In each of the last three NBA drafts, the Grizzlies acquired a player from the college team that eliminated the Tigers in the NCAA tournament that year. Name these three reformed villains.
• Mike Conley (Ohio State) in 2007
• Darrell Arthur (Kansas) in 2008
• DeMarre Carroll (Missouri) in 2009
I signed up for the month-by-month CSA option offered through Whitton Farms, so this is my last share.
For this week: carrots, a big bag of kale, beans, basil, potatoes, and squash.
So will my grand finale of cooking efforts be like that of Lost: sad, happy, and not a little confusing? We shall see.
The more we learn about the BP oil-well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the more we ought to question the basic assumptions that led us here. Like the explosion of the housing bubble that ruptured the world economy, this human and environmental tragedy resulted from a system that encourages reckless profiteering without effective regulation.
It is impossible to understand why an accident like the Deepwater Horizon disaster was inevitable without looking back on an era when the energy industry dominated government. The oil bidness, as it is known affectionately in Texas, could do no wrong under the Bush-Cheney administration, which was run by former oil executives and their lobbyists. Remember that among the top priorities of the secretive energy task force run by Vice President Dick Cheney was relief for Big Oil from “burdensome” environmental regulations.
Countries that impose strict oversight on their energy sectors are exemplary in protecting worker and environmental safety.
As The New York Times reported recently, the Washington zeal for deregulation let offshore oil drilling proceed virtually without interference from government, even though scientists and engineers repeatedly raised safety and environmental concerns over the past decade. Warned specifically that the blowout-prevention technology drillers were relying on to prevent an explosive spill was faulty as long ago as 2000, the oil industry did nothing except to drill deeper.
As for the Mines and Minerals Service, the Interior Department agency responsible for overseeing the drilling operations, it did nothing, either — except to reduce its inspections of safety equipment. Presumably, the MMS failed to act because it was infested with crooked officials who took drugs and engaged in sexual relationships with oil industry personnel — and accepted bribes from them, too. The oil industry was allowed to drill, baby, drill wherever it wanted, often without even paying royalties to the federal government.
But the culture of American government, from the executive branch to Congress and even the judiciary, has been infected with a disease deeper than corruption: an ideological deference to corporate power, in the name of “free markets” and efficiency, that enriches a wealthy few at the expense of the nation. While this pattern can be detected across many sectors of the economy, its effects are now felt most acutely in the financial and energy sectors, whose power over government is legendary.
Such an imbalanced system encourages financial firms to take enormous risks, pocket the profits, and let the taxpayers, workers, and communities suffer the consequences. And the same system encourages oil companies to take enormous risks of a different kind, resist strict environmental requirements, book huge profits — and then let the rest of us cope with the consequences of their devastating pollution (although we can hope that BP will pay for at least part of the Gulf cleanup).
Free-market ideologues and other corporate shills insist that this is the most efficient way to do business, which is true enough for a corporate manager or a stockholder. But it isn’t very efficient for the nation whose public wealth, natural resources, and future prosperity are depleted by these ruinous practices.
In America, we have been told for more than three decades that there is indeed no other way to run an economy — and certainly not if we wish to preserve our traditional freedoms. But looking around the world, it’s easy to see through those old platitudes. Countries that impose stronger regulation on their financial sectors did not endure the same kind of disruption we did and emerged more swiftly from the recession. Countries that impose strict oversight on their energy sectors, including offshore drilling, are exemplary in protecting worker and environmental safety.
The world’s best record on offshore oil is enjoyed by Norway, a free and democratic country where North Sea oil provides not only a major source of employment but the funding for universal health care, education, and a panoply of other important benefits. In Norway, oil drillers are expected to implement the most advanced systems of environmental protection. That’s because the Norwegian people own the oil, and the oil men answer to them.
Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer and Salon.com, where this column first appeared.
The entire Mid-South community continues to grieve over the tragic shooting deaths last Friday of two West Memphis policemen during what was described as a “traffic stop,” followed an hour or so later by a Wild West-style shootout
at a Walmart parking lot in which the Crittenden County sheriff and his chief deputy were seriously wounded and the alleged original assailants, a father and his 16-year-old son, were slain.
We say “alleged” because, until all the facts are in and there has been an ultimate legal disposition of the case, we can only conjecture as to the whole truth and to matters of guilt or innocence.
We are taken, however, by one of the background circumstances involving the slain father, one Jerry Kane, an itinerant conductor of seminars on how to avoid home mortgage foreclosures. Kane’s intellectual portfolio included an arsenal of grievances against a variety of governmental procedures.
When he was jailed for 72 hours in New Mexico earlier this year for non-possession of a license for himself and his motor vehicle, Kane took to a radio blog to complain of having been stopped at a “Nazi checkpoint.” Given the fact that anti-government zealots have risen to the defense of Kane’s memory, we have a clarifying question to ask of them: When is such a roadblock a legitimate method for screening out illegal aliens or, worse, potential terrorists? And when does it become the kind of totalitarian tyranny that Kane claimed it was?
We would hate to think that, for right-wing vigilantes, Kane’s redeeming WASP heritage was the definitive factor.
A Busted Union?
After a grueling seven-year negotiation, members of the Memphis Newspaper Guild finally have voted to ratify a “final” contract offer from The Commercial Appeal.
Guild-covered employees who qualify will receive their first raises since the process began. In exchange for the extra money, the right to arbitration, and an “evergreen clause” that won’t allow terms of the current agreement to expire until a new contract is in place, the guild has given management the right to an unlimited outsourcing of jobs.
In an open letter to the public at the guild’s website, the union’s president, Daniel Connolly, says his company could have imposed the outsourcing even if the contract had been rejected. And, he says, “the very existence” of the union would have been at risk. That’s what you call being caught between a rock and a hard place.
In a separate flag-waving note to guild membership, Connolly took courage from the union’s mere survival. “As long as there are any guild-covered workers left at The Commercial Appeal, their lives will be better because the union exists,” he wrote. But doesn’t a diminished, demoralized union that can’t protect jobs or oppose an unfavorable agreement without imploding sound like a busted union?
The guild is protected from decertification for the three-year term of the contract, but with unlimited outsourcing, who knows what the union, the newsroom, or even the newspaper will look like when contract negotiations resume in 2013.
A C Wharton has an aggressive plan to end homelessness in 10 years. He also has an aggressive plan to end the Overton Park golf course in about 10 weeks.
The list of jobs and salaries in Memphis city government runs to 172 pages. The mayor and his division directors, we are told, have been working 24/7, going over the budget with the proverbial fine-toothed comb to find savings and efficiencies.
I believe it. Because you would have to work 24/7 with a fine-toothed comb to find cuts that are more chickenshit than a handful of positions at a couple of libraries and golf courses.
The Overton Park golf course is eye candy first and golf course second. It is the southern entrance to the signature public park in Memphis — home of the Memphis College of Art, Brooks Museum, and Memphis Zoo. Thousands of people who don’t play golf drive past it on Poplar.
The nine-hole golf course at Overton and another nine-hole course at Riverside are up for closing by the City Council, at the recommendation of the mayor. The grass will have to be mowed anyway, but closing the courses will save wear-and-tear on the flagsticks and, more substantially, eliminate some really outrageous salaries.
The manager at Overton Park earns $47,432 a year plus $10,909 in benefits, according to the city salary schedule. The manager at Riverside makes the same. But the savings don’t stop there. The maintenance foreman at Overton makes $35,632 plus $8,133 in benefits, while the same job at Riverside pays $42,511 and $9,777.
All together, we’re talking more than $200,000 in salaries and benefits! And that’s not including the free Cokes that were given away two years ago to a kid who hit a hole in one!
There’s more, folks. Also on the cutting block are branch libraries at Cossitt downtown and on Highland near the University of Memphis. Those notoriously overpaid librarians are raking in anywhere from $31,536 plus $7,253 in benefits to $53,201 and $12,236 in benefits.
We could be talking — take a seat — as much as $300,000 in savings, if the city can whack three librarians at each library. Never mind that Cossitt also happens to be a de facto daytime homeless shelter. Maybe this is part of the 10-year plan.
Never fear, the proposed cuts will not impact the library’s director of community outreach and special projects assistant ($92,027 and $21,166 in benefits), the communications assistant ($86,520 plus $19,899), or the manager of public services ($75,712 plus $17,413).
It took a while to dig out this information. You have to flip through page after page of thousands of jobs in the fire department, starting at $54,980 a year on up to $90,891 a year, and in the police department at $53,573 to over $100,000. The mayor proposed cutting back on overtime in the fire department but not cutting back on fire stations.
From the same playbook, Memphis City Schools superintendent Kriner Cash trimmed the budget by proposing to cut some teacher aides. But no administrators and no schools, although he acknowledged that schools will eventually have to be closed. Now, apparently, is not the time, given how efficiently the system is running. What’s going on here? Not big savings and bold cuts, that’s for sure. What recession? The government sector is doing just fine.
The closing of Overton Park might make sense if it is followed up, as John Malmo suggested, with turning the course into a free course and continuing basic maintenance. There may well be a golf angel out there or some senior citizens and kids willing to man the clubhouse and cart concession for $10 an hour. The biggest waste at Riverside was not operations but the new clubhouse and gates. Riverside isn’t visible at all, but the investment in the clubhouse has to be protected somehow.
The library closings seem to be real-estate driven. Cossitt is on Front Street next to the University of Memphis Law School. Highland is within walking distance of the U of M and a planned new retail development on Highland. If the libraries were closed, the building sites would seem to have other prospects.
If the end game for the two golf courses is privatization or free golf, say so. If the two libraries have a higher and better use, say so. But chopping them to balance the budget makes no sense.
Six students sit facing a large projector screen in Ridgeway Middle School’s music room with djembes, or African drums, at their feet. Teacher Ken Greene fiddles with the controls of the computer that sits at his desk, and a classroom in Fairfax, Virginia, materializes on the screen. These students are wielding violins, and their teacher gives the Ridgeway students a thumbs up. Greene leans forward and asks, “Do you mind if we jam with you?”
Promethean’s ActivBoard, the 78-inch computer screen/chalkboard hybrid recently installed in several Memphis City Schools music labs, has connected Ridgeway students to classes in France, Belgium, and, last week, Virginia.
“Technology is such an integral part of most students’ lives,” Greene says. “It seems logical that we’d bring that familiarity into the classroom and make the experience not only more enjoyable but I think, overall, more effective.”
The students use ActivBoard for activities usually restricted to individual assignments, such as taking quizzes and practicing musical notation. ActivBoard also helps students to collaborate and create their own music while learning technology.
Greene can supply his own questions for games created specifically for ActivBoard, and the system tracks the progress of each student and the class as a whole.
“We get that immediate response and feedback,” Greene says. “It really serves us well in the classroom.” He also uploads student progress to the class website, where students can find music they’ve made, as well as homework assignments.
“When the students go home, they have a connection to our classroom and to our material,” Greene says.
Though the current labs were financed by a grant from Yamaha, the city schools are hoping to put ActivBoards in more Memphis classrooms.
“We’re going to keep on developing great relationships and using technology for all kinds of education,” Greene says.
Who’s Tops?
In the Flyer article that compared the barbecue sandwiches among Memphis’ prominent barbecue restaurants (“King of ‘Cue,” May 13th issue), I noticed one establishment wasn’t included in the paper’s comparison: Tops, one of the most popular barbecue joints in the city.
Not including Tops’ barbecue sandwich in the Flyer‘s comparison is like comparing Hollywood’s hottest actresses and not including Angelina Jolie. Most of the people I know tend to eat Tops’ barbecue sandwiches more often than from any of the restaurants mentioned in the article (which is probably due to the numerous restaurants that Tops has in greater Memphis).
I believe if the Flyer‘s barbecue sandwich comparison was based on a survey among Memphis residents, I’m confident that Tops would fare quite well. In the future, I hope the Flyer staff doesn’t make similar obvious omissions when comparing other Memphis-based products and/or services.
Ken Rogers
Memphis
Editor’s note: For the record, in the Flyer‘s 2009 Best of Memphis readers’ poll, the winners for best barbecue were 1) Central BBQ, 2) Corky’s, and 3) the Bar-B-Que Shop.
NRA Whore
First of all, let me say I love Memphis and would rather live there than Aurora, Colorado, where I live now. Here is the solution to your “NRA whore” problem. Send all your NRA whore government representatives to Colorado, and we will send all our anti-NRA government representatives to Tennessee. But I may change my desire to live in Memphis after the swap.
Come on, you idiot [Bruce VanWyngarden]. The violent crime rate for Memphis is through the roof! Concealed weapons haven’t made a dent in bringing your crime rate down nor have they caused the crime rate to go up! Law-abiding citizens who “pack” obey the law! I think your gun laws in Tennessee are some of the best in the nation.
Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.” If the criminals in Memphis put down their weapons today, will you, Mr. Editor, guarantee the citizens of Memphis there will be no more gun violence? Let me answer that as a whore of the NRA: Memphis, if you put down your weapons today, there will be no more Memphis!
Will you print this, Mr. Editor? Got balls?
William E. Goetsch
Aurora, Colorado
Rand Paul and the Tea Party
Tea Party candidate Rand Paul won the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky. Tea Party patriots all sound pretty much the same. Most letters to the editor from Tea Partiers sound like Glenn Beck, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh regurgitation. They use the same worn-out sound bites.
Case in point: They say the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse, going down the tubes. Just the opposite is true. Business is picking up. Obama’s stimulus plan is working. GM paid back its bailout money five years early and will most certainly buy back the government’s 63 percent ownership in the company. Last month saw a major jump in job numbers.
Tea Party activists throw in the obligatory “loss of liberties” to prove their upside-down worldview. What loss of liberties are they talking about?
Tea Partiers can still write their tripe in any newspaper in America, vote, and demonstrate. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin are still making scads of money and spewing out their nonsensical drivel. I continually push the limits, and I still have the same liberties I had 20 years ago.
These Johnny-come-latelys rant “we want our country back.” Why? So they can give it back to the Bush-Cheney crowd? What a joke these Tea Partiers are.
Ron Lowe
Nevada City, California
Oh, Nothing
I understand the followers of Islam are pitching fits over the “Draw Muhammad Day” movements on Facebook and YouTube. Please join me in a much bigger protest against these insensitive sites.
We atheists have been ignored too long, and most of the members of those sites are drawing nothing! That is deeply offensive to us.
William R. James
Lake Cormorant, Mississippi
About “Blunt Assessment” and Tennessee’s marijuana laws:
“Slippery slopes are usually coated with some form of bullshit.” — 38103
About “Letter from the Editor” on the same topic:
“You may have seen corporate executives smoking pot, but you won’t see their employees doing it because they all have to pass mandatory drug tests, even if all they do is answer a phone. Where big brother government can’t legally go, corporate America is perfectly happy to intrude.” — jeff
About “The Rant” and America’s love affair with oil:
“The part that really baffles me about the Hummer is that after driving them in the military, why in the world would anyone want to drive one? — mad merc”
About “Who Were the West Memphis Cop Killers?”:
“Where is the proof that the two vans, and the two sets of guys, are the same? Where are the videos from the cop cars, the Walmart security cams, the police audio tapes, the 911 and police dispatchers? Are two cop-killer Hispanic guys still on the loose with AK47s? Will the cops try to find them, or will they just try the two dead white guys, because they can’t mount a defense from the grave?” — Tex
About “Teachers, Education Reform, and Unions”:
“Over the last three years, as a teacher, I have averaged a 2 percent increase per year in pay — so what difference does it make? The entire compensation for teachers must be evaluated!” — Hawkeye
Comment of the Week:
About “Letter from the Editor” and marijuana laws:
“OD on alcohol and you go to the ER or the morgue. OD on weed and you go to sleep.” — Packrat
To share your thoughts, comments, concerns, and — maybe — get published, visit memphisflyer.com.
“Who were the West Memphis cop-killers?”
I wrote a post with that headline on my blog last week, in the wake of the shootout in West Memphis between Jerry and Joseph Kane and Arkansas law-enforcement agencies.
I meant it in the sense of “Who are these guys?” I’d found the elder Kane’s website, which promoted his “mortgage fraud” consultancy and linked to various anti-government websites. I also found a link to Glenn Beck’s “9/12 Project,” in which Jerry Kane was a participant.
At that point, all we knew was what the police spokesperson had told us: that a white van had been stopped at an I-40 exit and that two police officers — Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans — had been shot and killed, and a subsequent manhunt had resulted in a shootout at the West Memphis Walmart, in which both Kanes were killed.
Jerry Kane considered himself a “sovereign” citizen, for whom such routine trappings of society as a driver’s license were seen as government intrusion. On a web podcast, Jerry Kane spoke of being pulled over in New Mexico and jailed for 72 hours at a “Nazi checkpoint” for not having a license.
Within minutes of posting this information on my blog, defenders of the Kanes checked in, suggesting that the police couldn’t be trusted and that the Kanes were probably set up. Several readers pointed out that the Kanes were innocent until proven guilty and that I had jumped the gun by assuming that they were the “cop-killers.”
Technically, they were right. I had no proof, only police testimony to the effect that the Kanes — in their white van — were the perps in the killing of two policemen by two men in a white van. I had jumped the gun, so to speak. It was possible, at least theoretically, that there were two white vans, each occupied by men with guns who liked to shoot at police.
But, come on. Really?
Ironies abounded. I would wager that most cops in West Memphis are conservative, God-fearing folks who probably don’t think much of liberals or our current president. Now, these same cops were being disparaged by people from the far-right fringe as “crooked” agents of a corrupt government, bent on taking our freedoms.
It’s a bizarro world out there right now. (As of press time, Glenn Beck’s website still had the link to Jerry Kane’s contributions to the 9/12 Project.) These guys weren’t “patriots.” They were deranged murderers. When do we call a cop-killer by his proper name?
Bruce VanWyngarden
The plan for now is that Jill and Keith Forrester of Whitton Farms will be on the farm by day and inside the Trolley Stop Market by night, making sure things run smoothly. The idea is to operate a year-round market for local farmers and artisans as well as a restaurant that uses those local foods in the dishes. Everything local and in season will get top billing in their bins and on their plates.
“We want to be a destination,” says Sharron Johnson of the market on Madison, nestled between Orleans and Manassas. This shouldn’t be a problem, as the new combination market/restaurant/locavore Mecca is located on the Madison Avenue trolley line and is closer for downtown diners than a drive to Midtown.
You may recognize Johnson as the co-owner of Buns on the Run, the beloved breakfast spot in Cooper-Young that closed a few years ago. After a year and a half in retirement, Johnson stumbled upon the Trolley Stop Market on Facebook and submitted her resume. Now she’ll be a chef in the market’s restaurant.
“I’ll be serving all the traditional breakfast items [from Buns on the Run]. Quiches, crepes, biscuits and gravy — as well as new things like breakfast burritos and breakfast pizzas,” Johnson says. “Oh, and the ‘Holy Grail of hashbrowns.’ Someone once called them that.”
The Trolley Stop Market is set up with a restaurant in front, fresh produce bins in the middle, meat and cheese coolers on one side, a flower shop and craft boutique on the other, and live plants on a stage against the back wall. (“Every square inch will be filled with something,” says Jeremy Denno, bar and kitchen manager.) The stage will double as a venue for live music in the evenings, and the vegetable bins are on casters to make room for more seating. The market also has a deck behind the building and plans to have cafe tables in the front for plenty of outdoor seating.
The restaurant will serve breakfast and lunch every day and smoothies, coffee, and beer at the bar. Dishes like chicken and “slicks” (dumplings), meatloaf, and hearty burgers with Neola Farms beef will make up the plate-lunch portion of the menu, with other sandwiches and soups (in handmade sourdough bread bowls) offering lighter fare. All the sandwiches will be made with bread by Johnson or Shoaf’s Loaf, and every meal will be made from scratch. Johnson plans on doing large-pan desserts (like cobbler and bread pudding) and cheesecake. And there will be pizza. Denno says they have a 60-quart dough mixer and large stone pizza ovens, where they will prepare the hand-tossed crusts and pile on toppings that will change with the seasons.
A casual, kid-friendly spot, Trolley Stop Market has a genuine farm feel, with corrugated metal lining the bar and a hand-painted sign. It also has trolley tracks painted on the floor and the work of local artists and artisans on the walls.
The Forresters hope to open the market the first week in June, with breakfast and lunch prices starting at around $6.50. The market also will have up to 70 local vendors participating. Expect to see familiar products like Peace Bee honey, Neola Farms beef, Mama D’s Italian Ice, OC Vegan Foods, Makeda’s cookies, Jones Orchard, McCarter’s Coffee, and other vendors with farm eggs, cheeses, meats, and produce.
Trolley Stop Market, 704 Madison (526-1361)