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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Taxi Stories

The cover art on last week’s Flyer was awesome and made me stop what I was doing to jump straight into “Taxi Stories” (Cover Story, February 17th issue). The stories were well written, interesting, and a fun addition to the Flyer. Fast Eddie has a way of bringing his adventures home to share. Very entertaining.

I hope you will make “Taxi Stories” a regular part of the Flyer.

Linda Lockwood

Memphis

Keep the Yellow fleet rolling. Eddie Tucker has a Jack Kerouac-like beat that resonates with the struggling souls of our times. The poetry of human beings trying to get somewhere is an urban saga that should continue for many more miles. Eddie, well known in the Memphis area as an accomplished visual artist, has revealed that he is also a very capable street journalist with a unique sensitivity for good stories.

Ben Stroud

Sesto Calende, Italy 

Wow. “Taxi Stories” was good. How about making it a monthly series? The stories make us all laugh at ourselves and learn a little something at the same time.

Way to go, Eddie!

George Pappas

Memphis

Melisma

I want to thank Randy Haspel for the article he wrote (The Rant, February 17th issue) about the weird affectations so many (especially female) singers have adopted. I thought I was the only one who couldn’t stand the melisma in the vocals and the finger wiggling on the microphone. Quality vocalists don’t need gadgetry. The article was hilarious.

Buddy Dailey

Memphis

Teachers’ Rights

In the first week of the new Tennessee legislative session, Representative Debra Maggart and Senator Dolores Gresham have filed two bills that strike at the hearts of Tennessee’s teachers.

The Maggart bill (HB 130), if passed and signed into law, will end 32 years of teacher negotiations in this state. For over 100 years before the Educators Professional Negotiations Act became law, teacher compensation was at the whim of school superintendents and local boards of education. Men were paid more than women. Caucasian teachers were paid more than African-American teachers. Secondary school teachers were paid more than elementary teachers, and friends of the “right people” were routinely paid more than their peers. There was no fair and equitable salary schedule. Negotiations changed that.

The Gresham bill (SB 102) would replace the ability of teachers to select the teacher representatives to the TCRS Board of Trustees with appointments by the speakers of the state Senate and House. Teachers who contribute to the system would have no voice in determining who represents them on their retirement board. Instead, politicians who are not members of the system would make that determination.

As of this writing, no bills have been filed to support teachers in getting the job done in the classroom. Nothing has been introduced that would enhance teaching and learning in our schools and classrooms. Everything talked about so far is about restrictions and loss. It is ironic that this comes at a time when teachers are asked to work harder and smarter in order to help our students achieve ever more rigorous standards.

All of us recall a period in our lives that we term the good old days. When we look closely, however, we realize those good old days never really were. In the fictional good old days, teachers had even lower salaries, no voice in determining education policy, and only a fraction of boys and girls graduated from high school compared to today. Teachers will not sit still while some legislators attempt to take the teaching profession and public education back to a simpler but less effective time.

Media reports indicate Governor Bill Haslam intends to make public education a key component of his agenda. Our experience with the former mayor of Knoxville has shown him to be a thoughtful man. We believe he wants to make a positive difference in public education and the lives of all Tennesseans. We will be meeting with the governor to understand what he wants to accomplish, and we will let him know what teachers believe will be helpful in educating Tennessee’s students. We anticipate working with Governor Haslam to improve our public schools.

Tennessee’s teachers will not be silenced. The Tennessee Education Association will rise to fight to protect the hard-won rights some misguided forces seem willing to eliminate.

Al Mance, Executive Director

Tennessee Education Association

Nashville, Tennessee

Memphis Flyer ncourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Or send us e-mail at letters@memphisflyer.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: Kabuki Demonstrations

Remember back in August, when Glenn Beck held that big rally in Washington, D.C., to “restore honor”? Tens of thousands of people gathered to cheer on right-wing speakers and protest … something. Not long after that, Jon Stewart held a rally in the same city to “restore sanity.” Tens of thousands of people gathered to celebrate … irony?

Those rallies got a lot of attention in the American press at the time but neither amounted to diddly-squat. Both were examples of Kabuki theater on a mass scale — entertainers performing for their fans, about as consequential as Saturday morning television wrestling.

What’s happening in the Middle East is the real deal — demonstrations and protests with consequences, instigated by people who have had enough, who want their freedom, who want their despotic leaders removed, and who are brave enough to risk everything to achieve those goals.

To a lesser degree, the same thing is playing out in Wisconsin, where thousands of people are outraged at the government’s attempt to take away their right to unionize and are willing to take to the streets to oppose the legislation. And with the advent of the Internet and social tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, it’s never been easier for people to organize mass protests or to show the world where and how injustice is happening.

And that’s the eternal lesson: Change — real change — always comes from the bottom, from the people getting screwed. When a sufficient number of personal lives — and livelihoods — are impacted, people will organize and fight. Some of those at the top — the Sarah Palins, Glenn Becks, and Al Sharptons of the world — will try to jump in front of the crowds and call themselves leaders. But they’re not. They’re opportunists and parasites on the body politic.

It’s a sad fact of human nature that those with power and money never seem to be able to help themselves from seeking more — through oppressive, vengeful legislation, through gerrymandered redistricting, through corporate bailouts and tax laws that favor those who already have more money than they can ever spend, through service cuts that punish those who are struggling.

The arc of history shows that power is fluid. When those few on top abuse the many below, their days on top are numbered. It may take years or even decades, but eventually, what goes around comes around. Honor and sanity can be restored — at least until the next bunch gets greedy.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

To the Barricades!

Well, it’s about time! I wondered what it would take for Cairo-like demonstrations to break out on this side of the pond, and now, thanks to the folks in Madison, Wisconsin, we know the answer: It’s the same as anywhere else — autocracy.

Scott Walker, the newly elected, Republican-cum-tea-party governor of that state mistook his election as a mandate to engage in another of the right wing's battles with the middle class by targeting one of the GOP's favorite bogeymen — labor unions. Walker wants to unilaterally terminate the rights of 175,000 state workers to collectively bargain (a right, by the way, the union movement originated in — you guessed it — Wisconsin). He even borrowed a page from the Middle Eastern despots’ playbook by threatening to call out the National Guard to quell any protests.

But, unlike the rest of that socioeconomic class in this country who are under attack by conservatives but who have seemingly decided to shuffle off to the slaughter house in sheep-like obeisance to their corporatist overlords, these feisty laborers have intoned Peter Finch’s famous movie line, telling their bully governor that they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. Now, how about the rest of us?

Americans are notoriously complacent. Ever noticed how, in so many other countries, in a matter of hours after something unpopular happens, thousands of people are marching in the street, with banners and signs already made, decrying the latest outrage du jour? In this country, not so much. The last time we had mass demonstrations of an equivalent magnitude to what we’ve seen in the Middle East was during the Vietnam War, and that was primarily because many of the demonstrators were at risk of becoming involuntary cannon fodder. 

Sure, Americans have lost trillions of dollars in their pension and retirement accounts as a result of the crimes committed by Wall Street investment banks, for which no one will ever be held accountable. Sure, millions of Americans have lost their homes as a result of fraudulent loans and foreclosures, for which no one will ever be held to account. And sure, the U.S. has even greater income inequality than many Middle Eastern countries (including Tunisia and Egypt). But in the U.S., members of the middle class are told to just get over it. Pay your taxes, even if the super-rich pay far less, proportionately, than you do, and STFU. Write a blog, or maybe even an opinion column for your local alternative paper, but whatever you do, don’t put your bodies on the line, en masse, to express your disaffection or to demand your grievances be addressed and remedied. That would be so Third World.

Labor unions, of course, make a convenient target for the tea-and-no-sympathy crowd. It’s much easier to blame public employee unions for the fiscal problems most states find themselves in than it is to take responsibility for policies that have caused those problems. In Wisconsin’s case, this means the governor can bash unions as scapegoats for a budget deficit that he helped cause with a series of corporate tax reductions he promoted immediately following his election. 

The anti-union mantra is a familiar one here in the South, where the majority of “right-to-work” states are located. Unions are vilified here, perhaps as a remnant of a slavery-induced mentality that workers should be grateful, and even servile, to their employer/masters. Right here in River City, the hostility toward public employee unions was graphically displayed this past winter in the dustup that followed garbage workers’ failure to report for work during a particularly cold stretch of weather. 

Maybe the demonstrations in Wisconsin are a function of the fact that, unlike the case in the rest of the country, the demonstrators were already organized, and maybe the public employee unions in Wisconsin are the ones that are really promoting the “don’t tread on me” ethos the Tea Party disingenuously mouths as a subterfuge for its real, pro-corporatist agenda. But either way, we can all learn something from their resistance efforts (and, indeed, from the demonstrations in the Middle East) — namely, that there’s something to be said not only for being mad as hell and not wanting to take it anymore but in storming the barricades to do something about it.

Memphis attorney Marty Aussenberg writes the Flyer‘s online “Gadfly” column.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Arrested Development

A Cooper-Young Development Corporation (CYDC) project to revive a deteriorating stretch of Seattle Street has led to the deterioration of the organization itself.

The 20-year-old CYDC’s board has agreed to allow its president, Reb Haizlip, to manage the organization out of existence after the failure of the Seattle Street project and a recent Regions Bank lawsuit to recoup money borrowed for the group’s operating expenses.

“When we tie up our loose ends, we’ll seek a vote of dissolution from the board. We’ll present that to the secretary of state and that will be the end,” Haizlip said.

Over the years, the group has developed more than 60 properties in the Cooper-Young neighborhood. Some of those developments were new homes, and others were renovated homes or commercial businesses. When the development corporation was founded in 1991, the Midtown neighborhood was just beginning to bounce back from its reputation as a crime-ridden area.

“Twenty years ago, Cooper-Young was considered somewhat on the other side of safe,” Haizlip said.

The group was successful in reviving the neighborhood by growing home ownership and increasing the area’s housing stock. In 2006, the CYDC launched the Seattle Street project with funding support from the city and state.

The group purchased 10 properties on Seattle Street, a rundown neighborhood off McLean and just west of the Cooper-Young neighborhood. They built six new homes, but once constructed, they couldn’t sell them.

“Our timing could not have been worse. The homes came online just about the time that the real estate market went into its spiraling decline,” Haizlip said. “That made it impossible for us to sell. We could not lease them or rent them. It was a tragedy for our organization.”

Today, the new homes on Seattle remain empty and boarded. Some of the homes were foreclosed.

“We spoke with our lending institutions and informed them that foreclosure was our only course because we couldn’t sell them,” Haizlip said. “We thought it’d be better if the homes were back in their hands instead of ours.”

Additionally, the group was recently hit with a lawsuit from Regions Bank, which is attempting to recoup money borrowed more than 10 years ago for the group’s operating expenses.

For years, the CYDC paid small amounts to satisfy the interest on the uncollateralized loan, and eventually the board created a fund to retire its debt.

“When the real estate market got to the point where we couldn’t sustain our operations, we began tapping into that fund which we created to buy back the debt,” Haizlip said. “In the end, they sued us for the money, and the board elected the suit to be won. That election effectively terminated our ability to operate.”

The CYDC recently sold its old office building on Cooper Street to the Cooper-Young Community Association.

Despite the group’s post-recession financial woes, Haizlip hopes residents will remember the good things the group did to rehab the Cooper-Young Historic District.

“This was the first group of developers in the neighborhood. These were pioneers. These were the people who bought really derelict homes and brought sweat equity and money into them,” Haizlip said. “These are the people who brought the neighborhood back, and I think the organization deserves a lot of credit.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Cracked The Fly Team tries to let our readers know when Memphis is included on an unflattering list created by some struggling magazine to generate headlines. But somehow we missed this extremely important piece of writing from an August 2009 issue of Cracked. The article titled “6 Most Horrific Bosses of All Time” identifies former Memphis mayor Henry Loeb as the absolute worst boss of all time for his involvement in events leading up to the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike. According to Cracked, Mayor Loeb wasn’t satisfied with the

sanitation workers’ low pay and poor working conditions, so he made more oppressive rules “purely out of dickishness.” Why can’t these guys write history textbooks?

Irony Alert Apparently, Memphis police major Stanley Eason took his job title a little too seriously. Eason, who worked as the supervisor of the Memphis Police Department’s domestic violence unit, was charged with threatening his wife with a gun on Valentine’s Day. Let’s just hope the poor man never finds work as a shot nurse.

Verbatim Here are some words you don’t see together very often. According to a report by WMC-TV, Domino’s delivery driver Susan Guy contacted authorities when a customer who had ordered pizza every day for the past three years failed to place an order for several consecutive days. Police discovered that Domino’s customer Jean Wilson had fallen and was unable to get up, prompting WMC to report that “her pizza-heavy diet may have saved her life.”

By Chris Davis. E-mail him at davis@memphisflyer.com

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News The Fly-By

Money Pit

If the Mallory-Neely mansion in Victorian Village were a woman, she’d look darn good for her age. But even this grand dame of Memphis’ past isn’t immune to time.

Built in 1852, the 25-room structure at 652 Adams is in dire need of a new roof and restoration work to about a third of its 70 windows, said Wesley Creel, administrator of programs for the Pink Palace Family of Museums.

The carriage house/visitor’s center, situated behind the main house, is also out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The Mallory-Neely mansion will remain closed to the public until the repairs and ADA-upgrades are complete.

“I’m hoping that we will have a new roof by Christmastime,” Creel said. “That’s usually how long it takes for all the processes to work. But we still can’t open until we’re ADA compliant.”

Though Creel hesitated to set a date, he said the ADA upgrades might not be completed until spring 2012.

For years, the city-owned Mallory-Neely mansion was open to the public as a museum of Victorian culture, but it was shuttered in 2005 because of city budget cuts. That same year, the city of Memphis and the U.S. Department of Justice agreed that all city-owned facilities would have to become ADA compliant.

As far as Creel is concerned, the roof takes top priority this fiscal year. It isn’t leaking yet but has “major potential for some damage.” About $268,000 is available to replace the roof, but Creel is hoping prospective contractors will bid the job for less.

That would allow for at least some of the windows to be repaired and weatherized — a custom restoration that could cost about $4,000 per window. To put that figure into perspective, Creel said some windows in the house are seven and eight feet tall.

Meanwhile, the city’s capital improvement budget for 2012 allocates $36,000 for architectural engineering fees and $150,000 for construction, renovation, and repairs at Mallory-Neely. Those amounts could go a long way toward shoring up more damaged window casings and funding the ADA requirements, which include producing audio/visual tours for people with mobility impairments and improving the area outside the carriage house to make it wheelchair-accessible.

But first, a cash-strapped Memphis City Council must approve those amounts. Right now, the city anticipates a $70 million budget shortfall in fiscal year 2012 that could lead to layoffs and other sweeping austerity measures.

Cynthia Buchanan, the city’s director of Parks Services, appeared last week before a city council committee to submit a preliminary design schematic for the work. It was approved, so the next step involves a full council review on March 1st. After that, a bid package can be issued to contractors.

“We intended to open [Mallory-Neely] this year, but when we realized how massive the improvements were going to be, we didn’t want to bring in the public when we might have to be doing things that were dangerous,” Buchanan said.

Although frustrated by Mallory-Neely’s dormancy, Scott Blake, executive director of Victorian Village Inc., looks forward to the day when the mansion finally reopens for tours.

“Our little area needs that kinetic energy [that will be created] when the Mallory-Neely House is open,” Blake said.

Right now, amenities in the area, which lies between the downtown core and medical district, are limited. The Woodruff-Fontaine House at 680 Adams is the only continuously open museum in Victorian Village. The Goyer-Lee House sits empty and in need of extensive restoration work.

Blake is hoping a private developer will buy the Goyer-Lee House, which is for sale, and repurpose it as a bed-and-breakfast or some other tourist attraction. Whatever it becomes, the Goyer-Lee House, like Mallory-Neely, will have to be repositioned within historical guidelines.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

No More Omerta!: Terry Roland Spills the Beans on Executive Session

On Wednesday an increasingly impatient group of Memphis media people cooled their heels outside the 4th floor conference room of the Shelby County Commission. The reporters were being conspicuously excluded from an “executive session” in which the commissioners inside were deliberating with lawyer Leo Bearman and a colleague on possible legal strategies relating to their creation of provisional districts for an all-county school board.

It was all too much for Commissioner Terry Roland of Millington, a representative from suburban District 4 and a fierce opponent of the county commission’s plans to manage a transition to an all-county school board. So, executive session or no executive session, Roland let all the cats out of the bag and decided to tell the excluded media what was going on.

Ultimately the commission would open its doors to the media and proceed to discuss a provisional plan for a 25-district school board encompassing all of Shelby County. With Roland and Heidi Shafer voting No, the commission voted its approval.

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Paul Greengrass Movie “Memphis” Gets Greenlight

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Deadline is reporting that filmmaker Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum, Green Zone, United 93) is moving ahead with Memphis, a movie about Martin Luther King Jr. The film reportedly will focus on King’s time in Memphis in 1968. He came to Memphis during the city sanitation workers’ strike and was assassinated on April 4th.

Production will begin in June. No word yet on where it will be shot, or who will be in it. Universal Pictures will make the film, to be written and directed by Greengrass. Scott Rudin (The Social Network and True Grit) is producing.

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News

How Do the Memphis Biz Incentives Compare?

John Branston took Mayor Wharton up on his invitation to “read” about what other cities are doing to lure big business. The numbers tell a story.

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Opinion

Comparing the Memphis Incentives

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Taking a cue from Mayor A C Wharton, here’s a look at what some other Southeastern cities and states reportedly paid to land big manufacturing plants and major employers in the last 18 years.

On Tuesday Wharton suggested that critics of incentives for Mitsubishi Electric and Electrolux read up on what other cities offer. I looked at car manufacturers because Wharton specifically mentioned Nissan and Hyundai at his press conference.

Conclusion: Memphis paid less for less.

Numbers are easy enough to find since public expenditures must be disclosed. But comparisons are harder to make and quantify when other factors are considered. How many spinoff jobs and industries? What average wage? What’s the inflation factor for an incentives package given years ago? And how desperate was the city and/or state for new jobs and a good story to tell?

And in this case we’re not talking apples to oranges, but cars to appliances and transformers. Or first-round draft choices and third-round picks, if you prefer.

One thing is indisputable. You have to pay to play. As then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said in icy-cold tones in Chicago several years ago when Memphis and Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium finished out of the running for an expansion team, “You can win or you can be disappointed.”

With those cautions, here’s a look at some big car deals within 500 miles of Memphis and the two Memphis deals.