Month: August 2006

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Treed

I read with wholehearted agreement Ethan Gilsdorf’s article (“Made in the Shade”) on urban trees in your August 17th issue. Wouldn’t it be great to have the benefits of shady streets and sidewalks during the oppressive heat in Memphis during July and August? When I drive past the wooded area of Overton Park on North Parkway, the outside temperature feels at least 10 degrees cooler.

Unfortunately, my same drive takes me down Sam Cooper Boulevard, and I cringe at the pitiful effort put forth by our city to establish oak trees. Two years ago, dozens of unplanted oak trees were left out for two weeks before they were finally planted in May, only to have most turn brown and die in the early summer. This year, dozens more oak trees were more appropriately planted in late winter/early spring, only to suffer a similar fate from lack of watering. Some of those trees that appeared to be surviving were cracked off at their trunks by overzealous mowing tractors.

Thousands of dollars for trees and planting — nary a nickel for responsible maintenance. Where is the City Beautiful Commission when you need them? I bet there are business or civic groups that would be willing to sponsor urban reforesting in Memphis, if it were felt their efforts would not be thwarted by those responsible for maintaining our green spaces.

Ray M. Allen Jr.

Memphis

Biodiesel a Fantasy?

It is apparent that Harold Ford Jr. has great political ambitions, and it is also indisputable that he is very articulate. However, I question his understanding of economics as it pertains to agriculture. In “support” of our farmers here in Tennessee, he has a commercial in which he touts the promising future of biodiesel produced from soybeans. He says he is the man to get it done.

Sounds good, but he either ignores or is ignorant of the various supplies of oil crudes still available in North America. Biodiesel will probably survive as long as crude hovers around $70 or above. If it drops below that, then the biofuels industry is in trouble unless heavily subsidized by the federal government at the cost of the taxpayer.

Americans use 129 million gallons of diesel and 382 million gallons of gasoline a day. It is hard to predict, but biodiesel and ethanol-related crops might provide raw materials for maybe between 15 million and 25 million gallons of fuel a year in Tennessee. In a real-world scenario, we would be looking at providing maybe one third of the state’s diesel demand. It would take the state between 10 and 20 years to meet these production levels.

In the Northwestern states there is enough oil shale to provide diesel and gasoline for the next 100 years at between $30 and $40 per barrel. It is very unlikely that either biodiesel or ethanol can compete with $40-per-barrel oil. I can see the farmers in Tennessee being led into investing millions to produce a commodity that has no real future in the volumes and prices Ford would like to lead them to believe exists.

Earl Barnett

Speedwell, Tennessee

Draft the

President’s Kids

I am a white, middle-class suburbanite. I attended a top-20 university, and my kids go to private school. I am probably similar to many people in that I don’t know anyone who has served in Iraq. “So what?” you might say. “I don’t care who you know or don’t know.” But I believe that my not knowing who’s served in Iraq is indicative of a truth far too many of us ignore: It’s not our war. It’s a war being fought by the lower economic class. It doesn’t affect us. We are not even inconvenienced by it.

Why was President Bush so willing to send our young people off to fight and die? Because he doesn’t know them either. They are not his friends or children’s friends or his relatives or neighbors. He makes occasional visits with relatives of soldiers for an obligatory 10 or 15 minutes, then goes back to his life. A life in which his corporate friends are happy, the oil industry is booming, and his children are safe.

So I am proposing a new constitutional amendment, one that makes a whole hell of a lot more sense than banning gay marriage: I believe that any leader who commits our nation to war should be required to send his own children first. Lincoln’s son served in the Union Army. All four of Roosevelt’s sons fought during World War II. Those Bush girls ought to be over in Iraq right now, living on MREs and two bottles of water a day. Can’t you just imagine their postcards home?

Lisa Jackson

Memphis

Categories
News The Fly-By

Smile

Law-enforcement professional turned community-watchdog/politician John Harvey has discovered some mugshots that are at least humorous, if not exactly useful. For example, this photo would only come in handy if a witness described a perp as “the blackest black man you’ve ever seen”:

It’s possible — but, barring a positive dental ID, cannot be confirmed — that this man was arrested for spray-painting “Kilroy was here” in places around the world:

And here, of course, is the only known mugshot of the Invisible Man:

Why is it so hard to get a good mugshot each and every time? Maybe it’s got something to do with the fine print in this MPD recruiting ad.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Jail Break

For many prisoners in Shelby County, jail can be like drugs. Once they’ve been locked up, it’s a hard habit to kick.

About 85 percent of the people processed through the Shelby County Jail are arrested again within three years of their release.

But the county’s hoping to reduce those figures through a pilot program projected to begin in December. By providing mandatory incentives to prisoners, such as employment services, addiction counseling, and literacy training, county officials hope to reduce the recidivism rate.

“We’re doing a good job of locking people up, but they have a discouraging profile,” said Sheriff Mark Lutrell. “The majority of prisoners are young black men, aged 18 to 26. Many aren’t above a fifth-grade reading level, and many are illiterate.”

Currently, services such as basic education, drug-abuse programs, and anger management are offered, but attendance is voluntary.

The test program will break selected medium-security-level inmates into three groups. The first group will serve as the control group, and though services won’t be mandatory, they will be marketed more heavily.

Inmates in the second group will receive a case manager who will assess their individual needs and assign them to applicable services.

“The case manager will even work with inmates post-release to prevent them from reverting back to old behavior,” said Sybille Noble, the current project manager.

The third group will mirror the second group, but they will receive additional services in literacy training provided by faculty from the University of Memphis.

“We’re hopeful we’ll know in a year after release how stable their situation is,” said Noble. “If they’re working and going to church, that should be able to help us determine if they’ll be back [behind bars].”

Test-group members will also have some post-release incentives, such as housing and employment assistance.

“There’s a lot of factors [affecting recidivism], but it comes down to the negative environment some of these inmates face after release,” said Noble. “Some don’t have a good home life. Some don’t even have a home life.”

The $1.5 million program is part of Operation Safe Community, a countywide initiative to reduce crime by 2010.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Exit Bowers

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Although many in the media made merry in the last week or so with a scenario in which former state senator John Ford might use as a defense in his forthcoming extortion trial a private film made by undercover informant Tim Willis, the prospects for any such miraculous rescue took another hit this week.

As of press time, state senator Kathryn Bowers, one of Ford’s fellow indictees in the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting that netted several state legislators last year, has not yet changed her plea from not guilty to guilty, which would follow the lead of several other indictees, including former Shelby County commissioner Michael Hooks Sr., who did so only last week.

But Bowers seemed to be preparing the way for such a plea change when she announced on Monday her decision to vacate her District 33 state Senate seat, effective September 1st.

Bowers’ decision, communicated first by letter to Lt. Governor John Wilder, the Senate’s presiding officer, and later to the media, followed a statement about health concerns she had made last week. On the day Hooks changed his plea before U.S. district judge John D. Breen, Bowers asked for additional time to consider her own plea.

The other shoe dropped with Bowers’ Monday statement that she was formally resigning her office on “medical advice.” Her resignation comes in time for the local Democratic Party to appoint a successor on the November ballot for her District 33 Senate post.

The party will have until September 28th to meet and do so, said Jim Kyle, the Democrats’ Senate leader. Kyle also noted that illness and a finding of legal ineligibility were the only two allowable reasons for a certified nominee to exit the ballot. The medical out also leaves intact Bowers’ pension arrangements.

The diminutive but influential legislator is scheduled to make a formal plea in her extortion case on September 5th, four days after her official resignation date.

In her letter to Wilder, Bowers repeated her declarations of last week that she had experienced “considerable stress … that has taken its toll on my health.”

The precipitating incident, she said, was a near-accident last week in which, in the course of returning from a Knoxville conference on minority health matters, she lost control of her Chevrolet Blazer when the tread separated from one of the vehicle’s tires.

Bowers said on Monday that she mulled things over after returning to Memphis and made her decision to resign over the weekend. She called party caucus chairman Joe Haynes of Goodlettsville, who tried to talk her out of resigning, she said. (Haynes issued a statement Monday expressing “regret” at Bowers’ decision.)

A factor that hastened her decision was her determination to “spare the people of Shelby County the expense of a special election,” Bowers said. She gave no indication of what her plea would be at her court date, saying that her legal status had not entered into her thinking.

The likelihood of a plea change to guilty was being taken as a given elsewhere, though — especially since her attorney, William Massey, had said after last week’s hearing, “We’re always reevaluating our position, in light of everyone else, in light of the discovery we’ve had,” and gone on to tell reporters that it was possible a trial would not be necessary.

In the meantime, a brief flurry of excitement had been created by WMC-TV reporter Darrell Phillips‘ disclosure that FBI informant and sting go-between Willis, who aspires to be a filmmaker, had actually made a movie in the same office space used for sting purposes by the phony FBI computer company E-Cycle.

The movie, which employed the services of Circuit Court Judge and sometime actor D’Army Bailey, featured a sting plot remarkably similar to the one employed, with Willis’ help, by the FBI. Unofficial word came from sources close to John Ford indicating that the former state senator might attempt to represent FBI videotapes of himself accepting cash in that light.

One problem: The money doled out by the FBI — some $50,000 in Ford’s case — was not play money but bona fide U.S. currency that went into the bank accounts of the defendants or presumably was spent. In any case, the recent actions taken by Hooks and Bowers would not seem to provide any aid or comfort to Ford or assistance to his defense strategy.

In the wake of Bowers’ departure, speculation immediately went to the question of who might be nominated by the Shelby County Democratic executive committee to succeed her. The committee’s next scheduled meeting is September 7th, but it would have three weeks after that date to formalize a decision.

One likely candidate would be realtor Steve Webster, who ran second to Bowers in the August statewide primary election. In his race, Webster, a former Bowers supporter, eschewed direct references to the incumbent’s pending legal problems. Which is to say, he has burned no bridges with Bowers’ support group.

The exit of Bowers from the District 33 seat underlined several ironies related to the Tennessee Waltz saga. Bowers’ unsuccessful opponent in the special 2005 Democratic primary to fill the seat was Michael Hooks Sr. And the seat had been made vacant in the first place by the resignation of longtime incumbent Roscoe Dixon, who earlier this summer was convicted in federal court on several counts relating to the Tennessee Waltz sting.

Dixon had vacated his Senate seat in order to accept a job as an aide to Shelby County mayor A C Wharton (who demanded and got Dixon’s resignation upon his indictment in May 2005). The former senator then lobbied for the Shelby County Commission to accept as his interim successor one Barry Myers, a longtime Dixon aide who himself was indicted on Tennessee Waltz charges, pleaded guilty, and became a witness for the government. (Sidney Chism, currently a Shelby County commissioner-elect, got the commission’s nod instead of Myers.)

Given that kind of history surrounding the seat, local Democrats will no doubt employ special care in selecting a Senate nominee to replace Bowers on the November ballot.

The name of Hooks, who had resigned his own commission seat just previous to his guilty plea, was omitted from the roster of commissioners that appeared on the agenda forms at Monday’s regular commission meeting. Nor was the former commissioner included among the exiting members — seven in all — who were cited for their service and given commemorative plaques.

But two of those departing members — Bruce Thompson and Chairman Tom Moss — made a point of acknowledging Hooks’ service prior to the start of regular business.

Joe Ford Jr., third-place finisher in last month’s Democratic primary for the District 9 congressional seat, made a point last week of reaffirming his endorsement of that primary’s winner, state senator Steve Cohen.

Ford also posted lengthy comments on the “Space Ninja” blog rebutting claims by the Tri-State Defender that his candidacy had not been serious and may even have been designed to detract from the primary efforts of another candidate, outgoing county commissioner Julian Bolton.

After debunking the newspaper’s claims and making the case that he and several other candidates had waged more viable campaigns than Bolton (whom the Tri-State Defender had endorsed), Ford concluded:

“The purpose of American representative government is to ensure that all people have a voice in the government. And when all people stated their choice, like it or not, more people wanted Senator Cohen than any other candidate. Cohen could not have won this election without receiving a good number of African-American votes.”

Although problems associated with the vote-reporting process (see Feature, page 19) made it difficult to say for sure, preliminary estimates suggest that Cohen may have received as much as 20 percent of the district’s African-American vote.

Categories
News

Sumo Seagal

A recent photo of Memphis transplant Steven Seagal suggests he may be thinking of ditching his martial arts guru/guitar slinger image for that of a sumo wrestler.

The photo, located at the celeb gossip site TMZ.com, shows a heavy-set Seagal decked out in some sort of tight Star Trek-esque zippered shirt, and the pounds are definitely packed.

Perhaps the weight gain is a result of his newfound rock star life. For more, go here.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Diebold Factor

Almost a full month after the August 3rd election, with its mammoth ballot that covered elective positions of crucial importance to Memphis and Shelby County, serious questions linger in the public mind concerning the results.

Four races, for county offices won by narrow voting margins, are being appealed by the losers. And, for reasons explored in two articles (see page 19) in this issue, the outcome of those cases is surrounded

by a variety of uncertainties.

It is probable that no skullduggery or conscious subterfuge was indulged in to influence any of the results. The problem is that there are so many remaining issues with how last month’s election was conducted, at so many different levels, that it is difficult to be absolutely certain as to just what those results were. Many have commented on the imprecise way in which precinct results have been reported — forcing would-be analysts to extract them from the released vote totals by a kind of manual labor that went out of fashion even before paper ballots were perfected.

Another issue is the oddity — for the second year in a row — of seeing presumed election winners become losers as late boxes are tabulated. Compounding the problem this year was the fact that the crucial boxes, the ones altering the results, had been received at the same time as others but were unaccountably tallied last.

Software problems stemming from the use of the county’s brand-new Diebold voting machines appear also to have been responsible for snafus in early voting, whereby some voters were given the wrong ballots. Several cases of this sort were confirmed, and it has to be borne in mind that many voters may have proceeded to vote for the wrong offices — mainly in district-specific legislative races — without noticing such errors.

All of this would seem to vindicate critics of the machines manufactured by Diebold. All five election commissioners agree that Diebold supplied software that was insufficient to prevent the early-voting errors. And the company seems to be implicated in the poorly timed precinct reporting as well. It should be noted that Davidson County (Nashville), like Shelby County, experienced a record-sized ballot this year and did so with new, untested machines. But the ESS machines used in Davidson County resulted in none of the problems experienced here. Indeed, TV commentators there were reporting and analyzing precinct returns on election night. In Shelby, we’re still waiting.

Earlier this year, when Diebold was selected over ESS as Shelby County’s designated vendor, a clear majority of the Election Commission favored the company’s product. But because that vote, based in part on staff recommendations, was made on the basis of company representations that have since proved false, it is doubtful now that Diebold would get a single commission vote.

We’re stuck with the machines now, though, and the very least Diebold can do is bear the cost of a refitting process before the election in November. To its credit, the Election Commission has threatened to sue if the company doesn’t.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: The Sound of One Hand Bagging

“Paper or plastic?”

It’s the question we hear every time we’re in the grocery line — the modern equivalent of “To be or not to be?” It’s eternal, never-changing. The bagboy proffers his deceptively simple riddle. You have two possible responses. Choose one. But it’s a trap, the sound of one hand bagging, a Zen koan without a “correct” answer — unless it’s “No.”

Plastic bags are made from oil. Paper bags are made from trees. So the question really is: Which resource do you prefer to destroy for the purpose of carrying home your bread and cheese and Grape-Nuts? There are dozens of organizations and Web sites devoted to this dilemma. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent making paper and plastic bags. An equal number of millions are spent hauling them to our landfills and picking them up off our streets and out of storm drains.

Recycling is one answer, but most Memphis paper bags don’t get recycled. And according to the Web site Reusablebags.com, only three states have facilities to recycle plastic bags: Ohio, Indiana, and Florida.

What’s needed is fresh thinking. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, city governments are considering charging customers 17 cents for each plastic bag they take home from the grocery store. The idea is to discourage people from using disposable bags altogether. They’re also encouraging grocery stores to sell or provide reusable cloth or mesh bags for their customers. Many stores are doing so and putting their logo on the bags. Win, win.

Sound crazy? Can’t possibly work? In fact, it already is working elsewhere. Some European countries have already banned disposable bags. In the three years since Ireland imposed a 15-cent-per-bag fee, the use of plastic bags has decreased by 90 percent. That saves oil and saves the environment and saves money for consumers in the long run.

With gas at almost $3 a gallon, it doesn’t make sense to waste a precious resource like oil producing disposable plastic bags. We hear and read over and over how progressive thinking makes a city more attractive to smart young people who might consider moving there.

So let’s get progressive, Memphis. Come on, City Council. Come on, grocery stores — think outside the bag.

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q&A with David Allen Hall

Memphis has the highest infant mortality rate of America’s 60 largest cities. Some areas are worse than others. Near Cypress Creek in North Memphis, babies are dying at rates higher than those of many Third World countries.

Peace activist David Hall believes that’s due to toxic waste deposited by companies like Velsicol Chemicals and the now-defunct Firestone Corporation.

Last week, Hall and attorneys Jay Bailey and Halbert Dockins announced plans for a class-action lawsuit against those companies. They say they’ve studied state reports that show high levels of contaminants like cyanide, chlordane, and mercury.

“Those reports indicate numerous incidents where they have exceeded acceptable levels of spillage of these toxins,” said Bailey. “They’re in levels so large that human exposure would cause immediate problems.” — by Bianca Phillips

What is the infant mortality rate near Cypress creek?

We’re losing 14 babies per every 1,000 live births, which means we have the worst infant mortality rate in America.

Can anyone who lives near the creek get in on the suit?

All of it has to be done scientifically. I’m not looking to create a gravy train for someone who says I used to live in the area and now I want my handout. It’s for people who have legitimate concerns, who have been injured.

For example, a lady called me and said that she lived in Cypress Creek. Her area was flooded and her yard was inundated with that filth coming up out of the creek. Now she has cancer, and she’s the first one in her family that’s ever had cancer. She asked me if I thought there was a direct link. I told her I don’t know. But that’s what a class-action lawsuit will do. It will provide her a means to be tested.

Will everyone who takes part be tested?

Nobody has a right to be in on it if they are not tested and screened and found to be affected by it. It’s got to be fair.

What about babies believed to be lost due to pollutants? How will they be tested?

I guess we’ll have to exhume some bodies. If someone’s not willing to stomach that, then they might not be able to be part of this. That’s just part of the science. But I think a judge will determine all of that.

[Bailey says they’ll first check for medical records on infant deaths to see if certain tests were done that might prevent the need for exhumation.]

Is this only affecting zip codes 38107 and 38108?

Cypress Creek is eight miles long. You can start where it begins, if you can stand the stink and filth, and go all the way around to where it dumps into the Wolf River. The Wolf goes right into the Mississippi River. For all we know, people in Collierville or Germantown could be getting a dose of it too. All of us could be getting some good ol’ contamination in us.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Now and Again

Take your time. That’s my advice for anyone who checks out Memphis Heritage’s last show on South Main, “Then and Now: A Perspective on Memphis’ Historic Architecture,” before they move to their new home at Madison and Edgewood. The exhibit, a collection of Don Newman’s Memphis photographs alongside images of those same places today, looks through the lens of history. Literally.

You shouldn’t rush an exhibit more than 50 years in the making.

Some of the pictures look like identical twins, while other pairs may take more careful study to see just what has changed and what hasn’t. But like before-and-after pictures of dieters, all of them are worth a double-take.

“[Photographer] Gary [Walpole] stood as close to where Don stood as he could,” says June West, executive director of Memphis Heritage. “Sometimes it was hard, because it seems like Don was flying, but it’s still very effective.”

Newman’s widow donated roughly 300 of his historic Memphis images to Memphis Heritage in 2003 and donated about 800 more recently. They show landmarks such as The Peabody, Main Street, the E.H. Crump building, and just about every other place in downtown Memphis.

“As soon as you see them, you can’t help but think about what it looks like today,” says West. “I immediately started thinking about doing a show called ‘Then and Now.'”

West says she wanted the exhibit to show some of the architecture that has been saved, as well as some of it that has been lost. One set of images depicts the old Goldsmith’s building on Main Street, with the sleek, modern facade it had in the ’60s and what it looks like now, with its original exterior.

“When the Belzes began to redo the building, they took off the facade and the front was still there,” says West, explaining the changes that took place during the old department store’s conversion to Peabody Place. “In some cases, they would tear everything off and then put a new facade up. In others, they would put it up on top [above street level]. There are a number of buildings downtown with [original facades]. It might give the owners an incentive to take a peek underneath.”

Other images in the exhibit include Central Station (looking much the same), Beale Street (with corresponding Coke and Pepsi ads), and Riverside Drive (appearing almost naked without Tom Lee Park).

“We picked images we felt would be accessible and have a sense of importance to Memphians,” says West. “We’ve got a lot of older Memphians who come into [the gallery] and there’s a lot of reminiscing that goes on.”

Newman, a native Memphian, snapped images of the city during the ’40s and ’50s, sometimes for commercial purposes but mainly for himself. Because his negatives are 8 by 10 inches, the resulting photographs can be very large and very detailed.

West’s hope is that the show helps people focus on the importance of preserving architecture.

“Historic preservation is not on everyone’s mind. I hope 10 percent of the people are conscious of it,” she says. “This show — whether you’re a preservationist, a developer, a politician, or a citizen — will make you think about the changes we make to the architectural landscape.

“We’re not condemning what we haven’t done, but saying, ‘Let’s take it from here.’ We need to be thinking about what we want to save.”

For me, a city’s personality often comes across in its architecture. People might be the heart of the city, but its structures give it a sense of place and an identity separate from other cities.

Just as importantly — if not more so — buildings form an urban landscape that people remember. Take a street corner, but change all the surrounding structures, and you’ve lost your frame of reference. Without any landmarks, it’s simply a different place, even if the longitude and latitude are exactly the same.

I’m not trying to say we should save everything, but I think reusing historic buildings adds depth to the city. Instead of tearing everything down and rebuilding, reusing older buildings forms a connection between generations and keeps the area authentically “Memphis.”

“Some developers never want to look at adaptive re-use. They don’t see the benefit of it,” says West. “All they see is the additional cost.”

At the gallery, people spend time looking from the Don Newman black-and-white photographs to Gary Walpole’s color doppelgangers and back again. But back on the street, we should also keep an eye on the future.

“Then and Now” runs through September 29th at the Memphis Heritage Gallery, 509 S. Main.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

It’s been a few weeks since John Mark Karr “confessed” to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, and still no journalist here has been able to come up with a local connection to the 10-year-old crime. Meanwhile, just about every news crew in America is staked out in Boulder, Colorado. C’mon, people; we’re really missing out on the action here.

A judge has ordered Elartrice Ingram to undergo a mental examination. The former Schnucks employee went on a rampage July 21st and is charged with stabbing seven of his co-workers and threatening an eighth. Now, why would anyone think there might be something wrong with him?

Officials with Eudora Baptist Church announce they will demolish their 1,500-seat sanctuary sometime next year. The curving structure has been an East Memphis landmark for more than 40 years. It’s an odd-shaped building, but we’re going to miss it. Greg Cravens

Local media celebrities, including the Flyer‘s own Chris Herrington, lined up to eat worms on Saturday. Yes, worms — in three different flavors. The stunt was a fund-raiser for the Memphis Literacy Council and a promotion for the new movie How To Eat Fried Worms. We’re not sure who comes up with these things, but we’re glad they didn’t try something similar with Snakes on a Plane.

After a string of prostitution arrests, prosecutors want to shut down a Brooks Road topless club called Blacktail’s Shake Joint. So that’s what the place was. Whew, that was a close call. We were planning to go there this weekend and get a tasty milkshake. That would have been hard to explain to the police officers.