Land Scams

In 2001 the city of Portsmouth sold almost 8 acres of land next to Route 23 to Portsmouth developer Elmer Mullins for the minimum asking price of $60,000. The price Mullins paid per acre, therefore, was about $7,500.

In 2006, the county of Athens sold a little over 4 acres of comparable land on East State St. to developers for $2.3 million. The price per acre the developers paid in Athens, therefore, was about $510,000. In other words, the county and therefore the taxpayers of Athens county received a half a million dollars more per acre for public land on East State St. than the city of Portsmouth received per acre for public land on Route 23.

The land in Portsmouth and the land in Athens are similar. Both the nearly 8 acres in Portsmouth and the 4 plus acres in Athens were vacant and suitable for commercial development. The city of Portsmouth and the city of Athens also appear to be similar. Both are university towns and county seats and of similar population and per capita income. In 2000, the population of Athens was 21,342; Portsmouth was 20,909. Both cities are among the poorest in Ohio: Portsmouth ranks 809, Athens ranks 1043. The per capita income in Portsmouth is $15,078; in Athens it is $11,061, so both cities appear to be, municipally speaking, poor cousins.

What can explain the startling difference in price between comparable land in Portsmouth and Athens? Why did Athens county and its taxpayers receive about a half million dollars per acre for the East State St. land, and the city of Portsmouth only $7500 per acre for the Route 23 land?

The short answer is that when it comes to political corruption and to selling out to developers, Athens cannot begin to compare to Portsmouth. Portsmouth is not only a drug dealer’s paradise, it is a developer’s heaven, a place where Neal Hatcher is making a fortune off the city and Shawnee State University, while taking virtually no risks, and where Elmer Mullins had to pay the city of Portsmouth only $7500 per acre for prime commercial real estate.

Route 23 Rip-Off

The longer answer is that Mullins paid a paltry $7500 per acre on Route 23 because the price was driven down because rumors circulated that the site was contaminated and even possibly toxic. Who was spreading those rumors? Portsmouth Police Chief Charles Horner did an inept investigation and accused former Mayor Bauer and the developer Mullins of criminally spreading the rumors to discourage potential bidders from coming forward. But Horner never produced evidence to prove his charges. He could not produce public statements by either Bauer and or Mullins spreading the rumors. Horner was no better at investigating land scams than he is at performing drug busts. And if there is anything to the rumor that Horner removed the hard drive from Mayor Bauer's computer and withheld that evidence from the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, then Horner may face charges that make land scamming look like a lark.

The city official who did publicly raise the specter of contamination at the Route 23 site was First Ward council woman Ann Sydnor. At one city council meeting she claimed water and soil from the site were being tested and that results would be forwarded to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. The OEPA has denied that it ever received such tests or mandated any cleanup of the site. There probably was a rip-off on Route 23, but no one has ever been held accountable.

The Athens land deal was apparently also a scam, involving rigged bidding, according to recent news reports, but that is not surprising since a Portsmouth developer, Jeffrey Albrecht was involved. But that is the subject for another blog.

Horner's Last Botched Drug Bust

The bizarre events on the corner of 4th and Market Street on Wednesday May 14 and Chief Charles Horner’s equally bizarre account of those events in the Portsmouth Daily Times on May 22 tend to confirm the suspicion that we have as chief law enforcement officer in Portsmouth a man who appears to be not only incompetent, but to be psychologically as well as morally unfit for the important position he occupies. I was a witness to the events of May 14 and I spoke at that time to Lee Scott, who did not appear to me to be under the influence of anything but his own ebullient personality. I wonder what anybody who was not a witness to those events would think of Horner’s newspaper account, an account which, I believe, offers ample evidence that we have as chief of police an unstable individual who not only literally has his finger on the trigger but in addition wields broad powers, mainly the powers of search and seizure, and the powers of surveillance and arrest, which he abuses with alarming regularity.

J. Edgar Horner

The events of May 14 might serve as a reminder to us, and a warning, that Horner is a small-time, small-town J. Edgar Hoover (shown here), who for 45 years used his power as Director of the FBI to intimidate individuals whose “anti-government” politics and whose “anti-religion” beliefs and "anti-American" sentiments he did not approve of. But small-time or not, Horner is no less a threat to the constitutional rights of the citizens of Portsmouth than Hoover was a threat to the rights of Americans generally. Let us hope that Horner’s Botched Drug Bust of May 14, will be his last. I have previously posted an essay, “A Comedy of Terrors,” about what may have been Horner’s first botched drug bust, back in 1992, when members of the Portsmouth Police Department’s Emergency Response Team, under the command of then Sergeant Horner, broke into the wrong house and traumatized an elderly couple who had just returned home from an evening church service.

Scene of Horner's First Botched Drug Bust

Domestic Terrorists!

I am presumably one of the elderly gents Horner accused in his statement in the May 22 Portsmouth Times of trying to intimidate him and his armed men by filming them with a video camera. I had a digital, not a video camera. I’ll admit I tried to include Horner in the few photos I took, but I failed. He was always behind a car (as he is in the photo below) or behind one of the team he had on hand to facilitate his 4th Street Fiasco. Someone else who had tried to include him in a photo told me he had beenavoiding being photographed all afternoon. It may be that Horner sincerely does think I and Austin Leedom (a former deputy sheriff in Chillicothe) whose ages combined add up to about 150, are “domestic terrorists” who are trying to intimidate armed police with our cameras. But the rest of the crew around Horner, in the photo below, don’t look intimidated. They look bored, having stood around for hours waiting for a search warrant, and they look embarrassed to be part of such a stupid fiasco.

Ho-hum. How long has this drug bust been going on?


"Mutated Forms"

Over the course of the six hours or so that Horner's botched protracted drug bust was taking place, spectators gathered across the street to see what was going on. People came and went, and there were probably no more than a dozen at any given time. It was like the circus had come to town and Horner was the chief clown. In his Captain Queeg-like May 22 statement to the PDT, Horner referred to the spectators variously as the “small group of individuals,” “the group,” “associated individuals,” “associates of Scott’s,” all of which descriptions he tried to sum up in the paranoid phrase “this association of individuals, in a variety of mutated forms . . .” Horner in his statement went on to warn, “Of special concern is the known association, either directly or indirectly, of several individuals with known convicted felons and potentially those with anti-religion, anti-government, anti-American, and/or anti-nuclear interests, which may be affiliated with the uranium enrichment plant.”

Horner is obsessed with the internet and local bloggers, and what may be written about him. His case could serve as a warning of how psychologically unhealthy it is to spend too much time on the internet and in chatrooms. People who spend too much time in cyberspace start seeing not spots but “mutated forms.” If Horner had spent less time surfing the internet and checking out chatrooms, if he had spent more time fighting crime and less fighting farting, he and the city would be better off.

Marc Dann: Marked Man

Once again, Gov. Ted Strickland (shown here) is in the ironic situation of insisting on high ethical standards for others while the standards that prevail in Scioto County, now called Strickland Country, are scandalously low. It is as if he has trouble seeing Strickland Country clearly. It is as if he has double vision. Earlier in the Democratic primary campaign, Strickland criticized Iowa’s caucuses as being undemocratic, though he should have known as well as anybody that no county or city in Iowa is as undemocratic as Scioto County and its county seat, the city of Portsmouth. Now Strickland is threatening Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann with impeachment if he does not resign. It is as if Dann is a marked man. No Ohio state officeholder has been impeached since the early 1800s. “Short of being voted out of office,” a Columbus Dispatch editorial warned on May 11, 2008, “impeachment is the maximum political penalty that can be imposed on an elected official and should be reserved for the gravest offenses.” What was Dann’s grave offense? Another way of putting the question is, “What is Danngate?”

Danngate

Daniel Gutierrez, Dann’s director of general services, reportedly sexually harassed two female employees. The investigation of Gutierrez was reportedly obstructed by another aide to the Attorney General, communications director Leo Jennings III. To make a bad situation worse, Dann, 46 (shown here) subsequently admitted to having an extra-marital affair with another member of his staff, the scheduler Jessica Utovich, 28, who spent nights in the condo Dann shared with Gutierrez. Gutierrez and Jennings have been fired and Ms. Utovich has resigned as has another of Dann’s assistants, Edgar C. Simpson, who had failed to act promptly when the harassment complaints were first made. More may surface, but up to now two have been fired and two have resigned, but no one has been convicted of anything except acting like idiots, and since when is that enough to impeach or indict any politician?

To at least some of us in Strickland Country, Danngate is very ironic, for we have been trying for years, and especially since Strickland was elected governor, to get advice and assistance from state agencies, and especially from the office of the Attorney General. We have been told by the Attorney General’s office more than once that the state cannot interfere in any way because Ohio is a “home rule” state, and therefore Portsmouth is a home rule city, which apparently means we are at the mercy of the crooks who control the city. The only advice the Attorney General’s office has offered us is to get ourselves a lawyer, but lawyers in Portsmouth don’t dare represent clients who want to take legal action against those who control the city and in particular against those associated with the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership (SOGP). A former managing editor of the Portsmouth Daily Times complained that the SOGP had organized a boycott among the paper’s advertisers because of its reporting on the so-called Marting Scam, and more recently a reporter for the Daily Times was fired for doing no more than reporting that someone busted for drugs was an employee of Glockner Motors, a business owned by an influential member of the SOGP. How dare any reporter reveal such an embarrassing detail! Not only reporters but Portsmouth lawyers too must be wary. Any Portsmouth lawyer who dares to embarrass the SOGP would find himself blackballed in Portsmouth. As a result, concerned citizens of Portsmouth have had to look outside Scioto County to find lawyers willing to represent them.

The Mayor

Ted Strickland Giving Oath of Office to Mayor Kalb

When it comes to shady characters and unethical behavior, Portsmouth can more than match Marc Dann or any one else in the Attorney General’s office. Let’s start with the head of local government, Mayor James Kalb, whom Strickland did the honor of swearing into office. Kalb attended vocational school, but if he learned a trade there, he hid whatever skills he might have learned under a basket, a grocery basket, you could say, for he went to work as a grocery clerk at Kroger’s supermarket. He never rose above being a clerk and twice would have been fired, I was told, if he had not been a member of the Teamsters union.

Until he got involved in politics, Kalb never amounted to much, not at Kroger’s or anywhere else. But as a perennial member of city council, Kalb eventually became President of City Council, and in that position he was a key supporter of the purchase of the decrepit 125-year-old Marting department store building, in what is known as the Marting Scam. Not only Mayor Gregory Bauer, but two other members of city council were recalled by outraged voters for their roles in the Marting Scam. Kalb should have been recalled but he saved his hide by claiming he had been duped into voting for the purchase of the Marting building. He blamed Mayor Bauer, among others, for having duped him, and he encouraged the chief of police to investigate the mayor’s role in the Marting Scam. Bauer was never indicted for anything, but he was recalled from office and Kalb, conveniently, was next in line of succession, and became mayor.

After Bob and Teresa Mollette had hired an outside lawyer and got the Marting purchase invalidated in the courts, the self-confessed dupe Kalb turned around and negotiated another scandalous deal with the Marting Foundation, in spite of the voters’ clear indication they wanted the city to have no part of the Marting building. What Attorney General Marc Dann did was get involved sexually with a consenting adult, a woman who worked in his office. What Mayor Kalb did was screw thousands of Portsmouth citizens, without their consent, by conspiring a second time with the Marting Foundation and the SOGP.

But Kalb didn’t stop there. In a blatant rejection of democratic government, Kalb went on to ignore the will of the people as expressed by an almost 3 to 1 margin in a referendum on May 2, 2006, a referendum that specifically called for the city not to renovate the Marting building. Kalb proceeded as if that referendum never happened, and the city council is on the verge of passing an ordinance that calls for the renovation of the Marting building. But even before that ordinance is passed, in defiance of the May 2, 2006 referendum, the Marting Annex is now being renovated. Kalb’s misdeeds are far worse than Attorney General Dann’s, but who is going to prosecute him? This is, after all, Strickland Country, where the Attorney General’s office cannot act because Portsmouth is a home rule city. Is the price of “home rule” the loss of self-government?

Kalb is not done screwing the citizens of Portsmouth. For example, he continues to work part-time at Kroger’s as a grocery clerk. No one would object if Kalb was working evenings or weekends at Kroger’s, but he is working Thursday mornings. He is not "moonlighting," he is "daylighting." There are probably no provisions in Portsmouth city charter prohibiting him from setting his own hours as mayor, but there are laws against public officials using public vehicles for their personal use. Not only has Kalb been known to drive an official car over to Kentucky to buy cigarettes and lottery tickets, he even drives a public vehicle to his daytime job at Kroger’s. So the city is not only paying him for the time he is working at Kroger’s, it is also paying for the gas and mileage that he uses to get there. And he managed to slip a $6,138 raise for himself in the 2008 budget, bringing his salary of $$51,870 up to $58,008, a 12% raise. The legality of the raises for the mayor and the new city solicitor has been questioned by Teresa Mollette, but of course no state agency or official, including the Attorney General, can advise or help her out because Portsmouth is a home rule city. She would have to hire an out-of-town lawyer, but since she has already incurred legal costs of over $40,000 challenging the purchase of the Marting building, she cannot afford to individually challenge Kalb every time he flouts the law.

The notorious Portsmouth developer Neal Hatcher was Kalb’s chief backer during Kalb’s campaign for mayor. Hatcher is a Republican, but in Strickland Country corruption is bipartisan. Hatcher made one of the many buildings he owns available to the Democratic Party during Strickland’s campaign for governor. Strickland at a public rally in front of that building thanked Hatcher for making the building available to the Democratic Party. Strickland is a product of the corrupt political culture that prevails in Portsmouth, and he could not have advanced politically without winking at a least some wickedness. While he has always come off as an upright man, Strickland, an ordained minister, has not as far as I know ever done anything but accept the corrupt status quo in Portsmouth. Teaching part time at Shawnee State University was among the honorable but low-paying odd jobs he cobbled together to make a living prior to being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Part-time instructors are the educated slaves who make the academic plantation system possible. They are like the educated Greek slaves who taught the Romans to be civilized. Shawnee State could not have survived economically without them. I’m sure Strickland was a conscientious instructor, but as the president of the Shawnee Education Association, the faculty union, I was in a position to know he accepted the plantation system as he found it and did nothing to improve the working conditions or pay of the many part-time instructors. One part-time instructor was fired for trying to organize part-time instructors. Strickland was a strong supporter of the Ohio Education Association, as that powerful organization was of him, but he had nothing to do with improving the lot of part-time instructors at SSU. That would have put him at odds with those who control Portsmouth and dominated the Board of Trustees of SSU. Ohio law prohibits part-time instructors from belonging to unions, and Strickland was not about to challenge that law.

The Chief of Police

Chief Keeps Eye on Concerned Citizens

Mayor Kalb is not the most powerful and corrupt politician in Portsmouth. Charles Horner, the Chief of Police is. When it comes to abuse of authority, no one in Danngate can compare with Horner. Any mayor who thinks he is higher on the political totem pole than Horner soon learns otherwise. Former mayor Bauer was widely reported to be planning to fire Horner once Bauer won reelection. But Bauer never made it to election day because he was recalled from office. Bauer was recalled from office in part because Chief Horner publicly accused him of criminal behavior, first in connection with the sale of city property located on Route 23 and then in connection with the purchase by the city of the Marting building. Mayor Bauer was not indicted for either of the crimes Horner accused him of. When Bauer was recalled, Horner had what he wanted, which was not so much an indictment of Bauer as job security.

Horner is much better at politicking than he is at stopping drug trafficking, for which Strickland Country is notorious. Horner’s own son was dealing drugs in the Ramada Inn, directly across the street from the Police Station. A one-stop chop shop and Oxycontin operation was going full blast a quarter of a mile from the Portsmouth Police Station, but Horner was among the last to know about it. Horner is also much better at harassing community activists than he is at stopping drug trafficking. He has publicly labeled as “domestic terrorists” concerned citizens, many of them senior citizens, who dare to criticize and recall elected officials. He serves as a bouncer at city council meetings, always prepared to eject any citizen who criticizes a public official by name. He videotapes citizens who attend council meetings and speak to the council from the podium. When asked in a public records request to make those tapes available, he claimed he was not bound to because the camera is his personal property. That may be his way of evading public records requests. If the chief law enforcement in Ohio qualifies for impeachment, what does this chief of police in Strickland Country qualify for?

In my previous blog, “Fart-Free Portsmouth,” I pointed out that Horner’s control has reached the tyrannical point where he won’t tolerate farting in council chambers, even by someone recovering from colon surgery. When the farter complained in an email to the Attorney General’s office about Horner’s threats, he got a reply that contains the following paragraph: “To have your concern appropriately addressed, I recommend you contact the mayor of the area. It is important to note that Ohio is a home rule state; meaning no state-elected official has the authority to oversee the day-to-day operations of a local elected official (i.e. mayor). Therefore, the mayor has the authority to address issues within the police department.” But what if the mayor is in cahoots with the chief and defies the principles of self-government? What we would hope is not that state authorities would “oversee the day-to-day operations of a local official,” but that outrageous acts of a local officials or systemic local tyranny would not be beyond the jurisdiction of the state.

First Ward Councilman

Mearan and stenographer at work

I have saved the worst for last. Michael Mearan is a lawyer and the councilman for Portsmouth’s First Ward. He was not elected to city council; he was appointed after I successfully challenged the elected First Ward councilman’s residency requirement for the office. Mearan has lived in Portsmouth for many years, but he has never run for public office and for good reason: he is one of the most notorious characters in Portsmouth, long rumored to have criminal ties, linked specifically to drugs and prostitution. With his sordid reputation, he could not have been elected to office, even in a city whose ethical standards are lower than President Bush’s approval ratings. Mearan was no sooner appointed to the city council than the mayor appointed him chair of the Advisory Building Committee, a committee whose mission was to find a suitable site for a new city hall, or municipal building, as it is called in Portsmouth.

Mearan’s appointment to chair the Building Committee involved him in a clear conflict of interest, because he was the lawyer for Dr. Herbert Singer, the absentee Los Angeles landlord of the so-called Adelphia property, on Washington St. In Portsmouth’s chronically depressed real estate market, Singer’s property was worthless. The property had been on the market for years, and Singer was behind in paying his taxes on it. Prior to being appointed to city council, Mearan had appeared before that body to offer Singer’s property as a gift to the city, provided the city used the property for some public purpose, such as the site for a police station or city hall. Mearan admitted in offering the building to the city that his client’s aim was to qualify for a tax break from the IRS. Mearan continued to represent Singer even after Kalb appointed Mearan chair of the building committee that was to consider sites for new city buildings. To no one’s surprise, Singer’s property was chosen by the ABC as the site for a complex of city buildings. An interesting footnote to this story is that Mearan was the one who originally sold the Washington St. property to Singer, making a profit of $90,000 after owning it himself for only about nine months.

Rumors about Mearan’s links to drugs and prostitution were reactivated when he chose as stenographer to the Advisory Building Committee a young woman who was not long afterwards arrested for transferring Oxycontin from Columbus to Portsmouth in a vehicle Mearan had rented for her. Mearan claimed he was led to believe she needed the vehicle to visit her sick mother. The young woman was living at the time in an apartment of the Portsmouth Municipal Housing Authority, where Mearan is on the Board of Commissioners. Mearan was known to visit the building in which she lived and was photographed with her at the Scioto County Fair. In addition to being a possible drug runner, the young woman was not so much a trophy wife as a trophy stenographer, being much younger, slimmer, and more attractive than Mearan himself. She was subsequently arrested for purse snatching and admitted to authorities that she was a drug addict, something Mearan, we are supposed to believe, was unaware of. There is no evidence Chief Horner or a reporter with the Daily Times ever investigated Mearan’s relationship with the young woman. Chief Horner’s preoccupation is with “domestic terrorists” of the geriatric variety. Jessica Utovich’s sleep-overs at Dann’s condo led to her resignation and fueled the fires that were being lit under Dann. But meanwhile, in Strickland Country, mountains appear to be mole hills, and lawyers get away, figuratively at least, with murder. It is as if the governor sees Strickland Country "through a glass darkly" rather than clearly, face to face.

Fart Free Portsmouth

Police Chief Charles Horner

Farting has been treated humorously by writers down through the centuries. The Greek playwright Aristophanes treated the subject hilariously in The Knight, Benjamin Franklin did the same in a satirical letter to the “Royal Academy of Farting,” and Mark Twain wrote a coarse skit about royal family farting in the time of Queen Anne in a previously suppressed work that now goes by the abbreviated title “1601.” But farting has gotten out of hand in America. In fact, it has become a national crisis.

The crisis has reached all the way to the oval office. President Bush is known among close associates to be an indefatigable farter and lover of flatulent humor. “Frat Boy,” it should be noted, is an anagram of “Fart Boy.” In the 26 Aug. 2006 U.S. News & World Report, Paul Bedard reported that Dubya can’t get enough of farting and fart jokes. “The president is also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides . . .” Fraternity initiations can be downright vicious, but the initiations young Bush aides had to go through constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The first six months, recruits had to go through what was called “snoot camp.” When Bush spoke at a political rally in the field house at Shawnee State U., a smell lingered for months high in the rafters among the proud banners of the Lady Bears’ past titles. There is no doubt if the president himself ever again farted in the precincts of Portsmouth, Chief Horner would do his duty. Being a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, Chief Horner is not a a Frat Boy and does not find farting funny . He would not hesitate to give the Commander in Chief himself a citation should he be detected letting loose again within Portsmouth’s city limits.

Once Bush leaves office, expect a flood of tell-all/smell-all memoirs from long-suffering ex-Bush aids about the ordeal of having to work within smelling distance of what was known to insiders as “ the offal orifice.” There is little doubt historians will conclude President Bush presided over the fartingest presidency in the history of the republic. The unfairness of the criticisms of Vice President Cheney for retreating to a hidden bunker and establishing a government within a government may be more evident to posterity than it is now. Bush is likely to be remembered by posterity as “the posterior president.”

But the days of treating farting lightly are at last thankfully coming to an end. Ohio is becoming recognized as a national leader in the anti-farting movement. No other state can match the Buckeye state’s intestinal fortitude when it comes to the fight against farting. The Fart Free Ohio organization is a model for the rest of the country. Its stirring call to action can be read on its website, http://www.fartfreeohio.com. “Yes, it is now time to take back clean air by the total elimination of flatulence in public places in Ohio. It is the purpose of this website to provide information to you so we can fight the righteous fight against fart.” The organization proposes that in a “Fartless Ohio,” some bars and restaurants could be required to have farting and non-farting sections. Businesses could be designated as either farting or non-farting.

Portsmouth has an embarrassing reputation as the drug capital of the tri-state area. But now it is being recognized for something positive: it is becoming the Fart Free capital of the tri-state area. The champion of the Fart Free movement in Portsmouth is Police Chief Charles Horner who launched the crusade for a Fart-Free Portsmouth on April 28, 2008, when he gave a stern warning to a retired Christian minister and recovering colon cancer patient who farted at a meeting of the Portsmouth City Council. Rev. X, let’s call him, had not only farted at the council meeting but he did so in the proximity of Portsmouth’s first lady, the mayor’s wife, who was in attendance. Horner threatened to throw the retired minister out of the Municipal building if he ever farted there again. If he is willing to take on the Commander in Chief, why would Horner hesitate to take on a retired minister with a medical condition?

The Portsmouth Daily Times did not report on the breaking farting story, no doubt because of its policy of protecting the citizens of Portsmouth from the unpleasant facts of life. Two reporters who violated that policy were fired, and Sam Piatt was hired to replace them. The farting blowup was first revealed not by the Daily Times but on Moe’s Forum, a link to which is provided here.

Chief Horner has done more to protect Portsmouth’s first family than the Secret Service has to protect the Bush family, or Scotland Yard has to protect the royal family. Who is he protecting them from? He is protecting them from a group of old-farts whom he has publicly denounced as “domestic terrorists.” The prevalence of flatulence among senior citizens is one of our country’s most odiferous public menaces. Confining their terrorism up to now to their web sites, where they blow a lot of hot air about corrupt and incompetent public officials, Portsmouth’s domestic terrorists have now taken to farting in public meetings. To Chief Horner, this represents a new and dangerous threat to public safety. The prospect of hordes of senior citizens farting in public is a scenario right out of a nightmarish video game. The creation of a new Defartment Department within the Portsmouth Police Department is not a new layer of bureaucracy, as critics claim, but an indispensable weapon in the war on domestic terrorism. At present, the chief priority of the Defartment Department is videotaping those who attend council meetings for any sign of flatulence. With the tapes as evidence, Horner hopes to build air-tight cases against anyone farting in council chambers.

Chief Horner knows that the Portsmouth Municipal Building, in which the council chambers are located, is so decrepit that it would not take more than a half a dozen coordinated elderly farts to bring down the structure. That is why Horner is recommending that the renovations of the Marting building include reinforced anti-fart panels to strengthen the 125-year-old building’s ability to withstand a coordinated fart attack. Fart detectors will be installed at the entrance of the renovated City Center, and the high cost of the new technology will be defrayed by grants from the Dept. of Homeland Security. Fart detectors will become as common in Portsmouth as surveillance cameras now are in the chambers of the City Council. With another grant from Homeland Security, a trio of dogs are being trained, one to detect drugs, a second to detect explosives, and a third to detect farts. Why can’t one dog be taught to detect all three? That's what the budget hawk but mathematically challenged city councilman David Malone wants to know. Wouldn’t one dog be more cost effective? As Chief Horner explained at a closed door meeting of the Defartment Department, which is exempt from Ohio’s Sunshine laws, the sensory overload was too much for any one dog to handle. “Not even Rin-Tin-Tin could have handled the job,” Horner said.

Speaking of old dogs, Horner is working on a plan to subject senior citizens to annual emissions tests, similar to motor vehicles. The ACLU will no doubt come to the defense of farters’ civil rights, but Horner points out that Portsmouth has the highest number of old farts, per capita, than any other city in Ohio, and only St. Petersburg Florida is recognized as a more fertile breeding ground for domestic terrorists. By the time his campaign is completed, Horner hopes a sign will be placed at the city limits announcing, “Welcome to Portsmouth: Ohio’s First Fart Free City.” When the time comes for Horner to hang up his badge, a grateful citizenry may be able to say of him, as was said of the Father of Our Country: “First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Farts of his Countrymen.”

Kalb's Confession

At the City Council meeting on August 9, 2004, acting Mayor Jim Kalb made a remarkable confession. He admitted publicly that the sale of the 125-year-old Marting building to the city had been a fraud. He admitted publicly that when the city purchased the Marting building the heating and air conditioning systems were in poor condition, and so was the roof, which was leaking. He confessed that the building had “major environmental conditions,” by which he meant asbestos. He confessed that the appraisal that the city had relied upon had been made by an unlicensed appraiser (Ken Rase) and that the figure Rase had come up with was three times the value another appraiser had made just three months earlier. The mayor of Portsmouth admitted what others would be scolded for saying, and yet what he said was ignored and forgotten. Naturally, you didn’t read about his remarkable confession in the Portsmouth Daily Times.

If Kalb confessed the sale of the Marting building was a fraud, why had he originally voted in favor of the purchase? He confessed that he had been misled and given “faulty information.” He confessed he been told the heating and air conditioning were in good condition, that the roof would last for years, that there were no “environmental problems.” Who gave him this “faulty information”? He confessed he had been misled by PFB Architects of Cincinnati, the engineering firm the city had hired to inspect the Marting building and estimate the costs of renovating it. He confessed employees of PFB had told him there were no problems. He confessed he learned of the true condition of the building only after the sale in a written report provided by PFB. He confessed what they had told him verbally was at variance with what they put in writing.

Kalb also confessed that he was the one to initiate the investigation of the purchase of the Marting building, but instead of telling him the results, the investigators kept him in the dark. “As the person that first asked the questions and now the Mayor of the City involved in the investigation,” he said, “I would of [sic] thought I should have been one of the first to know the results.” He confessed that instead of being one of the first to know, he was one of the last. He confessed that as of August 9, 2004, he had still not “received any papers or official word concerning the outcome of the investigation.” Kalb comes off in his own confession as a foolish dupe. When Kalb confesses to being a dupe, you are inclined to believe him. Kalb said that if he had known before the sale of the Marting building what he had learned afterwards, he probably would not have voted for it. If the voters of Portsmouth knew before they had elected Kalb mayor what they know now, they probably would not have voted for him.

After the Mollette lawsuit resulted in the nullification of the Marting purchase, Kalb turned right around and “negotiated” another deal with the Marting Foundation by which the city once again assumed ownership of and the headaches connected with the worthless Marting building. In spite of confessing he had been duped in the original acquisition of the Marting building, Kalb acquired it a second time. He was duped again. As it is written in Proverbs (26:11), “As a dog that returns to his vomit, so is a fool who repeats his folly.”

The Confession

What follows, word for word, is Kalb’s disorganized confession as recorded in the official minutes of the City Council. I added italics for emphasis.

Noting this to be his “final word” on the Marting’s building purchase, he [Mayor Kalb] stated everyone present to be aware that the State’s investigation into the purchase of the building is completed. He said it appears there is not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that merits any further investigation. The Mayor said if he had had all the information that is known today he would probably have voted differently at the time of the purchase. He said if he had known, at the time of his vote, that an appraisal had been done less than three months before the appraisal provided him and that a certified commercial appraiser did not do the appraisal provided to him, he might have voted differently. He said had he known the appraisal he was given, by someone not so licensed, was ten times the amount of the one by a licensed appraiser, just three months before, he might have voted differently. He noted there to have been discussions saying the two appraisals were done for different reasons or needs, but the fact is both appraisals list their respective figures as “fair market value,” saying he still has trouble understanding how the fair market value of a building open for business tripled in just three months for a building that was then empty. He said a need for a different appraisal after just three months, the tripled increase of the fair market value and the fact that he did not have an appraisal by a person licensed to do so, led him to question other aspects of the purchase for which he had voted. He questioned whether or not he was intentionally led to believe that the heating and air conditioning systems were sound and would be operating for many years, and was shown heating and cooling bills that were so low he felt he had to question them. He said he was told, that the systems was so great that he was told that Council should create a new position for the person who had maintained these systems so well, so that he could continue to do so. He said he was also led to believe that the roof would be good for years and that there were no major environmental problems that needed to be corrected. He said the engineering firm that the City hired verbally relayed these facts to him and he believed all of this until after the purchase was completed. He said soon after the completed purchase he received a written report contrary to what he had been told verbally. He said the report indicated it had been received prior to the completion of the purchase. He said all the facts he has stated to this point and the fact that so many educated people in the public were questioning the purchase led me to the point that I had to have some of these questions answered. He said to help him get these answers he forwarded his questions to the Chief of Police because he was told by the Solicitor that the Chief of Police is the person in charge of any investigations in the City. He noted that it has been repeatedly stated that he conspired with the Chief of Police to initiate this investigation in his quest for answers to coincide with the recall and to discredit Mayor Bauer. Stating that it has been said the Chief Horner was “out to get Bauer” because of plans for the Police Department to be in the basement of the new City building, he said, “If this were so, why would the Chief be willing to help me in my search for answers when I was also there to vote about the location of the Police Department.” In defense of the Chief, the Mayor said, “He did so because he took an oath and part of his duties is investigation of possible wrongful acts in the City.” He further stated that it has been said that he started this whole process because I wanted to be Mayor and because of the recall effort in place it was the ideal time to discredit the Mayor – have him recalled and assume his position.” The Mayor called these accusations “absolutely false” saying; “I spoke many times both publicly and privately against the recall. Mr. Scott will even verify that I told him privately that this recall was not a good thing for the City.” He said he supported and defended the purchase of the Marting's building up until the time a person came forward with information that perhaps he had based his decision to purchase the building, on faulty information. He said the information provided to him brought up questions, to which he needed answers, and that is when he went to the Chief of Police for help. He said he did not choose the time for the information to surface nor did he ask for an investigation just to arbitrarily discredit any individual organization. He said, “I took an oath as a Councilperson and to ignore this information would have been a violation of that oath.” He said he did what he had to do, as did all the individuals and agencies involved in the investigation. He stated the “bottom line” to be, “The investigation has run its course and there were no improprieties found.” He said he guessed that left him with one final question, which was, “Why were people on the street, the news media, local organizations and agencies all aware of the result of the investigation before me?” He stated, “As the person that first asked the questions and now the Mayor of the City involved in the investigation, I would of thought I should have been one of the first to know the results.” He said that he still has not received any papers or official word concerning the outcome of the investigation.

“As a dog that returns to his vomit, so is a fool who repeats his folly.”

Conventional Folly

Shopping Mall Scam

Portsmouth has for at least the last twenty years been plagued by the Shopping Mall Scam. The crux of that scam was that a downtown shopping mall would revive downtown Portsmouth. That scam, which goes back at least to 1980, persisted until Neal Hatcher’s proposed Shopping Mall finally bit the dust a few years ago. If Hatcher couldn’t produce a mall with the city government in his pocket, no one could. Downtown Portsmouth is the last place any developer with sense would want to build a mall. You don’t build malls downtown, anymore than you build battleships in Arizona, and for good reason. There is not much water in Arizona or space in downtown Portsmouth. Malls are built on the outskirts or even better miles away from a downtown, on undeveloped relatively cheap land, not in a downtown where traffic cannot be accommodated, and not where you have dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of pieces of property that need to be negotiated for or acquired through the time-consuming, politically volatile and expensive avenue of eminent domain.

Now that a stake has finally been driven through the heart of the downtown Shopping Mall Scam, along comes a new scam to take its place: the Portsmouth Convention Center. Probably very few people in Portsmouth have ever heard of Heywood T. Sanders, but they should. A professor at the U. of Texas in San Antonio, he is a leading authority on convention centers. Among the conclusions he has reached, after twenty years of studying the subject, is that convention centers, and the new hotels that often accompany them, usually create far fewer economic benefits and far more problems in the communities in which they are built than had been expected. Most convention centers/hotel complexes are at best revenue-neutral and at worst a financial drain on local taxpayers and municipal governments.

Testifying before a U.S. House of Representative subcommittee in March 2007, Sanders said, “Forecasts of thousands of new convention attendees boosting local economies with millions of dollars in new spending, yielding thousands of new jobs are the common currency of local convention center development proposals and related consultant market studies.” That currency, Sanders suggests, is counterfeit; the optimism that proposed convention centers generate is unjustified. But that’s not the end of the convention center scam, for when existing convention centers do not live up to expectations, the argument is made that the reason they are not doing well is that they are not large enough: to succeed, they need to expand. So the convention centers become even bigger and so do the problems.

As for the hotels that are frequently part of a convention center package, Sanders in his House testimony warned they are as unlikely to generate growth as the convention centers themselves. “While consultant market and feasibility studies for these hotel projects indicate little public risk,” he pointed out, “with hotel operation forecast to generate sufficient net income to pay for debt service, those forecasts have almost invariably proven incorrect.”

Consultant Racket

Part of the problem with convention centers are the consulting firms that communities hire to make preliminary studies. Those firms almost always conclude that a convention center/hotel complex is a slam dunk that will lead to more visitors, more revenue, and more growth. In a 2000 interview in ArtVoice, Sanders said, “I’ve read about forty different feasibility studies. And you know, not a single one says don’t do it, don’t build a new center. Not one even says this might not be a good idea, or maybe you should be cautious. Every single one says ‘build it, you’ll do great.’ ” “If you build it they will come” works in the movies but not in reality, and Portsmouth, last I heard, was still located in reality, though too many of its residents try to escape from its poverty and despair with drugs and other forms of dope. CEO N. R. Augustine,of Martin Marietta said, “Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent means of turning problems into gold, your problems into their gold.” I have never lived anywhere that has had more consultants per capita than Portsmouth. What Portsmouth urgently needs is a consultant who can end its dependence on consultants.

The development of the consultant field is one of the great rackets of the last half century. Consultants can always come up with the facts and figures to justify whatever it is the groups that hire them want to do. Do you think consultants would be in business very long if they didn’t? Convention center consultants are to the present what medicine men were to the past. Medicine men promised to make hair grow on bald heads, the consultants promise that convention centers will rejuvenate depressed downtown areas. The most profitable of these convention center consultants is, ironically, a firm named Johnson Consulting!

Consultants can be used to demolish as well as build. If you want to tear down a city hall or municipal building to make way for a convention center/hotel complex, hire a consultant firm to come up with a study that concludes the building is a public hazard and should have been torn down ten or twenty years ago, even though the building is only about 75 years old and its municipal architectural twin sister, a U.S. Post Office located just up the street, constructed at the same time, is doing just fine thank you. Want to stick the taxpayers with an empty leaking relic of a department store that is 125 years old and no retail merchant in his right mind would want? Then hire a consultant, or appoint an advisory committee, to decide that building is just the place to invest $12 to $15 million public dollars to convert it into a “Civic Center” that is supposed to help to revive the dead downtown area. Never at a loss for scams, Portsmouth has two of them to save downtown: the City Center Scam and the Convention Center Scam. Meanwhile, downtown Portsmouth continues to be a magnet for prostitutes, drug-dealers, and antique/junk shoppes.

White Elephants

Speaking of antique/junk shoppes, convention center/hotel complexes in dozens of American cities have turned out to be white elephants. We’re talking about cities as visitable as New York, Boston, Chicago, San Diego, and Philadelphia, whose convention centers have not attracted enough visitors to justify what they cost to build and operate. If those cities have not attracted enough tourists to justify their convention centers, what is going to attract enough tourists to Portsmouth to justify its convention center/hotel? The floodwall murals? In a digital age of high definition TV and stunning graphics, of YouTubes and Photoshop boobs, the floodwall murals represent a quaint but static form of visual stimulation and entertainment. An honest appraisal of the economic impact of the murals, one in which paid consultants were not involved, would probably reveal they have not helped the downtown much economically. Even if Todd Book’s purloined rock ends up at the Welcome Center, I would say that the number of tourists who visit Portsmouth will remain at best a trickle. If a $38 million dollar bridge could make little apparent economic impact on downtown Portsmouth, why would a $20 million plus dollar convention center/hotel complex? The only thing that probably would attract enough tourists to Portsmouth to justify a convention center/hotel complex would be casino gambling, but until gambling comes to pass, Portsmouth should take a pass on a convention center/hotel complex.

And before we have casino gambling in Portsmouth, we should have a little more risk in our local economy. But it is the systematic elimination of risk and competition, the stacking of the deck, the loading of the dice, that is stifling our local economy. The game is fixed and when people like Hatcher play he is really playing with house money, which in this case means public funds. That competition is the lifeblood of the American economy is one of the great American myths, and no where that I have been is that more a myth than in Portsmouth. The proposed convention center/hotel complex in Portsmouth will presumably be financed in the way the Hatcherville SSU dormitories were. The taxpayers will take all the risks and Neal Hatcher, or whoever the developer-in-waiting is, will be guaranteed he can’t lose.

There is an extensive bi-partisan conspiracy to keep the game fixed. Anyone who comes to work in Portsmouth doesn’t need a consultant to tell him or her that loyalty or at least submission, is rewarded and criticism is punished; that just as long as you don’t try to change anything, you are welcome; that just as long you are willing to put up with cronyism, incompetence, and corruption, you will fit in; and that just as long as you are willing to go along, you will get along. In Portsmouth to get along you need to learn the local dialect, in which “forward” really means “backward,” “philanthropist” really means “crook,” and “news” really means “lies.”

Big Boys

“The immediate proponents [of convention centers] often are hotel owners and Convention and Visitors Bureaus,” Sanders said in ArtVoice. “But it’s usually the big boys, the major players in local business, who are really behind it. These are people who have a tremendous amount of money invested in the entire downtown area, and when the city’s economy is doing poorly they’re desperately concerned that they could lose a good part of what they’ve put into downtown.” I have not read a more accurate description of the role of Portsmouth’s “big boys” in our chronically depressed economy. The reason for our big boys’ fixation with downtown Portsmouth is that they were stuck with virtually worthless downtown property, but they refuse to take a loss on it. Why should they when they know how to make the public pay? What they have learned to do, instead of taking a loss, is find governmental agencies or public institutions, such as SSU, to take the unmarketable property off their hands, properties such as the Marting Department Store, George Clayton’s Kenrick’s Department Store, and Herbert Singer’s so-called Adelphia property. Where is the County Welcome Center, and where will the proposed City Center and the new police complex be located? On these otherwise unmarketable properties. City planning in Portsmouth consists off taking worthless properties off the hands of the big boys and trying to figure out what to do with them.

Javits Center: Going Nowhere

Sanders argues that “revitalization works where you have multiple small-scale undertakings, not blockbuster public investments. Compare [Manhattan’s] SoHo to the West Side projects around the Javits Center—one wasn’t centrally planned at all, it just happened as people discovered inexpensive space available in attractive buildings, and it’s thriving. The other has received all kinds of public attention and isn’t going anywhere.” Then he cites an example closer to Portsmouth. “I saw the same thing in Cincinnati: one area had quietly become a hub for diverse small enterprises—restaurants, offices, entertainment—attracting them with nice buildings and low expenses, and it was full of people; across town was the area the city had been trying to revitalize via a plan involving large direct public investment, and it was dead, no one around. Big-box development just doesn’t work.” Portsmouth’s convention center/hotel complex is not going to work either, no matter what the design of the building.

A survey conducted by SSU students found that about half the people interviewed thought downtown Portsmouth was ugly and unsafe. If Portsmouth’s $38 million dollar Bridge to Nowhere has made no apparent improvement in downtown Portsmouth, why would a $20 million dollar convention center/hotel located right next to it? Why has the Ramada Inn been a basket case for the last twenty years, earning the nickname “Queen of the Rust Belt,” but a hotel right across the street is supposed to be the salvation of downtown Portsmouth? Forget the pipe dreams and concentrate on getting rid of the crime and ugliness of downtown Portsmouth. But that will take new faces in city government and a new police chief, one who is not trying to intimidate citizens in their sixties, seventies, and eighties from speaking out on behalf of progress and accountability from public officials. Horner has labeled these elderly citizens “domestic terrorists,” when their worst crime is producing blogs like this and refusing to buy into Portsmouth’s latest scam, a convention center/hotel complex. What we get from our public officials is not leadership but collusion, not wisdom but conventional folly.

Bridge to Nowhere

April 14: "Packing" the Meeting

"Packed"

Council

Chamber

O, Portsmouth, to what depths of corruption and ignominy will the Clayton Johnsons, the Neal Hatchers, the Jim Kalbs and, yes, the Ted Stricklands not drag you?

The meeting of Portsmouth City Council on 14 April 2008 illustrates what can be done when Democrats and Republicans put their heads together to screw the taxpayers of Portsmouth. The corruption in Portsmouth is as deep and pervasive as it is because it is bi-partisan. Governor Strickland is as responsible as any Republican for the shameless subversion of democracy that is taking place in Portsmouth and especially in the chambers of the Portsmouth City Council. No one knows the corruption of Portsmouth better than Strickland, because he was active in Portsmouth politics for many years and because he had his office in Portsmouth before the city was gerrymandered out of his congressional district. No one knows the corruption of Portsmouth better than Strickland and no one could do more, since he is governor, to help stop it.

A person whose truthfulness I have come to rely on told me that Strickland was asked as he was about to leave a local restaurant, back when he was still in congress, what he thought the trouble with Portsmouth was. Noticing a copy of a newspaper with a front page story about the Marting building lying on the table, Strickland pointed to the story on Marting’s and said, more or less, “There’s Portsmouth’s biggest problem, right there.” Now, I assume Strickland meant not that the Marting building by itself was Portsmouth’s biggest problem but rather that the systemic political corruption that made the Marting scam possible was the biggest problem. I think he was right on target.

On 2 May 2006, the voters of Portsmouth, by a nearly three to one margin, passed a referendum demanding the city not proceed with the renovation of the Marting building. The city has ignored the referendum, by proceeding with plans to renovate the Marting building as if the referendum never happened. Even before passing an ordinance to resume the renovations, on the morning of 14 April, 2008, a tall crane pulled up next to the Marting Annex to begin replacing its roof.

At the Times too Long

Sam Piatt wrote about this event in the 15 April 2008 PDT. The title of a Depression era song goes, “Sam, you made the pants too long.” On the basis of Piatt’s reporting at the Portsmouth Daily Times, maybe the title should be changed to, “Sam you’ve been at the Times too long.” If he had integrity, would Piatt be back for a second tour of duty at the PDT? Two experienced reporters with experience and integrity, Jeff Barron and Mike Deaterla, no longer work at the PDT. They were fired. Deaterla was fired after the Times bought the Community Common.

They were fired by the Managing Editor of the PDT, Arthur F. Kuhn, who presumably hired Piatt. Kuhn must have come to the PDT thinking he was hired to write homey columns about the ups and downs of living out in the woods. It was as if he thought he was on a sabbatical or Neiman Fellowship. He seemed unaware that the Nature-boy niche has already been taken by Portsmouth’s sixtyish hardcore adolescent Steve Hayes. Kuhn started out with the same nature shtick as Hayes. As late as last September 9^th, he wrote one whole Sunday column about how cold it was out there in the woods. “I never got acclimated to the cold last winter,” he wrote, “so even though I love the four seasons and the winter, I still may corner the market on thermal undies.” The cold wasn’t the only thing he wasn’t acclimated to. He wasn’t yet acclimated to the dirty politics of Portsmouth or to his role as managing editor of the Prostitute Daily Times. He did not appear to understand he wasn’t hired to write about how cold it could get out in the boonies. He was hired to do journalistic dirty work in downtown Porksmouth, like a long line of managing editors before him. He was hired to promote the interests of the Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, which the PDT so subserviently serves. He was hired to criticize concerned citizens as naysayers and gadflies. It was not the woodsman’s axe he was expected to wield but the hired tool’s hatchet. If a managing editor should corner the market on anything, it should be journalistic integrity, not thermal undies. A managing editor who wasn’t a journalistic prostitute would hire, not fire, reporters like Barron and Deaterla.

Cover up Reporting

In the Tuesday 15 April 2008 PDT, Piatt reported that early the previous morning a tall crane (shown here) appeared next to the Marting Annex, starting a project to replace the roof. Piatt reported how tall the crane was (100 feet) and what the under-estimated cost of the job was ($49,550) but not a word about the 2 May 2006 referendum that enjoined the city from doing any renovation of the Marting building. The city action to replace the roof of the Marting Annex was a contemptuous violation of the will of the voters, but Piatt didn't come close to mentioning it. On 12 September 2007, Jeff Barron had written a front page PDT story, “Referendum Talk Angers City Leaders.” In the course of that story, Barron pointed out, “Voters two years ago decided not to renovate the former Marting’s Department Store.” If Piatt were to report as simple a fact as that, he might have been fired by Managing Editor Kuhn, as Jeff Barron and Mike Deaterla had been for not being cover-up reporters. All Jeff Barron had to report was that a man arrested for dealing drugs was employed as a mechanic at Glockner Motors. That’s all it took to get him fired. Of course, if Andy Glockner wasn’t a member of the SOGP, Barron might still have his job. Maybe. It has been my observation over the years that reporters at the Times, if they are not forced out or fired, just leave out of shame.

In the same 15 April 2008 PDT, Piatt reported on the the City Council meeting the night before. The subhead on the story was “Strong Support Shown for Establishing City Center.” In the story, Piatt wrote, “judging from the applause from the 100 or so people who filled the chamber and spilled out into the hall, the nays must have been outnumbered about 80 to 20.” Piatt does not point out that most of the 80 were union members who were there because their unions told them to be there, and most of them were not from Scioto County, and therefore not taxpayers who would have to foot the bill for the renovation of the 125-year-old Marting building. For most of the union members, they were at their first and probably last Portsmouth City Council meeting of their lives. I asked a number of them where they were from, and the answer was Ashland, Maysville, Ironton and Columbus, Ohio. Those from the Portsmouth area were in the minority. The Shawnee Labor Council had packed the council chamber with the aim of leaving little room for regular council goers. They had packed the chambers to give a distorted picture of public support for the Marting project, a distortion Piatt was only to willing to report. Many of union members were still in or hardly out of their teens. Some of these young people said they were in apprentice programs and they were given class credit for attending the council meeting. Unfortunately, what they got a lesson in was how to subvert the democratic process by packing a meeting. They were recruited for the council meeting the way Portsmouth school children reportedly were recruited to march in the infamous 1980 KKK-like parade in favor of the Shopping Mall Scam. Hell, anything's better than going to class.

Up and Coming Con Artist?

I talked to Jim, a union man from Columbus, who told me he had come down to Portsmouth to support the City Center. I asked him a few questions, and it was obvious he had no idea of why the Marting building was controversial. I asked him if he knew the building was 125 years old and had a leaking roof that would have to be replaced. He had no idea what I was talking about, as I’m sure most of his fellow unionists did not. He wandered off in the direction of Austin Keyser, of the Shawnee Labor Council, who had organized the packing of the council chamber by non-local, out-of-state union members. I have sometimes wondered where the next generation of Republican and Democratic con-artists and scoundrels were going to come from. Is Keyser a leading young Democratic contender for one of those roles? I snapped a photo of him (shown here) at a recent council meeting. Just above his head, fittingly, is the leaking corner of the council chamber that Mayor Kalb loves to call attention to, like a beggar does his sores in appealing for alms.

Perhaps some excuses can be made for Kalb, even though he is the best-lapdog-in-show. He may not be nearly intelligent or sensitive enough to realize what a painful embarrassment he is not only to Portsmouth residents but also to members of his own sex. Jim Kalb is not only a poor excuse for a mayor, he is a poor excuse for a man. I will go even further and say Kalb is not only an embarrassment to his city and to his sex, he is an embarrassment to our species. Kalb could be expected to be a strong union supporter since on at least two occasions in his failed "career" at Kroger’s, where he did not rise higher than a grocery clerk, the union reportedly saved him from being fired. I am a strong supporter of unions, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better argument against them than Kalb. If the union helped Kalb save his job, Chief Horner had to save his job on his own initiative by helping to get Mayor Bauer recalled. Mayor Bauer reportedly would have fired Horner if he had not been recalled.

Big Brother is Watching

Meanwhile, at the April 14^th council meeting, Horner had his camera aimed in the direction of the visitors gallery in the council chamber. Having labeled concerned citizens “domestic terrorists,” he is obviously continuing to try to intimidate and harass critics of city government and of his own police state tactics. Where did Horner find the money for his hi-tech surveillance equipment? From funds made available to police departments by federal agencies for the war on domestic terrorists? If only Horner had such equipment a few years ago, he might have been able to focus it directly across the street from the Portsmouth Police Dept., at the Ramada Inn, where his son was dealing drugs.

A lot of the competition for seats at the April 14^th meeting would have been reduced if council sessions were televised. But the City Council has for years been dragging its feet on televising council meetings. The last thing it wants is for the public tuned in to what it does. Just as citizens were not able to find seats at the April 14^th meeting, they were not able to watch it on TV either.

Let’s count our blessings, whether we can see them or not. We have Bob Mollette, an incredibly well organized and courageous council member, and we have the veteran steel worker and union officer Rich Noel, whom the lowlifes in city government are currently doing everything they can to drive from the city council. If only those young apprentices at the meeting knew it, Rich Noel is the union man to emulate, not Austin Keyser.