Slime Time

"It's a pig, it's a plane, no, it's a Portsmouth politician!"

I am able to report exclusively that the former Shine Time Carwash on Findlay St. has been purchased by the city of Portsmouth for a million dollars, and renamed Slime Time Peoplewash. An example of Portsmouth’s classic cinderblock architecture, the Slime Time building may date all the way back to the 1950s. Acting Mayor Jim Kalb reportedly negotiated secretly with the real estate developer Neal Hatcher to buy the Slime Time building, which will be converted to a state-of-the-art facility that will wash not cars but people, specifically politicians and reporters who do the dirty work for Portsmouth’s corrupt ruling elite, drug dealers, prostitutes, members of the SOGP, the Marting Foundation, and wheelchair-bound senior citizens, in short everyone in Portsmouth who can use a regular washing and scrubbing

The owners of Shine Time Carwash were reportedly willing to let it go for only a million dollars because they wanted to give something back to the community. “We didn’t want to sell it to someone who thought it was an eyesore and would tear it down.” The city is consulting an architectural firm in Cincinnati about the possibility of removing the red brick exterior of Slime Time to reveal the cinderblock underneath. The plan is to turn Findlay Street into an architectural showplace, unpeeling its buildings down to their pristine unpainted cinderblock frames.

When city auditor Trent Williams heard of the city’s purchase of the Slime Time facility, he said incredulously, “It’s only going to cost the city a million dollars?” Even though he was the last to learn of the sale, he did not take offense. “That’s only half of what Marting’s cost,” he said. “It’s a steal.” In a secret memo to City Clerk Jo Ann Aeh, leaked by someone in the Ku Klux Klan, City Solicitor Kuhn wrote, “Screw the public! The purchase of Slime Time is perfectly legal.”

Acting mayor Kalb will release a statement that says, “It’s time Portsmouth moved forward again. Just as the renovated Marting building will serve as a city hall and the former Adelphia Cable building as the new police station and Kenrick’s store as a visitor center, the Slime Time building will no doubt make Portsmouth a cleaner and more attractive city, especially if the council passes an ordinance making couches on porches, dogs under porches, and chickens on top of porches illegal. I predict our citizens will wonder how Portsmouth has gotten by as long as it has without a facility like Slime Time.” The mayor's mantra has become “It's slime time!"

City rescues Slime Time landmark from wrecking ball

Lawyer Clayton Johnson was allegedly the first to propose the city purchase Slime Time at a secret public forum held in his office at which three council members, Neal Hatcher, and the carwash owners allegedly were present. Footage surreptitiously taken by Joe Ferguson from the back of a second-hand reconverted Adelphia van and shown on Moe’s Forum reveals that there were no lights on in the offices of Johnson and Oliver when the late-night time secret public meeting allegedly took place. “Johnson always operates in the dark,” Joe explained

“The Sentinel crowd throws so much crap at public servants like me that a facility like this is an absolute must here in Portsmouth,” council member Marty Mohr said. Eager to rid himself of his reputation as Portsmouth’s crappiest politician, Mohr is said to be one of several council members who are jockeying to be first to use Slime Time before facing voters in next November’s recall election. Mr. Clean is how Mohr hopes to emerge from Slime Time.

“The Slime Time Peoplewash will be a Portsmouth landmark,” predicted Steve Hayes, a die-hard cinderblock preservationist. “I hope the omission of the Slime Time building from the murals is an oversight that will be remedied in the future,” he added. Neal Hatcher told the Daily Times, “The Slime Time building ranks right up there with the Adelphia building as a cinderblock landmark in our community. You don’t see much of that classic cinderblock architecture anymore.” Zeke Mullins of WNXT praised the purchase. “It sure makes a fella feel purty good there’s still fellas like Steve [his boss Steve Hayes] who cares about something beside making money. Imagine what some of those Italian quattrocento fellas could have done iffen only they'd a built some of those big churches in cinderblock stead of marble.”

“The Slime Time building is one of the most patriotic structures in Portsmouth,” Howard Baughman said at a recent city council meeting. “Not long after 9/11, its owners patriotically painted the Slime Time facility red, white, and blue,” he explained. The head of a Portsmouth VFW Post was quoted in The Community Common as saying “demolishing the Slime Time building would be like burning the American flag.” Councilman David Malone said he plans to lead prayer sessions in front of the Slime Time facility each alternate Monday before council meetings, unless there is a secret meeting in the city clerk’s office he must attend beforehand. Malone is already working on his first Slime Time sermon, called “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

Finally, an unconfirmed report out of Washington says that Rep. Rob Porkman, in one of his last acts before leaving the House of Representatives, will attach a rider to a space appropriation bill to help finance a speedy conversion to Slime Time.

(For those who tend to believe everything they read in print, I feel obliged to point out that there is about as much truth in this posting as there is in most local news stories in The Portsmouth Daily Times.)

Slots and Sluts

To a drought stricken region, dark clouds on the horizon offer the promise of rain. But dark clouds can be accompanied by destructive forces, by winds, lightning and torrential rains that do much more harm than good.

Like great dark clouds to the west, gambling is on Portsmouth’s horizon – again. Those clouds were there before, in 1988 and 1996, when gambling was on the ballot, but Ohio voters decided on those occasions that the potential harm was greater than any financial gain gambling might bring. But the dark clouds are back. Pro-gambling forces are trying to amend Ohio’s constitution to allow qualified cities to legalize land-based casino gambling. Because it has a home rule charter and has one of the other requirements a city must meet (being a county seat), Portsmouth is one of three cities in southeastern Ohio that would qualify. Ironton and Gallipolis are the other two.
The ruling elite in Portsmouth were aware of these dark clouds before they were on the public’s radar. I found it hard to believe than any informed person could believe the Front Street murals could attract enough visitors to justify expending millions of dollars of public funds on the “Kenrick’s” tourist center. But if the ruling clique is right in betting that gambling will come to Portsmouth, then that visitor center will no doubt be a busy place. But it will be serving people who came to Portsmouth not so much to see the murals as to play the slots.
I was astonished by what a piece of private Front Street property near the Municipal Building sold for last year. It made absolutely no sense unless someone was betting that gambling would come to downtown Portsmouth. If gambling does come, then all downtown properties, particularly in the area of the Municipal Building, the Ramada Inn, and the new bridge can be expected to skyrocket in value.
The determination of the ruling clique and their local political prostitutes to tear down the Municipal Building can best be understood when put in the gambling context. Acting Mayor Kalb said in a public forum that Portsmouth’s riverfront property is potentially valuable and that he knew of a developer who was interested in the Municipal Building site. Since when is riverfront property in Portsmouth valuable? Only since legalized gambling became a distinct possibility.
The Ramada Inn has struggled for years and would not have been able to survive without the kind of pork that has kept others in business in Portsmouth, which has been like a Third World city for a long time. When I came for an interview at the university in 1989, I was put up at the Ramada, as all university visitors are. I traveled in the Third World in the 1970s, and when I stayed at the Ramada I felt I was back in a Third World hotel. Without university business, which is ultimately public money, and without serving as a dormitory for the university, would the Ramada still be in business? It is certainly not the Ramada that made downtown property valuable. It is the prospect of slots that make the Ramada and other downtown properties look like a potential goldmine. We already have the sluts. (For a libertarian read on the sluttishness of slots, look at http://tzaddik.us/lilpoh/archives/001116.html)
The Portsmouth Daily Times recently (28 June 2005) ran a front-page story by Mark Shaffer with the headline “Gambling Draws Local Support.” Who is the local support? The only supporter quoted is a local businessman, someone identified in the story as “Kevin Johnson, the co-owner of the Emporium at Portsmouth . . .” The PDT reports that Kevin Johnson is in favor of legalized land-based gambling in Portsmouth. Kevin Johnson pointed to unspecified cities in Colorado and South Dakota as places where legalized gambling have been a good thing, and what’s good for cities in Colorado and South Dakota, he implies, will be good for Portsmouth. “He [Kevin Johnson] said casinos could mean turning around the local economy.”

“Gambling Draws Local Support” is the kind of slanted and inaccurate reporting that has made the PDT the prostitute of the local ruling clique for at least a quarter of a century and probably much longer. A story on a local antique dealer’s enthusiasm for legalized gambling is published without checking on the nature of the purported success of legalized gambling in Colorado and South Dakota. In a twenty-minute search on the Internet PDT reporter Mark Shaffer could have found enough documented criticism of gambling in South Dakota and Colorado to balance Kevin Johnson’s rosy scenario for legalized gambling in Portsmouth. When if ever will the PDT point out the potential environmental, social, and moral costs of “revitalizing” Portsmouth through gambling dollars?

Perennial Political Pawn David Malone at Work

We can expect more coverage like "Gambling Draws Local Support" by the PDT in the months and years ahead. Expect the forces pushing for legalized gambling to spend big bucks in promotional campaigns. Expect the PDT to be the recipient of many of those promotional dollars. Expect local businessmen and politicians to cite unspecified studies, as Kevin Johnson does, that imply legalized gambling will be the answer to Portsmouth’s economic woes, as “the mall” was supposed to be back in 1980.
In a cursory look on the internet, I found many websites promoting legalizing gambling in Colorado and South Dakota. These websites are sponsored by the gambling interests in those states. They obviously have a vested interest in convincing the public legalized gambling is a good thing. If your research extends no further than these patently biased sources, you will be impressed, as Kevin Johnson is, by the possibilities of legalized gambling in Portsmouth. A final word about Kevin Johnson. According to the County Auditor’s records, Paul E. Johnson and Kevin Warren are co-owners of the Emporium, a new antique store on Chillicothe St., so Mark Shaffer may have mixed up their names. If so, that was not the only thing he did not get right in the story.

After PBS showed a Frontline program on legalized gambling in the USA, a Colorado viewer wrote a letter to PBS saying, “I want to thank you for the excellent story about gambling. A few years ago when I lived in Colorado I voted for legalized gambling in the town of Blackhawk just west of Boulder and Denver. Today I would never vote for something like that again. I saw the slow decay of that beautiful mountain town and what that type of business can do! It basically destroyed the spirit of the town. The locals were driven out by big money, and fast life style in the name of progress. Closer to home a co-worker of mine hits the Native American casinos on a regular basis, and has in my opinion nearly bankrupted his family. I realize as Americans we control our own destiny, but what kind of future are we creating for ourselves? I get very scared when I hear of all the problems of this country, but I think this problem needs immediate attention! At the rate we are spending money on the ‘Gaming’ industry what is going to happen to us when the well runs dry, all this investment could have been more wisely spent on perhaps educating children against the evils of gaming.”

Another viewer wrote PBS from Colorado to say, “Your program regarding gambling was very interesting. I live in Colorado and we have legalized gambling in three small mountain towns and the State of Colorado lottery. I have seen my in-laws who are in their 70's spend their time and money on the pursuit of ‘easy money.’ It amazes me because they worked very hard all their lives to be able to retire with a modest income. They use to camp and ride their dirt bikes in our beautiful Rocky Mountains. Now, they take bus trips to gambling towns in and outside our State. I personally do not enjoy gambling or understand the pleasure in it. I have not expressed to them my opinion of gambling because it is after all, their right. Four years ago, I met a man who moved to Colorado from Las Vegas. Originally, he told me he moved because he was tired of the rat race and his now ex-wife was transferred here by her company. He lived here over a year before discovering legalized gambling just 30 minutes away from Denver. He became a frequent visitor to the gambling casinos. His whole personality changed. He began losing large sums of money he did not have. He would take out cash advances on credit cards in order to try and 'win it back.' To make a long story short, he never did 'win it back' and eventually hit bottom when he lost his job and had to file bankruptcy for the second time in his life. I learned later on that he had a terrible gambling problem and that was one of the reasons for the move to Colorado. I do not agree with the widespread of legalized gambling. I am concerned for the children who sit in lobbies with very little to do while their parents are gambling. I think gambling is one of the factors contributing to the demoralization of American society.”

And what about South Dakota, the other state Kevin W. Johnson mentioned? “Since South Dakota voted to make Deadwood a casino town in 1989, South Dakota politics have been hijacked by the massive political spending of gambling interests,” according to Mother Jones Magazine. A citizens' group on the internet (http://laplaza.org/~totem/gam.html) wrote, "Deadwood (South Dakota) is a prime example of what happened to a small self-sufficient community after the opening of casinos in its town. The town was lured by the promise of a much larger tax base, a larger tourist industry, and all the other lures that an industry will use to force the passing of ordinances to allow the business to locate in a community that otherwise would not allow it." The same citizens' group provided the following report, the information in which they attributed to U.S. News & World Report (14 Mar. 1994):

"Shortly after the advent of legalized casino gambling [Nov. 1989], the Deadwood [South Dakota] casino economy lurched forward. The state attorney's office in Deadwood indicated that within approximately two years:

1. Child abuse cases had increased 42% to 43% (from 350 to 500 cases);

2. Police costs had increased 80% to 100% with a virtual doubling of the number of police officers;

3. Although national statistics had increased only slightly, crime in the Deadwood area had increased overall by 10% (although prior to 1989 the crime rate had been declining) with a 50% increase in felonies. Furthermore, there were 614 Class One misdemeanors or felonies in 1988, and 1,070 in 1992, a 75% increase in four years;

4. Domestic violence and assaults had risen 80%; and

5. Burglaries and writing of bad checks had increased . . .

One of the saddest impacts of gambling and casinos in a community are the costs in people. The property and money loss are nothing compared to what people have to do to obtain the money to support their habits. And the saddest of these is when teen age girls have to turn to prostitution to get the money they need. It becomes epidemic as casinos and gambling have always lured girls and women into prostitution.

Teenage girls are forced into prostitution when they can't pay their gambling debt to the loan shark. In 1976 Atlantic City had no prostitution problem - today it is a public health problem.”

It is also possible that the lure of gambling, like the lure of the 1980 mall, by promising prosperity, will take in the hopefully gullible but amount in the end to nothing, and there will be further recriminations against those who challenged gambling for having prevented progress and prosperity. If gambling does come to Portsmouth, the Marting building might finally be recycled appropriately, in view of its recent notoriety, either as a casino or, in the unlikely event prostitution might be legalized, as the biggest bordello east of the Rockies.

Biggest bordello east of the Rockies?

Father, Forgive Him!

Rev. Malone Preaching
"Protection and Deliverance
of a City"

Rev. David A.Malone prayed on the steps of Muncipal Building for the deliverance of Portsmouth. Now citizens of Portsmouth are praying for the deliverance of Malone from the corrupt clique he is blindly following.

Below is a copy of one such prayer.

Prostitute Times

Hooker at work

Julie Stout recently pointed out in Moe’s Forum that the 56-year-old James M. McGinnis, until last February the president and CEO of Heartland Publications, the parent company of the Portsmouth Daily Times, or PDT, was found guilty last June of having purloined $1.7 plus from company coffers. Shades of Adelphia! McGinnis claimed that he was just borrowing the money, but the judge ruled the former owner of the PDT “committed theft, as that term is defined in 812.014, Fla. Stat. (2004) by taking $1,713,342 from Heartland's accounts for his own personal use and benefit." The judge fined McGinnis $5.1 million or triple damages. According to officials, McGinnis will probably not be able to pay the fine, because his wife divorced him, took possession of their house, which left him with only one asset – his XJ8 gold Jaguar, which will be sold at auction.

McGinnis has long been in the business, over the course of 30 years, of managing, owning. and milking roughly 80 small- and medium-town newspapers in 22 states in what he called the American heartland. Contrary to the prevailing view that American newspapers are liberal, most small-town newspapers, of which there are very many, are politically conservative. Small-town newspapers are conservative partly because they are dependent upon local conservative business people for their survival. If local businesses don’t advertise, there is not much to be milked by the small-town newspaper’s corporate parent. The pressure that the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce puts on the PDT to toe the SOGP line is no secret. If you believe the PDT’s current opposition to a second round of recalls was based on an honest, independent judgment on the editor’s part, then you might also believe Madonna is a virgin.

As for the PDT’s circulation, the other source of its income, it has been about as robust as a fossilized pterodactyl’s. That is why small town newspapers often function as the handmaidens of local Chambers of Commerce and do everything they can to promote local economic development, even if the development has an unethical or criminal character and has a detrimental effect on the community, as legalized gambling has. (I’ll deal with legalized gambling in my next blog.) In the case of our river city, the PDT is not so much the handmaiden as it is the prostitute of the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, which is the arm of the Chamber that launders government money.

As for the notion that a small town newspaper might do the kind of investigative reporting that could put local business and political bigwigs in a bad light, forget it. Did the PDT report the conviction of its owner James M. McGinnis? Did it put a reporter on the anthrax evacuation at Shawnee State? Has it ever reported that for a decade or more Shawnee State has been ranked as one of the worst universities of its kind in the U.S., in spite of many millions of dollars of state support and special subsidies? Not that I am aware. But it did recently put a reporter on a front-page story of a duck that was reportedly trapped in a storm drain. The Shawnee Sentinel came into existence and became Portsmouth’s most popular source of local news not by reporting on alleged ducks in drains but because it does investigative journalism and is the generator of lively opinion. The PDT does not cover the news that the Chamber of Commerce and the two other large institutions in Portsmouth, the hospital and the university, do not want it to cover. There is a local news vacuum, which readers abhor. That is why the Sentinel, which reports it had 10,000,000 hits in the last year, finds so many readers. Even my infrequent and somewhat professorial blog, River Vices, as it approaches its first anniversary, has had over 10,000 visitors.

The FBI was reportedly involved in the investigation of McGinnis. I have heard rumors that the FBI is involved in an on-going investigation of criminal activities and corruption among the higher-ups of Portsmouth, but that’s all they are at this point, rumors, born of wishes. But of one thing I am fairly sure: the kind of newspapers McGinnis owned, such as the PDT, are about as likely to be investigating corruption or criminal activities among the higher-ups in the towns of the American heartland, and in Portsmouth in particular, as the Portsmouth Spartans are of playing in the Super Bowl next winter. Rather than investigating the well-heeled of Portsmouth, the drain-duck lame-duck PDT is in bed with them, trying to denigrate the use of the recall of public officials and promote legalized gambling, all the while piously pretending to occupy a moral high ground where it scolds the “troublemakers” on the internet, the same internet that broke its monopoly on local news. What the PDT is really doing is working both sides of the street, like a five-dollar John St. whore waiting for a John, or another Jim McGinnis, in a gold-colored Jaguar.

Adelphia: O, Brother!

Adelphia founder in handcuffs

To better understand the Marting mess and the swindle Clayton Johnson has nearly completed with the complicity of the Portsmouth City Council, it helps to look at the so-called Adelphia building, at 807 Washington St., which Johnson made part of the package he told the city it must accept if it hopes to get back any part of the $2 million he illegally obtained from the city for the Marting building.

A little background. Adelphia is a Greek word meaning “brother,” but Adelphia’s history of corruption is enough to make anyone say “O, brother!”

A year ago this week, a federal jury found former Adelphia chairman and founder 80-year-old John Rigas (in photograph above) and his son Timothy guilty of conspiracy and massive securities and bank fraud. Rigas and Timothy were convicted of deceiving investors and hiding more than $2.3 billion in debt while using company funds to finance a lavish life style for themselves and their relatives. The father received a 15- and Timothy a 20-year sentence. The Rigas family was required to pay huge fines and to give up any stake in Adelphia, which was operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The elder Rigas is reportedly down to his last $76 million.

Former Adelphia building on Washington St.

Now, what about Adelphia and Portsmouth? O, brother! In 1984, a Dr. Herbert I. Singer, of Los Angeles, bought what became known as the Adelphia building, on Washington Avenue, from Michael H. Mearan, a local lawyer who specializes in auto accidents and bankruptcy. Dr. Singer leased the building to Adelphia for twenty years, but Adelphia reportedly abrogated that lease in its last year, presumably because Adelphia was in bankruptcy and could get away with abrogating leases and not paying its bills.

About that time, Adelphia moved from Washington St. to its new location, not far from the 15th Street viaduct development. Given the 15th St. viaduct’s shady history and shady tenants, it should be called “Shady Plaza.” The Adelphia building on Washington Street was convenient to customers and far better suited than its current building, which looks and feels like a fur trading outpost in the wilds of Alaska. When I asked an Adelphia representative why the company had moved from Washington St., she said it was because the rent on Washington St. was too high – $2,200 a month.

Did Adelphia try to renegotiate the lease? I don’t know, but Adelphia was in an excellent position to do so, because commercial and retail property in downtown Portsmouth is notoriously hard to rent and even harder to sell. For example, according to figures in the auditor’s office, in the Scioto County Courthouse, in 2001 the true cash value of Adelphia’s Washington St. property – actually Dr. Singer’s property – was listed at $958,970; three years later that figure had been reduced 66% to $319,920.

It is hard to believe, with the value of the Washington St. property plummeting 66%, that Adelphia could not have gotten its rent reduced or even bought the property at a distressed price from Dr. Singer. If the city was sincerely interested in reviving downtown, they should have done everything to encourage Adelphia to stay on Washington St. That would have made sense, at least for Adelphia’s customers, but Adelphia does not think first of its customers, not when it has a cable monopoly and a city council that cares about its constituents about as much as Adelphia does for its cable customers.

By moving to “Shady Plaza,” Adelphia not only did a disservice to its customers, but it apparently dealt a karate chop to Dr. Singer, who filed for bankruptcy. In speaking before the city council, Dr. Singer’s lawyer denied his client had declared bankruptcy, but records in the Scioto County Courthouse at the time and still today prove otherwise. Why did Mr. Singer’s lawyer deny he was in bankruptcy? It is possible that Singer is trying to use bankruptcy in the way Adelphia used it, to avoid meeting his financial obligations. The suspicion that Dr. Singer is yet another shady character in this Adelphia corruption saga is heightened by the fact that he is in default for about $18,000 in city taxes on his Washington St. property, taxes which his filing for bankruptcy puts in abeyance.

One of the refreshing things about Dr. Singer and his lawyer, Mr. Mearan, is how candid they are about the underlying reason Dr. Singer is offering the property to the city. There is no moonshine about saving downtown Portsmouth and no Herbert I. Singer Foundation façade has been established to provide a front of civic-mindedness for Singer’s pecuniary motives. According to Portsmouth City Council minutes (14 March 2005), “Mr. Mearan said that in order for Dr. Singer to take advantage of certain IRS regulations the City could not sell or lease the building because that would set a value on the property and would restrict the amount Mr. Singer can claim as a donation to the City. Mr. Mearan stated that with the understanding that the City would accept the property and use it for City purposes [italics added], with a restriction of ten years[,] after which if the City wants to get rid of the building or do whatever they want with the building they could do so.” After ten years, Dr. Singer doesn’t care what the city does with the Washington St. property; they can flush it down the toilet for all he cares. What he wants is for the city to use the property for some public purpose for a minimum of ten years or otherwise he will be greatly restricted in what he can claim as a tax write for a charitable donation.

We need to understand that this is also the motive behind the Marting Foundation’s offer to give the city the Marting building that it had previously fraudulently tried and failed to sell to it: in order for Singer and for Johnson to qualify for maximum tax write-offs the property they donate must by IRS regulations be used for government purposes, in the case of the Adelphia building as a police station and in the case of the Marting building as a city hall.

Public policy in Portsmouth is being dictated not by what is best for the city and its citizens but by what is best for privileged property-owners who want to unload their virtually worthless buildings off on the public for the purposes of tax write-offs. And it is not just the Marting and Adelphia buildings that are being foisted off on the public. The practice of getting the public to pay for property that is no longer of use to it owners and of very little value in the local real estate market is long-standing and widespread in Porksmouth.

Instead of using millions of dollars of public monies to build structures designed for the purposes to which they will be put, the city government receives old and architecturally embarrassing hand-me-downs that require ridiculous outlays to try to transform them into the public buildings they were so obviously never intended to be. In the meanwhile public buildings of architectural importance and practical value are derided and torn down, while for at least ten years, these other old buildings, such as the Marting and Adelphia buildings, with new phony facades, will have to be renovated and maintained, at large public expense, just so that the tax breaks to the privileged few can not be challenged by the IRS. After ten years the buildings can be flushed down the toilet, which is probably what should have been done in the first place. Or to repeat the startlingly candid language of the minutes of the March 14th city council meeting: “Mr. Mearan stated that with the understanding that the City would accept the property and use if for City purposes, with a restriction of ten years[,] after which if the City wants to get rid of the building or do whatever they want with the building they could do so.” O, brother!

From minutes of the 3/14/05 Portsmouth City Council Meeting

ROYAL SCREWING

“The history of the present King is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over Portsmouth. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Or so say I.

On this July 4th weekend I am thinking not only of the Declaration of Independence but of May 24th, 2005, and of another document that was signed on that day here in Portsmouth, Ohio. I hold a Ph.D. in American Civilization, and as a student and teacher, and as the coordinator of a Yale-based committee that organized a series of conferences around the world prior to the celebration of the American Bicentennial, in 1976, I have in my time seen a lot of American documents. But I have never seen one that mocks the Declaration of Independence and the ideal of American democracy as blatantly and cynically as the one that was signed on May 24th, 2005, by Portsmouth’s acting mayor James Kalb and city solicitor David Kuhn, representing the city of Portsmouth, and by Julia Wisniewski, representing the Richard D. Marting Foundation. That infuriating document, which the city solicitor gave the innocuous name “Marting’s Foundation Grant Agreement and Release,” deserves to be studied for the revealing light it throws on the tyranny that exists in Portsmouth as a result of the unholy alliance between crooked politicians and crooked lawyers.

The depth and pervasiveness of that tyranny cannot be appreciated unless we note that there appeared to be a sort of political revolution last year in Portsmouth. Following the revelation that the city had purchased a former department store at a wildly inflated price of $2,000,000 from the Richard D. Marting Foundation, Mayor Greg Bauer and two members of the Portsmouth City Council, Ann Sydnor and Carol Caudill, were recalled from office as a direct result of that scandalous sale. In spite of the support he received financially from well-heeled backers and editorially from the Portsmouth Daily Times and from the weekly Community Common, Mayor Bauer was recalled by a 2 to 1 margin. The recall movement was bi-partisan, for crooked/honest, not Republican/Democratic was what mattered. June 22nd, 2004, the day Mayor Bauer and the others were recalled, had some of the feel of July 4th, 1776, as I showed in Recall, the video that is now available at the Shawnee State Clark Memorial Library and the Portsmouth Public Library.

The political victory was followed by a stunning legal victory when a suit brought by community activists Bob and Teresa Mollette against the Marting Foundation led to a ruling by Judge Marshall that invalidated the sale of the Marting’s building to the city. Mollette’s attorney had argued that Clayton Johnson had conducted secret illegal negotiations with members of the city council, and Judge Marshall agreed. Johnson is playing the role of King George III in Portsmouth’s contemporary history, but fortunately there are some patriotic people in the city not intimidated by him.

But the political and legal victories of the reform movement did not end the tyrannical rule of crooked politicians and crooked lawyers, as the “Marting’s Foundation Grant Agreement and Release” sadly reveals. What that agreement does is not only put the Foundation and everyone associated with it, including Clayton Johnson, beyond the reach of the courts, it also stipulates a number of conditions that the city would have to meet in order to get back any part of the $2,000,000 the Foundation had previously illegally acquired from the city.

To quote the language of the May 24th agreement, which protects Johnson and the Foundation from any legal action: “the City hereby releases and discharges the Foundation and Marting Brothers from any and all claims or causes of action, from the beginning of the world to the date of this Agreement, arising out of the Dispute and the Purchase Agreement, including any and all claims asserted or which could be asserted which the City has or may have against the Foundation and/or Marting Brothers, whether such claims are legal or equitable, known or unknown, contingent or matured, or joint, several or individual. The release by the City is also intended to and does release and discharge the agents, affiliates, subsidiaries, related business entities, insurers, successors, attorneys, officers, directors, board members, assigns, and all and every other person who has worked for or on behalf of the Foundation and/or Marting Brothers.” With this agreement Johnson not only covers his own ass from the beginning of the world to all eternity, but he also covers the asses of every party however remotely related to the Foundation and the crooked sale of the Marting building.

In the agreement the Foundation on its part agrees to give the city the Marting building, but the Marting Foundation never wanted this worthless property in the first place; the Marting building is like the Old Maid in the card game: whoever gets stuck with it loses. I think the Foundation may have been created primarily to unload the Marting building, preferably by selling it to some foolish buyer or, failing that, by giving it away, which ended up being the only way the Foundation could get rid of it.

Councilman Marty Mohr was right about one thing when he told a Columbus Dispatch reporter last year that he had made a study of retail property and decided the Marting building “ain’t worth anything.” (After being courted by King George and after real estate developer Neal Hatcher named an SSU dormitory in Hatcheville in honor of the Mohr family, Marty Mohr changed his mind about the value of the Marting building.) As long as the Marting Foundation owned the building, it presumably would have had to pay taxes indefinitely, assuming the Foundation had not finessed those, too; there was little chance that any retailer would buy it. Giving the building away, provided someone would take it, might at least make a tax-write off possible, as had been the case when Johnson arranged to have the very dubious assets of the defunct Travel World agency donated to Ohio University, at Ironton.

What makes the May 24th agreement one of the most infamous documents in Portsmouth’s history is, first, that the Foundation, after Judge Marshall’s invalidation of the sale, did not agree to return the $2,000,000 it had received from the city but only $1,405,000, because the Foundation had lost nearly $600,000 on risky investments.

"Honey, I shrank the $2,000,000!"

Section of Marting's Agreement with city of Portsmouth showing how, through poor investments, the Marting Foundation shrank the city's $2 million to $1.4 million

Even though Judge Marshall had ruled that Johnson had violated the law in the underhanded way he had conducted negotiations for the sale of the building, the Foundation would not agree to return all the money it had received but only whatever portion of it that remained at such time that it might return it. The high-handed attitude of our King George can be explained by the unwritten rule that possession is ninth-tenths of the law, even if what you possess you acquired illegally.

But Johnson and the Foundation did not stop there: he also set conditions that the city would have to meet before the Foundation would turn over what ever remained of the $2,000,000, for there was no guarantee that the $1,405,000, with fluctuations in the market, would not shrink some more. Here is the relevant passage from the agreement:

“The Foundation agrees to deliver the Foundations Assets” [that is, the money the Foundation obtained illegally from the city], if “The City agrees that the Foundation Assets shall be used exclusively for one (1) or more of the following purposes: City Police Station, Portsmouth City Offices, or a national or regional retail establishment . . . The City agrees that the Foundation Assets may be used for rehabilitation and renovation of 807 Washington Street, commonly known as the Adelphia Building, for a Permitted Use; and/or (ii) the balance, including any sums which the City shall decide not to allocate to the use and purpose described in Clause (i) herein, to rehabilitate and renovate, or to tear down and rebuild at the main Marting Building, 515 Chillicothe Street, and any other of the Marting Properties, for a Permitted Use."

Imagine a con artist being arrested for illegally selling a worthless painting for $2,000,000, and then agreeing to return only part of the $2,000,000 but only if the defrauded party agrees to keep the painting and spend a specified amount of the returned money on restoring the worthless painting. Oh, and in addition, the con artist insists that any money left over should be spent on restoring another painting of dubious value (the Adelphia building).

We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that con artist King George is not asking for the Marting building back. If you miss that point, you miss everything. Hell, that Old Maid is the last thing he wants back in his hands. No one in his right business mind wants a square foot of that property. As a former employee of Marting's says in Recall, "I know every stinking inch of that building." Johnson's got the city’s money, and he doesn’t want to spend another nickel on that 100-year-old worthless old maid.

But King George the con artist is not done dictating conditions in the Agreement, for the city has to submit a specific plan for a Permitted Use (that is, plans for the Marting and possibly the Adelphia building) within 36 calendar months or lose all claims to the Foundation’s assets (i.e., the city money it holds). "Do exactly what I tell you to do in the time I have told you to do it or you will not get a cent of your money back!" Our spineless and corrupt city government is reduced to being a pawn of this small town dictator.

In his memo to the city officers, accompanying the “Marting’s Foundation Grant Agreement and Release,” solicitor Kuhn wrote, “Please review the agreement carefully, so that the time constraints are met in order for the City to take full advantage of the Agreement.” The city take full advantage of the Agreement? Anyone who reads the agreement carefully should conclude that it is the city that is being taken full advantage of. What the solicitor is really saying is let’s push this crooked deal through as fast as we can, for what the “Marting’s Foundation Grant Agreement and Release” really is, I say on this 4th of July weekend, is a royal screwing.

Prayer

Rev. Malone praying on steps of Municipal Building

Religion played an important part in the recall of mayor Greg Bauer. In the months leading up to the special recall election, on June 22, 2004, the Rev. David Malone denounced the wickedness in Portsmouth. With leaders of the recall movement standing next to him, with their heads bowed, Malone preached a sermon on the steps of the Municipal Building. In that sermon, “Protection and Deliverance of a City,” part of which is reproduced below, he said, “In the name of Jesus, we stand victorious over the principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places over Portsmouth, Ohio.” Austin Leedom later said Malone’s prayers on the steps were the turning point for the recall movement.

But while he was praying with leaders of the recall movement, Rev. Malone at the same time was disassociating himself from that movement. In a recorded interview with me, in his church office, not long after his sermon on the steps, Malone characterized the recall movement as mistaken and “divisive.” His prayers, he told me, had not been intended to help the recall movement. But if there was wickedness in high places, wasn’t using a special election to remove it not only totally constitutional but also morally obligatory? Apparently not, at least not in the mind of Rev. Malone. In his relationship to the “rulers of darkness” and to the followers of the prince of air who hovers satanically over Portsmouth, he appeared to be, if not hypocritical, at least contradictory.

There were those who believed Malone, in appearing to sit on the fence, was maneuvering for the upcoming mayoral primary. He was willing to denounce Evil, in general, but no crooked politician, in particular: “Holy Spirit, we ask you to visit our city and open the eyes of the people, that they may turn from the power of Satan to God,” he preached. But who in Portsmouth is Satan working with? Malone was not willing to be more specific. He was apparently trying to have it both ways, to please both his potential supporters in the recall movement but also powerful people in high places. If that was his strategy, his poor showing in the mayoral primary showed how politically ineffective fence-sitting can be.

The suspicion is growing that Malone’s political priorities take precedence over his moral and spiritual obligations, and as a result he is losing the trust not only of those recall advocates who prayed with him on the steps of the Municipal Building, but also of a number of others as well. Judging from his poor showing in the primary, he has forfeited much of the moral high ground he once occupied. The voters expect a man of God to be at least a cut above a politician, especially above a Portsmouth politician.

At the last city council meeting the ever solicitous city solicitor asked if any of those members of council who regularly meet in the office of the city clerk’s office prior to council meetings believed they were participating in a non-public and therefore illegal meeting of the council. When Malone blurted out “No!” to the solicitor’s question, many of the visitors in the chamber laughed. How did Malone interpret the laughter? Does he realize that in allowing himself to be used by solicitor Kuhn, acting mayor Kalb, and city council president Baughman that he is not only losing the respect of the populace but that he is also becoming something of a joke? Councilman Tim Loper was applauded at the last council meeting for saying he had been played for a dummie long enough. Loper was applauded for declaring his independence; Malone was laughed at for claiming he had done nothing illegal. Shouldn't that tell him something?

Judge Marshall had already pointed out, in ruling on the Marting sale, that whenever four council members get together there is a potential quorum; and if those council members discuss anything remotely related to city business that gathering constitutes a meeting, an illegal meeting since the public is not given the opportunity to attend. Clayton Johnson’s arranging to meet with members of the council in three’s in negotiating the sale of Marting’s was an obvious, crooked scheme to get around the “four’s a meeting” rule.

Pre-council meeting get-togethers in the city clerk’s office are another obvious way for illegal meetings to take place, and Malone should not give even the appearance that he is part of illegal meetings. He should follow the example of council members Bob Mollette and Tim Loper and not join with other members behind closed doors. And, as important, he should not join with those members of city council and mayor Kalb, who are attempting to deliver to Clayton Johnson a half of the whole loaf that Judge Marshall’s decision denied to Johnson when he ruled that the sale of the Marting building to the city had been illegal.

If ever the expression “the devil is in the details” could be said to apply, it applies to the sale of the Marting building, as well as to the machinations mayor Kalb and several on the city council are conducting to get around Judge Marshall’s ruling that the sale of the Marting building was illegal. The sale of the Marting building to the city was not only illegal, it was, from a religious point of view, illicit – a bastard project conceived in a law office in Portsmouth’s red light district. A minister of the gospel should not vote in favor of any ordinance that lends legitimacy to that illicit sale.

The mayor and two council members have been recalled as a direct result of the Marting scandal, which outraged voters, and for Malone to continue to add his support to a proposal that he knows will deliver a half loaf to Johnson will only add to the perception that he is still playing politics rather than following his religious principles.

Part of Sermon Malone delivered on steps of Municipal Building

I hope that those who believe in the power of prayer will pray for the Rev. Malone. When Baughman calls for a moment of silence at the beginning of council meetings, I hope that those who laughed at Malone will follow a more Christian path and pray for him, with all their might, for he was and still is a potential leader of obvious ability, and could yet be a key figure in the crusade against the forces of darkness and for the moral rejuvenation of our river city.

Anniversary of Bauer Recall

Front Page of Daily Times, 06/23/04

One year ago today, on June 22nd, 2004, the voters of Portsmouth recalled Mayor Greg Bauer from office by a 2 to 1 margin.

Several months earlier, around April 2004, I began using my new DV video camera to make a record of the recall process. I worked on editing the video as my teaching schedule permitted in the fall and winter of 2004. On March 16th, 2005, I showed Recall to the public in Flohr Hall at the Shawnee State Clark Memorial Library. Prior to that showing, the Communications Office of SSU put out the following publicity release based upon answers I had provided to their questions:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 11, 2005

Robert Forrey’s video essay Recall to premier at SSU

Shawnee State University’s (SSU) Robert Forrey, Ph.D., professor of English, has created a video essay, entitled Recall, regarding last June’s recall of Portsmouth Mayor Greg Bauer. A showing of the 60-minute documentary will take place on Wednesday, March 16, at 7 p.m. in the Flohr Lecture Hall, located on the first floor of the Clark Memorial Library on the SSU campus.

According to Forrey, the recall movement apparently began when Bauer summarily rejected Lee Scott’s attempt to get city assistance for the restoration of the old Columbia Theater, located on Gallia Street in downtown Portsmouth.

“Scott began an intensive investigation of city government and concluded it was rife with favoritism and corruption,” said Forrey. “However, the seismic event of the recall movement was the controversial sale of the Marting’s department store building to the city, for which Mayor Bauer was responsible.”

Forrey said he had audited a course on videography taught by Michael Barnhart, senior instructor of music at SSU, in order to learn the basics of making videos.

“Though I still have much to learn about the technology, and remain a novice about the art, I proceeded on my own, contacting those involved in the recall movement and members of the city government,” he said.

Incidentally, the key figure, Bauer, declined to be interviewed, in addition to his assistant, Jamie Tuggle, who is an SSU graduate, according to Forrey.

“I am embarrassed at how little I knew about local politics after living in Portsmouth for 15 years,” he said. “I suspect that many at the university know very little about the problems and politics of Portsmouth. One senior professor in business [Larry Essman] told me that until I learned about Portsmouth, its history, and its politics, I could not really understand the university. I now appreciate the wisdom of his observation.”

Forrey has spoken to representatives of Adelphia cable about showing the video essay on cable access, but no date has been set. [Adelphia is not going to air the video.]

“I have been reluctant to call what I created a documentary,” he said. Most of what are called documentaries are not, if by documentary is meant an objective record of something. What I have created and what most so-called documentary makers create is a video essay. Essays have a thesis, a point. I didn’t start out with a thesis; I thought I was just going to record on videotape what others said and felt and what the facts were about the recall. I was being naïve. There is no overall truthful objective record about anything, especially about something as heated and contentious as politics. There are just various people, parties, and points of view, competing with each other for a share of the truth.”

The showing will be followed by an open forum on the issues that led to the recall. [Most of that forum was later added to Recall.]

“Dr. Forrey’s video essay is an interesting look into the politics of Portsmouth,” said Jennifer Phillips, president of the Shawnee Liberals Association, the student group that is sponsoring the event. “People who live and work in the area should be interested in seeing it, and SSU students wishing to learn more about the city they live in will find it worth watching. The discussion that is to take place after the video is shown should be interesting and informative as well.”

DVD copies of the final cut of Recall (approximately 80 min.) are now available for circulation at the Shawnee State Library and the Portsmouth Public Library. A limited number are also available free through The Sentinel, the editor of which can be reached at aleedom@adelphia.net.

Gutter Politics

“Blog Slut” from Mike DeWine’s Office

As I was driving down to Portsmouth from Columbus late Sunday afternoon, June 12th, I noticed a slew of DeWine for Congress signs along Route 23, in Scioto County. That would be Pat DeWine, son of Ohio Senator Mike DeWine. Once I reached Portsmouth, the DeWine signs were all over the place, especially on the properties of real estate developer Neal Hatcher and lawyer Clayton Johnson. As I was driving by the corner of Washington and Sixth Streets, in Portsmouth’s red light district, I thought I recognized the short senator, briefcase in hand, standing in the gutter in front of Portsmouth’s most prestigious house of ill repute, namely the law offices of Johnson & Oliver, Esq. Partially obscuring a DeWine for Congress sign, the senator was talking to a young man and a younger woman. With a digital camera, through a dusty windshield (through a glass darkly), I took a picture.

Mike DeWine in gutter outside Clayton Johnson’s Office

Where Senator DeWine happened to be standing was appropriate, for the political gutter is where the DeWine name has been dragged in the last couple of years. The twenty-five-year-old Jessica Cutler, who worked in DeWine’s Washington office, created a blog to keep a few of her friends apprised of her promiscuous sex life, which she carried on primarily with family-values espousing Republicans. But her blog leaked all over Washington, and the petite Korean-American, who became known as the “blog slut,” lost her job and got a six-figure book contract, in that order. DeWine’s 35-year-old son Pat may have moved in some of the same gutters as Ms. Cutler. The younger DeWine left his pregnant wife and two children for a Republican lobbyist whom he had been having an affair with and whom he had the chutzpah subsequently to campaign with. “Pat and Girlfriend on the Campaign Trail.” Not only that, DeWine was accused by a political rival of having changed his vote on tax breaks for a company that had hired his girlfriend. 

Pat DeWine has shown about as much loyalty to those who elected him as he did to the woman who married him. First, he was elected to the City Council, where he served his constituents without distinction. “Then,” according to Michael Altman in the online Queen City Forum Magazine (queencityforum.com), “DeWine jumps ship and runs for County Commission, where he wins and—after being sworn in six months ago—jumps to the next level again to run for Congress in the special election . . .” His political rise from City Council to County Commission to Congressional candidate was accomplished with the help of financial contributions from friends of his father, the senator. “There is a boatload of money fronting a guy who has never done anything to merit a seat in Congress,” the Queen City Forum blogger observed. “Republican PAC’s across the country contributed big bucks to Pat DeWine’s campaign for the Hamilton County Commission, knowing of course that it was just a stepping stone for higher office, and it was a way to stay in the good graces of Senator DeWine.” 

Peter Bronson in the Cincinnati Enquirer wondered aloud whether DeWine and his far-flung Republican PAC supporters had the inside scoop that Rob "Porkman" was going to resign his congressional seat, creating an electoral opportunity for the junior DeWine. Bronson asked rhetorically, “Did Washington PACs know DeWine was already planning to run for Congress, before Rep. Rob Portman was nominated as U.S. trade representative, opening the Second District slot?” The answer is fairly obvious. In the stock market, this is called insider trading and is against the law. In politics it is called helping the son of an influential senator and is apparently legal. The distinction seems slight, like the difference between slot and slut.

According to the Enquirer, Pat DeWine raised far more money than his rivals in his campaign for the congressional seat to be vacated by Porkman. But just last Tuesday, in the June 14th special election, DeWine finished a dismal 4th. That was no surprise, for neither Mike DeWine nor his son Pat are currently popular among conservative Republicans in the recently gerrymandered Second Congressional District. To loosely paraphrase a Second District Republican who wanted no part of father or son, the DeWinesap didn't fall far from the tree.
So Clayton Johnson, Neal Hatcher, and the other pork merchants of Portsmouth have backed another politician of questionable morals and ethics, only to lose badly at the polls again, just as they did when they backed Portsmouth Mayor Greg Bauer, who was recalled last June, by a margin of two to one, in spite of the big bucks spent to keep him in office. Portsmouth’s pork merchants did not back Bauer and Pat DeWine because of that hapless pair's penchant for the gutter, but because they expected them to continue the tawdry tradition of funneling public funds into the Portsmouth area, funds ostensibly appropriated for the economically disadvantaged but that end up in the pockets of those who make up the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership.
The defeat of Bauer and now Pat DeWine may reflect the inability of big bucks, in this age of blogging and Googling, to control the news and buy elections. The Portsmouth Daily Times continues to launder the news, the way drug dealers do money, but gutter politics and the corruption of local government are being reported on by people with candid cameras and computers, even if they are not by uncrusading reporters, and that should give us hope.

Feldman Followup

Why City Council Fired Feldman

On March 18th I published a blog on Barry Feldman, who was fired as Portsmouth's City Manager back in 1980. Since then I have received several emails from people in the Hartford, Connecticut, area, who say the events in Portsmouth twenty-five years ago are eerily similar to those that are taking place today. Feldman is once again involved in a mall controversy and is being accused of many of the same underhanded things he was in 1980. The folks in Hartford have asked me to provide them with more particulars, which I will now try to do. What follows are the 14 reasons the Portsmouth City Council gave for removing Feldman from office. They were reported on the front page of the October 20, 1980, Portsmouth Daily Times, with the headline, "Council's Bill of Particulars in Suspension."

- It is the opinion of the City Council that you have failed to comply with the duties set forth in the Portsmouth City Charter and the applicable sections of the Ohio Revised Code, in that you have not faithfully executed the laws and ordinances of the city and state and that you have acted in other ways which cause displeasure to the Council.

- You have failed to demonstrate the qualities of impartial leadership expected of the city's chief executive.

- You have not supplied members of the City Council with proper fiscal figures within the time requirements and with the necessary information concerning the financial status of the city as outlined in the Portsmouth City Charter and the Ohio Revised Code.

- You have not handled personnel recruitment for the city in a proper, dignified manner.

- You have publicly claimed responsibility for local achievements which were in process or provided for by existing plans prior to your employment.

- You have not kept City Council adequately advised of the financial condition of the city.

- You have not conducted the city's business with other officials in such a manner as to cultivate good business relationships with the city.

- You have not administered the programs and departments of the city in a fashion which is most beneficial to the citizens of Portsmouth.

- You have failed to provide adequate information to the Council necessary for Council to carry out its duties.

- You have actively concerned yourself with the qualifications of the members of City Council
and have indicated an inability to confine yourself to the administrative and executive duties prescribed by law.

- You have expended public funds in ways which were not authorized by the City Council.

- You have acted discourteously toward certain members of the Council, which has resulted in a loss of cooperative effort between the administrative and legislative divisions of the city government.

- You have not kept Council adequately informed as to the current status of the affairs of the city.

- You do not have the confidence of a majority of the members of the City Council.

Headline announcing Feldman's firing

Spats and Anthrax

a lethal anthrax molecule

Two events last week, and the way they were covered in the Portsmouth Daily Times, may be examples of the way in which that newspaper occasionally reverts to its previous practice of manipulating the news and controlling the way its readers perceive local events. The Daily Times was not quite the official organ of the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce and the SOGP porkers, but it was close to it. Without their advertising revenue, the steadily shrinking newspaper could not survive. If a Daily Times reporter dared to try to do the kind of investigative reporting that led the Toledo Blade to expose the scheme by which a prominent political fundraiser and rare coin collector allegedly swindled the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation of millions,* that reporter would soon be looking for another job. Instead of uncovering corruption or incompetence in Scioto County, the Daily Times is more likely to gloss it over, if not cover it up.

Which gets me back to the Daily Times reporting on two events last week, at both of which I was present and therefore know something about firsthand. The first was the Portsmouth City Council meeting, last Monday evening. In recent weeks, councilman Marty Mohr has attempted to change the existing format of council meetings so that citizens cannot speak on items not on the agenda. Instead of focusing on this unusual and even extraordinary effort to restrict free speech, and on Mohr’s earlier dissing of citizens in the council chamber as “crap,” the Daily Times has focused on the protests that Mohr’s insult and his attempt to restrict free speech has prompted. In other words, the Daily Times has made the protests, and not what provoked them, the story.

The May 25th front-page story on the May 23rd council meeting was headlined, “Spats Disrupt Council.” The opening paragraph reads, “Even though it’s hard to find common ground for City Council members and some vocal citizens, they agree that recent disturbances during meetings are not conducive to business.” Jeff Barron closes his report by quoting Mohr and Baughman. Mohr said, “We have an extremely small group of people who enjoy bashing people at meetings, on the Internet and in their newspaper (Shawnee Sentinel).” Barron gives Baughman the last word in the story. “I think the atmosphere discourages outside investment,” Baughman said, “because there has to be an atmosphere of trust.”

Baughman repeats one of the favorite Chamber of Commerce myths of the last quarter of a century, which is that a few people “discourage outside investment [in Portsmouth],” to use his phrase. Twenty-five years ago, according to this myth, three malicious councilmen condemned Portsmouth to another quarter century of economic stagnation by opposing the building of a downtown mall. Two of those councilmen are no longer alive to defend themselves, but one of them, Harold Daub is, and not coincidentally Daub is being cast as the chief culprit of the city council disturbances that are allegedly discouraging outside investment. Daub is being cast as the Darth Vader of Spat Wars. Daub’s behavior at the May 23rd council meeting was not disruptive. I was there. I saw and heard. Daub spoke to the council at the appropriate time, and calmly, but he dared to mention a council member by name, which has become an ejectionable offense according to the imperious standards of deportment set by the dictatorial Baughman and Mohr. Daub was commanded to leave the Municipal Building, and I’ve heard of people who were not there circulating stories he was out of control. The Mauling of Harold Daub continues.

The other event that may have been slanted by the Daily Times occurred on March 24th, the night after the council meeting. It occurred on the Shawnee State campus.

SSU's Massie Hall: Scene of the "Anthrax" Evacuation

Unlike the “spat” at the council meeting, at which there were a Daily Times reporter and an editor, and about thirty-five citizens, there was no one from the newspaper at what I will call the "Anthrax" Evacuation, judging by the way the Daily Times reported the story. Having been part of it, I thought that the Anthrax Evacuation was the biggest local story of the day, if not the week, and maybe the month, but the Daily Times put the story on page 3 of the same May 25th paper that had the “Spats Disrupt Council” story on the front page. The small story on page 3 is an Associated Press, not a Daily Times story, and the unrevealing and possibly obfuscating headline for it was “White Substance Found at SSU.” White substance? Snow? Cocaine? Why the reluctance to mention in the headline the "A" word, which is what the whole panic was about?

Associated Press story on page 3 of Daily Times (5/25/05)

Well, of course, how can finding a white substance on campus possibly compete for front-page coverage with a spat at city council? That headline – “White Substance Found at SSU” – may speak volumes for what the Daily Times, and possibly SSU, did not want to publicize about the Anthrax Evacuation, which involved hundreds of students and faculty, as well as more police and police cruisers than I have ever seen at one Portsmouth scene. The potentially tragic Anthrax Evacuation has such possibly revealing and important elements, as well as curious and embarrassing sidelights, that most reporters at most newspapers (certainly those at the Toledo Blade) would love to be assigned to it. But I think no Daily Times reporter has yet written one word on the Anthrax Evacuation. Why not? Writing about council spats apparently has a higher priority.

But I don't think the Anthrax Evacuation story will be buried. Somebody, either because of negligence or misplaced public relations priorities, may have risked the lives of hundreds of people. However, rather than speculate further, I will wait until SSU or public authorities release more facts, facts that Daily Times reporters should be digging up. But in order to do that they need at least temporarily to devote less time to perpetuating the myth that a very small number of citizens, by speaking out at council meetings and writing in the Shawnee Sentinel, are maliciously preventing the economic revival of Portsmouth, and more time to exposing the incompetence and corruption that give Portsmouth a bad name and impede its economic recovery.

*For more on the Toledo Blade story, click on:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage

Automaniac

Marty Mohr Mugging for Moe

City Council meetings are turning into the Marty Mohr Show. Is this how Jerry Springer, former mayor of Cincinnati, got his start in show business? Mohr’s mugging for the camera when "Moe" Ferguson caught him red-handed at the illegal pre-meeting meeting in the city clerk’s office shows how much contempt and defiance Mohr has for a free press and the public it serves.

Mohr is Ward 6 councilman and owner of Automania, the car radio business. If nothing else, last night’s May 23rd meeting of the Portsmouth City Council showed that there are some citizens who are not going to take any Mohr crap sitting down. Objecting to his attempts to stifle free speech at the council meetings, the same citizens whom the crapulous (i.e., intemperate) Mohr at an earlier meeting had called “crap” dared to stand up at last night’s meeting and say they objected to his motion to eliminate free speech, which got them ejected from the meeting.

Probably infuriated by the rumors of his adultery circulating on local chat rooms, Mohr seems determined to deny citizens the right to say anything at council meetings. If citizens attending last night’s meeting so much as mentioned the name of a councilman in their remarks to council, in any context, Mohr called them out of order and instructed police to eject them from the Municipal Building. His response seems as irrational as it is ineffective, because his attempt to change council rules and eliminate the part of the meeting allowing citizens to speak on items not on the agenda failed by a vote of 4 to 2.

Judging by how he conducted himself in the rest of last night’s meeting, Mohr must have been incensed by the 4 to 2 vote. He had succeeded in instigating a disorder that he could then use to justify stifling free speech, but four other councilmen did not buy his argument. Councilman Malone wisely declined to be defended by the undemocratic duo of Baughman and Mohr, saying he was quite capable of defending himself, and he did not need to stifle free speech to do it.

While citizens speak during the non-item segment of city council meetings, Mohr, unlike other council members, avoids looking at them, in a studied show of disrespect. As a political ally, the smarmy Baughman has indulged Mohr’s dictatorial tendencies, and excused his crapulousness, but Baughman is clearly eager to move on to other business. Mohr is out of order. By turning meetings into the Marty Mohr Show, he is interfering with the council’s normal business of mulcting the public. How does he expect the fraudulent Marting’s deal to be completed if he continues to incite disorder?

Little Reichstag Fires

Freedom of Speech (1943) by Norman Rockwell

“Lies.” That's the only word I can apply to the case that councilmen Howard Baughman and Marty Mohr have made to justify their attempt to deny citizens the opportunity to address the Portsmouth City Council on items not on the agenda, which citizens have been able to do for many years. Baughman and Mohr are trying their hardest to suppress the views of the informed citizens who attend council meetings and occasionally criticize council members, especially Baughman and Mohr themselves. Just how far the two councilmen are willing to go to suppress freedom of speech was evident at the May 9th council meeting, which I attended and which I have also viewed a tape of.

One of the well-informed citizens who addresses the council and occasionally criticizes them is Teresa Mollette. The specific justification that Baughman and Mohr gave for suppressing free speech was her criticism at the April 25th council meeting of councilman David Malone. In comments on the council's inability to handle budgets, Teresa Mollette pointed out that Malone, a councilman who was running for mayor, was not good with budgets. Councilman Malone has some admirable qualities as a public servant, but he is not good with budgets. That is no secret. Like everybody else, he is not perfect. But Mollette's criticism of Malone was not an attack on, or a harassment and an intimidation of, him, as Baughman charged. Nor did Mollette administer a "thrashing" to Malone, as Baughman also alleged.

I was at the April 25th meeting and heard Teresa Mollette address the council. I have since viewed a tape of her comments. She did not attack, harass, intimidate, or thrash Malone, as Baughman claimed. To say that she did is so gross a misrepresentation of what she said and how she said it as to constitute a lie. She was speaking on the failures of the council as a whole in handling budgets. She made a passing reference to councilman Malone because the Daily Times had written that he claimed to be working on balancing the budget. She wasn't singling out Malone; she made it clear she was criticizing the council per se for being penny-wise and pound-foolish in refusing to pay claims by former long-time city employees against the city. She spoke about 3 minutes on the council's budgetary shortcomings; less than half a minute was on Malone.

Baughman and Mohr seem oblivious to the fact that not only is what they and others say at council meetings recorded in the minutes but they are also recorded on tape, by Joe Ferguson, for all to hear and see on his website, Moe's Forum, including body language and facial expressions.

John Welton wrote recently that, “It is becoming more apparent that Sixth Ward City Councilman Marty Mohr is trying his best to cause another political firestorm between the residents of Portsmouth and the City Council.” In a similar vein, Austin Leedom wrote that the Baughman-Mohr attempt to restrict free speech smacked of facism. Firestorm? Fascism? That may strike some as wildly exaggerated. But after sitting through the April 25th and May 9th meetings, as well as earlier ones, I can understand why Leedom and Welton would make these charges.

Let me remind you of a historical parallel. On Feb. 27, 1933, a fire of suspicious origin destroyed the Reichstag, or parliament building, in Berlin. Many historians believe the Reichstag fire was started by the Nazis, who used it as a justification for cracking down on their political opponents and seizing unlimited powers. Remember the city council meeting at which citizens were searched at the door for hidden weapons after a threat was allegedly made against Baughman by someone in a local bar? A reliable source told me that the alleged threat was relayed to authorities by the son of the city clerk. Jo Ann Aeh, the city clerk, has been associated with the Portsmouth City Council since 1980, not long after she and her husband were reportedly welcomed into the Ku Klux Klan by the white supremacist David Duke. The tactics used by supporters of city manager Barry Feldman in 1980 to remove from office three councilmen who were his political opponents resembled the infamous tactics used by the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis to intimidate their opponents.

What we are currently witnessing in Portsmouth is a series of little Reichstag fires to justify a crackdown on free speech and free assembly. Baughman’s characterization of Teresa Mollette’s April 25th remarks to the city council as an attempt to “inflame the environment,” to quote him again, is an example of an effort to light a little Reichstag fire. It is Baughman and Mohr, not Teresa Mollette, who are trying to "inflame the environment."

For example, at one council meeting, Marty Mohr abused his authority as acting president of the city council to angrily denounce "People on the Internet - and I think you all know who you are -- " for spreading rumors in an online chatroom about his having an adulterous affair with a young woman whose name been mentioned in the chatroom. Mohr apparently thought he recognized some of these "People on the Internet" in the front row of the council chambers and he denounced these "gentlemen," as he sarcastically called them, as "crap"; and he said anybody who associated with them were also crap. Since some of these "gentlemen" had wives who were present, the wives naturally took strong exception to his remarks, and pandemonium followed.

No citizen had ever used a council meeting to accuse Mohr of adultery, so why should Mohr use a council meeting to raise such a personal issue and then denounce citizens in the front row as crap? To quote further from Mohr's outburst, he said "Anybody, ANYBODY who'll say anything detrimental to my family, my wife, I will not stand for it!" As I understand it, nobody in the online chatroom had said anything detrimental about Mohr's wife or his family. It was Mohr who was accused of adultery, not his wife or his family, and if he was going to defend anybody at a city council meeting it should not have been his wife or his family but himself. Perhaps it was just an oversight, but he did not deny the adultery charge. Following his outburst, Mohr was reportedly escorted to his car by police. (I listened to Mohr's outburst and the pandemonium that followed it on an audioclip.)

The meeting at which Mohr provoked pandemonium is now being cited as justification for suppressing the right of free speech in public meetings in Portsmouth. Daily Times reporter Jeff Barron recently referred to the disturbances at council meetings as “outbursts,” without pointing out who created the “outbursts.” What those who are attempting to suppress freedom of speech are doing is creating the outbursts that are then used to justify a crackdown on free speech. Baughman characterized Teresa Mollette's mild 26-second criticism of the only African-American council member as a "thrashing." The definition of "thrashing" is to beat with a stick or whip. But it is the erratic Mohr, not Teresa Mollette, who has the reputation of carrying a chip on his shoulder and whip in his hand.

Baughman and Mohr’s ostensible defense of councilman Malone from criticism should be seen for what it is: a cynical attempt to pose as his protectors when it is themselves they are trying to protect. Disappointed as he probably is in his fourth place showing in the mayoral primary, Malone may mistakenly believe Baughman and Mohr are acting on his behalf in making an issue of Teresa Mollette's comments. I believe they are using him for their own political purposes. Baughman and Mohr are the objects of the citizens’ wrath, not Malone, and Malone would be making a serious error if he allows them to use him as an excuse for suppressing free speech.

Baughman and Mohr are laboring under the same illusion those who wield the real power in Portsmouth are laboring under. They think this is twenty-five years ago when the elite had the city manager Barry Feldman in their pocket and controlled the media. They believe they are above criticism and they treat anyone who criticizes them as disturbers of the peace, if not anarchists. Greg Bauer, who was recalled from office last June, had predicted that if he was not retained as mayor Portsmouth would fall into anarchy. Baughman, Mohr and the SOGP crowd they represent are trying by lighting little Reichstag fires to create the impression that Bauer's prophecy is coming true. Because they controlled the news the citizens of Portsmouth got for so long, the elite and their pawns on the council cannot countenance public challenges to their authority. In particular, they cannot stand the freedom of expression and information that the Internet makes possible. They cannot control the Internet, but they continue to try to control public meetings in Portsmouth, setting the conditions and terms under which those meetings take place, in contravention of the spirit of Ohio's Sunshine laws. The attempt to eliminate the opportunity of citizens to address and, yes, to criticize the city council on issues not on the agenda is just part of a wider effort to stifle freedom of speech. Whether they succeed may be decided at the next council meeting, on May 23rd, when another vote is expected on Mohr's motion.

Write-in

In the weeks prior to the mayoral election, I spoke to acquaintances about the slate of candidates. And the prevailing opinion was there was no candidate on the slate worth voting for. “It’s very discouraging,” was one complaint. “I’m sitting this one out,” was another.

My circle of acquaintances is not large, but it is diverse, including some fairly conservative individuals. But liberal or conservative, they said they were disgusted by Portsmouth politics and frustrated by the slim mayoral pickings, so they decided to stay away from the polls on May 3.

What surprised me was not how many decided not to vote but how many expressed regret that Frank Gerlach was not a candidate. Even some Republicans expressed this view, and they said they knew other Republicans who felt the same way. They had not felt that way in the past, but after seven years of Bauer, Gerlach began to look petty good. I don’t claim to know if such feelings are widespread since I am reporting on a fairly small sample. I haven’t seen any “Bring Back Gerlach” bumper stickers.

But I know I felt most of the serious candidates were compromised by their involvement in the corruption of the Bauer years, in particular by the Marting scandal, and they have not done or said anything to lead me to believe they have turned over a new leaf. None of those on the ballot publicly stated they were against making the Marting building the new city hall, but Gerlach has. None of those on the ballot said publicly the current form of city government is inefficient and should be changed, but Gerlach has. None of those on the ballot has said the Municipal Building is worth saving, but Gerlach has. None of those on the ballot has served as the elected mayor of Portsmouth, but Gerlach has.

Unfortunately, Gerlach did not choose to run. Perhaps he believes he has paid his dues and can live without the hassles of public office. Still, I decided I would rather vote for somebody who was qualified but not on the ballot than for any of the unqualified who were. I decided it was a waste of time trying to figure out who was the lesser of several evils. Instead of staying away from the polls, I decided to go and vote for someone I wish had been a candidate.

I was warned that writing in a candidate is complicated. It isn’t. On the inside of the sleeve that holds ballot, there is column for writing in a candidate. All it takes is a pencil. I did my civic duty. I voted, even if it was for someone not on the ballot.