37 Flood - Louisville, KY Music, Art and Social News: May 2019

Today is election day for Kentucky's Primary Election, including the primary election for Governor. I'm sure a lot of people skip the primary, only concerning themselves with the election between Democrat and Republican. Although the past few years has taught us that a two-party system is much like the two sides of the same oligarchical coin. This is especially true locally; with the mayor, Greg Fischer, raiding the city's coffers at a lightning pace for his last term in office; handing our hard earned tax dollars over to his friends in blatant sweetheart landholding deals, such as selling city property well below market value for his friends to immediately flip for handsome profits, and in forgivable loans to developers to gentrify low income neighborhoods pushing Louisville's poor into even worse financial situations.

The most current and disgusting display is the 'Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund' that is supposed to be a city fund to help stop the runaway rental costs in our town, and help overburdened residents stay in their neighborhoods, but is instead the exact opposite; It's become a way for Fischer to hand over city funds to his developer buddies so they can have free money to buy up properties in low income neighborhoods and make a fortune (with our tax dollars) by gentrifying the areas.

It's horrifying the way our city government so unashamedly targets and destroys our lower income citizens for profit; and how the mayor has stopped trying to connivence us he's a nice guy now that he has run out of terms in office and just wants to cash in as many chips as possible before he has to hand the keys back; but after Fischer is gone, there could be a bigger threat: Gill Holland.

I used to equate Holland as the dim-witted sidekick to Fischer that so badly wanted to be Fischer but was more like Pinky to The Brain, or Cooky The Clown to Fischer's Bozo. Fischer, as diabolical as he is, is smart and cunning, and was able to trick us into 3 terms as mayor as he sold every piece and parcel he could of our city funds. Holland, on the other hand, so desperately wants to be the evil genius his hero Fischer is, but is so unbelievably bad at it that he has become the laughing stock of the town.

Lately he seems more like one of those clown punching bags that you can hit as hard as you want and it still eventually stands back up. We have all become too familiar with Holland's failed schemes and self proclaimed importance, that I think we have become anesthetized to his current big boy plans.

He still touts his alleged genius on his websites of gentrifying Downtown, although he really just waltzed in after the gold rush with his wife's checkbook and pushed to change the name of my birthplace to the nonsensical name NULU. But he thought he somehow was the evil genius that displaced hundreds of hardworking Louisvillians (including myself) and sent property rates so high that not even middle income families can afford them. Then he set his sights on Portland and promised everyone he could build an empire there on the backs and in the blood of more lower income Louisville families, and failed miserably. More than 5 years later (We first reported on it in 2013) and even with mountains of money and using every dirty gentrifying trick in the book, He is still trying to connivence us he can do it.

In March of last year it was announced that the city's Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund was handing Holland's Urban Acupuncture company (No joke y'all, that's what he calls it) $1 Million dollars (also no joke) to build a housing complex at 2506 Montgomery Ave in Portland. Of course Holland likes to pretend that he is some do-gooding altruistic savior trying to help the people he is destroying. The motto of his company is "Doing Well By Doing Good." No joke, but still very laughable on both accounts.

We aren't surprised when rich privileged guys do really awful things; but why do they always have to act like they are wonderful saviors worthy of praise and thanks? That's what really gets me. They push hundreds of Louisvillians into homeless camps by making the cost of living unattainable and then bulldoze the camps in the middle of winter, and then throw a press conference about how compassionate and wonderful they are.

Fischer said of the new affordable housing project "When families are cost-burdened by their rent, they have to give up other things like time with children, food or other essentials. The allocation by LAHTF will open housing opportunities for people who need them."

But in reality he gave forgivable loans to Holland who plans to rent one bedroom units at a little over $1,000 per month. The current median household income in Portland is $25,851. Which means he wants to rent apartments that go for 50% of the annual income of a family in that area. Which really means this isn't for existing Portland residents. This is designed to gentrify the area and drive up rents beyond what the existing population can afford. And this isn't being done with private money, but public (our) money allocated for "affordable housing" which means the city government is actively sponsoring the income gap and overburdening working families in Louisville.

So Fischer is a smart bad guy that figured out how to clean out the city money; Holland gets this money but is pretty bad at what he does and flounders most of the time. But that's the problem with privileged guys with money; it doesn't matter how bad they are at something when they have endless funds to keep doing damage.

Remember when Holland ran for city council in 2016? Probably not since he did really poorly in it.
And by the way he was representing District 16; which is not the district where Portland is located (where he claims to be helping), but the district where Norton Commons is located, the neighborhood that so famously tried to stop anyone who made less than $50k a year from living in (further speaking to Holland's motives of revitalizing poor neighborhoods). But he couldn't even connivence a bunch of classist monsters that he could crush the lower classes into submission.

But such the punching bag that he is; He got back up on his feet and kept going. He doesn't seem to mind that his attempts to be important are met with bemusement or outright laughter; He just wants it so bad. So it was no surprise to see he is running for Lieutenant Governor under Adam Edelen. Didn't know he was running? No surprise, he hasn't seemed to be all that great at campaigning.

But the issue is that he is trying to sneak in under someone else's coat. And If he can siphon millions from the city's funds now by sucking up to Fischer, imagine the damage he could do as Lieutenant Governor. This guy wants to be important so bad that he has actually listed wanting to be Lieutenant Governor as viable experience on his Linkedin page!

Laughable I know, but someone this delusional could really make life more difficult for the working families in Kentucky (Look no further than Trump for proof on that). And we can't risk that. As proud Kentuckians it is our duty to look after our own, not watch them be exploited by power hungry classists.

So I am urging you today to please go vote, and please vote for anyone at all that you think won't be a punishment to working families. We have learned that privileged millionaires don't have our best interests in mind; and that they seem to not really have a right mind at all, no matter if they call themselves Republican or Democrat. If we wait until the General election then it becomes a race of picking the least horrible privileged guy; but if we get Gillzo The Clown out of the Democratic race now, it won't be so much of a faustian bargain in the general.