Month: January 2005

Categories
News The Fly-By

Bouncing Back

The smile is the same, the rotund waistline is the same, the store is the same … almost. It’s as if Jim Fleming never left the furniture business after a 2001 bankruptcy closed his once-thriving company of eight stores. Just like a firm mattress, Fleming has bounced back in business with the help of friends and family.

In August, Fleming reopened one of his former Fleming Fine Furniture stores in the Perimeter Mall on Summer Avenue. Operating as Fleming Furniture Direct, the new venture is funded by the partnership DavCor LLC — Fleming’s friend Rick Davis along with an unidentified family member. According to the furniture veteran, financing offered by other backers was unnecessary, because he was able to open the store on a “shoestring.” The project was also assisted by the location’s landlord, Belz Enterprises.

“I had been traveling the road for about a year as a national sales manager for a bedroom line and got a call offering to help put me back in business,” said Fleming. “Things just fell into place.” The vacant store was still there with the fixtures in place, and, according to Fleming, “We really didn’t have to do a lot of remodeling. It was the grace of God that this worked.”

Whether grace or financial assistance, the store opened with Fleming as general manager, along with a staff of fewer than 10. Fleming previously employed as many as 220 workers, including 80 warehouse personnel. The new store operates as a “furniture direct” location, displaying individual factory samples for immediate sale, instead of stocking items in a company-owned warehouse. The change has eliminated almost 30 percent of overhead costs.

Another change is the store’s television commercials, which helped make the Fleming family a household name. Since the opening, commercials have only aired on one local station. When customer response from that advertising campaign overwhelmed the small staff, plans for additional segments on other stations were delayed.

The company’s financial situation is better than before, said Fleming. But returning to the market was not without its difficulties. Although the Fleming Fine Furniture company was dissolved after the bankruptcy, the reputation as a failed business remained.

“Some furniture companies were leery about dealing with us, and we understood that,” said Fleming. “But after years of being in business, we had others that were glad to do business with us.”

Since the bankruptcy, Fleming’s son and former business partner, Chris, has left the business for a mortgage company in Florida. Fleming’s wife has also returned to her previous employment in the medical industry.

The smaller furniture company has been a revival of sorts for Fleming, who always prided himself on customer service and satisfaction.

“I really like greeting the customers as they come through the door, something I wasn’t able to do with eight locations,” he said. “I’m here almost every day, but I enjoy it and wouldn’t think of doing anything else.” •

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

A Survivor Stumbles — Again

If William B. Tanner is convicted of bribing the late Chancellor Floyd Peete Jr., his punishment should be confinement to a tropical paradise with two other people, $1 million, a couple of lawyers, and a video camera to record them making each other miserable.

Tanner was playing Survivor long before reality television. Forty years ago, he made his first million when a million still meant something. He was 34.

He made millions more over the years. At age 74, he should be enjoying the fruits of his labor, his family, his hard-won health, and the satisfactions of giving some of his fortune away, maybe to search for new treatments for the cancer that plagues him.

Instead, he is under indictment for the second time in 20 years, charged with bribing a judge to win a nasty, six-year dispute over — what else? — money. Both indictments stemmed from multimillion-dollar sales of Tanner companies that ought to have been career highlights. Now Peete has his reputation besmirched but can’t do anything about it. He died of a heart attack in 2002, a year after ruling in Tanner’s favor. Tanner gets to spend his gold and golden years fighting an indictment and haggling with lawyers and could go to prison for up to six years if convicted.

If there was ever a reminder that money can be both a blessing and a curse, this is it. Tanner and his ex-partner Jerry Peck fell out shortly after joining forces in the billboard business in 1992. Peck had the know-how and the political contacts. Tanner had the capital and the salesmanship and, among other things, the billboard rights along U.S. Highway 61 in DeSoto County. Casinos were coming to Tunica, and road signs were as precious as slot machines.

But one should not enter into a competitive enterprise with Tanner without a jock strap and an opinion from the United States Supreme Court, preferably unanimous. He thrives on competition and hardship and has been doing it since growing up in the Missouri Bootheel during the Depression.

The Tanner-Peck business succeeded but the partnership failed. In 1996, Tanner sold the company to Universal Outdoor Advertising for $71 million. Peck claimed he owned 5 percent of the business with an option entitling him to as much as 49 percent. Tanner disagreed.

Seventy-one million dollars would seem to be enough for both of them. They could have split the difference. They could have cut cards. They could have had a fistfight and a beer and shook hands and moved on. Instead, they called their lawyers.

The case dragged on for five years, filling folder after folder and eventually a filing cabinet at Chancery Court with documents, depositions, claims, and counterclaims. If scholars ever do a case study of the human psychosis that enables lawyers to charge $250 an hour, this would make a good start.

The case came to trial in 2001, starting in March and ending in May. Peete ruled in Tanner’s favor in October 2001, concluding that there was no partnership at all, and Peck was entitled to nothing. But Tanner wasn’t through. He wanted attorney fees as well. In November, Peete ruled that Peck had to pay Tanner’s lawyers $719,586.

In August 2002, Peete died at a vacation home in Florida, reportedly of a heart attack. Peck appealed to the Court of Appeals as rumblings began that the fix was in. People familiar with the case say the main accuser was someone close to Peete’s family and that the bribes included credit card charges, travel and vacations, and money for a Peete family member to start a business. Sources would only speak anonymously, taking their cue from the one-paragraph indictment and Shelby County district attorney Bill Gibbons, whose only comment was that “this type of crime attacks the integrity of our judicial system.”

Gibbons ordered the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to look into the accusations in May 2003. In light of the findings, Peete’s ruling was negated. The appeals courts sent the case back to the trial court, which booted it to the Tennessee Supreme Court. It could be heard as early as April, according to appellate court clerk Susan Turner.

Peete was elected chancellor in 1990. In 1999, he was overruled by the Court of Appeals on a case in which he favored Penn National Gaming’s efforts to start a horseracing track in Memphis even though the Tennessee Racing Commission had been abolished and Gibbons had vowed to oppose it. In 2003, the appellate court overruled Peete’s 2002 decision in favor of developer Rusty Hyneman in a divorce case. Tanner and Hyneman were business partners in an aborted hotel project on Beale Street in 2003. •

Categories
Book Features Books

Tour of Duty

The Ha-Ha

By Dave King

Little, Brown, 340 pp., $23.95

• the off-chance you don’t know, a ha-ha’s no laughing matter. It’s a retaining wall sunk in a ditch. Seen one way, it keeps farm animals — cows, sheep — in their place, away from the main house. Seen the opposite way, it offers the homeowner an unbroken view across his property. In short, it’s an illusion, a lie of the landscape.

In Dave King’s accomplished debut novel, the ha-ha’s no laughing matter either. It’s on the grounds of a convent in some unnamed Midwestern city, and it’s a dangerous opportunity for army veteran Howard Kapostash, the grounds-keeper, to go right over the edge. He may thrill to feeling airborne on his riding mower as he climbs the ha-ha’s bank, but at its height he risks toppling into the traffic of the highway below. He’s got his reasons to risk it though.

Back when Howie was drafted at the age of 18, and only 16 days into his tour of Vietnam, his guiding lieutenant (who was stoned) wandered off to look at a flower and stepped on a land mine, which killed the lieutenant, injured another soldier, and sent Howie (also stoned) flying, then crashing with a hematoma in his left temporal lobe. He was in a coma. Then he was in rehab, but he gave up on therapy when he failed to make real progress after years of trying. Today, decades later, he’s off the acid he used to drop, but he still can’t remember properly (anomia), he still can’t read or write properly (alexia), and he still can’t speak properly (the product of adynamia). He also suffers from a deep dislike of confrontation and “emotional volatility” — a distinct disadvantage for this self-described “king of control.” Weightless on that convent’s John Deere (and toying with suicide on that ha-ha) is about the one thrill the guy’s got left in life. It sure beats having to handle Sylvia Mohr.

Sylvia’s a real user — of cocaine and of anybody mistaken enough to respond to her incessant whining and unpredictable mood swings. She’s also an ex-artist with a mean streak and Howie’s one and only ex-girlfriend from high school. (Never mind his subsequent history hiring cut-rate hookers.)

When Sylvia is forced by her sister in Chicago into drug rehab, her 9-year-old, fatherless, semi-African-American son, Ryan, needs a home and an adult on hand. Howie’s the man, and for two months his household’s the place. Laurel (who rents a room from Howie) is the fortysomething Vietnamese-turned-Texan who heads the kitchen and makes sure the bills get paid. Harrison and Steve (aka Nit and Nat, or is it Nat and Nit?) are the thirtysomething house-painters (“not bad people, just stupid and untested,” according to Howie), who rent the remaining bedrooms. But Ryan is Howie’s to look after — forget the scary scar sunk in Howie’s forehead, forget Howie’s unintelligible barkings and wordless gesturings, and forget that Ryan is equally, initially uncommunicative and given to angry outbursts.

There’s more and it’s worse, however: flashbacks to Howie’s deceased alcoholic father (his mother a shadowy figure); Howie’s run-in with Sister Amity after he jeopardizes the life of Ryan on that riding mower; Howie’s run-in with a homeless Vietnam vet, a man Howie in one scene beats to a bloody pulp and in a subsequent scene scares into the path of an oncoming car; Howie’s multiple run-ins with Sylvia, who, even out of rehab, remains a real piece of work; and Howie’s brief run-in with the law and a team of clueless pyschiatrists. Thank God, then, for Ryan’s Little League baseball team, which does both boy and man some temporary good. Thank Laurel too for seeing through to Howie’s better nature, which is kindness itself … Howie the end product of some very raw deals. Howie the dreamer and something of a poet.

Author Dave King sets himself a tough task measuring out this much high drama inside one first-time novel. Not the least of his difficulties is leading off with a character who cannot make his good intentions known despite his buried rage against those whose burdens, he thinks, are lighter than his own. The frustration is Howie’s, but it’s readers’ too.

Ours as well: America the unbeautiful unable or unwilling to face the scar of Vietnam on a generation entering into middle age amid broken families and newfangled families. In The Ha-Ha, no joke, it’s the well-rendered lay of the land. •

BOOKS by LEONARD GILL

Tour of Duty

A damaged veteran and a fatherless boy in America the unbeautiful.

The Ha-Ha

By Dave King

Little, Brown, 340 pp., $23.95

• the off-chance you don’t know, a ha-ha’s no laughing matter. It’s a retaining wall sunk in a ditch. Seen one way, it keeps farm animals — cows, sheep — in their place, away from the main house. Seen the opposite way, it offers the homeowner an unbroken view across his property. In short, it’s an illusion, a lie of the landscape.

In Dave King’s accomplished debut novel, the ha-ha’s no laughing matter either. It’s on the grounds of a convent in some unnamed Midwestern city, and it’s a dangerous opportunity for army veteran Howard Kapostash, the grounds-keeper, to go right over the edge. He may thrill to feeling airborne on his riding mower as he climbs the ha-ha’s bank, but at its height he risks toppling into the traffic of the highway below. He’s got his reasons to risk it though.

Back when Howie was drafted at the age of 18, and only 16 days into his tour of Vietnam, his guiding lieutenant (who was stoned) wandered off to look at a flower and stepped on a land mine, which killed the lieutenant, injured another soldier, and sent Howie (also stoned) flying, then crashing with a hematoma in his left temporal lobe. He was in a coma. Then he was in rehab, but he gave up on therapy when he failed to make real progress after years of trying. Today, decades later, he’s off the acid he used to drop, but he still can’t remember properly (anomia), he still can’t read or write properly (alexia), and he still can’t speak properly (the product of adynamia). He also suffers from a deep dislike of confrontation and “emotional volatility” — a distinct disadvantage for this self-described “king of control.” Weightless on that convent’s John Deere (and toying with suicide on that ha-ha) is about the one thrill the guy’s got left in life. It sure beats having to handle Sylvia Mohr.

Sylvia’s a real user — of cocaine and of anybody mistaken enough to respond to her incessant whining and unpredictable mood swings. She’s also an ex-artist with a mean streak and Howie’s one and only ex-girlfriend from high school. (Never mind his subsequent history hiring cut-rate hookers.)

When Sylvia is forced by her sister in Chicago into drug rehab, her 9-year-old, fatherless, semi-African-American son, Ryan, needs a home and an adult on hand. Howie’s the man, and for two months his household’s the place. Laurel (who rents a room from Howie) is the fortysomething Vietnamese-turned-Texan who heads the kitchen and makes sure the bills get paid. Harrison and Steve (aka Nit and Nat, or is it Nat and Nit?) are the thirtysomething house-painters (“not bad people, just stupid and untested,” according to Howie), who rent the remaining bedrooms. But Ryan is Howie’s to look after — forget the scary scar sunk in Howie’s forehead, forget Howie’s unintelligible barkings and wordless gesturings, and forget that Ryan is equally, initially uncommunicative and given to angry outbursts.

There’s more and it’s worse, however: flashbacks to Howie’s deceased alcoholic father (his mother a shadowy figure); Howie’s run-in with Sister Amity after he jeopardizes the life of Ryan on that riding mower; Howie’s run-in with a homeless Vietnam vet, a man Howie in one scene beats to a bloody pulp and in a subsequent scene scares into the path of an oncoming car; Howie’s multiple run-ins with Sylvia, who, even out of rehab, remains a real piece of work; and Howie’s brief run-in with the law and a team of clueless pyschiatrists. Thank God, then, for Ryan’s Little League baseball team, which does both boy and man some temporary good. Thank Laurel too for seeing through to Howie’s better nature, which is kindness itself … Howie the end product of some very raw deals. Howie the dreamer and something of a poet.

Author Dave King sets himself a tough task measuring out this much high drama inside one first-time novel. Not the least of his difficulties is leading off with a character who cannot make his good intentions known despite his buried rage against those whose burdens, he thinks, are lighter than his own. The frustration is Howie’s, but it’s readers’ too.

Ours as well: America the unbeautiful unable or unwilling to face the scar of Vietnam on a generation entering into middle age amid broken families and newfangled families. In The Ha-Ha, no joke, it’s the well-rendered lay of the land. •

=

Categories
News The Fly-By

C.A. SAY WHAT?

On January 6th, The Commercial Appeal ran as its main front-page story a piece subtitled, “God grants wish to reunite husband and wife in death.” The Fly was shocked to discover that the CA reporter did not confirm her report with the Supreme Being or with ranking members of the Heavenly Host. This kind of shoddy reporting is to be expected from the supermarket tabloids, but not from the Mid-South’s paper of record. So what’s next for the CA?

— Chris Davis

Plante: How It Looks

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

WILDER LEAVES DEMS IN CONTROL OF SENATE

As it turned out, John Wilder did less blinking in the eyeball-to-eyball

confrontation with state Senate Republicans than they did. Having gained

reelection on Tuesday as Senate speaker (and, therefore, as Lt. Governor)

despite their one-vote majority in the chamber, Wilder deigned on Thursday not

to honor an on-again, off-again commitment to give the GOP majority status among

committee chairmen nor in the membership of two key committees.

At the end of the day Democrats still headed five of the body’s nine

committees– the same ones as before, in fact. Most importantly, Finance and

Commerce, the two blue-chip committees, remained in Democratic hands, chaired by

Doug Henry of Nashville and Jerry Cooper of Morrison, respectively. Finance and

Commerce also retained their previous Democratic majorities. The sole concession

made to the Senate Republicans by Wilder was to give them majority status on the

remaining seven committees.

Wilder had won reelection with the aid of two Republican votes– those of

Micheal Williams of Maynardville and Tim Burchett of Knoxville. Williams had,

late in the game, become a lateral substitution of sorts of Memphis senator

Curtis Person, a longtime Wilder loyalist who voted with the majority of his

partymates Tuesday to name Ron Ramsey of Bluntville to the speakership. Person

contended that Wilder had reneged on a pledge to appoint across-the-board GOP

majorities, and Wilder more or less confirmed that fact. Person retained his

chairmanship of Judiciary, all the same.

Two newly appointed Republican chairs are Mark Norris of Memphisw,

Transportation, and freshman senator Jamie Hagood of Knoxville, Education.

Hagood had been the subject of much pre-session speculation as a possible

reserve GOP vote for Wilder.

The complete list of Senate chairs announced Thursday by Wilder is as

follows.

á

Commerce – Chairman Jerry Cooper,

D-Morrison.

á

Environment and Conservation – Chairman David Fowler, R-Signal

Mountain.

á

Education – Chairman Jamie Hagood, R-Knoxville.

á

Finance – Chairman Douglas Henry,

D-Nashville.

á

General Welfare – Chairman John Ford,

D-Memphis.

á

Judiciary – Chairman Curtis Person,

R-Memphis.

á

Transportation – Chairman Mark Norris,

R-Collierville.

áá

Government

Operations – Chairman Thelma Harper, D-Nashville.

á

State and Local

Government – Chairman Steve Cohen, D-Memphis.

Categories
News

FROM MY SEAT: De ANGELO’S COMING BAAAAAACK!

FAITH RESTORED

It had been a gloomy week for University of Memphis sports. But it all changed at precisely 1 pm Friday afternoon on the second floor of the U of M’s Athletic Office Building.

Facing a crowd of family, friends, boosters, students, and media types, DeAngelo Williams — the greatest player in the history of Tiger football and holder of every rushing record the book can fit — approached a podium laden with microphones and recorders to announce whether or not he would enter this spring’s National Football League draft. (When he accidentally knocked a recorder to the floor, one wise guy cut the tension by shouting “Fumble!”) Williams opened his comments by thanking the entire Memphis community for its patience. Then the fun began.

Spoke the junior tailback, “I’m going to forego my NFL career . . . .” However Williams finished this sentence no one will ever know, for “Ode to Joy” might as well have been playing. Williams is blessed with a smile that puts Magic Johnson’s to shame, but at this time in Memphis football history, in this room, he had a run for his money from all attendees, young, old, and in between.

Why come back for another year of college, with all that money on the table in the pros? Williams’s answers seemed to come out of a Frank Merriwell novel. “It was a very difficult, but easy decision . . . . It came down to the NFL vs. the city of Memphis, and the city of Memphis won, hands down . . . . I could gain a lot by going to the NFL, but I’d lose a lot by leaving Memphis.” Williams noted conversations he’s had with former Tigers now in the pro ranks like Jimond Pugh and Isaac Bruce, chats where he’s been left with the impression that pro football is fun . . . but a business. And he enjoys the fun that comes almost around the clock with being a college football star. “I like meeting people in class,” he said between smiles. “I like walking out of the tunnel, seeing the kids, signing autographs, running through the Tiger . . . when it’s inflatable.” (When his pro career is done someday, the man might try some stand-up comedy. That smile’s an ice-breaker and then some.)

According to Williams, no one — not even his mother, Sandra Hill, in attendance at the press conference — knew of his decision until he spoke into the microphones. But it was his mother, one has to believe, who wound up with the biggest impact on the choice. “My mom really wanted me to come back and get my degree,” he stressed. “I made a promise to her before I came to college. I knew her wanting me to return wasn’t about the Heisman.”

Ah, yes. The Heisman. Sport’s most fabled trophy will be at the center of discussion for the rest of Williams’s days as a Tiger. The front runners for the 2005 trophy will certainly be Oklahoma tailback Adrian Peterson and Texas quarterback Vince Young. Williams will enter the fall with 4,062 career yards and 41 touchdowns, more than enough resume to place him among the top five candidates. But if he doesn’t score a single touchdown in 2005, he’s already won, as has the University of Memphis.

“He’s mature beyond his years,” summarized coach Tommy West, himself at the podium after hearing the announcement. “I’m so proud of DeAngelo’s approach to this decision. We spent hours and hours together . . . I’m sick of him right now.” More laughter. When pressed about which way West thought his star was leaning, the coach quipped, “I had a real strong feeling that he would do one or the other.”

More Merriwell from the guest of honor: “I asked myself, have I done everything I can possibly do for the University of Memphis? I want to keep developing friendships with the fans and the players on the team.”

I got about 30 seconds with Williams after he completed his formal remarks. I asked if he had ever made this many people this happy . . . without his shoulder pads on. “No,” he replied through one more cheek-splitting smile. “But it sure feels good.”

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Dying Is Hard

Just stand there and look dispossessed” are the instructions film extra Jake Quinn passes on to his mate Charlie Conlon. And as the cameras go by, both men lean on their imaginary sod-cutters, mouths agape, eyes hollow and hungry. The hyper-real irony, of course, is that Jake and Charlie, like all the residents of Ireland’s County Kerry, are already quite dispossessed. Poverty is widespread, and a hopeless depression has spread across the countryside like a thick Irish fog. Only the whiskey, pints, drugs, and a wistful nostalgia for the good old days keep the general population from drowning itself in the river. These days, County Kerry’s only useful as the backdrop for sprawling Hollywood dramas with fake happy endings. And since the glamorous cast and cocaine-sniffing crew of The Quiet Valley showed up with costumes, lights, and ready cash in tow, that’s exactly what it has become.

Marie Jones’ dark but giddy comedy Stones in His Pockets, which opened last weekend at Theatre Memphis, is an occasionally, though not entirely, brilliant look at the corrosive nature of American pop culture — and Hollywood culture in particular. Imagine David Mamet’s State and Main set in the Irish countryside, and you’ll get some notion of the tone and tempo.

Stones has a gimmick as well. Two actors play every role: 15 between them. By changing their voices, accents, and posture, Memphis stage veterans Michael Gravois and Tony Isbell effectively play starlets, producers, grips, and a village full of memorable characters. Isbell’s portrayal of Old Mickey, the last surviving extra from John Wayne’s The Quiet Man, is by turns heartbreaking and hysterical as he stares down the possibility of a funeral without whiskey. Gravois also presents a number of well-defined characters but is best as Charlie Conlon, a bankrupt but seemingly unbreakable spirit with big Hollywood dreams and dark, well-hidden despair.

Everybody is related in County Kerry, and when Sean Harkin, a hometown-boy-turned-druggie walks into the river with his pockets full of rocks, the film executives initially refuse to break for the funeral for fear of going over budget. Worse, the cast and crew eventually turn the funeral into a publicity stunt, and Old Mickey gets sacked for drowning his grief in a nip.

If there is a serious criticism of Stones in His Pockets it’s that it ends too abruptly, with a happyish Hollywood ending that feels like it was tacked on at the last minute. Director Stephen Hancock, who has dexterously navigated the difficult script, was unable to make the big happy ending seem any less unnatural. And in its last minutes the play becomes a bit too much like the very thing it has eviscerated. Nevertheless, it’s fun and thoughtful, if a bit superficial at the edges. And Isbell and Gravois, doing outstanding work, manage to create an entire village out of nothing at all. Impressive.

Through January 22nd

Three Sisters and a Funeral

When I am the supreme ruler of all things theatrical, I will lay down but one rule: There can be no more plays about funerals. The device is too easy, and, all puns aside, it has been done to death. Nevertheless, The Memory of Water is a well-constructed, commercial comedy that is amusing, occasionally surprising, and often insightful, if a bit tedious in its ham-fisted attempts at philosophizing. Of course, our parents live inside of us, and their ghosts haunt us. That’s called genetics, and there’s no need for a homeopathic water metaphor to make that point. Still, with a solid cast, and under the guidance of director Josie Helming, Playhouse on the Square’s production at TheatreWorks is never anything less than watchable and occasionally quite riveting.

Upon the death of their mother, three sisters — a doctor, a health-food pusher, and a drugged-up fun-girl — discover how much they are like the woman they loved, even if they never particularly cared for her. The play is a live-action (and self-aware) chick-flick with a pair of significant others (a celebrity physician and a miserable businessman) functioning like a Greek chorus.

The central theme is memory and how tricky it can be. The mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s, and the sisters’ childhood memories never seem to match up. But in the end, all the heavy talk never adds up to much more than some pretty words.

TheatreWorks is a tiny space, and the naturalistic, nearly cinematic acting style adopted by the cast works well, though there are occasions where the event could be, perhaps, a bit more theatrical and a bit less obvious. The “ghost scenes” — due primarily to the background music — flirt with self-parody. But even then, a rock-solid performance by Laurie Cook McIntosh keeps even the show’s most fantastical scenes grounded in reality. •

Through January 30th

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

POLITICS

FORD’S WAY

U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., the 9th District Democrat and prospective U.S. Senate candidate who has been under fire this week for his positions, real or alleged, on Social Security, is at pains to distance himself from various proposals to create private investment accounts from the Social Security fund.

Ford suggests that his positions have been misunderstood or misrepresented and offers as an example of the kind of innovative entitlement reform he does support a bill he introduced last July, entitled “The America Saving for Personal Investment, Retirement, and Education Act (ASPIRE) Act”

What the act would do is establish a “KIDS” saving account for every newborn child, who would be issued a Social Security number. Accounts in the amount of $500 each would be opened for them automatically, with children below the national median income eligible for a supplementary grant of up to another $500.

The accounts, indexed for inflation, would be paid of the government’s general revenues fund, and provisions would be established allowing for matching grants from private sources.

In the language of the bill, the purpose of the measure would be “to encourage savings, promote financial literacy, and expand opportunities for young adults.” Although hardship exceptions could be applied, the bill calls for repayment of the initial investment at the time the recipient reaches the age of 30. No withdraw could occur, except for legitimate educational expenses, until the age of 18.

The bill would also establish “a range of investment options similar to those offered by the Thrift Savings Plan, including a government securities fund, a fixed income investment fund, a common stock fund, and other funds that may be created by the Board.”

No action was taken on the bill last summer, but the bill, co-sponsored in the Senate by Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum, the Republican Conference chair, will be re-introduced in the current session, said Ford’s spokesperson, Mark Schuermann.

Ford, who, as this week’s cover documents, suffered some direct hits from various members of the blogosphere last week, also got some indirect– and presumably undeserved– shrapnel from the revelation that black commentator Armstrong Williams ahd been paid $240,000 in federal funds for shilling for the Bush administraton’s No Child Left Behind program.

Though Ford had no relation to that circumstance, his name ended up being mentioned along some of the estalbished blogs and email networks by virtue of the fact that Williams had from time to time praised the Memphis congressman. As they say, with friends like that —

At the precise moment that members of the Shelby County Commission were locked into a debate Monday on partial privataization of local corrections services (the matter ended up being deferred), Governor Phil Bredesen was holding a press conference in Nashville to announce significant reductions in the scope of TennCare, the state’s medical insurance system.

There was an eerie parallel between the two situatons. In the same half-hour that an audience member in the county building auditorium was pleading that the privatization measure would cost “1500 union jobs, affecting 1500 families,” Bredesen was detailing his plans for cutting 323,00 adult Tennesseans off the TennCare rolls– a fact which was duly announced to the commission by Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton in his somewhat later testimony concerning what he saw as an urgent need for the commission to approve a local privilege tax for legislative consideration.

The two situations had a common bottom line: namely, that revenues for public services are drying up.

During commission debate, a proposal was advanced by member Cleo Kirk that state Senator Roscoe Dixon, now an administrative aide to Wharton, be prevailed upon not to resign his senate seat this Friday, as commission chairman Michael Hooks had previously announced. That was, said Kirk, given Dixon’s expertise and given the fact that legislators with precise knowledge of the county’s proposals this year don’t grow on trees.

Hooks, who wishes to run for the seat when it becomes vacant but doesn’t seek an interim appointment, said he would take the up with Kirk and Wharton.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Kathryn Bowers, another aspirant for Dixon’s District 33 seat, was the beneficiary of a busy round of four fundraisers, held both in Memphis and in Nashville over the weekend. After the beginning of the legislative session this week, fundraising by members of the General Assembly is prohibited– yet another reason why Hooks doesn’t covet an appointment just now.

Quote of the week: “Get some devastation in the back,” said by Tennessee Senator Bill Frist, according to the Associated Press, to a staff photographer getting a picture of him as he prepared to leave a tsunami-devastated region of Sri Lanka. The photographer had easy pickings.

Categories
Opinion

CITY BEAT

A SURVIVOR STUMBLES AGAIJN

If William B. Tanner is convicted of bribing the late Chancellor Floyd Peete Jr., his punishment should be confinement to a tropical paradise with two other people, $1 million, a couple of lawyers, and a video camera to record them making each other miserable.

Tanner was playing Survivor long before reality television. Forty years ago, he made his first million when a million still meant something. He was 34.

He made millions more over the years. At age 74, he should be enjoying the fruits of his labor, his family, his hard-won health, and the satisfactions of giving some of his fortune away, maybe to search for new treatments for the cancer that plagues him.

Instead, he is under indictment for the second time in 20 years, charged with bribing a judge to win a nasty, six-year dispute over what else? money. Both indictments stemmed from multimillion-dollar sales of Tanner companies that ought to have been career highlights. Now Peete has his reputation besmirched but can’t do anything about it. He died of a heart attack in 2002, a year after ruling in Tanner’s favor. Tanner gets to spend his gold and golden years fighting an indictment and haggling with lawyers and could go to prison for up to six years if convicted.

If there was ever a reminder that money can be both a blessing and a curse, this is it. Tanner and his ex-partner Jerry Peck fell out shortly after joining forces in the billboard business in 1992. Peck had the know-how and the political contacts. Tanner had the capital and the salesmanship and, among other things, the billboard rights along U.S. Highway 61 in DeSoto County. Casinos were coming to Tunica, and road signs were as precious as slot machines

But one should not enter into a competitive enterprise with Tanner without a jock strap and an opinion from the United States Supreme Court, preferably unanimous. He thrives on competition and hardship and has been doing it since growing up in the Missouri Bootheel during the Depression.

The Tanner-Peck business succeeded but the partnership failed. In 1996, Tanner sold the company to Universal Outdoor Advertising for $71 million. Peck claimed he owned 5 percent of the business with an option entitling him to as much as 49 percent. Tanner disagreed.

Seventy-one million dollars would seem to be enough for both of them. They could have split the difference. They could have cut cards. They could have had a fistfight and a beer and shook hands and moved on. Instead, they called their lawyers.

The case dragged on for five years, filling folder after folder and eventually a filing cabinet at Chancery Court with documents, depositions, claims, and counterclaims. If scholars ever do a case study of the human psychosis that enables lawyers to charge $250 an hour, this would make a good start.

The case came to trial in 2001, starting in March and ending in May. Peete ruled in Tanner’s favor in October 2001, concluding that there was no partnership at all, and Peck was entitled to nothing. But Tanner wasn’t through. He wanted attorney fees as well. In November, Peete ruled that Peck had to pay Tanner’s lawyers $719,586.

In August 2002, Peete died at a vacation home in Florida, reportedly of a heart attack. Peck appealed to the Court of Appeals as rumblings began that the fix was in. People familiar with the case say the main accuser was someone close to Peete’s family and that the bribes included credit card charges, travel and vacations, and money for a Peete family member to start a business. Sources would only speak anonymously, taking their cue from the one-paragraph indictment and Shelby County district attorney Bill Gibbons, whose only comment was that “this type of crime attacks the integrity of our judicial system.”

Gibbons ordered the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to look into the accusations in May 2003. In light of the findings, Peete’s ruling was negated. The appeals courts sent the case back to the trial court, which booted it to the Tennessee Supreme Court. It could be heard as early as April, according to appellate court clerk Susan Turner.

Peete was elected chancellor in 1990. In 1999, he was overruled by the Court of Appeals on a case in which he favored Penn National Gaming’s efforts to start a horseracing track in Memphis even though the Tennessee Racing Commission had been abolished and Gibbons had vowed to oppose it. In 2003, the appellate court overruled Peete’s 2002 decision in favor of developer Rusty Hyneman in a divorce case. Tanner and Hyneman were business partners in an aborted hotel project on Beale Street in 2003.