SOGP: "It's dead! It's dead!"

The SOGP: “It’s dead! It’s dead!”

The headline of a story in Monday’s Portsmouth Daily Times (2 April 2012) was “Gampp: SOGP to Fade Away.” Mike  Gampp, president of American Savings Bank, who just recently replaced the disgraced Bob Huff as president of the SOGP,  told the PDT, “I believe you are going to see the SOGP fade away. It’s not going to exist anymore.”  Yes,  Gampp, Portsmouth's most politically active banker, and the rest of the SOGP gang wish the corrupt Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, of which they were an integral part, would just fade away and never be heard from again. But from a public relations point of view, the demise of the SOGP is not what Gampp should have been trumpeting and not what Frank Lewis, if he had been doing his job at public relations correctly, should have used as his lead in Monday’s PDT.

Bob Huff was recently fired after it was discovered he was using Portsmouth Murals Inc. (PMI) monies to pay operating expenses for the SOGP. But that’s really old news—at least a week old. The negative impression Gampp’s inept attempt at a whitewash  made on Monday had to be corrected on Tuesday. The day after the “Gampp: SOGP to Fade Away” story appeared in the PDT,  another more upbeat story appeared the next day, Tuesday, with the headline, “Community Action to Buy Welcome Center,” the opening sentence of which was, “The future of the Scioto County Welcome Center is brighter after Community Action of Scioto County announced Monday it was purchasing the building for $300,000.”  Instead of negative words and phrases like “fade away,” “discrepancy,” “defunct,” “concerned,”  “SOGP’s time had probably come and gone,” tell-tale words in  Monday’s story, Tuesday’s story had words and phrases such as, “This is a win win,” or even better,  this is a “win win win,” “it’s an opportunity that came along that we couldn’t pass up,”  “brighter,” “collaborative effort,”  “asset to the community,” come to “fruition,”  “excited” [twice], “relieved,” “complete reorganization,”  “great thing,” “something to celebrate,” and last but not least “bingo.”

Yes, providing bingo is one of Community Action’s public services, and it is considering moving that most boring of all addictions for the elderly to the Welcome Center. But won’t  that interfere with the questionable  coin  auctions that occasionally take place at the Welcome Center? Perhaps those two things—bingo and coins—could   be combined into a more “exciting” game, which might be called bunko instead of bingo. In case you forgot, bunko is a swindle perpetrated by two or more con artists on a naïve victim.  Portsmouth may be not only the Oxycontin but also the bunko capital of Ohio. Bunko-games, as they are sometimes called,  are usually accompanied by a lot of bunkum, or hot air,  which appears to be Gampp’s speciality. Incidentally, Gampp’s nickname among CAVE people is “Double Pee,” in keeping with the CAVE people’s nickname for the SOGP—the “Soggy Pee.”

American Savings Bank, where “Double-Pee” is president

 I and other CAVE people were shocked-shocked when we learned Huff had been  dipping into PMI funds to pay SOGP operating expenses, and we were shocked-shocked that businessman Chris Lute, who thinks the minimum wage is un-American,  and former city council member Ann Sydnor, who has been feeding at the public trough since the Stone Age, had no idea that squarepants Bob was sponging on PMI, even though Lute and Sydnor are  vice presidents of PMI.  You would think Sydnor in particular, after all her years in public service, at city government, at PMI, and at Community Action, would have been a better financial watchdog since she knows as well as anybody that the city has been illegally using funds intended for capital projects to pay operating expenses, such as salaries and benefits  of city officials and employees, for a long time, letting the Municipal Building fall into disrepair in the process. Why pay for the upkeep of the Municipal Building when salaries and benefits for the mayor, the auditor, the city solicitor, members of city council, and all city employees can be persistently increased, even when the city is operating at a deficit?

The SOGP has been a bad influence in Portsmouth for a long time, as far back as the 1960s (under another name), but it could not have done so without the money provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,  millions of dollars  that the SOGP then loaned out  to favored parties as a form of political patronage, including reportedly to members of the SOGP inner circle. The SOGP was a private organization doling out public money without being obligated to disclose what they were doing since open records laws don’t apply to private organizations. The SOGP was the main means by which greedy lawyers and developers in Portsmouth evaded the bothersome constraints of democracy.

The Scioto County Welcome Center: Another Portsmouth Pork Project

On Tuesday Lewis recovered his PR stance and made the bad news sound like good news. Nothing had happened between Monday and Tuesday as far as the Welcome Center was concerned. The sale of the Welcome Center to Community Action was mentioned Monday, but it was not spun the way Gampp and the rest of the SOGP gang would have liked. Frank Lewis had got carried away on Monday and apparently forgot that his primary job at the PDT is public relations, not reporting news. Jeff Barron lost his job at PDT for reporting that somebody arrested for dealing drugs was employed as a mechanic at Glockner’s. That’s when angry Andy called the PDT and Barron was fired. I wonder if someone contacted the PDT after the Monday story “SOGP Fading Away” appeared?Lewis better watch his step. Even somebody as adept at spin, and as eager as he is to be a tool, can anger the SOGP gang, or should they  now be called the Public Spirited Citizens, or the  PSC:  Gammp, Thacker, Morton, Walton, Lute, Sydnor, etc.? Lewis better remember the cardinal rule of public relations: he  can’t be frank; he can’t be critical—not of the people who control Portsmouth, not  if he wants to keep his job.

Rob “Porkman” Portman, godfather of Welcome Center

 I once compared the Welcome Center to one of those “social clubs” in lower Manhattan that are fronts for Mafia families. Huff will fade away, possibly right into jail, but the other usual suspects will still be at the Welcome Center. The bipartisan corruption for which Portsmouth  is notorious, the same lack of competition, the same toothlessness at the Portsmouth Daily Times, will continue. The SOGP is gone but the Chamber of Commerce, which fathered it, will be up to its old tricks, and Senator Rob Porkman, the godfather of the Welcome Center, and the Attorney General, Mike DeWine, whom I once photographed in the gutter outside of Clayton Johnson’s office, may turn the usual blind eye and the SOGP will, as Double-Pee predicts, fade away and be forgotten.

Mike DeWine in gutter outside office of Clayton Johnson

Earlier postings on SOGP:

http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2006/05/shadow-government.html

http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2009/01/shadow-govt-update.html

http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2012/03/sogp-its-alive-its-alive.html

Albrecht's Etch A Sketch

News item: "Romney campaigns on Etch A Sketch platform . . ."

Meanwhile, Jeff Albrecht  . . .

. . . shakes his Etch A Sketch and Presto!  

 The Marting building is replaced by the Fifth Third building
 as the best place to move city government.

Footnote: Bryan, the home of Ohio Art, Inc., makers of Etch A Sketch, is in the very northeast corner of Ohio. Since 1960, more than a hundred million of the buggers have been sold, but since 2000 manufacture of them has been outsourced and off-shored to China! Of course, that number is far short of the number of Oxycontin prescriptions that have been written in southern Ohio, so Bryan is not equal  to Portsmouth when it comes to the numbers game. But Bryan does happen to be the home of Horace G. Prettyman, the first Ohioan to play football for the University of Michigan. I happen to have bought at an auction in Athens, Ohio, a cap worn by Prettyman, but it was stolen when my car was broken into several years ago in Portsmouth. Below is a photo of the cap. I have heard from a private detective I hired that a cap of that same description has since been sold at an another auction in Athens, Ohio, an auction that was reportedly rigged, but I have been unable to confirm that rumor. 

Think Tank or Stink Tank?

The headline in today’s online Portsmouth Daily Times reads, “Think Tank Mulls Revitalization Plans.” Think Tank? Who knew? And who dreamed up the  name for this glorified “Bilking Committee”? Given some of the usual suspects who are on it, a more appropriate name for it, somebody suggested to me, would be Stink Tank. Shouldn’t a basic requirement of membership in a think tank be the ability to think? Yes, one of the members, Kevin Johnson, can think but he can’t think straight. And another member, Jeff Albrecht, can think but when it comes to Portsmouth he can’t think of anything except the land on which the Municipal Building sits, the land across the street from his new Holiday Inn. Albrecht may have been hankering for that city owned  land for at least ten years. I’m fairly sure he was  the secret developer whom the mentally challenged Jim Kalb alluded to ten years ago as wanting that land in the worst way. It may have been Albrecht lusting for that land who set in motion the whole chain of events that led to the city’s purchasing of the Marting building. The idea was to have the city government move  out of the Municipal Building and into a renovated Marting’s Building so the Municipal Building could be torn down so that the unnamed developer (guess who?) could build on it. This is like a chess game in which all the pieces cannot be moved and so are worthless, as Albrecht admitted to the PDT that the Marting building, the Adelphia building, and Fifth Third building are. “He,” Frank Lewis wrote, referring to Albrecht, “said none of the buildings, on the surface have any value on the market.”

Now Albrecht or somebody on the Think Tank has come up with a recycled bilking proposal: move city offices out of the Municipal Building and into the Fifth Third Bank building, on the corner of 6th and Chillicothe, catty corner from the Marting building. This proposal is déjà vu all over again, because the shyster lawyer Mike Mearan, no less, made a similar proposal some years back. Under its phony red brick facade, the Fifth Third Bank building is the decrepit twin to the Marting building with its phony yellow brick exterior. It’s half a dozen of one and six of the other. Mearan tried to tout the Fifth Third Bank building as a new home for city offices, but Frank Gerlach told me when I interviewed him in 2004 for the documentary Recall, which is available in the Portsmouth Public Library and the Clark Library at SSU, that behind its faux façade that old building has serious heating and cooling problems that will probably be expensive to fix. Presumably those problems still exist and are probably worse in the unused 78 percent part of the Fifth Third bulding than they were in 2004.

Financial Finagling at Fifth Third

       Now that Fifth Third is being proposed again as a place for city government to move to, the apparent financial finagling about the value of that building should  be remembered. Here is what I wrote about the Fifth Third building in River Vices in 2006: “According to records at the county auditor, available online, Fifth Third paid $231,000 for the property in 1998. Those same online records say that in 2005 the property had increased in value to $2,847,020. How did that happen? That’s a staggering 10-fold increase in value in seven years. If Fifth Third could sell the property at anything approaching $2,847,020, or even half of that, it would still be doing well financially. I learned from a visit to the auditor’s office that just this year [2006] the value of the property had been  'readjusted,’ and dramatically reduced to $1,281,490, or less than half what it was worth last year [2005].” A question I will ask now, in 2012, is this: Did that ten-fold inflated price of $2,847,020, have anything to do with somebody’s dream of unloading that unmarketable property off on the city, as the Marting Foundation had done the Marting building? And even the current valuation the auditor’s office puts on it of $1,281,490 seems like a fantasy concocted to convince the city it would be getting a good deal if it would only take it off the hands of the owner, Fifth Third, who could claim a tax write-off as the absentee owner of the Adelphia building did when Mearan helped him unload that on the city.

       Maybe the solution to the whole problem is to have an auction like the one Albrecht was a party to in Athens, Ohio, an auction which the Ohio Attorney General suspected Albrecht had rigged. In Portsmouth’s incestuous culture, everything is rigged, in my view, because there is  no real competition. Everything is kept in the family,  which is the way the corrupt city government, the Bilking Committee, and now the “Think Tank” aim to keep it. (Click here to read an earlier post on Albrecht.)

“Under its phony red brick facade, the Fifth Third Bank building is the decrepit twin to the Marting building . . .”  

SOGP: "It's Alive. It's Alive!"

Creation of the SOGP Frankenstein Monster

The SOGP has been in the news lately. An article appeared in the Portsmouth Daily Times (21 April 2007), in which chairman C.B. Hermann said SOGP members must work “behind the scenes” and “must maintain secrecy at times because of the nature of business they conduct.” Hermann added, the SOGP “worked behind the scenes [emphasis added] to foster the premise that if we could bring jobs to the area, it would help the local economy.” Andy Glockner of Glockner Motors put it less elegantly, “We [SOGP] just want to be recognized as the back office that’s here for economic development to support the chamber, the murals and any other entity in a way to create the financing or be the front person.” Not a lawyer or a PR person, Glockner unintentionally spilled the beans. “Back office” and “front person” says all that needs to be said about how the SOGP operates – in secret and as a front. It is a private corporation, yet from its back room offices in the publicly funded Welcome Center, just one of its pork projects, the SOGP meets in secret and makes decisions that determine what happens in Portsmouth, economically and politically.

The kind of jobs the SOGP are after are not industrial jobs. Herrmann said, “it’s doubtful a Honda or Toyota plant will come to the area. Therefore, SOGP concentrates on attracting smaller businesses.” In response to Hermann’s comment, Robert Madison wrote a letter-to-the-editor, saying, “In reviewing the history of the organization [SOGP], it looks like it started with the best of intentions. But maybe through the years it has lost its mission. Instead of selling water, maybe it’s time to think bigger and go for the Honda or Toyota plant and bring real jobs to Scioto County.” Madison’s letter asks an extremely important question about the Portsmouth area, maybe the single most important question: Why has Portsmouth been in the economic doldrums for so long?

The SOGP ’s Predecessor

Whatever may have been the case with its predecessor, the Portsmouth Area Community Improvement Corporation, the SGOP did not start with the best, but with the worst of intentions. Considering who was behind it, how could it have been otherwise? What Johnson and his crowd created in the SOGP is not just a glorified Chamber of Commerce, it is a transmogrified Chamber of Commerce, a monster that rules Scioto County the way Frankenstein did Transylvania. The SOGP has, working “behind the scenes,” in Hermann’s phrase, debased local government by making a mockery of competition between the two main political parties. You can’t tell the Democratic whores from the Republican whores. Local government has become the preserve of the incompetent, the criminally inclined, the near comatose, and the unemployables (it is the wives of the unemployables who hold down the jobs, in the public sector).

Those in control of the SOGP, like Clayton Johnson and his buddy Neil Hatcher, have made fortunes in Portsmouth not in spite but because of the economic doldrums the city has been in for the last half century. The worse things are in Portsmouth, the better it is for the SOGP, because they control most of the pork that comes into our economically depressed area in the form of government grants and loans. They not only control the pork, they also control local government and are able, with the collusion of politicians who can be bought for the price of a John Street whore, to monopolize and manipulate whatever local business opportunities there are. Because there is no real competition for the Johnsons and the Hatchers, they can’t lose. Imagine a team that has no opponents. They can really rack up the points. Neil Hatcher should have lost his shirt in his dumb plan to build a huge shopping mall on the site of the demolished Selby factory, and he would have lost his shirt if the game he was playing in was not only not just fixed but in which there was no opposing team. The city will bail Hatcher out by buying his virtually worthless mall property at his price, to build a sport’s complex, just as the city bought the worthless Marting’s building, at Clayton Johnson’s price, to convert to a city hall.

From PACIC to SOGP

There are Community Improvement Corporations (CICs) all over Ohio. That other CICs may have turned into the Frankenstein monster that the SOGP has is quite possible. But the few that I have looked into, such as the one in Chillicothe, do not appear to be scam operations. To quote from earlier River Vices postings, “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. 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 extraordinary 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 SOGP.”

They are trying to stifle and intimidate critics, but over the years a handful of courageous souls have stood up to the SOGP and its predecessor. There was the “Unbribed Trio” of Clausing, Price, and Daub, back in 1980. Prof. Larry Essman told me he first got involved in the reform movement as early as 1974 when he was Asst. Auditor and realized the PACIC was not interested in having Toyota or anyone else build in the Portsmouth area. I have heard the same story from others, such as Rich Noel, who discovered as a result of involvement in area development discussions that the PACIC and SOGP were always more interested in excluding than attracting new businesses. New businesses and industries were the last thing they wanted because that meant competition. Glockner did not want competitors in vehicles, Marting’s did not want competition in retail sales. Councilman Bob Mollette, the only city official in the present government truly representing the citizens, wrote in a letter to city council that this is an unacceptable situation. “I believe the relationship with the SOGP, if considered an authorized agency that represents our city, must be accountable and transparent.”

Through their political puppets, the SOGP is trying its damnedest to drive Mollette from city council as the PACIC drove out Clausing, Price, and Daub back in 1980. Through their political puppets, the SOGP is trying to stop citizens from speaking at city council meetings, labeling them as Domestic Terrorists. As for transparency and accountability, sunshine and democracy, those are not on the Frankenstein SOGP’s agenda.

[This is  reposted  from April 2007 with the recent Marting shenanigans in mind ]

Marting's: The Bilking Committee

The “Bilking” Committee

     To bilk means to defraud, cheat, or swindle. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, the sharks have spawned another Marting’s monster. The unannounced goal of the Latest Building Committee, as was the goal of the Previous Building Committee, chaired by the shyster Mike Mearan, was to help the sharks complete the Marting swindle. Some of the members of the Latest Building Committee may have understood that the purpose of the committee was to screw the voters who have turned Marting’s down more than once, but some members apparently didn’t understand or accept their role, resulting in a lot of confusion, like the  Marx Brothers movie the Big Store. (Click here  to link to earlier post on Marting’s.)

The Marx brothers would be right at home at Marting’s, along with Kevin Johnson, co-chair of Bilking Committee

Confusion and chaos reigns. The Latest Building Committee was supposed to allow the public to attend its meetings, but they proceeded like thieves in the night, as if the last thing they wanted was public scrutiny. They wanted to slip in and out of the Municipal Building with a key provided for them by Mowery. They also wanted to keep from the public as long as possible the names of the individuals connected with the non-profit entity that Kevin Johnson said was willing to take possession of the Marting Store, renovate it, and lease offices in it to the city government. The non-profit took the offer off the table today, the 29th, because it could no longer be kept under the table, which is where these characters prefer to operate. Only Kevin Johnson, the go-between in the proposed sell-out, knows who these shadowy individuals are and his lips are sealed. He self-righteously pronounced, already having kissed some millionaires’s behinds, that he would never reveal who made the offer. Johnson plays the role of the holier-than-thou nun in the whorehouse of Portsmouth politics.

    The chair of the Latest Building Committee, Alan G. Barlow, a man of honor,  has resigned as of February 29, 2012. In a letter to the unelected mayor of Portsmouth and the City Council, Barlow wrote, “In my opinion the Building Committee has been nothing but a sham and exists merely to give ‘cover’ for certain elected officials and their plan to use the Marting’s building against the wishes of the public.” The Latest Building Committee is  nothing but a front for what I am calling  the Bilking Committee, the committee that really has the power, in my opinion, and which is operating undercover, or under the table. The only item on  the Bilking Committee’s agenda is to move city government out of the Municipal Building and into the renovated Marting building so that the Municipal Building can be torn down and some form of gambling casino can eventually be erected in its place. Gambling casino? Yes, gambling casino, on the theory that if you build it, they will come and gamble. If you think this swindle has gone on for ten years only because of the Marting building, you are missing the point: it is the Municipal Building, not the Marting building, that is the big prize, because the land on which the Municipal Building rests is a potential goldmine if and when gambling comes to Portsmouth.

“Co-Chairs” of Bilking Committee

  In my view, the  co-chairs of the Bilking Committee are First Ward Councilman Kevin Johnson and Municipal Judge Steve Mowery. When Johnson and his late partner arrived in Portsmouth around 2005 and opened their high-end antiques store on Chillicothe Street, their solution for the economic ills  of our depressed city was gambling. Johnson and his partner also backed  lapdog Jim Kalb for mayor. Kalb is for anything that serves his multimillionaire masters, which gambling would. We shouldn’t be surprised that Mowery would be co-chair of the Bilking Committee because he announced publicly at the Welcome Center, when running for the judgeship, that he was for renovating the Marting’s building and moving city government offices and the Municipal Court there, even though the voters had soundly rejected that move. The other members of the de facto Bilking Committee are Jim Kalb, David Malone, John Haas, and Nicholas Basham. The Latest Building Committee may be history, but the Bilking Committee will continue to push for moving city offices to the Marting building.

        The reason the names of those representing the non-profit organization were being kept secret is not hard to figure out. One of them, the front man,  is rumored to be the puppet Terry Ockerman, with Clayton Johnson and possibly Neal Hatcher pulling Ockerman’s strings. If it was revealed that either Clay Johnson or Hatcher had any connection with  the non-profit that wanted to take possession of the Marting’s, it would have been the kiss of death as far as the voters are concerned. There is already one Johnson involved, Kevin,  and another, Clayton, would have made it two too many. The sharks wanted to keep notorious names  out of it as long as possible. The Latest Building Committee emails that were released recently under a public records request indicate that Kevin Johnson threw a hissy fit and vowed he would no longer have anything to do with the Marting scam. Let’s hope he’s a man of his word. And let’s hope, after ten years, that a stake will finally be driven through the heart of the Marting monster and both Johnsons will stop trying to shove it down citizens’  throats.

“Kevin Johnson, co-owner of the Emporium of Portsmouth, said there are a number of reasons he is supporting legalized casino gambling, including the potential for significant economic development.” 

                                                                              From the Portsmouth Daily Times, 28 June 2005

From Moses to David Malone

“Moses, here are my Ten Commandments. Make sure David Malone gets a copy!”

The article below appeared on the website Edge, the editor of which is Steve Weinstein, who says he grew up in Portsmouth. What Weinstein apparently does not know, which makes this story very ironic,  is that the unelected, bankrupt, hypocritical Mayor of Portsmouth, Rev. David Malone,  is reportedly a notorious philanderer, including with women in his own congregation. If so, he is hardly the person to be condemning Johnson. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” the Bible says. The seventh commandment declares,  “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Maybe Malone has not got the word yet.

Rev. Mayor Malone Announces Sewer Increase to Rats

“I don’t care what you rats think. We’re raising your sewer rates ten percent too and there ain’t 

 nothing in this here bible that says I can’t. Right, Mr. Auditor?”

From Ashes to Ashes

From Ashes to Ashes, from Drugs to Bust

“But with the right vision, with the right decisions, and with the right management, success can happen, even out of ashes.”

The clipping above and the quote below it is about the Columbia Theatre from the January 2012  issue of the Shawnee State student newspaper The Chronicle. It is not just misleading, it is false. The student reporter was misinformed, if not lied to, by the crooked ex-mayor James Kalb and his wife Allison. Contrary to what the story says, the Kalbs do  not own the Columbia. The Scioto County Auditor’s website lists Christine Scott, not the Kalbs, as the owner of the property. (See Auditor ’s record below.) Christine, a lawyer, is the wife of Lee Scott, a local businessman, who is the true owner of the Columbia. Scott’s postings on Moe’s Forum leave no doubt who the boss is.  Contrary to what the Chronicle story says, it was not the Kalbs who restored the Columbia. It was not the Kalbs who had “the right vision,” and made “the right decisions.” It was Lee Scott and his son Eddie who had the vision and restored the Columbia. They did it in the face of enormous obstacles—one of which was  Greg Bauer, another crooked ex-mayor of Portsmouth, who did everything he could to stop the renovation. The other obstacle was the fire that gutted the interior of the interior and left the ashes referred to above. I videotaped Lee and Eddie doing restoration, before the fire, for the documentary, Recall, available at the Shawnee State Library and Portsmouth Public Library.

Kalb has had a twenty very odd year career in local politics but only because he was willing to serve as the faithful lapdog to the unelected multimillionaires who control the city. Currently, Kalb is Lee Scott’s lapdog.  Lee Scott has a felony conviction for drug trafficking, and ex-felons are prohibited by state law from owning any establishment that sells alcohol.  Lee’s wife Christine, a religious woman,  reportedly would not agree to have a liquor license in her name, which is where Kalb comes in. Kalb  is the front man for Scott. The liquor license and the business are in Kalb’s name. And the business is alcohol. It could not survive without it. “The Columbia now has a full bar and concessions,” the story says. “Our goal is to cater to the students,” Allison Kalb told the reporter. With Kalb and his wife operating the business, it’s a virtual certainty that not all the students who consume alcohol on the premises will be of legal age, although their friends who do the buying may be. Nor will alcohol be the only drug consumed either.

The Kalbs are a curse, to themselves and the city. They illustrate the curse of drugs in America. Kalb’s only son has a long history of drug abuse and recently served a drug-related prison term in Chillocothe. A brother of Kalb was also reportedly involved heavily in drugs. The Chronicle story says “success can happen even out of ashes.” There a lot of ashes in Kalb’s life, if you know what I mean, but little success. He failed as  a grocery clerk at Kroger’s  where he would have been fired long ago, I was told by a former employee.  if it weren’t for the Teamsters Union, which provided him with some job security. Kalb’s rap sheet, which I recently posted on River Vices speaks for itself. He and Allison have already declared bankruptcy once, and, they could file again, perhaps bringing the Columbia down with them.  Lee is taking a big chance letting them front for him. But you won’t read about that in The Chronicle, which makes the Columbia sound like some kind of mom and pop operation, the better to lure homesick students to Ma and Pa Kettle’s—I mean Ma and Pa Kalb’s—din of inebriety. 

Auditor’s records showing Kalbs do not own Columbia Theatre

Three Bankrupt Mayors

 Three Bankrupt Mayors

and Portsmouth’s Financial Crisis

Here’s our three  bankrupt mayors for all to see.   

The first, our current fiscally clueless mayor,

Believes the way to achieve prosperity

Is not through working but through prayer.

The second, who’s next in line to be mayor,

Is a deadbeat dad who collects vintage cars.

And likes to drive and dress with flair.

He piles up debts till they reach the stars.

The third, the lapdog ex-mayor

Who got Portsmouth into this financial mess,

Is a brainless, bankrupt failure.

He’s like the girl who’s gotta say yes.

What’s worse than getting the finger from Neil Hatcher?
Appointing a bankrupt mayor with rabies dog catcher.

Haunted House from Hell

Haunted House from Hell

At about six-thirty P.M., Monday, January 16th, 2012, the Portsmouth Fire Department responded to a fire at 1914 7th Street, a property previously owned by the bankrupt Shane DeSimone. Police Chief Bill Raison told the Portsmouth Daily Times he believes the fire was deliberately set, possibly by a firebug.

This is the house A.D.—

After DeSimone acquired it,

But before his bankruptcy

And before a firebug fired it.

It’s a fiery hell to a parson—

To a firebug it’s fuel.

Anywhere else it’s arson—

In Portsmouth it’s urban renewal.







Still-standing now, after the fire,
It’s a burned-out, asbestos-shingled shell.
But will it, like Dracula, never expire—
This haunted house from hell?

Just Who is Getting Screwed and Who is Doing the Screwing?

Mayor-unelect Malone, perhaps trying to figure who he can screw next, having 

already screwed his creditors by filing for personal bankruptcy

     Screwing the Sanitation Workers

     Unelected Mayor David Malone is quoted in the Portsmouth Daily Times (7 Jan 2012): “The unions are being protected while their non-union counterparts are, quite honestly, being screwed because of budget cuts.” “Quite honestly!” Malone is incapable of honesty. In my view, it is not the non-union city employees, it is the union employees who are being screwed. They are the ones who pay dues and are denounced by much of the public as trouble makers. They are the ones who struggle to improve wages and working conditions. And then whatever gains they make in negotiations are given to non-union members. Non-union employees may be opposed to unions on principle or simply because they don’t want to pay union dues. It is their right to be non-union, but they have no right to expect to be rewarded for not belonging to a union. In financial crises like the current one in Portsmouth, non-union members are being rewarded by the city employers for not belonging to unions. They are, of course, being paid off. If they find themselves, during a fiscal crisis, losing out on their customary payoff, they have no reason to complain. They can’t have it both ways: they do not deserve to have the rewards of being in a union when they are not in a union. If they want union pay and benefits they should join a union, and if a union doesn’t exist, they should try to organize one. Of course, if they succeed in becoming unionized, Malone will screw them too,  like he screws the sanitation workers. But when it comes to the politically powerful police and fire unions, Malone grovels. He contributed $1000 to the Committee in Support of Police and Fire, a political action committee that supported the measure on last November’s ballot that increased the city income tax. Note that the committee was in support of police and fire personnel, not city sanitation workers. The passage of the income tax measure  did not improve the lot of the sanitation workers as Malone’s recent attempts to screw them by ignoring the contract they had negotiated with the city made clear. 

Bankruptee and Mayor-unelect Malone contributed $1000 to campaign to support the police and fire unions 

Screwing the Citizens of Portsmouth 

     Speaking of being screwed. It is the citizens of Portsmouth who are being screwed by having the mathematically and administratively challenged Malone as mayor. He wasn’t elected. He became mayor by default when Jane Murray was recalled. Malone was next in line in the long line of corrupt officials who became mayor when the elected mayor was recalled or left office for other reasons. The reason Malone was next in line was because he had demonstrated his subservience to the rich unelected individuals who decide who should be next in line. Malone is beholden especially to Neal Hatcher. Malone does what Hatcher and others expect of him—which is serve their interests. Granted he had a lot of competition, but there was no one on council who was more willing to sell out the citizens of Portsmouth than Malone. That’s why he is mayor. That’s why he rehired Weghorst and appointed her to a position for which she is not qualified, which is what he did for another unqualified city employee, Rick Duncan. Both Weghorst and Duncan were cogs in the corrupt administration of Mayor Jim Kalb.

The Marting Building Screwing

   
        Malone will do whatever he can to make the Marting building the place that the city government will move to, in spite of it having been rejected by voters as unworthy of being anything but torn down. The Marting building is another way Malone is trying to screw the tax payers. If the Municipal Building were not sitting on prime real estate, it would not have been neglected, and would have probably been renovated by now, and Malone wouldn’t have created yet another building committee that will attempt to get the city to spend many millions to renovate the worthless Marting building. 

     To return to the previous point, it is not the non-union members who are being screwed. It is the people of Portsmouth who are being screwed by having as mayor somebody whom the voters have more than once rejected soundly at the polls just as they have soundly rejected the Marting building. Why do you think SOLACE was pressured to leave the Marting building by Malone and the city? It is because Malone is following the wishes of those who have not given up the scheme to have the city government move there once it is renovated, making the site of the Municipal building available for developers, who have long had designs on that property. Getting SOLACE out of the Marting building will make it easier to get city offices in. Solace is just one of the parties being screwed by Malone.

  

The Prosperity Screwing

Malone ’ s Prayermobile, with City of 

of Prosperity bumper sticker

    Malone also screwed the public by preaching that prayer could lead to prosperity. Look at how successful prayers were, both for himself and the city of Portsmouth! If he had prayed less and paid his bills more, maybe he wouldn’t have had to file for bankruptcy. Prayer doesn’t produce prosperity— hard working people do, and Malone has apparently never been one of those. Wasn’t that the reason he got into politics in the first place? He is the handy tool of the unelected clique that controls the city and it is the clique and Malone who are doing the screwing. With Malone as their unelected mayor, the  poor people of Portsmouth don’t have a prayer. 

Rev. Malone, future unelected mayor of Portsmouth, bible in hand,

 preaching on the steps of the Municipal Building (2007)

The BCS Dumb Ox Trophy

The BCS Dumb Ox Trophy

    

 After its victory last night, Alabama is now ranked number one in football. It is also number one among the fifty states in one other category: alphabetically. It always comes first there. Those are about the only things in which the state is number one. In almost every other respect it ranks low to bottom. On a scale from 1 to 50, with 1 being the highest (good) and 50 the lowest (bad), Alabama ranks as follows:

·         Homelessness                         50^th

·         Strokes                                   50^th

·         Economic Opportunity             47^th

·         Obesity                                   46^th

·         Diabetes                                  46^th

·         Education                                45^th

·         Smoking                                  45^th

·         Health Care                              45^th

·         Taxes on cigarettes                  42^nd

·         Personal income                      40^th

·         Crime                                     39^th

·         Teen pregnancy                       39^th

·         Violent crimes                         23^rd

     Is it just coincidental that Alabama is ranked so high in football and so low in these other categories? I don’t think so. In what I will call the Dumb Ox Law, a state is ranked in the other categories in inverse ratio to its ranking—or at least the ranking of its state university—in football. But the Dumb Ox Law is not infallible. Guess which state is ranked lower than Alabama in categories related to health, education, etc? You’re right if you guessed the neighboring state of Louisiana. If the Dumb Ox Law was infallible, Louisiana State University should have defeated Alabama last night in New Orleans, especially since it also had the home field advantage. I could speculate on why LSU lost the game last night—because I have a theory—but the game was boring enough without my making this analysis more complicated and as boring as the battle of college football titans was. Just let me say this. It is the most economically and culturally disadvantaged states that try hardest through football to compensate for their disadvantages, states that will go to extraordinary, even unethical and criminal lengths to achieve number one status.

     Ohio State and Penn State are reminders that it is not just in the historically disadvantaged southern states that football is almost a religious (or at least a bread and circus) diversion from the unpleasant facts and harsh realities of life. The pieties, the religiosity, that both Ohio State and Penn State used to cover up their immorality and criminality have now been exposed for the hypocrisies that they were, though it probably won’t be long before the worshippers, the fans, are once more as fanatical about their teams as they were in the past. That will happen once the ghosts of the once holy Tressel and Parterno are exorcised. Two-time Heisman winner Tim Tebow, who is still playing and praying like a college quarterback at the professional level, may be the avatar of the religious revival underway in football.

     

     Ohio is not just a northern state, it is also a border state, sharing important characteristics with  the South.  The Midwest, just like the South, is out to prove something to the Northeast, the home  of the pointy headed Ivy League “elites.” Call it the F. Scott Fitzgerald or Great Gatsby Complex. Among the hundred-and-thirty-pound Fitzgerald’s fantasies were being a war hero or a football star. That may be one reason he was such a poor student. It surprised me when I learned how low Ohio is ranked educationally. But I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering how insanely determined Ohio State is to be number one in football. The Dumb Ox Law may not be fool proof, but it proves there are still a lot of fools when it comes to college football.

     Let me close with a question. What do you make of the fact that Mike Mearan is one of the most die-hard Buckeye fans in the state?

Top Ten Postings of 2011

River Vices: Top Ten Postings of 2011

Based on the number of times visited by readers, these are the most popular postings of 2011. Click on the title to retrieve the post.

1. Billboard from Hell 

2. Rich Saddler: Portsmouth Boy 

3. Addicted Kittens: Oxy and  Contin 

4. Smokers’ Lungs 

5. Portsmouth Copout 

6. Devil in Scioto County 

7. Hill View Flyer 

8. Ameresco 

9. Valentine Verses 

10. Jim Tressell: Nearer My God