Three Bankrupt Mayors

 Three Bankrupt Mayors

and Portsmouth’s Financial Crisis

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

The first, our current fiscally clueless mayor,

Believes the way to achieve prosperity

Is not through working but through prayer.

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

Is a deadbeat dad who collects vintage cars.

And likes to drive and dress with flair.

He piles up debts till they reach the stars.

The third, the lapdog ex-mayor

Who got Portsmouth into this financial mess,

Is a brainless, bankrupt failure.

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

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

Haunted House from Hell

Haunted House from Hell

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

This is the house A.D.—

After DeSimone acquired it,

But before his bankruptcy

And before a firebug fired it.

It’s a fiery hell to a parson—

To a firebug it’s fuel.

Anywhere else it’s arson—

In Portsmouth it’s urban renewal.







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

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

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

already screwed his creditors by filing for personal bankruptcy

     Screwing the Sanitation Workers

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

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

Screwing the Citizens of Portsmouth 

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

The Marting Building Screwing

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

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

  

The Prosperity Screwing

Malone ’ s Prayermobile, with City of 

of Prosperity bumper sticker

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

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

 preaching on the steps of the Municipal Building (2007)

The BCS Dumb Ox Trophy

The BCS Dumb Ox Trophy

    

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

·         Homelessness                         50^th

·         Strokes                                   50^th

·         Economic Opportunity             47^th

·         Obesity                                   46^th

·         Diabetes                                  46^th

·         Education                                45^th

·         Smoking                                  45^th

·         Health Care                              45^th

·         Taxes on cigarettes                  42^nd

·         Personal income                      40^th

·         Crime                                     39^th

·         Teen pregnancy                       39^th

·         Violent crimes                         23^rd

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

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

     

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

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

Top Ten Postings of 2011

River Vices: Top Ten Postings of 2011

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

1. Billboard from Hell 

2. Rich Saddler: Portsmouth Boy 

3. Addicted Kittens: Oxy and  Contin 

4. Smokers’ Lungs 

5. Portsmouth Copout 

6. Devil in Scioto County 

7. Hill View Flyer 

8. Ameresco 

9. Valentine Verses 

10. Jim Tressell: Nearer My God 

The Illustrated Ballad of Dr. Lundeen

The office of Dr. James E. Lundeen in Portsmouth

This is the door of the controversial doctor

Who was accused of dispensing pain pills like candy

To “patients” who came from near and far

To a location that was handy—

The fourth floor of the Masonic Building

On Chillicothe Street in P’town.

Masonic Building, c. 1900

Was he practicing medicine or a swindle;

Was he high-minded or low-down;

Was he Hippocratic or hypocritical;

Was he hard working or just lazy;

Was he the sufferer’s best friend,

An angel of mercy—or just crazy?

He operated in God’s country, the Buckeye state,

Thirteen crowded so-called clinics

Where milling “patients” faced a long wait

That drove some of them to hysterics.

On entering, what his patients would see

Was a smooth shaven, bow-tied gent

Who was not only a bona fide M.D.

But had also been candidate for president.

For more on candidate Lundeen, click here

He proposed a foreign policy called SMITE—

A biblical assault on evil—

A reminder to enemies of God’s might,

Which could eradicate them like boll weevil.

In addition to providing a fix to those in pain,

The doctor also would ask for a donation

For his presidential campaign

To help relieve the pain of the nation.

He literally threw his hat in the ring,

A hat made by Cynthia, his millinery wife.

She was his one, his only, his everything—

His faithful companion for life,

His support hose, his holy staff.

She was the first to ask, “Jim, what’s the matter?”

The only one who could make him laugh—

She was both his dream of genie and mad hatter.

The Lundeens at Kentucky Derby in hats designed by Cynthia

The Lundeens in campaign hats designed by Cynthia

Having gone bankrupt in 2007,
Did Lundeen, when he came to P’town
Feel like he’d arrived in loser’s heaven?
Mayor Malone, President Haas, Kalb the clown,

Desimone, of Fork and Finger—

And a very close call for Kevin—

All had given creditors the finger,  

All were deadbeats, all Chapter 7.

Lundeen’s office was just down the hall

From the studios of WNXT,

Where Stephanie Haze, the SOGP’s moll,
Was always denouncing the CCG—

The fourth floor hall of Masonic Building where as many as forty patients sometimes waited to see Lundeen

The Concerned Citizens Group—

For criticizing the SOGP’s dirty tricks,

While, milling in the hall, dozens of cooped

Up addicts waited impatiently for their fix,

Waited like cars to get gassed on dope.

The shorn losing candidate in one of his cramped thirteen offices

Notice the box marked “Free Trial,” a sample,

As if it contained some evil dope

From the satanic Procter and Gamble,  

Which was into much more than soap. 

The former P&G “satanic” logo

 

The Southern Ohio Growth Partnership

Controls P’town like Tammany did Manhattan

And the military now does Egypt.

While the poor of Portsmouth repine, the SOGP fatten.

Only after the homeboy was not reelected

Did the state revoke Lundeen’s license;

Only after one in eight babies were born addicted

Did authorities finally stop the pretense.

Lundeen had been dispensing for five long years,

While Stephanie Haze ranted on the station

Against C.A.V.E. People and  the CCG’ers

For besmirching  P’town’s reputation!

The doctor has fled to Indiana or Pennsylvania.

On the fourth floor, WNXT has found the solution:

Thirty second plugs for Mohr’s Automania—

Instead of pain pills, it’s noise pollution.

Mohr noise

Look Deeper

Look Deeper

He tried creating a blog of his own

But no one but himself would read the thing.

It was so damn boring and monotone,

Always scolding, always lecturing—

The blogger no one would ever mention.

Like a desperate nerd who always jogs

In heavy traffic for the attention—

He became a parasite on trafficked blogs,

Anonymously depositing comments,

Like lice in kids’ hair, fleas in  dogs’ fur—

The bench warmer who constantly torments

The loser coach to make him a starter.

Vaulter without a pole, player without a goal—

See him look deeper up his own asshole.

                             Robert Forrey, 2011


For more on Look Deeper, click here.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: 2011

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through house,

Not a creature was stirring, not even a louse.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care

In hopes a city manager soon would be there.

Mike Mearan was nestled all snug in his bed,

While visions of hookers danced in his head,

And Kalb on the toilet, in his dunce’s cap,  

Had just settled down for a long winter’s crap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

Kalb sprang from the toilet to see what was the matter.

Away to the window he flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and smoked some hash.

The moon on the breast of a hooker below

Made him want to do wheelies in the snow,

When what to his wandering eye should appear,

But the recycled auditor swigging some beer.

A Kiwanian, looking dishonest and spent,

It could be nobody else but Trent.

Pixilated from playing financial games,

He whistled and called out some names:

“Here Horner! Here Raison! Here Tricky Nixon,

As sure as shootin’ I’m puttin’ the fix in.

You’ll all get raises, public employees all,

Cause your CPFA’s on the ball.”

“To Capital Improvements say bye-bye,

Cause they’re nothing but a lot of pie in the sky.”

Then up to the house-top he flew

Like an elephant jumping out of a zoo.  

Meanwhile, tinkling, Kalb heard on the roof

A drunken footstep that he thought was a  hoof.

Failing to flush the toilet, as Allison told him, he turned around

Just as Trent came down the chimney like a chow hound.

Like a black sheep from head to foot,

Covered all over with inches of soot,

He resembled a sweep who’d just come back

From supplying Mary Poppins crack. 

His eyes so twinkling, his smile so Kiwanis,

His bulk was just short of dinosaurus.  

A Certified Public Financial Administrator,

He was deficit financing’s favorite perpetrator.

He was chubby and plump, a gigantic old elf,

And Kalb laughed when he saw him in spite of himself.

A wink of Trent’s eye, which showed he would fudge it,

Made Kalb understand he would “balance” the budget.

Trent spoke not a word as he cooked the books,

Transferring funds to the usual crooks.

Then putting a finger up his nose,

He chuckled and up the chimney he rose.

He sprang to his cycle and gave a whistle,

And away he flew like an unguided missile.

But Kalb heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight,

“Be sure to write Forrey an email tonight.”

                             Robert Forrey, 12/24/11

Hornergate

Matt Dillon AWOL

Matt Dillon and friend outside of the bankrupt 

Shane DeSimone’s Fork and Finger Restaurant

(*For the Portsmouth Daily Times story, click here.)

Wanted for Pilfering from the C.I.P. Fund

WANTED

The Portsmouth City Council for Pilfering from the Capital Improvement Fund

Jim “Dopey” Kalb

Bankrupt head of the Capital Improvement Pilferers.

Chief parasite on the body politic of Portsmouth.

Trent “The Enabler” Williams

The Auditor who cooks the books

Mike “Donut Hole” Jones

The heavily mortgaged clueless city lawyer

John “Deadbeat” Haas.

Bankrupt President of City Council

who cares more for cars than kids.

Rich “One for the Road” Saddler.

The “Portsmouth Boy” voted for the motion to pilfer.

Kevin Johnson.

 The failed businessman who was for Kalb as mayor,

 for gambling, for the city manager form of government, 
and for the pilfering of the Capital Improvement fund.

Nick “Thundering Turd” Basham.

Ex-teacher, ex-bar owner, who served half price Pilfer Beer 
to disgruntled city employees conspiring to recall Mayor Murray.

*See the anti-pilfering briefs filed with the court by Frank Gerlach and Jane Murray by clicking here.

Trent Williams's Double Talk

In view of the double talk that City Auditor Trent Williams resorted to in order to evade answering the questions of Frank Gerlach and Jane Murray about city finances at the recent hearing at the Court of Common Pleas, the underlined excerpt from the minutes of  the Portsmouth City Council for 12 January 2004, shown above,*  is revealing. Williams announced in January, 2004, that there were no deficits for the  year just passed, 2003. First Ward councilwoman Anne Sydnor asked how this balancing of the budget had been achieved. Where had the revenues  come from to erase an anticipated deficit? The question could not have been clearer, but Williams replied he “was not sure to what figures she was referring.” Williams gave the same evasive answer more than once when Gerlach asked the same question earlier this month. Williams said he was  not sure what figures Gerlach was asking about. Gerlach, like Sydnor in 2004, was asking for an accounting of the revenues that had help erase the deficit. Williams said he was not sure which revenues Gerlach was referring to. Williams was being evasive because it was not  “revenues” that had erased the budget but rather funds that had been transferred from the Capital Improvement fund. In October, 2003, with the approval of Judge Harcha, the  city had made up the deficit in the General Fund by transferring money from the Capital Improvement fund. By law, the Capital Improvement funds are supposed to be used only for capital improvements, for the city’s infrastructure, and for such structures as the Municipal Building. But a loophole in the law allows the city to petition  the Common Pleas Court to allow the transfer of CIP funds, which is what was done in 2003 and which is what the city is asking to do again, in 2011. The Capital Improvement funds are the piggy bank that the city periodically empties to pay off city employees.  

The sorry condition of the Municipal Building today is a consequence of the funneling of Capital Improvement funds into the General Fund, which is used to pay general operating expenses, such as salaries and benefits for city employees, including fire and police personnel. The  city has been generous to the fire and police personnel in particular because they are a potent political force in Portsmouth, and politicians cannot expect to stay in office if they don’t cater to that powerful political constituency. Now Judge Marshall, presiding in the Common Pleas Court, is being asked again to make an exception, even though, as Gerlach pointed out, the city is not currently in a deficit and has revenues coming in that will assure that it won’t fall into a deficit. Why does the city want the CIP funds to be transferred again? What is the emergency? The emergency is that the politicians, including City Solicitor Jones (who, last time we checked, appeared to be  mortgaged to the hilt and beholden to those who control the city financially**) wants to make sure there is enough money in the city treasury to provide a reported 12% pay increase in wages for the fire department. Can that be right, 12% for fire personnel in these belt-tightening times? Surely the court is not going to reward the city’s  budget busting-infrastructure wrecking behavior by allowing the transfer again. Will the citizens again have to take it to a higher court to see that justice is done, as it did when it appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court to overturn the Common Pleas Court’s ruling that City Clerk Jo Ann Aeh had not mutilated recall petitions?

The city is now rehiring the same employees, the same people, who negotiated the contracts while Kalb was mayor that put the city in the financial bind that caused the state to put Portsmouth on a fiscal watch list. Kalb will once again be in a position to help take Portsmouth down the road to bankruptcy, a road he knows something about, having traveled it himself personally, as did the  unelected, out-to-lunch mayor David Malone and the deadbeat president of city council, John Haas. The court should not allow the city to continue to  follow the same path of misusing capital improvement funds, which  led the state to declare Scioto County the first county ever to be in a fiscal emergency. The city will end up like the county if Williams is allowed to get away with his double talk. The city and the auditor have made no effort to change the way the city mishandles its finances since the Common Pleas Court approved the transfer in 2003. By approving another transfer, the court will be condoning the way the city auditor cooks the books.




       *For more on the 2003 transfer of funds, go to Teresa Mollette’s invaluable website Portsmouthcitizens.info  by clicking here.

     ** For my earlier post on Solicitor Jones's personal finances, click here.

Bankrupt DeSimone's Crappy Properties

DeSimone and Friends

In July, 2004, Shane DeSimone bought sixteen pieces of heavily mortgaged Portsmouth houses from Home Federal Savings and Loan, a Kentucky bank, for about $440,000 dollars. Three of the properties, 1701, 1703, and 1709 Jackson Street (not shown here), were renovated into the Fork and Finger Restaurant, which he is the owner of. But most  of the houses, including those shown below, were ramshackle and in the seven years since then have only gotten worse. The first house below, at 318 2nd Street, now boarded up, was a crack house for several years. The last house below, at 1525 Jackson, may still have tenants, with children, judging by a light inside and the battered playthings surrounding it. On September 27, 2011, four months after Home Federal Savings and Loan took DeSimone to court, he sold it to Hatcher  for $10,000, well below what the county auditor had it valued at. Hatcher may be doing what homeowners in the John St. area suspected him doing there—letting houses go to hell as a way of depressing property values so he can buy them for a song. DeSimone sued then mayor Murray for saying she thought he bought these properties to launder drug money. He claimed she defamed him, making it harder to achieve one of his ambitions: to be mayor of Portsmouth! Why did he buy these properties? Whatever the reason, he is now bankrupt and owes Home Federal about a half million dollars. His properties will be auctioned off at the County Courthouse, beginning at 1 PM, Wednesday, December 21.

You can see the County Court docket on his bankruptcy by clicking here.