Month: May 2008

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Cover Feature News

Circle of Friends

CREDIT: Courtesy WMC Channel 5

About a year ago, Jackie Welch drove downtown for an appointment at the federal building. The FBI had invited Welch and another man to meet with agents looking into possible political corruption on the Memphis City Council.

Welch is a suburban developer whose special prowess is selling school sites to the Shelby County Board of Education and adjacent land parcels to homebuilders to put in subdivisions and commercial properties on the major roads around them. He is also a prolific contributor to political candidates and frequently hosts fund-raisers at his expansive suburban home. Less known outside of political circles is his role as an unofficial sub-prime lender. One of his many clients was former city councilman Edmund Ford. Another was Joe Cooper.

As Welch told the Flyer last week, the agents asked him if he had a lawyer. Welch said no. They asked if he wanted a lawyer before answering their questions. Again Welch said no. In that case, the agents said, would he mind answering some questions? Fire away, Welch said. He had a notebook full of paperwork and documents with him. “I told them, ‘Ask anything you want, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.'”

The agents asked Welch to wait about 20 minutes while they questioned someone else. One of the agents was from South Dakota, and Welch, an avid turkey hunter, made small talk with him about hunting. A few minutes later the agents called Welch in. The other witness, it seems, had taken the Fifth Amendment to each of their questions, reading word for word from a card pulled from his pocket. After three questions, the man was allowed to leave. That man was Rusty Hyneman, also a developer and frequent contributor to political candidates.

Last week, the names of Welch and Hyneman came up several times in Edmund Ford’s bribery trial. In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. attorney Larry Laurenzi said of the government’s star witness, two-time loser Joe Cooper, “There are no swans in the sewer.” Laurenzi said Ford was motivated by greed, and that “the Rusty Hynemans of the world” and “the Jackie Welches of the world” enabled him to stay in business and live a nice lifestyle despite Ford’s history of bankruptcies and bad credit.

The next day, jurors acquitted Ford on all six counts of the indictment after about seven hours of deliberations, despite videotapes that clearly showed Ford taking $8,900 in payments from Cooper. Ford’s political future is uncertain, because he still faces high legal bills and another indictment in a case involving former MLGW chief executive Joseph Lee.

Despite last week’s courtroom setback, federal prosecutors have signaled that public corruption investigations are not over and could include not only politicians but also the developers and companies that hire them as consultants or make loans to them.

Former state senator John Ford, already serving five years in prison, is scheduled to go on trial in Nashville on June 24th. The charges are related to his consulting work for Doral Dental and United American Health Care that earned him more than $800,000.

In the Edmund Ford trial, FBI agent Dan Netemeyer testified that defendant Ford was predicated, or formally put under investigation, on the basis of a Cadillac lease co-signed by Hyneman and loans for his funeral home from Welch, as well as other information given by Cooper. Netemeyer said the secrecy of the Memphis City Council investigation dubbed “Operation Main Street Sweeper” would have been jeopardized if the government had gone ahead with investigations of Ford’s dealings with Hyneman and Welch before Ford and colleague Rickey Peete were arrested on November 30th, 2006.

It’s not known whether other members of the Memphis City Council besides Ford and Peete (who pleaded guilty last year to taking bribes from Cooper and is in prison) were predicated but not indicted. Seven City Council members mentioned on the Cooper-Ford tapes have retired or resigned to take other jobs since 2006, part of the biggest mass turnover in the council’s 40-year history.

The acquittal of Edmund Ford leaves some questions hanging. Since it was undisputed that Cooper gave Ford $8,900 — his attorney even offered an entrapment defense — were the exchanges really car and loan payments rather than payoffs, as jurors apparently believed? Were they illegal, no matter what they were intended for, if they were for Ford’s benefit, as Laurenzi argued?

And why did the government bring up Hyneman and Welch in such an unflattering light, although neither man was called as a witness and neither has been charged with any wrongdoing?

While Hyneman avoids media interviews and declined comment for this story, Welch has been quite open about the political aspects of his world for several years. In fact, the ties between local politicians, developers, and lobbyists are so extensive that Memphis politics for the last 25 years cannot be understood without accounting for Jackie Welch and Joe Cooper.

Courtesy WMC Channel 5

Edmund Ford

Waymon “Jackie” Welch Jr. grew up in Whitehaven in the 1950s and 1960s. His father, Waymon Welch, was in the real estate business, head of the Homebuilders Association, and later head of the Office of Construction Code Enforcement for Shelby County. Jackie learned the business by buying and selling property along such major roads as Elvis Presley Boulevard and Winchester Road, when they were rezoned from residential to commercial and the neighborhoods around them changed because of white flight and suburban sprawl. In a span of about 15 years in the 1980s and 1990s, Welch Realty sold the Shelby County Board of Education nine school sites. As Welch said in an interview several years ago, “I kind of had the franchise for a while.”

Welch got rich off the subdivisions and commercial strips and corner drug stores and gas stations that grew up around the schools. He does not seek media attention, but he does not shun it either. If a reporter is patient and interested, Welch will show him numbers, profit margins, residential growth patterns, and his own subdivisions either on paper or through the windshield of his Cadillac. It is like getting an intensive course in the recent history of Memphis real estate.

As Welch’s wealth grew, so did his political influence. The FBI got a glimpse of this when they interviewed Welch last year at the federal building and at the office of Welch Realty in Germantown.

Agents wanted to know if Welch had any political contributions to Edmund Ford. Welch, who knows Ford as “Ed,” wasn’t sure, but he said he had probably made contributions and even held fund-raisers for most if not all members of the City Council and County Commission, as well as several mayors and governors.

Agents also asked Welch about loans he made to Edmund Ford.

“Do you have a note?” the agents asked.

“I said, ‘Sure, I got a note,’ and I handed them a book with 30 or 40 loans in it,” Welch recalls.

by Jackson Baker

Joe Cooper

Welch says he told the FBI that Cooper asked him a few years ago if he would make a loan to Ford for his funeral home. Welch personally looked at the property, which was partially complete. Welch asked Ford about his credit, which Ford admitted was “terrible.” But Ford told him he had so much embalming business that he could pay $2,000 a month from it alone, apart from the funeral-home business. Welch agreed to lend him $20,000 at 10 percent annual interest, which was 3 or 4 percent higher than the interest rate banks were charging.

Welch says Ford made the payments for the first few months and then wanted to borrow another $20,000 to expand his business. Welch agreed, but that made the monthly payment $4,000. “Ed got more and more behind,” Welch says. He agreed to lower the payment to $2,000 a month on the first loan and interest only on the second loan. By the time he was indicted in November 2006, Ford had paid Welch $42,000, including late fees and bounced-check charges. He paid off both loans in full after the indictment was returned, Welch says.

Ford also was facing foreclosure on his home. Again, Welch came to his rescue. Through a friend in Whitehaven who buys properties under threat of foreclosure, he arranged a sale for $70,000. Out of that, Welch was paid the balance of the money owed to him by Ford.

“Ed’s slick with me,” Welch says.

Welch also loaned money to Joe Cooper.

About five years ago, as Welch recalls, Cooper told him a family member had cancer and was going to die unless he could raise $5,000. Welch asked Cooper why he didn’t get the money from Cooper’s friend and former employer, wealthy billboard king William B. Tanner. Cooper told him he already owed Tanner too much money.

“I don’t know why, but in a weak moment I loaned him $5,000,” Welch says.

Meanwhile, Cooper began lobbying for William Thomas, who was also in the billboard business. Cooper asked Welch if he wanted to sell a billboard that Welch’s father had owned on American Way. Welch agreed to sell it to Thomas through Cooper. Then Cooper asked Welch for another $50,000 loan, this time saying that he himself had cancer. Welch agreed to do it if Cooper would get a co-signer on the loan, which turned out to be Thomas. Welch said he deducted what he was owed on the previous loan plus a $5,000 late fee.

“So it was about half of what he needed,” Welch says. “Maybe they fixed half his cancer.”

Welch said his lawyers contacted Thomas a few days later, and Thomas wrote him a check.

“I raked Joe Cooper,” Welch said. “I got more than even.”

Welch says he came out ahead with both Cooper and Ford, and “very few people can say that about Joe Cooper.”

Cooper says he does not remember the exact numbers, but that Welch keeps meticulous records and his recollection of the loans is probably correct. He says he told Welch that a loan to Edmund Ford would be “a good investment” whether or not it was repaid because of Ford’s political clout. Cooper says Thomas was not aware that Cooper was making payments to Ford on his behalf.

“He thought I was lobbying,” Cooper says. “He didn’t care. All my clients want to do is win. Like they say in that movie about football — just win, baby.”

Cooper called the jury verdict in Ford’s case “a travesty.”

Welch did not attend the trial last week but followed news reports as it reached its conclusion.

“I believe Joe set Ed up,” Welch says. “I don’t believe he ever asked to be paid. But he may have done wrong by taking it.”

Videotapes of the payments show Ford and Cooper conducting their business in a disarmingly open manner, in sharp contrast to the behavior of other defendants in recent political corruption cases. According to his indictment, Rickey Peete used code words and hand gestures and told Cooper to leave a payment on the toilet in the bathroom of his office. On secret tapes played at his trial, former state senator Roscoe Dixon, convicted in a Tennessee Waltz case in 2006, was obviously nervous before uttering the fateful words, “Hand me one of them stacks” of money. On tapes played at his trial, former senator John Ford threatens to kill his benefactor if he finds out that he is an informant, and Ford appears to nervously search the informant’s office pictures and potted plants for hidden microphones or cameras before taking one payment.

The unthreatening, matter-of-fact relationship between Cooper and Edmund Ford may have helped Ford’s case with jurors. If the Dixon and John Ford tapes were often “R”-rated for crude banter and rough language, Edmund Ford’s tapes would have earned a family-friendly “G” rating. Both on the tapes and in the courtroom, Edmund Ford was direct, pleasant, and businesslike. Each morning, he made a point of shaking hands with courtroom spectators, including reporters. After leaving the witness stand during a recess, he gave Laurenzi a friendly pat on the shoulder, and he practically hugged FBI agent Mark Post after the agent testified and jurors had left the courtroom.

Presiding judge Samuel H. Mays kept attorneys, jurors, and spectators smiling with his stories, friendly drawl, and occasional wisecracks. “Fish a little closer to the shore,” he advised Ford attorney Michael Scholl after one long question. This is not to suggest that Mays was in any way unprofessional. In fact, he specifically reminded jurors that sympathy should play no part in their verdict. But one has to wonder if a smiling jury is a hanging jury.

When all is said and done, a trial is a mini-drama, a movie if you will, performed for the benefit of an audience called the jury. There are scripted lines, a plot, heroes and villains, and, in Ford’s case, a parade of character witnesses attesting to his work ethic and honesty. The trial’s leading lady, Ford’s wife, Myrna, certainly helped his case. She was attractive, pleasant, and willing to stand by her man. “I love my husband, but I fear God more,” she said.

There is little doubt that the contrast between Myrna Ford testifying about her hard-working husband of 28 years and Joe Cooper testifying about laundering money for drug dealers was ultimately devastating to the government’s case and is the principal reason Edmund Ford is a free man. At least, for now.

See also A Well-Connected Man.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The TVA Impasse

We’re not naive (well, not that naive), and we know that there may be a political motive or two behind the unyielding support that Senator Lamar Alexander is giving the proposed renomination to the Tennnessee Valley Authority’s governing board of Bishop William Graves of the

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Memphian Graves was the first African-American ever to serve on the TVA board when he was appointed in 2006 to fill out a term that expired last year. No doubt on the express recommendation of Alexander, whom he has consistently supported in the past, the bishop was renominated this year by President Bush for a full term. But Graves’ nomination, along with that of another Tennessean, Susan Williams of Knoxville, has so far been blocked by Nevada senator Harry Reid, the Democrats’ majority leader in the Senate.

Reid has accounted for his adamant opposition in the past by alleging that Republicans managed to purge Democrats from the board via a 2006 power grab that was led by then Senate Republican leader Bill Frist of Tennessee. Graves, whose original appointment dated from that period, is a self-professed Democrat whose occasional digressions into support of Republicans apparently disqualifies him for Reid as an appropriate appointee. But Alexander — seconded by others, including the Democratic congressman from Memphis, Steve Cohen — continues to argue that Graves’ credentials, his experience, and his place of residence all make him an ideal and deserving candidate for a new term on the TVA board.

Accordingly, Alexander, contending that Reid is departing from a long-established principle whereby presidential appointments to the TVA board are invariably honored, has blocked a nomination himself — of Ikram Kahn, a Reid protégé, to the United States Institute for Peace, a nonpartisan body established and funded by Congress.

This is where it gets confusing. Reid accuses Alexander, the GOP caucus chairman, of scuttling an elaborately balanced compromise reached last week between the two party leaderships. Alexander has now abrogated that pact, insisted a spokesman for Reid, and as a result, 80 presidential appointments, including that of a new secretary of Housing and Urban Development, have been held up.

In other words, some hardball is now being played. We don’t know Kahn, who may be very deserving indeed, but we do know Bishop Graves, and we find it regrettable that a man who has bipartisan support on his own home ground should find his opportunities for further public service blocked because of a partisan turf battle.

At a time when both likely contenders for the presidency — Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain — promise they will reach across party lines in the formation of a new administration, we can only hope that the current impasse concerning the TVA board will end.

And we congratulate Alexander, not only for persisting in this matter but for seconding the objection of his Tennessee Republican colleague Bob Corker to a new attack piece by the state Republican Party on Michelle Obama. This is Alexander’s second direct appeal to the state GOP to cease its personal attacks, a fact which makes his call for nonpartisanship in the TVA matter all the more credible.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Landmarks

Ah! Nothing beats a sweaty Memorial Day picnic at the boarded-up BP at Union and Cooper. The graffiti-covered building is a heart-warming reminder of those good old days when gas was only $2.76 a gallon.

Elvis is Everywhere

A recent column on the relative merits of Elvis Presley and jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut by jazz.com‘s “resident curmudgeon” Alan Kurtz resulted in one of the more unlikely sentences ever composed in the history of music criticism. Kurtz declares that Chestnut’s recent LP Cyrus Plays Elvis “seems to have inspired the same number of followers as Benedictine Chimes of Westminster Play the Great Ballads of Elvis (Skylark Jazz, 1994) … none.” Ouchie.

Separated at Birth?

Is it just us or does Hernando DeSoto, the mustachioed spokestoon for The Commercial Appeal‘s “Most Memphis” readers’ survey, look a lot like an armored Mario brother?

Oh, Canada

Some fighting words from Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail:

“[Al Green’s CD] Lay It Down takes a totally different tack, dumping the old guys [Willie Mitchell, Teeny Hodges etc.] and teaming Green with a younger, hipper crowd.” Hipper than Willie Mitchell? Would the Roots’ ?uestlove, who produced Lay It Down even agree with that? Ouchie again.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Home Court Advantage

Southeast Memphis resident Carlos Paloma nervously stands before Shelby County environmental court judge Larry Potter in a conference-room-turned-courtroom at the Ridgeway police precinct on a recent Thursday afternoon.

One of the first defendants in Hickory Hill’s new environmental court, Paloma is charged with storing trash under his carport and allowing weeds to grow around a trailer parked in the grass beside his house.

Paloma tells the judge that the mess has been cleaned up. A police officer confirms that the trash and trailer were gone when he patrolled the area that morning. Paloma, however, insists that his roommate was responsible for the charges. Potter tells Paloma that he was ticketed because his name was on the lease.

“As long as you keep the property clean, we won’t have a problem,” Potter says as he dismisses the charges. “But you need to have what we call in the South a ‘come-to-Jesus’ meeting with your roommate.”

Case after case on Thursday’s opening session of the new community court dealt with similar charges: cars parked in yards, loud-music complaints, trash piled in backyards.

“The environmental court deals with a hodgepodge of issues related to quality of life,” says John Cameron, environmental court referee. “We hear state nuisance cases like hotel closures. We hear state charges relating to fishing or hunting without a license. And we hear code violation cases, cruelty to animals and dog-fighting cases.”

Though many of these cases are heard in the environmental courtroom at 201 Poplar, Potter holds community court sessions twice a month in Whitehaven, Frayser, Orange Mound, Millington, Arlington, and Hickory Hill. The Hickory Hill court, which covers all of Southeast Memphis, meets on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month.

“Coming down to 201 Poplar can be an intimidating experience for people,” Cameron says. “We like to go out into the community because we’re not seeking to punish people. We’re just seeking compliance. It’s also easier for the defendants to get in and out because court is being held in their neighborhood.”

A couple of citizen groups in Southeast Memphis — the Southeast Memphis Betterment Association and the Police and Citizen’s Alliance (PACA) — have pushed for a community court in Southeast Memphis since last fall.

“Hickory Hill has such a reputation citywide, and the media identifies anything that happens from Hacks Cross to the airport as Hickory Hill,” says Bob Morgan of PACA. “We have a big reputation to work against.”

Both Morgan and Potter hope that the court will encourage people to keep their yards clean.

“I don’t expect we’ll have Hickory Hill cleaned up this year, and I don’t think we’ll have it completely clean in a couple of years,” Potter says. “But we’re going to work on it one case at a time.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Opponent Barnes May Benefit from Kurita Showdown with Senate Dems

CREDIT: rosalind kurita by jb

A confrontational meeting last week between state Senator Rosalind Kurita
(D-Clarksville) and other members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate ended
with old wounds exacerbated and with the probability that Kurita’s primary opponent
this year, Tim Barnes, will be the recipient of some concerted party support,
sources tell the Flyer.

The meeting – of the admonitory sort that politicians refer
to irreverently as a “come-to-Jesus” affair — took place at the request of
Democratic caucus chairman Joe Haynes of Goodlettsville during the last week of
the 2008 legislative session. It was a day after Kurita had voted with Senate
Republicans to defeat a key Democratic-backed bill to amend eligibility
requirements for lottery-funded Hope scholarships. She was taken to task by
several caucus members for that vote and for other breaks with the party
majority but vigorously defended her right to cast her votes as she saw fit.

She was then asked if she would at least pledge to support
the caucus’ candidate for Senate Speaker at the beginning of the next
legislative session, in January 2009. She declined to make such a commitment.

The backdrop for the meeting and for the raising of the
Speakership issue, in particular, was the bad blood that has existed between
Kurita and key Senate Democrats since her fateful decision in January 2007 to
break ranks and vote for Republican Ron Ramsey as Speaker and Lieutenant
Governor. As a result of Kurita’s action, the 36-year hold on the position by
octogenarian John Wilder (D-Somerville) was ended, while she herself was
rewarded by Ramsey with the position of Senate Speaker Pro Tem.

Wilder subsequently announced his retirement after the
session which has just ended. But other Democrats – notably Jim Kyle
(D-Memphis), the party’s leader in the Senate – hope to regain the Speakership
for the party if this year’s elections result in a Democratic majority in the
33-member body. Relations between Kyle and Kurita have ranged from merely tense
to overtly hostile ever since her vote for Ramsey.

Last week’s meeting increases the likelihood that Barnes, a
Clarksville attorney who was the Democratic standard-bearer in a 2006 race for
the state House of Representatives , would have stepped-up organizational and
financial support from party members. Barnes made a point, during the session,
of visiting Democratic legislators’ offices to introduce himself.

Asked about relations between Kurita and other Democrats, Lowe Finney, a first-term Democratic senator from Jackson, cited a phrase once used by former Governor Ned McWherter in another context: “He said, ‘Nothing more embarrassing than being bitten by your own dog,’ Well, I worked hard to get to the Senate to work for Democratic causes, and I feel , like a lot of others, that I’ve been bitten.”

Finney said Kurita had deserted the party on several key votes during the last two years and predicted that, if state Democrats saw Barnes to be making serious headway, he could well end up with significant support within the party – “especially from labor and lawyers’ groups, who’ve taken it on the chin.”

Kyle pointed out that Barnes had already been endorsed by the state Labor Council and by the College Democrats of Austin Peay University, located in Clarksville.

Another influential Clarksvillie Democrat , former House
majority leader and current gubernatorial hopeful Kim McMillan, told the
Flyer last month that either Kurita or Barnes would be an acceptable Senate
nominee in District 22. McMillan, never considered close to Kurita, may now come
under pressure to tilt toward Barnes, whom she actively supported in his
unsuccessful House race against a Republican incumbent.

The Democratic primary will decide the outcome in District 22, since no Republican had filed for the seat.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Alt-rock success story bounces back.

Formed in 1997 and official major-label recording artists in 2003, Death Cab for Cutie has experienced general rising success that, for a majority of American bands, must seem as attainable as cheap gas and a van that doesn’t break down.

Death Cab leader Ben Gibbard is no rock star — doesn’t look like or act like it. But as Death Cab has gotten more popular, Gibbard has made a decided attempt to write anthems that are at least as big as the stage he and his pals now find themselves on. Despite that, Plans, the band’s previous album and the major-label debut, felt stubbornly inert and practically vanished on contact.

Narrow Stairs is a different matter altogether: It sports guitars that actually squeal and drums that are pounded in a manner more appropriate for stadiums than coffeehouses. It also has a few songs that are absolute winners.

The album opens with “Bixby Canyon Bridge,” Gibbard’s ode to Jack Kerouac and his lesser-known novel Big Sur. (Gibbard spent two weeks writing in the same cabin where Kerouac penned Big Sur.) Though “Bixby Canyon Bridge” practically explodes with noise about midway through, Gibbard’s relationship to the famous beat writer isn’t spelled out enough for the song to take flight. But the melancholy atmosphere that pervades the rest of the album is successfully set.

The eight-minute-and-change “I Will Possess Your Heart” is the tale of a stalker that works much better when cut in half for a radio edit. But just when you think Narrow Stairs is going to settle for decent-not-great, “Cath…” hits like a bolt, pairing Gibbard’s sharpest lyrics with an infectious burst of musical energy. The portrait of an uneasy bride (“She holds a smile/Like someone would hold/A crying child”) is pitch-perfect. Too bad that “Cath…” is followed by the squishy nonsense of “Talking Bird.” “Your New Twin Sized Bed” isn’t as electric as “Cath…,” but it’s a well-observed number with an infectious hook.

Death Cab for Cutie seems to be warming to its new role, and Narrow Stairs certainly offers more bite than Plans. Rock stars rarely get to show off late maturity, but Gibbard has bucked a lot of trends, and he might be ready to buck one more.

— Werner Trieschmann

Grade: B+

Categories
Opinion

Riverfront Rising

“You will see a constant progression of things getting better.”

That’s how Benny Lendermon, executive director of the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC), summarized upcoming riverfront improvements for members of the Memphis City Council at budget hearings last week.

The riverfront that thousands of Memphians and visitors saw this month at Memphis In May will look significantly different two years from now, with the expansion of Tom Lee Park, the Beale Street Landing boat dock, an overhaul of the cobblestones, and the construction of the University of Memphis Law School at the old post office on Front Street.

Here’s a summary of the changes.

What is Beale Street Landing? Located at the north end of Tom Lee Park, Beale Street Landing will include a boat landing, concrete islands for pedestrians to get close to the river, a parking lot, a restaurant, and a gift shop. Total project cost is about $30 million, including $19.5 million in city funds and $10.5 million in federal and state funds. There is no private funding so far.

Completion date is fall of 2010, but that could change based on weather and funding issues. Lendermon said the project has already come before the council seven or eight times and will doubtless come up several more times.

“That is just what happens on a multi-year, phased project,” he said.

About $6 million already has been spent. The landing will take up six acres, including four acres being added to the current 25-acre Tom Lee Park. All permits have been obtained, and a wetlands mitigation plan for the half-acre of wetlands at the tip of the park is included. Lendermon said operating costs of the landing will be paid out of revenues.

What about the cobblestones? As an architect involved in the project says, the good news is Memphis has seven acres of cobblestones. And the bad news is Memphis has seven acres of cobblestones. The cost of repairing them and adding access points is approximately $7.2 million, including $6 million in federal funds. Improvements will include a sidewalk at the lower level, limited handicapped accessibility at Jefferson Davis Park, a retaining wall, new utility service, and walkways. There will be “some opportunity for floating restaurants,” Lendermon said.

Will there be daily excursion boats? Yes, but possibly under a different operator. Presently, only two of the boats docked at the cobblestones are in use. Future passenger pick-up and drop-off will be at the new landing, but the RDC wants the excursion-boat operator to do a better job of maintenance. Wharfage fees are now only $1,500 a month. The overnight-cruising riverboat business is in flux, and it is unclear how many of them will use the landing. At one time, the RDC hoped to attract the corporate headquarters of a steamboat company, but that fell through.

What about the law school? The $40 million renovation is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2009. It will basically turn the back of the building into the front of the building, with landscaping, elimination of parking, a plaza, and a connecting bridge to Confederate Park. The building overlooks the cobblestones.

What about Mud Island River Park? Don’t expect any changes this year or next year, but the long-term future is likely to include a hard look at private development. Lendermon said “there is some opportunity” for that, but proposals should be part of a public process and not simply presented in take-it-or-leave-it fashion like the ill-fated theme park.

“No matter what you do, Mud Island is still going to be detached,” said Lendermon in response to a question from Councilman Shea Flinn who asked why Beale Street Landing is a higher priority than Mud Island.

Is the City Council on board? Most members seem to be, including holdovers Myron Lowery and Barbara Ware, as well as newcomers Bill Boyd, Flinn, Wanda Halbert, and Jim Strickland. Doubters are confronted with the $6 million already spent, the lure of “free” federal funds, the commitments made by previous councils, and the permits already obtained.

Ware has a special interest in the old post office where she used to work. Strickland expressed doubts about the need for more parking at Tom Lee Park. And Flinn noted that the city could possibly have cut its operating losses at Mud Island by spending “half or less” of the $30 million going to Beale Street Landing. But the overall tone of the hearing was jovial.

Bottom line: All aboard.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

I wonder how we would react if 50,000 of us got killed in one whack, as apparently has happened in the China earthquake. Or, God forbid, 121,000, which is the high estimate for the number of dead in the Myanmar cyclone.

Judging from our reaction to the terror attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which claimed 3,000 lives, I suspect we would go nuts. Back in 2001, it became Terror Week on television, so we got to see the damage endless numbers of times. Politicians were scrambling for flag pins and trying to remember the words of the national anthem. Hardly a family pet could be buried without the TV cameras and the mayor showing up.

The president said it was our patriotic duty to spend money and then declared world war on terrorists everywhere, even though the 9/11 attackers had nothing to do with the others.

I infuriated one of the TV talkie boys one night. I accused him of being a fearmonger because he was ranting about the ever-present menace of terrorism. I pointed out that while terrorists had killed 3,000 Americans, 17,000 had killed themselves in falls, 15,000 had been murdered by homegrown criminals, and 109,000 died in accidents. He shouted and hung up.

Never let the news media set your priorities for things to worry about. They will be hopelessly wrong. Any one American’s chances of being killed by a terrorist is minuscule. The only thing you have to do to protect yourself from a bomb is be somewhere else, and in a country of 3 million square miles, the odds are that most of us will be somewhere else.

There is no worldwide network of terrorists. Al-Qaeda is the only group we have to worry about, and it is small and not very influential. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad have no quarrel with us. Their quarrel is with Israel. Colombia’s terrorists are trying to overthrow the Colombian government, and that goes for most guerrilla organizations in the world.

A sensible administration would have taken out Osama bin Laden a long time ago. It’s pretty embarrassing when you can’t find a guy who is 6′-6″ tall in a country where most people are short.

We need to develop some stoicism, because it is possible that we could lose a large number of people. A powerful earthquake in Los Angeles or San Francisco at rush hour could kill a good number. We’re 30 minutes from 150 million people dead as long as nuclear missiles sit in silos in Russia and China. The most stupidly dangerous thing this administration has done is to allow our relations with Russia to deteriorate. When the Russians needed our help, we tried to exploit them instead. Now they have become an energy superpower and have little or no use for us.

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin proved to be a smarter man and a better leader than George W. Bush. Russia’s economy is booming; ours is in decline. Russia is energy-independent; we are desperately dependent on energy imports. Russia’s power and influence are on the rise; ours are in decline. That’s what happens when we vote jovial dullards into office who surround themselves with ideologues. Other than throw out a couple of baseballs, what has Bush done right? I can’t think of anything.

And I’m not excited about any of the possible replacements. I just pray that whichever one it is will have more brains and less arrogance than the present occupant of the White House.

Forgive me for sounding cynical, but I’ve been listening to politicians promise to solve these same problems for 40 years, and the problems have all gotten worse, not better.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years. He writes for King Features Syndicate.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Should Memphis Police Officers Pay to Live Outside City Limits?

The town of Tunica doesn’t have much turnover on its tiny police force. Of its 10 officers, half of them have been on the job for more than a decade.

But that wasn’t always the case. Before the growth of the area’s gambling industry, the police department would hire someone; they’d stay a year, then leave.

“We were a training ground,” says Chief Richard Veazey. “We couldn’t compete with the larger towns and counties.”

Better salaries solved Tunica’s retension rate, but things in Memphis are a bit more complicated. Since the beginning of the year, City Council members have investigated ways to increase the number of police officers in Memphis …

Read the rest of Mary Cashiola’s In the Bluff column.

Categories
Hot Properties Real Estate

Garden Party

This house is centrally located in Central Gardens on a large corner lot, with a wooden fence on the street side that encloses a wonderfully private courtyard for entertaining. French doors lead from the kitchen out to a patio covered by a cypress arbor. The arbor is quite tall, but a climbing vine knocks off the midday sun and a ceiling fan stirs the summer breeze. Perennials and herbs inside the fence provide seasonal interest. A curving hedge screens the rear drive and garage.

The other rear quadrant is more open and has a low, rose-covered picket fence, a play yard, and a crisply laid-out vegetable garden with raised planting beds and fine gravel walks. Several old figs, a mock orange, and “Pride of Mobile” azaleas add Southern flavor. The kitchen and mudroom connect to this yard, and that makes it easy to clean kids and veggies. Irrigation makes it easy to water the lawn.

Out back is the original two-story garage with two parking bays down and two rooms up. The groundfloor rooms are currently used for storage and a workshop. Upstairs has potential as a great guest suite or handy detached home office. An electric gate on the rear alley controls access to the drive and garage. The front yard has a grand sweep of lawn with one immense oak and an equally laudable sasanqua camellia as big as any in town.

The house is a four-square with Arts and Crafts touches. Stucco is used between the upper windows. Brick covers the exterior below the second-floor windows. It’s often the case that the upper stucco level is painted a darker color to emphasize the deep shade into which it is cast by the immense roof overhang. This overhang, usually found only in houses from the 1910s and 1920s, is underappreciated. It permits the second-floor windows to stay dry in a gentle rain and prevents the high summer sun from heating up the second floor — no small job!

The current owners have been in residence for seven busy years. Besides all that yardwork, they’ve overhauled the house, too. In addition to storm windows, two deep, bracketed canopies were added at both the front and west-side entries. These are copper-roofed and provide elegant shelter for guests.

Inside is a grand foyer that, with the living room, stretches across the front of the house. An equally spacious dining room has a cozy, glassed-in sunroom to the east and a renovated kitchen to the west. A large island topped with hard-rock maple butcher block dominates the oak-floored kitchen, which was created by removing a wall between two rooms. The island fronts two walls of white marble counters and painted cabinets that hold sink, cooktop, double ovens, and refrigerator. There is also a desk with lots of bookcases above it and still room for a couple of easy chairs or a big breakfast table in this expanded layout. The mudroom behind has lots of pantry cabinets, an extra sink, and laundry facilities. Dual central heat and air systems were installed, and plumbing and electrical services upgraded.

There are three large bedrooms and a small sitting/playroom upstairs. Both bathrooms here have been gutted and rebuilt. The hall bath retains its cast-iron tub, original pedestal sink, and toilet. A comfortable shower was added. The master bath has a long, white marble-topped vanity and a tub/shower combo. Subway tile on the walls and one-inch hexagonal tile on the floors give both baths a period feeling. Several closets were combinedto make a walk in closet with lots of built-ins for the master bedroom.

This house is certainly well set up both for raising a family and entertaining. Few homes are as well integrated with their exterior spaces. The real delight here is how readily family and friends can spill out to play and party in garden spaces that are cozy and welcoming in any season.

1442 Goodbar Avenue

Approximately 3,400 square feet

3 bedrooms, 2-1/2 baths: $599,000

Realtor: Coleman-Etter, Fontaine

767-4100

Agents: Fontaine Brown
and Fontaine Taylor