Odds

Mayor back when he worked for a living

I heard Mayor James Kalb recently drove over to Kentucky in a city vehicle to purchase Powerball lottery tickets. His chances of winning the Jackpot were about 1 in 146,000,000. Those are pretty high odds, and they set me thinking about what the odds might be on other unlikely events involving His Honor and other members of the Portsmouth City government.

For example:

1. What are the odds that former councilman John Thatcher will not again fleece Ohio taxpayers as he did when he unloaded his Franklin Blvd. house on Shawnee State University at a wildly inflated price?

2. What are the odds that former city council candidate Michael Malone, brother of councilman David Malone, will not forge another check?

3. What are the odds that Ward 1 councilman Timothy Loper will not continue to live outside Ward 1 in violation of the city charter?

4. What are the odds that councilman Timothy Loper will not continue to be played for a dummy by those with more brains than he has?

5. What are the odds that councilman Jerrod Albrecht will not continue to occupy his council seat illegally?

6. What are the odds that councilman Jerrod Albrecht will not doze off during council meetings?

7. What are the odds that city solicitor Kuhn will not further lower the already abysmal ethical level of city government?

8. What are the odds that councilman Rev. David Malone will not commit adultery with another member of his congregation?

9. What are the odds that Rev. David Malone will not preach on the steps of the city hall and call on God to smite all the sinners of Portsmouth (except himself)?

10. What are the odds that city clerk JoAnn Aeh will not obstruct recall candidates?

11. What are the odds that city clerk JoAnn Aeh will not hold a government job?

12. What are the odds that councilman Robert Mollette will not continue to drive his fellow council members crazy by being honest and well prepared?

13. What are the odds that councilman Marty Mohr will not embarrass himself, his family, and the citizens of Portsmouth at every council meeting?

14. What are the odds that councilman Howard Baughman will not be the smarmiest politician in Scioto County?

15. What are the odds that Daily Times reporters will not be camp followers of the city council?

16. What are the odds that police chief Horner will not accuse critics of the city council of being “domestic terrorists”?

17. What are the odds that the city council will not continue to hornswoggle the taxpayers of Portsmouth by burdening them with the Marting building?

18. What are the odds that Mayor Kalb will not come up with another scheme to tax the tenants and landlords of Portsmouth?

19. What are the odds that Mayor Kalb will not continue to try to bring gambling casinos to Portsmouth?

20. What are the odds that Mayor Kalb will not continue to drive to Kentucky in a city vehicle to play the Powerball lottery?


Kalb seeks Jackpot in Kentucky

[For a previous blog on gambling in Portsmouth, click here ]

Hops, Shoots, & Quails

Texas (Gambel's) Quail


Quail is both a noun and a verb. The noun refers to a beautiful smaller bird that some people consider sporting to shoot. The slang meanings of quail as a noun are numerous and usually sexual in nature. As early as Elizabethan times, quail was slang for prostitute.

As a verb, quail means acting cowardly, shrinking away, or seeking cover.

Quailing is very much in the news this week. There was an accident in Texas involving quail that was potentially extremely embarrassing to the Bush administration. Not since 1994, when George W. went hunting pigeons, shot a rare bird (charadrius vociferous) by mistake, and paid a $130 fine have Texas Republicans been so chagrined.

The current VP, the secretive Dick “No Tracey” Cheney (halliburtanus pusillanus), engaged in one of his favorite pastimes: shooting quail, perhaps bobtail (colinus v. texanus). Except in this case Cheney by mistake shot Harry Whittington, who is not a rare bird but a familiar species of well-heeled senior Texas Republican (septuagenanus texanus).

The typical first reaction to bad news by the Bush administration is to try to cover it up, which the VP and his party may have been foolish enough initially to think they could do. No such luck, because the buck-shotted Whittington, even if buck naked, will for the rest of his life be unable to pass through a metal detector without setting off the alarm. No, the cover-our ass tactic didn’t work, but Carl Rove (odious toxicanus) was involved and when Rove is the name, blaming others is the game. Rove kicked the well-heeled Whittington in the ass. Rove swift-booted him. “The geezer is at fault. The geezer is practically senile. The geezer didn’t know what the hell he was doing. The geezer blindsided the innocent VP.” The Mercury News reported that “The White House blamed the 78-year-old man whom Vice President Dick Cheney shot during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas for the incident, as officials struggled Monday to explain why they waited nearly 24 hours before making the news public.” Loyal Texas Republican that he is, Whittington took the fall, like a dying quail. He even suffered a “minor” heart attack when one of the pellets migrated to his heart.

Quails and Chicken Hawks

Why was the quail story such bad news for the administration? Because Cheney, who is very unpopular with the electorate, had avoided serving in the military, and shooting off anything in defense of his country except his mouth was never one of his priorities. Unfair or not, the impression is out there that the tough-out-of-the-side-of-his-mouth-talking Cheney is a craven coward. He was gung-ho for invading Iraq even while he was hiding, or quailing, in bunkers. The Texas quail story was potentially very bad because a hunting accident in which he was driven to his quail by a rich host lobbyist and then allowed to carelessly shoot his hunting partner would only call attention to Cheney’s, and the president's, quail- accomplished Chicken Hawk image.

There is also the possibility that the administration tried to kill the story because alcohol was involved. If not during the hunting, then possibly before; either the VP or Whittington, or both, might have been drinking, not necessarily very much but enough to impair somebody’s judgment or reflexes. It is only a possibility, but that possibility would have been eliminated if the accident had been promptly reported and Cheney, perhaps playing hopscotch, had not avoided the media. The sheriff later reported no alcohol was involved, but since officers were initially turned away from the Armstrong ranch, what kind of investigation did he conduct? You can bet the VP will be sober as a Judge Scalia when he does face the public and the media.

Humulus Lupulus: Wolf Among Sheep

John Nichols, author of a book on Cheney’s controversial career, points out in a posting in The Nation that, as an undergraduate at Yale, Cheney hit the bottle harder than he hit the books, which was one of the reasons he flunked out. GW drank heavily, too, but he later swore off the stuff. Cheney did not. He earned two DUI's in his 20s. Nichols also points out that Katharine Armstrong, the quail hunt hostess, has admitted that some drinking took place on the day of the hunt, but she said, vaguely, it wasn’t much, “a beer or two.” Will we ever learn who quaffed how many hops at the quail hunt? And was the delay part of the attempt to cover up how much the VP consumed? Incidentally, the scientific name for hops (humulus lupulus), shown above, means wolf among sheep, because the potent hops used to grow, or prowl, among willows.

Since a lobbyist was the host of the Texas quail hunt, that also did not look good, not now that Jack Abramoff, beginning to sing like a canary, is causing the administration so much acid reflux. Abramoff donated to an organization of Israel sharpshooters when what was really needed was a practice range for Republican quail hunters. In a New Yorker piece, Jane Mayer dubbed quail hunting Cheney’s “contract sport.” She reported that in 1998, Cheney negotiated a $7.7 billion contract for Halliburton during a weekend of quail hunting. No wonder the VP has such an enormous nest egg.

Most state laws are very liberal where hunters are concerned because legislators at all levels quail before the NRA. In a hunting accident, only a fatality requires the hunters to notify authorities. Imagine if that were the case in automobile accidents. GW had been arrested for driving under the influence, and now Trigger Finger Dick ran the risk of being arrested for shooting a septuagenanus texicanus under the influence and without a license. Not having the right stamp to hunt was also, of course, somebody else’s fault, not the VP's.

The next best thing to covering up the accident completely was to put a spin on it by releasing the story to a subservient local newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, so that the story could start being spun in the administration’s favor. Kathryn Garcia, a reporter for the Caller-Times said on MSNBC's Countdown that the relationship between the paper and the Armstrong family had been very friendly for a long time. We in Portsmouth know about the cozy relationship between the local newspaper and local over-privileged.

Following the shooting, the VP immediately ran for cover, where he will probably remain until such time as Rove can arrange a press conference in which Cheney and his victim, preferably out of his hospital bed, can exchange wisecracks, and repeat the spin Rove had already begun for the story: It wasn’t the Vice President’s fault; it wasn’t a serious injury; it was only a minor heart attack; it wasn’t a big deal.

Cowards Shoot “Quail” near Kroger's

Before Cheney went quail hunting in Texas, somebody was hunting quail, i.e., prostitutes, in Portsmouth. The Shawnee Sentinel is an alternative on-line newspaper that prints all the news that the Portsmouth Daily Times (PDT) considers unfit to print, all the news that reflects poorly on the over-privileged who control Portsmouth economically and politically. In a story dated Feb. 10, a writer reported, “The Sentinel has learned there is a new so-called ‘sport’ in town called ‘painting hoes.’ Cowardly men are practicing drive-by shootings [using paint-filled projectiles] of prostitutes in Portsmouth. A recent shooting that Sentinel reporters are aware of took place right across the street from Kroger's in broad daylight.”

It is fitting that the cowardly quail hunters of Portsmouth are doing their shooting in the neighborhood of Kroger’s because that is where the current Portsmouth mayor, James Kalb, was previously employed. Though a Democrat, Kalb likes to serve the needs of Portsmouth’s rich over-privileged Republicans. Birds of a feather flock and hunt quail together. Kalb's platform is to tax the middle and lower classes and abate and abet and abase himself before the over-privileged. He is doing all he can, figuratively and literally, to tear down the Municipal Building so that some developer can acquire the land on which it rests. As a council member and now as mayor, he has been an architect of the scam by which a local lawyer is palming off a hundred-year-old empty department store as the future home of the city government.

A duck allegedly trapped in storm drain was a front-page story in the PDT, but the shooting of prostitutes around Kroger’s is not the kind of news they want to investigate. And not all the prostitutes in Portsmouth work the streets and not all of them are women. Just as street prostitutes serve the sexual needs of their clients, the prostituted PDT reporters serve the political needs of their clients – the politicians and over-privileged of Portsmouth. The quailing reporters of the PDT duck the news, like the anthrax hoax at Shawnee State, and decline to publish anything that might reflect unfavorably on their clients. A letter-to-the-editor from a seventy-seven-year-old Portsmouth woman, a subscriber to the newspaper for a half century, was withheld from publication because she dared to criticize the mayor's craving for secrecy and his closed door policy in regard to public documents. The similarity between what is happening in the Municipal Building and what is happening at the White House is uncanny.

We are all sitting ducks and pigeons for those running the government, in Washington and Portsmouth, and we will continue to be so until we stop quailing.

Propinquity

Portsmouth Police chief Charles Horner has accused local websites of “crucifying” him and his family. What did this crucifixion consist of? John Welton had revealed that David Horner, the chief’s son, had a history of drug abuse, and that he had been arrested for selling drugs. The website’s publicizing of David Horner’s drug-dealing apparently felt to the chief like a crucifixion.

Since I posted my last blog, I have learned from several sources that one of the places David Horner did his drug dealing was at Damon’s Restaurant, which is located in the Ramada Inn, directly across the street from the Portsmouth Police Station. Drug-related activities have reportedly been going on at the Ramada and at the restaurant, now operating as Damon’s, for a long time. That the Ramada is a reputed drug hangout triggered memories and prompted the following reflections:

When I came to Portsmouth fifteen years ago for a job interview, Shawnee State University reserved me a room at the Ramada. The culture shock I experienced in coming to Portsmouth reminded me of what I had experienced when I taught as a Fulbright exchange professor in communist Poland, in 1971-1972, and what I felt when I visited Third World countries in the 1973-1975, when, under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Dept., I was helping to organize international American Studies conferences to celebrate America’s bicentennial. Staying at Portsmouth’s Ramada Inn in 1989 was like staying at the best hotel in a provincial Polish city or at the “best” hotel in some poor Third World country in 1974.

I had grown up and gone to school in New England and had taught in California, but I had never been anywhere in the United States that was like Portsmouth, and I had never stayed at a hotel that was anything like the Portsmouth Ramada Inn, except in a Third World Country. The “best” hotel in a poor town attracts the worst, because it represents a degree of luxury or least an escape from poverty and depression. Pimps, prostitutes, drug-dealers – these are some of the unsavory characters who are attracted to the best hotel in a poor town, whether the hotel is in Africa, Poland, or southern Ohio.

If you try to learn about the Ramada by surfing the Internet, what you get is the folksy description that the Inn supplies to Yahoo, etc. “The Portsmouth Ramada Inn offers the old history and charm of a river city with all the comforts of a modern full service hotel.” That is what the Ramada says about itself. By contrast, what follows is part of a review by a guest at the Ramada. The title of the review, dated March 2005, is “Ramada Inn Portsmouth, Queen of the Rust Belt: Don't Drink the Coffee!”

“The Ramada Inn chain has recently fallen on hard times; nowadays their properties are restricted to dilapidating high-rises near city centers, buildings that just can't quite match the glitz of the newer chain motels out by the interstate. Well, Portsmouth, Ohio, doesn't even have an interstate, but you get the picture. In Portsmouth's case, the Ramada is a five-story 1960s-style building just a block off the Ohio River (and two blocks from the US 23 bridge that's been closed for two years and will be for three more). The building and its large, free parking lot are sandwiched between a discount medical supply emporium and a convenience store that, on Sunday nights, apparently sells more Bud Light (by volume) than gasoline. Inside, the Ramada has a noticeable case of the shabbies. It’s not dirty, mind you, just rather shopworn. Carpets are threadbare and loose in the corners, elevator buttons have long since lost their paint, metal surfaces are dented, and paint is scratched and chipped. Take the elevator to your fourth-floor room, and the theme continues.” This is pretty much the way the Ramada appeared to me, fifteen years ago, not decrepit but shabby.

Sometimes people who have not lived outside of southern Ohio ask me, “Are other towns like Portsmouth?” My short answer is “No,” because there’s something unique about Portsmouth, and the uniqueness is not simply a matter of space but also of time. Not only did coming to Portsmouth feel like being in a Third World Country, it also felt like being back in the 1940s, perhaps because that was when Portsmouth, as a healthy, self-sufficient city, began slowly dying. The sense that Portsmouth is in a time-bubble, or is like an insect preserved in amber, remains with me to this day.

In my first few years in Portsmouth, certain statistics struck me. For example, I heard the pregnancy rate among teen-age white girls in this region of the country was off the charts. And the largest cash crop in a fifty-mile radius of Portsmouth was marijuana. Somebody gave me a photocopy of a column that made the claim that the Appalachian white males felt like the most discriminated-against ethnic minority in America. It was always open-season on rednecks. It was if the youth of this dying city could find nothing better to do than smoke dope, produce babies out of wedlock, and complain about being a crucified minority. And that was before things got really bad.

The Ramada Inn was not doing so hot either. I’ve been told it has been on the verge of bankruptcy for much of its existence. The expansion of the university, a publicly funded enterprise, provided financial relief, not only by sending visitors to the university there but also in providing students to live in rooms that would otherwise remain unoccupied.

Queen of Rust Belt: Drug deals across from police station?

I was president of the union at Shawnee State U. during some politically tense times. The university was helping keep Ramda from going under financially, and they were grateful. I recall trying to contact members of an accrediting team who were visiting Shawnee during the controversial administration of Clive Veri. The visiting accrediting team was staying at the Ramada, but the suspicious management would not allow me to contact them. Whether or not they knew who I was, and I doubt they did, they knew Veri would like to insulate them from his many critics. I was reminded Portsmouth was not so different from communist Poland.

Here’s a curious thing. Mayor Kalb has said publicly that somebody is interested in the land on which the Municipal Building is located, which is the building athe police department is located in. There is a rumor that the party interested in acquiring the land is the owner of the Ramada, and that he wants the land to build another hotel. In other words, across the street from the site where the Ramada Inn has been unable to make a go of it from time immemorial without leeching on to a publicly funded institution, Shawnee State, the owner of the “Queen of the Rustbelt” wants to build another hotel, no doubt with abatements and pork renderings up the wazoo.

Propinquity means nearness in terms of blood relations and nearness in terms of place and time. Iniquity means a wicked act or thing, like drug-dealing. When it comes to the Queen of the Rustbelt, the propinquity of the iniquity is too much, even for Portsmouth.

The relocation of the police station to the building formerly occupied by a cable company, and of the city government to the Marting building, will have at least this advantage: The police station and the city offices will no longer be located directly across the street from a favorite haunt of drug-dealers, and the addicted relatives of the police chief, the politicians, and the over-privileged of Portsmouth will be able to breathe, or snort, a little easier.

Police State

Police Chief Charles Horner


Dispatching Portsmouth

On June 20, 2004, the Columbus Dispatch published an investigative story by reporter Andy Ludlow on the Marting scandal. In that story, councilman Marty Mohr was quoted as saying the Marting building, which the city had paid $2 million dollars for, “ain’t worth anything.” The mastermind of the Marting deal, local lawyer Clayton Johnson was not quoted as saying anything, because he did not return The Dispatch reporter’s calls, nor did Robert Huff, head of the Chamber of Commerce. When the lights went on, these gentlemen, like certain household insects, scrambled for cover.

The Dispatch report on Marting’s was one of the reasons Mayor Bauer and two members of the Portsmouth City Council were recalled from office by irate voters. The Portsmouth Daily Times (PDT) could not have done this kind of investigative reporting because it operates under the thumb of the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership. The Dispatch reported on the pressure that had been put on the PDT to follow the chamber of commerce’s political line. The Dispatch explained: “Some traditional advertisers did not buy ads in the special issue on development after the chamber [of commerce] called for a boycott of the edition, said Rick Greene, the newspaper’s managing editor.” Unlike the PDT, The Dispatch is not under the thumb of the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce. The publication of The Dispatch story on the Marting deal helped publicize the scandal, and Bob Mollette and his wife Teresa, as irate as any Portsmouth voters, brought a suit that resulted in the ruling that the Marting sale was illegal.

Judge Marshall invalidated the Marting sale to the city because of the secret meetings in which that sale was hatched. Undeterred and brazen, city officials had tried to conduct city government in secret, as had been the case in the past. Through the courts and Judge Marshall's ruling, the Mollettes prevented them from doing so.

Fast forward two years. Now the Portsmouth City Council is up to its same dirty tricks, trying to foist the Marting building off on the city by means of a follow-up Rube Goldberg scam they have worked out with Clayton Johnson. But they have not succeeded yet. A referendum in May will put the fate of the Marting building up to the voters. The publication in 2004 of the Dispatch report on the Marting scandal awakened many Portsmouth voters, and the results of the May referendum should show whether or not those voters have gone back to sleep.

Portsmouth: Drug Pipeline

Now we have another Columbus Dispatch investigative story on a much worse Portsmouth problem – the rampant drug trafficking in our city. The January 22 front-page story was headlined, “Pipeline Down Rte. 23: Columbus’ crack trade takes root in Portsmouth.” In Ohio we have a deer hunting season that limits hunters to certain months of the year, but in Portsmouth there is, to use The Dispatch phrase, an “open season” for drug dealers, which lasts all year. President Bush said in his recent state-of-the-union address that the U.S. “was addicted to oil.” Portsmouth, which is addicted to crack – and pork – should be so lucky.

The Dispatch story has already had immediate political consequences. Who was damaged politically by it? The whole city government has been put on the defensive, but nobody has more to explain than the Portsmouth police chief, Charles Horner. To defend himself and the Portsmouth Police Department against the damaging implications of The Dispatch story, Horner addressed the city council in the conference session of the Jan. 23, 2006 council meeting. (Since the conference sessions of council meetings are not recorded in council minutes, I have relied on the audio recording of Horner’s remarks that are available on Teresa Mollette’s resourceful website.

Horner in a Corner

Because Horner has been police chief for the last four years, he has some explaining to do about why Portsmouth has become infamous as southern Ohio’s drug capital. Horner did not dispute that the city has a terrible drug problem. He told the council that Portsmouth is very high on the FBI’s national Crime Index. Horner could also have told the council that among other shameful distinctions, Portsmouth is one of only two Ohio cities that have made the list of the “Top 100 Least-Safe Cities in the U.S.A.” The only other Ohio city in the Top 100 Least-Safe list is Akron.

But Horner insists Portsmouth’s high drug-crime rate is not his fault. Not by any means. He told the city council on Jan. 23 that he is proud of the many years he has served in the war against drugs. He claims he has not sat behind a desk: he has been in the trenches. If there were battle ribbons for this war, he implies he would be the most highly decorated cop in the county. Horner in his remarks to the city council was in effect telling himself, "You're doing a heck of a job, Chuckie." What he told the council, in his own words, was “I spent many a long night and many a long day away from my family to address the drug problem.” He boasted, “I will put my stats up against anybody in this county.”

What stats is he talking about? The stats that put Portsmouth high on the FBI's Crime Index? The stats that make Portsmouth one of the two most dangerous cities in Ohio? Even if stats exist for individual cops, what decorations do you deserve for being captain of a police force in a city that is one of the 100 most dangerous cities in the country and one of the two worst in the state? Portsmouth is making these shameful lists on Chief Horner’s watch.

Keystone Cops

There is a sign on the river side of the flood wall boasting of Portsmouth selection in 1979-1980 as an “All-American City.” Ironically, Akron (the other most dangerous Ohio city) was selected as an “All-American City” the following year. In 2006 the only sign Portsmouth deserves on the flood wall is “Portsmouth: Columbus' Drug Pipeline.” Because Portsmouth’s “war” on drugs has been so humiliatingly, so pathetically, so chronically unsuccessful, there is a comic quality to Horner’s extravagant claims for himself and the Drug Task Force. When it comes to fighting drugs, the Drug Task Force, under Horner’s command, has, sadly, become something of a FEMA, something of joke, a kind of Keystone Cops operation.

If Horner as a long-time drug cop and now police chief does not bear responsibility for Portsmouth’s reputation, then who is to blame? Why, his former nemesis, former mayor Greg Bauer. In his remarks to the city council, Horner said that soon after he became chief, “I attempted through the then-mayor [Bauer] to address the crime-drug issues facing the city.” Horner said he sought the aid of Portsmouth business people, but Bauer tied his hands. “Due to the intervention of the previous mayor,” Horner said, “my efforts failed.”

Why did Mayor Bauer (shown at left) prevent the chief from cracking down on narco-criminals? In his Jan. 23 remarks to the city council, Horner did not offer an explanation. However, it was rumored that Mayor Bauer abused drugs. Lee Scott told me in an interview in my 2004 DVD Recall of Mayor Bauer (available at the Portsmouth Public and SSU Clark Library) that Bauer’s drug use was “very well known in the city.” Although Horner had five criminal investigations of Mayor Bauer going at one time, he apparently did not investigate Bauer's drug activities, perhaps because it is unwise for those who live in glass houses to throw stones.

All in the Family

Because drug dealers are so pervasive, especially in Portsmouth, no family can completely protect their children against them. Drug abuse among all social classes is now the rule. Those of us lucky enough to have children who did not develop drug problems should count our blessings and not point fingers at parents who were not so lucky. Horner is one of those unlucky parents, for he has a son, David, who has a history of drug problems, and a conviction, Doug Deepe (John Welton) provided case numbers and background information on back in 2003. http://portsmouthohio.info/david_horner.htm.

So not only did we have a mayor reputed to be abusing drugs, we have the son of the police chief apparently selling them as well. But if it weren’t for the investigations by bloggers like Welton and Teresa Mollette, who would know? An online search of public records now will turn up nothing on David Horner, because on Nov. 6, 2002, he filed to have his criminal records expunged, and on Dec. 12, 2002, those records were expunged by order of Portsmouth Municipal Court Judge Richard T. Schisler.

A police chief who has a son dealing drugs has a potential conflict of interest – a conflict as a public law enforcer and as a father. John Welton accused Chief Horner not only of helping expunge his son’s drug arrests but also of arranging for the surveillance of a New Boston police officer who was investigating his son for drug dealing in New Boston. Horner told the city council that he did not want to "emotionalize" the drug issue. But that is exactly what he did when he accused bloggers of having "crucified" him and his family, by which he meant Welton's publicizing David Horner's drug arrest and Judge Schisler's subsequent expungement of that arrest and suspended sentence from public records.

It was rumored that Mayor Bauer was about to fire Horner, but before Bauer could fire him, Horner made charges against the mayor that led eventually to the mayor’s recall by the voters. Russell Cooper, claimed he was targeted by Horner because he attempted to recall councilman David Malone. The New Boston police officer who was investigating Horner's son claimed he was being set up by Horner. Lee Scott, who was a central leader of the recall of Mayor Bauer, has recently made a similar charge against Horner in a Jan. 21 letter, which he posted on Moe’s Forum.

Lee Scott Accuses Horner

Attention - Horner, Donnini, DEA & others.

Please stop sending drug dealers to me.... I am not a dealer and am not interested in buying the two pounds offered yesterday. It is just as illegal for you to try to sell drugs as it is for me to buy them. I am not interested in going back to prison and the next person you send (friend of mine or not), I will deal with them like I would any other piece of crap that is trying to harm me or mine and then-----IT IS YOUR TURN.

PLEASE - try and concentrate on the real problems (some are your very own) and leave me out of your setups with busted snitches----
Thank You----- LEE

Molletttes in Horner's Crosshairs

Bob and Teresa Mollette, active in the reform movement, also appear to be in Horner’s crosshairs. If Horner showed half as much determination to crack down on drug-dealers as he has on blogging citizens identified with the reform movement, then maybe the city’s reputation for crime and corruption would not be quite as bad as it is. Chief Horner and Mayor Kalb are determined to stifle the political reform movement in Portsmouth and to curb the Mollettes in particular from revealing the shenanigans of public officials on their websites. Bob Mollette's very professional and informative site is driving them crazy.

The mayor and the chief of police are doing everything they can to frustrate the Mollettes from bringing transparency and honesty to city government, and they are coordinating a public relations effort, with the complicity of the Portsmouth Daily Times, to discredit the Mollettes, the two citizens who are currently doing the most to reform our corrupt city government.

Mollettes' websites front-page news in Daily Times

The Portsmouth City Council is now trying to change the city charter to make it more difficult for voters to recall elected officials. This puts Horner and the current mayor in a very awkward position, because they would probably not be chief and mayor if Bauer had not been recalled. “I have seen the best of recalls and I have seen the worst of recalls,” Horner told the city council. The recall of Bauer, which saved Horner’s job and put Kalb in the mayor’s chair, was good, but the more recent attempts to recall other city officials are bad. Or so he implies.

Up to his eyeballs in city politics, in which he may one day drown, Horner has become the cheerleader as well as the tool of the current city administration because his continuing as chief of police, in the face of Portsmouth’s notoriety as a drug hotbed, depends upon the support of the city council and the mayor. If they will protect him and his job, he will protect theirs from recall. In an extraordinary statement to the city council, on Jan. 23, Horner claimed that those who have recently attempted to recall public officials are “domestic terrorists.”

“Domestic Terrorists”

In nothing has Horner and the police department been as diligent and thorough as in investigating what Horner characterized as an alleged “series of improprieties” in the recall petitions of reform candidate Russell Cooper a native America who was trying to mount a challenge to David Malone, the rubber-stamp councilman of Ward 2. Cooper’s purported improprieties received the kind of high priority, all court police press that in other cities might be used in the war against drug dealers. But in Portsmouth it is not narco-criminals but those who challenge the city government who are perceived as the most serious threat, who are denounced as “domestic terrorists.”

Teresa and Bob Mollette: “Domestic Terrorists”?

We have the example of the Bush administration playing the terrorist card to cover up its own corruption and incredible incompetence, so it should not come as a surprise to see the chief law officer of Portsmouth, a city awash in drugs and corruption, try the same desperate and irresponsible trick. With each passing week I am more and more struck by how political developments in Portsmouth resemble those in Washington, and I wonder how much longer the one and the other administration will be able to keep it up and how much further they will go in trying to stifle their critics. Corruption, incompetence, lies, surveillance, the erosion of civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism – that unfortunately is the state of the union and the state of Portsmouth.

Lord of the Lies

A Wannabe Ann Coulter

Kathleen Parker (below) is a syndicated right-wing columnist, called an Ann Coulter wannabe, who is connected to a newspaper with a long right-wing tradition, the Chicago Tribune. On December 30th, 2006, the Portsmouth Daily Times (PDT) published her column, “Beware of Bloggers.” The original name of the column was “Lord of the Bloggers,” which is a play on title of a misanthropic novel, Lord of the Flies. The title “Beware of Bloggers” was apparently chosen for Parker’s column by the PDT, which probably fantasizes about returning to 1950, when there was no internet and no bloggers to warn its dwindling readership to beware of. In her column in the PDT, Parker made an invidious comparison between blogs and the mainstream media. Who do you think came out smelling like roses? Who do you think came out smelling like crap?

“Say what you will about the so-called mainstream media,” she wrote in “Beware of Bloggers,” “but no industry agonizes more about how to improve its product, police its own members and better serve its communities.” Keep in mind that even small newspapers like the Portsmouth Daily Times are part of the mainstream media. Then ask yourself whether more preposterous claims for the PDT have ever been packed into one sentence?

The mainstream news media is an industry. Parker got that right, and like every other industry, its purpose, its reason for existence, is profits. That is the single most important thing to remember about the mainstream news media. Writing the truth about local political corruption and rampant drug-dealing is not the way to please Portsmouth advertisers and the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, as those of us in Portsmouth know all too well from the example of the Portsmouth Daily Times. The truth is bad for Portsmouth’s image, you see, and therefore bad for business. Those who try to tell the truth about Portsmouth are labeled as “troublemakers and malcontents,” and, in Chief of Police Horner’s latest game of one-upmanship, as “domestic terrorists.”

Shawnee Sentinel

When we need an exposé of the Marting scam or of Portsmouth’s role as southern Ohio’s hottest drug spot, we rely not on the PDT but on a non-mainstream newspaper, the Shawnee Sentinel, which has been sounding the alarm on corruption and drug activity in our river city for a decade. Eventually, the Columbus Dispatch follows the Sentinel’s lead, as it did in June 2004 when it reported on the Marting scam and as it did on 21 Jan. 2006, when it published an article on the heavy drug trafficking in our river city: “Columbus’ Crack Trade Takes Root in Portsmouth.”

The Sentinel is also host to several blogs, including Porstmouthcitizens.info, Doug Deepe, River Vices, Councilman Mollette’s Homepage, and Moe’s Forum. From Kathleen Parker’s perspective, bloggers are “insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility – the angry offspring of narcissism's quickie marriage to instant gratification.” She allows that there are a few good bloggers, doctors, lawyers, and such, but most she says are unspeakably vicious. “Each time I wander into blogdom,” she writes, “ I’m reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies.’ Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.”

Like those punishers of impiety in Puritan New England, blogger-floggers like Parker are out in force and flexing their political muscle. They are sniffing out the innate depravity of human nature, especially when it is not held in check by a “civilizing structure.” And they are not advocating just verbal floggings. “I have to say I'm all for public flogging,” Ann Coulter said on MSNBC (3/22/97), adding, “And it might not be such a cool thing in the ‘hood to be flogged publicly.” Bloggers, blacks, Lewis Black – they should all have red stripes on their back.

A Million Little Lies

The recent controversy over James Frey’s “memoir” A Million Little Pieces shows that in publishing, as in the press and in politics, truth is often a fiction. From Kathleen Parker to Oprah Winfrey, truth is whatever those with money and power tell us it is. “Bloggers are murderous barbarians,” Parkers says, and mainstream newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the PDT print such lies as truth.

If it weren’t for The Smoking Gun blogger William Bastone, James Frey (below) would have gone on pocketing millions of dollars and very few people would have known that his memoir was more fiction than fact. (The name of Frey’s website, incidentally, is Bigjimindustries.com.) Bloggers' livelihoods do not depend on the mainstream media, and bloggers are not “policed” by their industry because they are not part of any industry. Bloggers are more likely than the mainstream media to publish the truth, however unprofessionally and uncivilly they may do it. Do you think a blogger would have sat for a year on the story of the Bush administration’s domestic snooping, as the New York Times did? A Million Little Pieces is filled with profanity and vulgarity for which bloggers are verbally flogged, but because Frey’s memoir qualifies as self-help/uplift bullshit, of which Oprah is America’s prophetess, it continued to get her seal of approval, even after Frey was exposed as a fraud.

What does Kathleen Parker advise doing about the plague of bloggers? She concludes “Beware of Bloggers” with a grandiloquent pronouncement. “We can't silence them, but for civilization's sake – and the integrity of information by which we all live or die – we can and should ignore them.” Consider this as advice from a high class mainstream hooker about what to do about streetwalking bloggers.

As bad as Parker’s advice may be, a Portsmouth resident in a letter to the editor of the Portsmouth Daily Times (6 Jan. 2006) complained that Parker had not gone far enough. It is not enough to ignore bloggers, as Parker advocated. No, not nearly enough, this Portsmouth reader wrote. “Is it not sad that a communication tool that began over three-decades ago as a professional ‘Bulletin Board’ used nationwide by responsible and educated people has bottomed-out into a mass-communication quagmire hustled by bunches of unprofessional, clannish degenerates who verbally pat each other on the backside with every crass touché? What say ye, Congress? Why let back-stabbing sass be so openly easy? What do you gentlemen and gentle ladies do when insulted, for example, by a fellow cohort from across the aisle? Don't you ‘take steps’ to clean up the mess?”

National Review

The highfaluting, flatulent writing and shallow thinking in this letter-to-the-editor, might have been inspired by the National Review School of Writing. The letter is not so much to be read as deciphered. We gather that this Portsmouth pettifogger wants congress to outlaw or at least regulate bloggers, although the quotes around “taking steps” may hint at something worse. And the “mess,” as in to “clean up the mess,” appears to refer to something sexual as well as political.

Conservatives cannot stop obsessing about homosexuality, especially since same sex marriages have become a favorite subject in the mainstream media. With his references to “backstabbing sass,” patting “backsides” and, my favorite, “‘crass touché’,” this flogger is apparently implying that bloggers, whom he labels “clannish degenerates,” engage in anal sex. Choosing not to call an asshole an asshole is this backward flogger’s rhetorical right, but if he ends up in the process sounding like one himself that is only the more reason that he should have settled for clarity instead of cleverness.

Kathleen Parker lives in South Carolina, and her politics, if not her style, may owe something to all the Buckleys associated with the Palmetto State’s Buckley School of Public Speaking, whose founder is William F.’s younger brother, Reid Buckley. “Since its launch in 1988, the Buckley School,” its website boasts, “has provided speaking and writing instruction, private coaching and media training for nearly 2000 first rank executives and political leaders.” Where do the second and third rank executives and political leaders go for their writing instruction? What say ye? Why to Yale, of course.

Chinese Checkers

Blogger flogging flourishes in China, which tries to regulate the internet by putting pressure on Yahoo and Google, and on Microsoft, which kowtowed to the Chinese authorities. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are part of an industry whose goal is profits, and there is an awful lot of potential profits in China, with its 1.3 billion population.

Back in the USA, in the name of national security, the Bush administration puts pressure on Google to provide information on its users, but Google resists. Not because Google believes it would be an unconstitutional infringement of a fundamental American freedom but because it would be bad for business. Google is resisting the Bush administration because it does not want to reveal trade secrets to its competitors. It is free enterprise, not free speech, Google is defending. On that apolitical reed, on the profit motive, may rest the survival of blogging, as we know it.

In her review of A Million Little Pieces, New York Times book critic Michico Kakutani reminds us we live in an age that bends the truth in a million little ways (17 Jan. 2006). River Vices, like millions of other blogs, is hosted by Google, which could snuff us all out in a nanosecond. The U.S. government also could regulate every website. The U.S. government could provide the “civilizing structure” that Parkers says bloggers lack. Then we would be back in the mainstream, without a paddle, ruled over by the Lord of the Lies.

Open Letter

Daily Times photo of Strickland swearing in Kalb



Open Letter to Gubernatorial Candidate Ted Strickland

Ted, I have been a strong supporter of yours from your first run for Congress, but what were you thinking when you swore in James Kalb as mayor of Portsmouth at the Portsmouth Municipal Building on January 1? What a way to begin your Portsmouth campaign for governor!

I’ve heard some of your supporters try to put the best face on that Portsmouth Daily Times photo of you swearing in Kalb by saying you look unhappy, as if you were conscience-stricken. But nobody forced you into it, did they? As ripe for picking as the statehouse in Columbus may appear to some Democrats, the voters in Ohio will want more to choose between than Bob Graft and Conscience-Stricken Ted.

The swearing in was not just a ceremonial event. By participating in it, you made it also a political event. That’s the part that’s hard to figure out. It’s obvious what the controversial Kalb had to gain being sworn in by you, the presumptive favorite for the Democratic nomination for governor, but what did you have to gain politically? Yes, Kalb is a Democrat, but did you think swearing him in was going to enhance your image with local voters? Are you that out of touch with Portsmouth, now that it has been gerrymandered out of your district, that you didn’t know that Kalb and the corrupt and incompetent Portsmouth city government that he heads is as much an embarrassment and threat to democracy locally as the administration in Washington is nationally? A few of our local politicians are Democrats but more are Republicans. But what difference does that make? All politics is local, as the saying goes, and in Portsmouth all local politics is corrupt. The parallels between Portsmouth and Washington are depressing.

Ted, Portsmouth city government is in control not of K Street lobbyists, like Jack Abramoff, but of the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, a Chamber of Commerce front group, and of two rich and powerful local Republicans in particular, the attorney Clayton Johnson and the real estate developer Neal Hatcher, both of whom the Democrat Kalb is the convenient tool of. Before they had Mayor Kalb to do their dirty work, Johnson and Hatcher had Republican Mayor Gregory Bauer, who reportedly lunched with them on a daily basis.

"A Marting We Will Go!"

Ted, let me fill you in on some recent history. Mayor Bauer and two city council members were recalled from office in 2004 because of their complicity in the illegal sale of the empty Marting’s department store to the city for $1.8 million dollars, which was more than twice the $762,000 figure for which the building was appraised. And even that $762,000 figure was an appraiser’s fee-inspired fantasy, which he justified in part because there was an alleged buyer of the Marting building in the wings, and in part because he used Ashland and Huntington retail real estate for comparison purposes to appraise the Marting building. I’ve been to Ashland and Huntington, Ted. They are not Portsmouth by any stretch of anyone’s imagination except the appraiser’s, who was under pressure from Clayton Johnson to wildly inflate the value of the one-hundred-year-old empty department store, Portsmouth's bad dream, in Portsmouth’s depressed downtown.

We have all heard of “Enterprise Zones,” distressed and impoverished areas that get targeted for special government assistance. What we have in Portsmouth is a “Lack of Enterprise Zone,” which author Jesse Stuart prophesied in his novel Land Beyond the River. Marting's is at the heart of Portsmouth's Lack of Enterprise zone. Owing in part to a lack of enterprise, Portsmouth’s anemic economy is dependent on drug-dealers, prostitutes, and, especially, government pork, of which the SOGP is the primary distributor in southern Ohio. If Mayor Kalb and his cohorts have their way, legalized gambling will be added to the mix, further corrupting our community.

Larry Leiter, president of Marting’s acknowledged the $2 million dollar figure for the Marting building was “ridiculous,” but it was all part of the scam Johnson was trying to pull to get a loan from the bank. “It ain’t worth anything,” city councilman Marty Mohr said in 2004 about the Marting building to a Columbus Dispatch reporter. That same reporter tried to talk to Johnson, but Johnson made himself unavailable. In a sworn deposition, Johnson was described by Robert Smith of American Saving’s Bank as going “berserk” because Marting’s was not being appraised at the ridiculously high figure he wanted. You can look all this up, Ted, under “Marting’s,” on Teresa Mollette’s very informative website.

Was Marting’s worth $2 million dollars? Marting’s is no more worth $2 million than Crosley Field is. People no longer go to Crosley field to see the Reds play or to downtown Portsmouth to do their retail shopping. Crosley Field was torn down in 1972, and the Marting building, which is older than Crosley Field, should have been torn down ten years ago. But instead of being allowed to die with dignity, the Marting building, after the expenditure of many millions of taxpayer renovation dollars, will house our corrupt city government and be hooked up to a publicly funded life-support system. The Marting building will become the brain-dead architectural equivalent of Terri Schiavo in downtown Portsmouth. Or at least it will if Mayor Kalb has his way, and you could be dragged into it, Ted, in the SOGP’s upcoming campaign to get voter approval of the Marting scam in a referendum.

There is an unwritten rule in Portsmouth, Ted, regarding structures like Marting’s. No empty house or building owned by one of the over-privileged is so worthless and unattractive that it cannot be unloaded on the city or county and converted at great public expense for some public use. Think not only of Marting's but also of the Kenrick and Adelphia buildings. On the other hand, no public or religious building, no matter how architecturally distinguished and historically important, can escape being torn down to make way for a jail or a parking lot. Think of the razed N&W railroad terminal. Think of the razed old United Wesley Methodist Church. Think of the Municipal Building, where you swore Kalb in. I was surprised to see that he allowed you to risk your life by entering that building to swear him in. The Municipal Building is at the top of Kalb's "This Property is Dangerous and Condemned" list. Some developer has his eye on that property, as Kalb has admitted, which is the real reason it will be bulldozed. We can be thankful that the U.S. Post office is federal, not city property. The Post Office is of the same age and style as the Municipal Building, but it has not been deliberately neglected to justify tearing it down.

It was the citizens, Ted, who pressured the city government to put the Marting issue on the ballot. Since you stood with Kalb at the swearing in, you might be asked during your campaign where you stand on the Marting building. Because of Kalb, you could be dragged into a scandal created by the Republicans Johnson and Hatcher. If you support keeping the Marting building alive, you could be seen as another Dr. Bill Frist (R. Tenn.), who disagreed with Terri Schiavo’s doctors that she was in “a persistent vegetative state.” And if you don’t support keeping Marting’s alive, you risk being perceived by the Portsmouth politicians and over-privileged as a “domestic terrorist.” I will return to the issue of “domestic terrorism” in a moment.

Kalb is not the only Portsmouth politician you were endorsing by administering him the oath of office. You were also endorsing his allies on the city council, such as the oafish Marty Mohr, mugging for Joe Ferguson in an infamously defiant pose (left.) Shrewdly deciding he was not going to be one of the council members who were recalled because they had defended the city’s purchase of the Marting building, Mohr had said in 2004, in perhaps his first and last honest public statement, “It ain’t worth anything.” Since then, after meeting with Clayton Johnson, Mohr has done a complete turnaround and enthusiastically endorsed the purchase of the Marting building. (Timothy Loper won a recall election in Ward 1 by running as a critic of the Marting purchase, but he too promptly switched his position once he was on the council.) According to Marty Mohr’s math, which is as fuzzy as councilman David Malone’s, the city is now getting a great bargain because it is paying “only” $400,000 for the Marting building.

Let me explain, Ted, how Mohr figured that paying $400,000 for the Marting building is a great deal when less than two years ago he said, “It ain’t worth anything.” You see, Ted, Clayton Johnson and the Marting Foundation, through poor investments, lost $400,000 of the $1.8 million it had illegally obtained from the city when it sold it the Marting building. When Judge Marshall ruled the sale illegal, Johnson was obligated to return the $1.8 million and take a $400,000 loss, but Johnson worked out a deal with Portsmouth’s crooked city council and with Mohr and Kalb in particular by the terms of which the city had to keep ownership of the decrepit building in exchange for the $400,000 Johnson was not returning. Oh, and get this, Ted: as part of the deal, Johnson dictated a number of conditions about the building the city had to agree to before he would give back any money. It was like a swindler agreeing to return part of the money he had obtained for selling worthless property, minus $400,000, but only if the victim, in this case the city, also agreed to take the worthless property off his hands.

Johnson’s offer of the Marting building to the city was spun as a philanthropic act, for the sake of Portsmouth’s dearly-beloved-but-long-since-departed Downtown, but in fact what Johnson as head of the Marting Foundation was doing in the name of philanthropy was unloading a property that was costing the Foundation money in the form of taxes, a property he had no hope of unloading on any retail merchandiser with an ounce of business sense. Furthermore, if the Marting building was used for public purposes, i.e., as a municipal building, the Foundation could take a tax write-off. The Marting building is like the old maid in the card game: whoever ends up with it loses, and Johnson is determined the Marting Foundation is not going to be the loser. Given the low level of intelligence and even lower level of ethics in the city government, Johnson is not having much trouble turning the city government, and the over-taxed people of Portsmouth, into the losers.

Do you see, Ted, what you were stepping into when you stepped into the Municipal Building on January 1 to administer the oath of office to Kalb? And that is not the half of it.

The opening prayer on the swearing-in on January 1 was offered up by our adulterous “praying councilman,” Rev. David Malone. Along with his felonious brother Michael, the convicted forger who came within a vote of joining his brother on the city council, David Malone was the sponsor of a religious revival in Portsmouth that had been inspired by a guest preacher associated with the Deeper Life movement. The Deeper Life movement was exposed by the Tampa Tribune as yet another religious fraud, as I pointed out in my blog “My Brother’s Keeper.” One of the tenets of the Deeper Life movement is that you don’t criticize Deeper Life church leaders, no one of whom, it seems, is less than a bishop. We are to think only positive thoughts about all our leaders, whatever community we are part of, whether they are bishops or public officials. (Come to think of it, the Daily Times has been following the Deeper Life philosophy for years.) I was present at a City Council meeting at which the felonious Michael Malone preached the Deeper Life philosophy to the City Council, even as he was continuing to pursue his chief means of income, writing back checks.

The voters in Rev. David Malone’s ward were not thinking positive thoughts about him last year and might have recalled him from office if his opponent, Native American Russell Cooper, had not been arrested for allegedly forging signatures on recall petitions. The charges against Cooper were dropped at the city level because City Solicitor David Kuhn dropped the ball, but the ball has been picked up again at the county level by County Prosecutor Mark Kuhn, his nephew. Meanwhile, Rev. David Malone still sits on the city council and prays at public ceremonies, such as the swearing in on January 1 that you dignified with your presence.

Police Chief Horner

A zealous investigation of Russell Cooper’s alleged forgeries was carried out by the Portsmouth Police Department under the direction of Chief Charles Horner, who incidentally, has his own mini-Marting going on. He had from the start endorsed the proposal to convert the Adelphia building, another empty building that "ain't worth anything" into a public facility, a police station, so the over-privileged absentee landlord could get a tax write-off. The Adelphia building, occupying a streetcorner, could be called “Horner’s Corner.”


“Horner's Corner,” with ubiquitous Hatcher sign (left)

Anyway, Ted, it was Horner who said in remarks to the City Council (9 Jan. 06), “I chose not to become involved in any other recall[election] because it [the investigation of Cooper] was so time-consuming.” And what was the result of Horner’s time-consuming investigation of Cooper? Cooper was guilty, Horner told the City Council on the same occasion, of “a series of improprieties.” An impropriety is something that is improper, something that is not suitable. Since when is an impropriety, even a series of them, a felony? If series of improprieties are felonies then what about councilman Mohr, with his bizarre statements at council meetings about punching the mouths and slashing the tires of drivers who illegally park downtown?

One of the reasons there are so many drug-dealers and prostitutes, we were told by an “investigative” reporter of the Portsmouth Daily Times is that local law enforcement officials have such scrupulous regard for the constitutional rights of all citizens, including drug dealers and prostitutes. But, Ted, what of Cooper’s constitutional rights? Why did City Solicitor Kuhn and City Clerk Aeh rush to judgment on him? Why were Chief Horner’s officers so thorough in its investigation of him? Why did they put him under surveillance and harass him, which is what Cooper has charged? Why have charges against him been dropped and then brought again? Is it part of a concerted effort to insure that David Malone would continue to serve on the city council and do the bidding of Johnson and Hatcher? Is it part of a concerted effort to discredit the recall process and change the city charter to make it even harder than it already is to win a recall election? The recall provisions in the city charter are more stringent than Ohio law requires them to be, the only honest councilman Bob Mollette claims, and yet the city council he patiently takes to task each meeting is determined to make the process by which they can be removed from office even more difficult. And why? To cover their corrupt political hides.

Howard Baughman and Mohr are now attempting to make it more difficult for citizens to recall elected public officials, claiming that that right is being abused under the present city charter provisions, that it is now too easy to recall. Too easy! Tell that to Russell Cooper. Tell that to Richard Noel. The majority of voters in Noel’s ward obviously preferred him to Marty Mohr, but because of the difficulty and confusion inherent in the current recall process, Mohr was returned to city council by relatively few votes.

David Malone claimed that voters would try to recall him if they didn’t like the color of his eyes. It is not the color of Malone’s eyes but his dishonesty, hypocrisy, incompetence, and adultery that made him a recall target. Chief Horner would not have his job if Bauer had not been recalled, because it is no secret that one of the first things Bauer would have done if reelected was fire Horner, whom the Shawnee Sentinel has long accused of corruption. Horner and Kalb and Loper would not be where they are now if citizens had not exercised their right of recall. But now members of the Kalb-led city government, as bad as the Bauer-led government ever was, wants to reduce if not eliminate the risk that they will someday be recalled from office.

What is behind all the recall activity are not domestic terrorists but a group of informed and concerned citizens who are deeply disturbed by the political corruption in Portsmouth, a corruption that emerged odiferously in the Marting scandal, like raw sewage backing up in the sewer pipes on Grandview Avenue. We have had as many attempts at recall as we have had not because we have a group of domestic terrorists in our midst but because we have a group of corrupt politicians who are pawns of the over-privileged of Portsmouth.

In closing, Ted, I want to repeat what I said at the beginning: the current city government is as much an embarrassment and threat to democracy locally as the current administration in Washington is nationally. At last Monday night’s council meeting, Chief Horner denounced those who have attempted to recall elected officials as “domestic terrorists.” The likeness of Horner (left), taken from a video of the council meeting, shows the police chief just before he rose to make his inflammatory accusation. What he told the City Council was, “A group of individuals have seized that recall process to engage in what I perceive as a form of domestic terrorism in this community.” (Teresa Mollette has an audio recording of Horner’s outrageous "domestic terrorism" remark on her website.) And then Horner went on to say, “I don’t think we can allow that to happen. Something should be done.” Something is being done, Ted. Cooper has been arrested for what Horner has said are “a series of improprieties.” And the city council is moving to change the city charter to make recalls even harder to accomplish than they already are.

Cooper claims that there is bad blood between himself and Kuhn going back to the mid-1980s. Kuhn is an amateur anthropologist with an interest in Indian artifacts. Cooper claims Kuhn is an Indian grave-robber. Native Americans are reportedly planning to come to Portsmouth to demonstrate on Cooper’s behalf, because they assume one of their own is being railroaded. They know that some arrogant white people, such as Abramoff, consider Indians “morons,” “troglodytes” and “idiots.” We can add Chief Horner’s “domestic terrorist” to Abramoff’s list of epithets.

Portsmouth is a microcosm of Washington, Ted, and you apparently are unaware of it. Or, even worse, you are aware of it but are going along to get elected. Based on what I know of you, I find that hard to believe. Distance yourself from this “domestic terrorism” crap, Ted, and distance yourself from a police chief who serves at the pleasure of Mayor Kalb; distance yourself from councilman Marty Mohr, who at a recent council meeting was recorded encouraging the punching of parking violators in the mouth and the slashing of their tires; distance yourself from the SOGP pork addicts, or be prepared to pay the electoral consequences. I look forward to being proved wrong. I look forward to seeing you sworn in as governor, but you may not be if you continue to show the kind of political misjudgment you recently showed at the beginning of the new year in Portsmouth. The proverb says “Those who lie down with dogs rise with fleas.” I say those who lie down with lousy politicians will be dogged for the duration of the campaign.

Droit du Seigner

Scioto County Courthouse

Native American Russell Cooper, who tried to run for Portsmouth City Council last year, was accused of being a forger. As a result of the City Clerk’s and the City Solicitor’s investigations, Cooper was charged with having forged signatures on his election petitions.

The forgery charges against Cooper have since been dropped, as veterans in the reform movement had predicted they would be once they had served their political purpose, which was to prevent Cooper from effectively challenging David Malone for the Ward 2 council seat in a special recall election. Viewed as hypocritical and incompetent by a number of voters in his ward, Malone, the “praying councilman,” was perhaps the member most vulnerable to recall. The rush to judgment on the part of City Clerk Aeh and City Solicitor David Kuhn on Cooper’s alleged forgeries had the effect of keeping a rubber-stamp incumbent, David Malone, on the city council and a reform candidate, Cooper, off.

I have copies of Cooper’s petitions and I can see that there are questionable signatures on them, but since several of those whose signatures were allegedly forged had extensive criminal records, to immediately assume that it was Cooper who was responsible for the alleged forgeries was a convenient way to scuttle his candidacy. Cooper had no trouble finding enough Ward 2 voters willing to sign his petition, so why would he have forged signatures? It does not make sense. Where is the motivation?

Cooper (left) with lawyer as he faced charges of forgery

I believe there is a double standard in Portsmouth when it comes to forgers and alleged forgers, depending upon whether they are supporters or critics of the over-privileged of Portsmouth. Remember that convicted forger Michael Malone, who was a supporter, not a critic of the over-privileged, came within one vote of defeating his rival, the reformer Bob Mollette, in a city council recall election in 2004. Michael Malone, brother of councilman David Malone, claims he asked City Solicitor David Kuhn and City Clerk Jo Ann Aeh whether he could, as a felon who had been convicted of forgery, run for public office. Malone claimed he was told he could run. In the course of Michael Malone’s campaign, no one revealed that he was a convicted forger, not the City Solicitor, not the City Clerk, not his brother David, not the Portsmouth Daily Times, and not anyone else. The voters in Ward 3 were kept in the dark, as was everyone else. It was only after the election that Harold Daub discovered Michael Malone had served time for forgery. The double standard for forgers had probably protected Michael Malone, who had made it clear during the campaign that he was not one of the troublemakers, not one of the reformers, who were trying to recall elected officials.

In addition to having copies of Cooper’s disputed election petitions, I also have in my possession a photocopy of an older document that could serve as a classic example of the double standard that exists in Portsmouth in regard to forgers, which is a certified copy of a marriage license that is on file in the probate offices in Scioto County courthouse. That license purports to show that a marriage took place back in the 1960s between a Portsmouth woman and a soldier who was living at the time, temporarily, in Athens, Ohio. In researching the names on the marriage license, I found no evidence of the existence of the soldier, or anyone else whose name is on it except Scioto County Probate Judge Paul E. Fowler and the putative bride.

Fowler Building

It has been known for years by friends of the woman that the marriage in question never took place, and that the woman in question had been impregnated by Fowler, a member of an old and prominent Portsmouth family. The Fowler Building, in downtown Portsmouth, is an architectural reminder of the importance of the Fowler family. In his capacity as probate judge, Fowler signed the marriage license for a marriage that I could find no evidence had ever taken place. The marriage certificate is, as far as I have been able to determine, a forgery, apparently to cover up the fact that the “bride” listed on it was carrying Judge Fowler’s child. He signed a marriage license that has the earmarks of a clumsy forgery that contains the fictitious name and therefore the forged signature of a husband who did not exist, and the forged signature of a minister who, as far as I could discover, also did not exist, although I did find a minister with the same unusual name who lived in St. Louis in the late 1800s. The certificate also contains the names of the groom’s parents, whose existence I could not confirm. I have no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the forgery, but I came up with an imaginary forgery in a short story for a blog in River Vices.

The broader implications of the unusual marriage license are worth noting. Probate records are what make civil society possible. Our legal identity, who we are as citizens, depends upon such records. The family, on which society as we know it depends, needs to keep clear who is a father and mother and who is a son and daughter. Without those family distinctions remaining clear and without probate records to prove their accuracy, we could end up singing, in the words of a comic song, “I’m my own grandpa.” How could a judge charged with the responsibility for assuring the integrity of probate records have anything to do with the criminal falsification of even one of those records? We don’t expect a fire chief to burn a church down or a lifeguard to drown someone. How could a family man and pillar of the community, how could a member of the Wesley Methodist Church and the distinguished president of the National Judges Association, how could a former member of the Ohio state legislature and an assistant attorney general of Ohio, how could a respected person in a position of public trust have dared to be party to an act that at the very least would have scandalized his family and ruined his career, and probably have resulted in some kind of jail time? I heard Newt Gingrich, of all people, recently say on TV, in a discussion of the Abramoff scandal, in which Ohio congressman Ney is implicated, that public officials who betray their public trust should be shown no mercy.

I have spent a several years trying to figure out the answer to why Judge Fowler did what he apparently did. Some of those who knew him thought he was eccentric, but no one considered him crazy. So the only answer I can come up with is that he dared to do what he did because the over-privileged of Portsmouth, the people in positions of authority, have been getting away with so much for so long that they are conditioned to think they are above the law. After all, who was going to look into the matter, even if they heard rumors of Fowler's waywardness? Who was going to go poking around in probate records? The city or county prosecutor? A reporter for the Portsmouth Daily Times? Fat chance.

A fire chief is in the best situation to get away with arson and a probate judge to falsify probate records, but if there is a pregnant woman in the picture any advantages the fire chief or judge has are more than outweighed by the desperateness of his situation. The original marriage license, on file at the county courthouse, is so obviously a frantic whited-out cut-and-paste document that it resembles a ransom note as much as a marriage license. It would not have taken a Sherlock Holmes or a Woodward and Bernstein to conclude there was something very suspicious about it. The marriage certificate indicates forgery far more than do Russ Cooper’s election petitions do, but Cooper is not one of Portsmouth's over-privileged, and that makes all the difference.

I would not have written about an old marriage license and exhumed this matter if it did not have direct relevance to the central theme of River Vices, which is the outrageous but long-running abuse of power on the part of the over-privileged of Portsmouth. However, compared to some of the crooked characters who control Portsmouth today, Judge Fowler was a scholar and a gentleman.

There is something feudal about social relations in Scioto County, and droit du seigner, the supposed right of the feudal lord to spend the first night with the brides of his lowly subjects, may have been one of the lordly privileges Fowler felt he was entitled to, although in this case the groom appears to have been imaginary. A probate judge signed off on a forged marriage license that covered up illicit behavior, and he was never called to account for it. By contrast, a native American who presumed to run for public office against one of the adulterous pawns of the over-privileged was arrested and accused of forging signatures on election petitions on the basis of a very dubious evidence.

I regret that in this blog I may be toppling a departed pillar of the community, just as a bulldozer last November toppled the tower of the Wesley Methodist Church, which Fowler, ironically, belonged to. But I am not doing it just to make room for another parking lot. I am doing it to make way for a truth, unfortunately an unpleasant truth, and that is that even one of the most respected and trusted of Portsmouth's over-privileged could not resist the temptation of thinking he was a law unto himself. And if that is what a "gentleman and a scholar" dared to do, it is even worse now with some of the unscrupulous characters who are in positions of authority and influence in our community, characters who have been screwing the public so long they think it is their birthright, like the droit du seigner.