gloom that is permeating the rest of the country and globe. As reported in The Post, “‘We’re not crying wolf. This is real,’ Strickland said in an interview in his statehouse office, pointing to charts that project the most serious erosion of state income in 40 years and a two-year budget deficit of $7.3 billion. Revenue shortfalls in the upcoming two-year budget could amount to about 25 percent of the state's discretionary spending.” The Post went on to report that “Strickland recently picked up the telephone and called Rham Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff. When he heard the recorded voice of his former congressional colleague, he left a message: ‘Rahm, it’s Ted. You’ve never failed me and I need $5 billion.’” Strickland called Emanuel, when he could have called Mayor Kalb, whom Strickland did the honor of swearing into office? How quickly they forget! This I suppose is what happens when somebody starts reading liberal newspapers, such as the Washington Post and New York Times, and stops reading the ever-forward-looking Portsmouth Daily Times.

Along with many other Ohioans, I recently received a Christmas card from Gov. Strickland and his wife, with whom I have a slight acquaintance. I appreciate the card and wish the governor and his wife and the rest of the residents of the Buckeye state well, but I am saddened to realize how much this son of Scioto County has forgotten or perhaps never learned. Has he, in this holiest of holiday seasons, lost faith in miracles?

A Season for Miracles?

Has he been influenced by the neighing of the naysayers, of our local bloggers, of our domestic terrorists, who have nearly driven our poor chief of police crazy? I say pick up the phone, Ted, call Mayor Kalb and ask him how at the end of this financially calamitous calendar year, in this time of state $1.9 billion budget cuts and $7.3 budget deficits, Portsmouth still manages to have a million dollar balance in the city coffers. And if you can’t reach the mayor, who likes to spend as much time as he can on his motorcycle in the Carolinas or other venues, on well-deserved breaks from his stressful job in the city hall, then call City Auditor Trent Williams, who is always on the job and who follows the advice of his mother: “Count your pork chops and the pigs will take care of themselves.” Yes, I know Rahm Emmanuel made $15 million in the financial sector during his three-year hiatus from public service, and I know that since he left office Bill Clinton has made a bundle that could choke a stable of interns, but neither they nor Lawrence Summers nor Robert Rubin accomplished any lasting financial miracles, as Mayor Kalb has by following Porksmouth’s miracle recipe of pork, rebates, foundation money provided by doddering dowagers, and the prospect of legalized gambling. It’s that simple, Ted. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s our miracle.

There is a Santa Claus

What follows is the woeful economic news I culled from just one day’s New York Times, for December 17, 2008. For the last year, stories like these began trickling into newspapers and other media, and they have now reached Niagara Falls proportions. The world is drowning in red ink and pink slips. Or at least the world outside of Portsmouth is.

The New York Times reported on December 17, 2008, among other things, that Goldman Sachs suffered a $2.1 and Morgan Stanley a $2.36 billion loss. I see also that Yale’s endowment has dropped over 13%, creating a $100 million shortfall for the coming school year. A survey revealed $107 billion worth of income-producing properties nationwide are already or potentially in default. Because of declining sales, Best Buy electronic stores are sharply cutting their workforce and their competitor Circuit City borders on bankruptcy. Unemployment claims have reached their highest levels in decades, forcing some states to plead for federal assistance. Funds for the jobless are drying up in New York State. On December 16, the Federal Reserve cut the rate for overnight loans to almost zero percent, sending more bad news to those who prefer putting their money in a low-yield saving account rather than speculating with it on the stock market and in their 401K’s. “The ripple effects of the recession and Wall Street’s slide have now fully engulfed the New York theater,” the Times reported. "The play's the thing," Hamlet said, but there are few angels willing to invest in new Broadway productions.

The bad news is not just national; it is international, according to the Times affecting every part of the global economy. “Japan’s Manufacturing Confidence Index Drops Sharply.” Honda projects a 64% drop in profits. “British Unemployment Up 137,000 at 1.86 Million.” OPEC is about to cut oil production, again, and with falling oil prices their plans for large scale projects are unlikely to begin any time soon. “The oil cartel has been stunned by the speed of the downturn, which has created a sudden nightmare for producers,” the Times reported. And Russia devalued the ruble for second time in a week. “Global Car Industry Fearful for Detroit,” read one headline. The source of the fear is that the financial crisis at Detroit’s Big Three is going to mean that their more successful units abroad are about to be battered. “There are growing concerns that the automakers’ problems in the United States will weigh down their more successful units in Europe, Asia and Latin America,” the Times pointed out. Speaking of Detroit, that city’s major newspaper, trying desperately to avoid going under, will stop home deliveries four days a week. (I wonder: Did the Portsmouth Daily Times realize it couldn’t afford to continue Art Kuhn as managing editor anymore because he was driving down circulation even further by angering readers by his shameless shilling for the City Center?) Here are a few more stories from the December 17 issue of the New York Times: “Retail Spending Weak in November,” “No Question We’re in a Financial Pickle,” “Job Losses in City Reach Up Ladder,” “Oil Demand Down; 1st Time Since ’83,” “U.S. Trade Deficit Grew in October as Exports Slowed,” and “Jobless Claims at Highest Level in 26 Years.”

In addition to all this depressing news, the Times also reported on the financier Bernard L. Madoff’s incredible Ponzi scheme by which he bilked gullible investors, including charities, of billions. “Wall St. Fraud Leaves Charities Reeling,” the Times reported, and “S.E.C. Issues Mea Culpa on Madoff." Charity begins at home, they say, but it is apparently Madoff's home, or homes, it begins at.

I mention all this not to spread gloom but to point, by contrast, to some not just good but remarkable financial news. Portsmouth appears to have escaped the economic tsunami that has washed over the rest of the world. I recall attending a Portsmouth City Council meeting early last January, as the crisis was getting under way. Our upbeat City Auditor Trent Williams reported Portsmouth was in reasonably good financial shape and mayor Kalb concurred. That apparently is why Mayor Kalb was able to put in his order for a new automobile for himself and why the city council and the mayor proposed spending $15 million (at least) on two new city building complexes, and why the city council made a large appropriation (to be paid for by property taxes) for a new fire engine and why at the last meeting, I've been told, they talked about buying another fire engine, maybe because there are going to be so many fire sales as a result of the recession.

Instead of being in the red, the city was in the black, and the auditor felt that city would have about a million in the General Fund by the following November 30. If the city didn’t, the city would be in trouble he said. I recently asked the auditor whether the city had that million by November 30 and he reported it had that amount, or very close to it, $955.171 to be exact. So the city is not in financial trouble, if the auditor is correct. The reason this is remarkable is that Ohio has not escaped the financial crisis. At every level of government, cutbacks, layoffs, and panic prevail. Education, assistance to the poor, social services of all kinds will be affected. A while back, a New York Times reporter began a story with the lead, “In the bellwether Ohio city of Chillicothe, population 22,000, residents are worried about the economy.” Having visited the Chillicothe city hall and met its mayor and auditor a few years ago, I think of it as Portsmouth's sister city, the sister city that did not become a woman of the streets, municipally speaking. Mayor Sulzer told the Times that “ the state of Ohio just tried to borrow $150 million dollars for low-income housing. But no one was interested in buying those bonds. So what will happen when the city of Chillicothe has to borrow a couple of million dollars to build a new bus garage?”

Chillicothe can’t afford a new bus garage? Chillicothe can't raise a couple of measly million dollars? How pitiful! Mayor Sulzer should pick up the phone and call Mayor Kalb for some financial advice and learn how it is possible for an Ohio city in this terrible crisis to afford to build two new city buildings, and buy two fire engines, and a new car for Mayor Kalb to boot. Don’t they have property owners in Chillicothe to pay for these things?

Portsmouth has drawn regional if not national attention in the past few years for unflattering reasons. Every month seems to bring news that we are leaders in the state if not the nation in some unpleasant category or other – for poverty, drugs, corruption, and filching historic rocks. But what about our financial miracle? Why doesn’t our city government get credit for that? What other city, in the middle of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, can afford to tax its property owners $15 million to provide the mayor and other city officials with spacious new offices, and provide His Honor with a new automobile as befits the dignity of his position? Why doesn’t Governor Strickland recognize the miracle in his own backyard? Why doesn’t he hire Auditor Williams as a consultant and make his old friend Mayor Kalb part of his brain trust?

We should feel sorry for those who don’t believe in Santa Claus, or who suspect that our auditor and mayor are engaged in some kind of Ponzi scam, that we are in fact not better but far worse off than Chillicothe and the other cities in Ohio and around the nation that are howling with pain. Yes, a Bernard Madoff could fool some of the smartest people in the world with his scam, but it is hard to believe that our city officials could fool the people of Portsmouth in that way. True, we no longer have Managing Editor Art Kuhn of the Daily Times around to explain to us how a 440% tax increase is not really an increase, but with unelected public servants like Mike Mearan to assure us that the city is in good financial condition, as he did in that council meeting last January, and who more recently said at a council meeting that if any resident of Portsmouth believes he or she can’t afford the 440% tax increase to build a City Center and a Justice Center on his client’s property, then he or she should move out of town. But why would anyone want to move out of a town that has miraculously escaped the current crisis? Not even an Alfred E. Newman would be stupid enough to move out of Santa’s Ohio getaway.