Month: June 2016

Scotched and Trumped!

Post author By Tim Sampson
Post date June 30, 2016

CREDIT: Reuters | Carlo Allegri

Whoaaaa! I’ve been trying not to write much about Donald Trump because the idiot is getting way too much publicity, but I figured not many people pay attention to me, so I’m not adding to the media frenzy that much when I state that I really do think he might be the Antichrist.

I’m not a religious person, and I don’t know about all this Armageddon and heaven and hell and all that. And I was naive enough to think that, when he announced he was running for president of the United States, people would not get behind him the way they have. I, like many people, didn’t take him seriously at all, and just thought of him as bad entertainment, a train wreck hard not to stare at. I figured anyone who’d ever been to Trump Tower and witnessed how gaudy it is would know better.

But now that he’s on a world stage (well, at his Trump Turnberry golf course, one of several he has built in Scotland) offering up his rhetorical B.S. in support of the United Kingdom pulling out of the European Union — he’s actually become even more dangerous than he has been before now.

In my real job as PR guy for a major Memphis cultural organization, I deal with people from all over the world on a daily basis, especially the United Kingdom. We have a lot of U.K. journalists, filmmakers, bloggers, and others in the media whom I’ve become great friends with over the years, and they are absolutely mystified by the United States’ having someone like Donald Trump being in the position he’s in. And now that he has come out with his unfettered-by-any-knowledge opinion that it’s great for Great Britain to pull out of the European Union, they hate him even more. One friend actually just emailed me this morning, saying, “I honestly didn’t think this [pulling out] could happen. It makes me actually scared of Donald Trump.”

Why Trump decided to travel to Scotland to cut the ribbon on a golf course at the same time the United Kingdom is doing something more radical than anything it has done in 100 years is anyone’s guess, unless he just figured he would get more publicity if he rode on the coattails of an historic, controversial event that was getting the attention of the press all over the world.

Reuters | Carlo Allegri

Trexit, please.

And he did it in true, inexplicable Trump fashion. After circling his Scottish golf course in his G-TRMP helicopter, he landed to be met, as The New York Times reported, “much like the queen of England would be met, by staff members of Trump Turnberry — all clad in red ‘Make Turnberry Great Again’ hats — as well as two bagpipers in kilts who, along with Secret Service, preceded him up the sloping steps to his property. And he waxed proudly about his golf resort for more than 15 minutes, before finally taking questions on the seismic news of the day.”

While that may not be Antichrist behavior, it’s hard to make the case that it’s not pretty damn weird. Almost as weird as his referring to himself as “Scotch,” instead of Scottish.

His comments ranged from comparing renovating a golf course to making America great again to blaming Barack Obama for commenting on the U.K. pullout, even though he was standing there doing the same thing and had been doing it for a few days prior to his grand arrival, once someone in his campaign explained to him what “Brexit” meant.

While he heralded the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union as a catalyst that would drive down the pound and thereby drive more people to his Scottish golf courses (yes, it’s fine to scratch your head in public), he failed to mention that when building the Trump International Golf Links course near Aberdeen, Scotland, he sued the Scottish government for trying to build smart-energy wind farms that would block the view of the ocean from the courses, and psychologically tortured homeowners who refused to get their cottages out of his way. He promised 6,000 to 7,000 jobs for the development, which now has approximately 150 employees. And apparently, it gets few players because it’s built on shifting sand dunes and is usually shrouded in freezing cold fog.

One Scotch — oops, I mean, Scottish columnist wrote, “Some locals are puzzled over why Trump would build a golf course in a spot regularly shrouded in cold fog. It is fabulous news for the area, of course, and also for knitwear manufacturers, who will make a killing when the world’s top players step out on the first tee and feel as though their limbs are being sawn off by a northeast breeze that hasn’t paused for breath since it left the Arctic.”

So, all of you Trump supporters, this is the man you are backing to handle foreign policy for the United States? I think it might be the end times. Orlando, ISIS, Trump, the fact that Americans can buy a military assault rifle faster than you can get a drink in a crowded bar — it’s not looking good. I just hope Trump’s hair doesn’t turn out to be the mark of the beast.

Tags Brexit, Donald Trump in Scotland, prevaricating cocksplat, Trump's golf course in Scotland

We Recommend We Recommend

Billy Gardell at Minglewood Hall

Post author By Chris McCoy
Post date June 30, 2016

“I started stand-up in 1987,” says Billy Gardell.

The transplanted Floridian got his start onstage during the height of the ’80s stand-up boom and achieved some success on the road before heading out to Hollywood in 1997 to try and make it in the movies. After years of bit parts and recurring roles on shows such as The King of Queens, Yes, Dear, and My Name Is Earl, in 2010, he landed every comedian’s dream job: a leading role on a primetime comedy called Mike and Molly. “It was 25 years to an overnight success,” he says.

Co-starring with another rising comedy star, Melissa McCarthy, for six seasons on CBS made Gardell famous. When the show’s finale aired last month, Gardell was already hard at work on another role that was very different from the Midwestern everyman familiar to his fans. The comedian has spent the last few months in Memphis playing Elvis’ infamous manager Col. Tom Parker for the CMT series Million Dollar Quartet. “It’s been wonderful,” he says. “The city’s been incredibly welcoming. Being able to film in the authentic places where some of those things happened really lends to the performance. … It’s a wonderful cast. I think we’re going to do something special for the city of Memphis.”

[iamge-1]

Gardell has also returned to his first love: stand-up comedy. “My stand-up show is about real life. It’s about being crazy when you’re younger, and then trying to step into being a father and a husband without being a hypocrite. I think that’s pretty relatable. It’s very working-class humor.”

For the show, the comedian takes inspiration from his life as a father to his son, William. “I’ve got a 13-year-old who just went into teenage mode. He sleeps until 1 every day, and all I get is one-word answers. He’ll get through it, though. He’s a good boy.”

Gardell will bring his comedy stylings to Minglewood Hall on Saturday, July 2nd. “I’m really looking forward to the show,” he says. “It’s gonna be nice. Most of our cast and crew are going to come, so it will be a big night.”

Tags Billy Gardell, Mike and Molly, Million Dollar Quartet

News The Fly-By

University Employees Can Begin Carrying Guns Friday

Post author By Toby Sells
Post date June 30, 2016

CREDIT: Laura Iushewitz | Dreamstime.com

Handguns will be allowed on the campuses of Tennessee’s public universities on Friday, and Memphis’ two biggest universities began registering employees wishing to carry this week.

State lawmakers passed the bill to allow full-time employees to carry handguns on public university campuses in May. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam expressed concern about the legislation at the time but allowed the bill to become law without his signature.

The bill was opposed by the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) and the University of Tennessee (UT) system. The two organizations will manage gun-carry programs at the 46 institutions they oversee.

“Our police chiefs and public safety officers will face greater challenges when responding to emergency situations with the complexity this law adds to their responsibilities,” TBR interim Chancellor David Gregory said in May.

Laura Iushewitz | Dreamstime.com

Employees must have a state-issued permit to carry a handgun, and they must register with their school’s police department if they want to carry on campus. University of Memphis opened its registration process to employees Tuesday. University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) will open its registration process Friday.

Handguns cannot be carried into stadiums, gymnasiums, or auditoriums while school-sanctioned events are in progress. They are not allowed in meetings about student or employee discipline matters or in meetings about faculty tenure. At UTHSC, handguns cannot be carried into a hospital, student health or counseling center, or into an office that provides medical or mental health services.

U of M president David Rudd was expected to release a more detailed statement on the issue this week, but in a statement to the U of M campus community in May, he said “I don’t believe the presence of more weapons will make our campus safer.”

“The University of Memphis campuses have consistently been among the safest in the state, which is critical to student success,” Rudd said. “We believe our exemplary safety record is due in part to guns being prohibited with the exception of those carried by highly trained police officers.”

Stuart Dedmon is a U of M student, and he heads the Tennessee chapter of Students for Concealed Carry (SCC), which advocates for on-campus carry rights. He said the organization does not claim that on-campus carry will make campuses safer. Concealed carry is about personal protection, he said, not public protection.

“We realize that many individuals are uncomfortable with the thought of armed individuals on their college campus, but those same individuals worried about guns on campus are likely surrounded by licensed and armed individuals while off campus.,” Dedmon said.

Tennessee Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris, who is also a professor at U of M’s law school, surveyed 1,700 university faculty members across the state, and he said many criticized the move.

“Make no mistake. Special interest groups and the opinions of a very small minority of Tennesseans drive decisions like this one,” Harris said.

Southwest Tennessee Community College did not respond to an inquiry on this story.

Tags guns, University of Memphis, University of Tennessee

Editorial Opinion

No to Requiring City Residency for City Employees

Post author By
Post date June 30, 2016

When Martavius Jones was a member of the old Memphis City Schools board, he came across as a generally forward-looking public official. He was board chairman when a massive Republican victory in the state election of 2010 awakened fears in city circles that the long-blocked ambition of the then-wholly suburban Shelby County Schools board for special-school-district status would be enabled by the new legislature. Fairly or not, many residents of Memphis’ urban core believed that such an outcome would result in the diversion of significant state funding from city schools. Jones was a leader in moving for the MCS charter surrender that, in theory, would lead to the merger of city and county schools and the avoidance of any such fiscal dilution.

Martavius Jones

Subsequently, as a member of the blue-ribbon Transition Planning Commission that was created by the legislature, allegedly to “facilitate” the merger, Jones appeared to be on the side of those who took seriously the TPC’s ostensible mission of setting the stage for a successful union of the two existing systems. From the beginning, there were elements of a sham to the process, since the Norris-Todd bill which created the TPC seemed clearly designed to lead to a secession of the Shelby County suburban municipalities from the newly merged common district.

As we all know, that is how things ended up, with a fragmented local educational landscape, consisting of six suburban school districts and a rump version of SCS that served mainly Memphis and a bit of unincorporated county turf and was further balkanized by a galaxy of charter schools and a state-supported Achievement School District that gobbled up “non-performing” city schools.

But there had been a brief moment when the prospect of a unified and merged city/county school district seemed possible. That was when an initiative developed across various jurisdictional lines to name John Aitken, the respected superintendent of the old version of SCS, as superintendent of the unified new version. Unexpectedly, Jones, the presumed progressive and apostle of school unity, became one of the leaders of a stop-Aitken movement and made clear his loyalty to an urban faction that brooked no possibility of a compromise solution. The result was deadlock on the ad hoc provisional board then governing the public schools and the ultimate disintegration of the merged system.

Why do we bring up this unhappy history? Because once again we see Mr. Jones, now a member of the Memphis City Council, applying his talents, not to the process of unity but to that of parochialism in his sponsorship of a prospective referendum to force all city employees, including first responders, to live within the city limits — binding the Strickland administration’s hands and limiting its options as it strives, at a time of rising violent crime, to rebuild what is a seriously truncated police force.

The able councilman from Super District 8 still, as in his time on the school board, has stand-out moments — as when he, and he alone, demurred from the original Council vote to give the Memphis Zoo board total oversight over the Overton Park Greensward. But we think he’s wrong on the residency issue and urge his council colleagues — or the city’s voters, if it comes to it — to reject the proposal.

Tags Martavius Jones, Memphis Flyer editorial, residency requirement for Memphis city employees, residency requirement for Memphis city employees is a bad idea

Politics Politics Beat Blog

It Took a Collaborative Effort, but Shelby County Passed a Budget

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date June 29, 2016

CREDIT: JB

Administration figures Luttrell, Kennedy, and Swift huddle as the bargaining gets intense.

On Wednesday, the Shelby County Commission met for seven hours —nonstop except for brief “recesses” — and finally voted for a solution to the county’s budget dilemma that could probably have been arrived at within the first several minutes.

But the longer time period was doubtless necessary to iron out wrinkles and wear down some stubbornness and misgivings among the principals, both on the Commission and within the administration. The only given, as the day started, was that the persistent issue of school funding would be resolved via a $3.5 million add-on allocation to Shelby County Schools. (SCS’s total allocation is $22 million, and the county’s municipal-district schools will receive a pro-rated $6.2 millionl.)

The school-funding increase was one matter that Chairman Terry Roland (and most other participants) was insistent about. Every other possible increase was a variable in what turned out to be a $1.4 billion operating budget.

At roughly 3 p.m., the Commission resorted to a procedure that the administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell had persistently warned against and voted resoundingly to tap the county’s fund balance for $5 million to round out a budget deal that included some $13.5 million of add-on expenditures.

At various times in the proceedings, which began with committee meetings at 8 a.m. and continued with a special full-commission meeting that started at 11 a.m., Luttrell and two aides — CAO Harvey Kennedy and CFO Mike Swift — had seemingly convinced the Commission to pare down or eliminate some of the add-ons, which were earmarked for a variety of county departments, but in the end only a pair of add-on allocations were modestly trimmed.

The beneficiaries of the Commission’s largesse were Shelby County Schools ($3.5 million); the Sheriff’s Department ($3.1 million, with another $1.3 million possible down the road); Juvenile Court ($1 million); Shelby County Department of Corrections ($1 million); Regional One Health ($1 million) the District Attorney General’s office ($1,300,000); the Shelby County Election Commission ($8,216); General Sessions Criminal Court ($228,238); General Sessions Enviro
JB

Commissioner Eddie Jones

nmental Court ($8,233); $169,000 for JIFF (Juvenile Intervention & Faith-based Fellowship); and $64,590 for the Commission’s own budget.

To offset these increases, the Commission availed itself of several cost-cutting remedies, some suggested by Kennedy for the administration, some of its own devising.

Among the former were a cap on life insurance payouts for county retirees, for a savings of $2 million; the inclusion of an estimated $1 million windfall addition to the county wheel tax, which will be routed exclusively to the schools for fiscal 2016-17; and a pledge from Kennedy to “find” another $1.2 million in random funds. Among the latter were a re-allocation to the fiscal 2016-17 budget of surplus Sheriff’s Department budget funds from fiscal 2015-16, and the aforementioned $5 million transfer from the fund balance.
Before the final budget formula was reached, various other alternatives were considered and discarded, including a proposal by David Reaves to eliminate blight-reduction funding so as to shift funds elsewhere; and a comprehensive amendment by Steve Basar that would have freed up several millions by re-classifying a number of pay-as-you-go capital-construction projects as debt-incurring cases.
Acceptance of Basar’s amendment, which was rejected after a recess, would have funded all the intended projects but would have left the county budget out of balance, with a need for the Commission to make later revisions in either the budget, which had to be passed by July 1, or the county tax rate, which got the second of three readings Wednesday, remaining at $4.37 per $100 of assessed value. The tax rate, which as of now balances with the budget, will get its third and final reading on July 27.

Although several of the votes along the way of Wednesday’s elongated bargaining sessions were contested, the margins of acceptance seemed to grow as the day wore on, with several commissioners accepting procedures they had earlier balked at (e.g., David Reaves on several expenditure increases he eventually accepted, or at least tolerated; and Reginald Milton on the retirees’ insurance caps).

The administration’s acceptance of the Commission’s tapping the county balance was passive and grudging, at best, with Kennedy acknowledging, “We didn’t like it, but we couldn’t stop it, and at least we managed to mitigate it.” As Heidi Shafer noted, the delving into the fund balance may have reduced the intensiveness of the county’s debt-retirement policy somewhat, but it still left it in acceptable order.

Implicit in Wednesday’s bargaining was the continuation of a power struggle
JB

Commissioners Walter Bailey and David Reaves

between the Commission and the administration on matters of governance. Shafer voiced the issue during the day’s deliberations as a matter of whether the Commission’s responsibility was limited to approving a tax rate to cover the administration’s budget allocations or involved a more active license to collaborate on determining those allocations.

By definition, Wednesday’s negotiations, as well as the final outcome, resolved the issue in favor of a broader interpretation of the Commission’s mission.

Tags Heidi Shafer, Mark Luttrell, Shelby Commission creates budget compromise, Steve Basar, Terry Roland

Intermission Impossible Theater

Munchkin Mayor Justin G. Nelson, Candidate for Most Adorable Duckmaster

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date June 29, 2016

CREDIT: Daniel A. Swalec

Daniel A. Swalec

Justin G. Nelson welcomes Dorothy.

If you didn’t get to see Memphis actor Justin G. Nelson’s star turn as a Peabody Duckmaster, good news — there’s video. Nelson played the mayor of Munchkinland in the Wizard of Oz national tour that docked at the Orpheum earlier in June.

Munchkin Mayor Justin G. Nelson, Candidate for Most Adorable Duckmaster

The bad news: The show’s picked up and moved on.

News News Blog

Pets of the Week

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date June 29, 2016

Each week, the Flyer will feature adoptable dogs and cats from Memphis Animal Services. All photos are credited to Memphis Pets Alive. More pictures can be found on the Memphis Pets Alive Facebook page.

[slideshow-1]

Tags Memphis Animal Services, Memphis Pets Alive

Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Read Trump’s Letter Soliciting Campaign Donations from Non-U.S. Citizens

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date June 29, 2016

As you’ve probably heard by now, GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has been sending fundraising emails to foreign citizens including British politicians and every member of the Parliament of Iceland. This has resulted in a legal complaint filed by the The Campaign Legal Center accusing the candidate of violating federal law.

Fly on the Wall has obtained an email Trump’s campaign sent to various UK officials including Pilsbury D’Bowie from the constituency of Welwyn Hatfield. Here’s the full text.

To whom it may concern.
Please excuse me if I have infringe into your privacy. This may be strange
introduction, but I have no option than to mail you. I am Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate for President of the United States. I m presently trying to make America great again and stop crooked Hillary. Though I have not met with you, I believe one has to risk confidence in someone to succeed sometimes in life.
To stop crooked Hillry there will be costs of doing America’s business for which I will need your beautiful assistance. When we take back our contry I will inevest in your contry thru you in the business of your picking.

• Real Estate Investment
• The Transport Industry
• 3)Five Star Hotels.

I await your response soonest and please include your direct phone number, full
name and contact address for easy communication.
Regards,
Donald J. Trump

News News Blog

‘No Answer’ on Homicide Spike, Gun Violence

Post author By Toby Sells
Post date June 29, 2016

Cohen

It’s easy to get guns, there are “hundreds and hundreds of thousands” of them in Memphis, and some city leaders had no answer as to why violent crime is on the rise here.

Those are some of the conclusions reached Wednesday during a panel discussion on gun violence in Memphis convened by Rep. Steve Cohen. The panel discussion brought together state, federal, and local leaders to hear Memphians’ views on the gun debate in Congress. Cohen wanted to hear what more could be done on the federal level to help prevent gun violence here.

Cohen noted that recent gun legislation failed in Congress. That legislative push came after a shooter killed 49 people in an Orlando nightclub.

Several bills came from Democrats and Republicans alike that would have closed loopholes for sales at gun shows and required background checks. All of them failed, even after a group of House Democrats (including Cohen) staged a widely publicized sit-in on the House floor.

Memphis Police Department (MPD) Deputy Director Mike Ryall said most of the city’s 111 homicides so far this year were committed with a gun. With that, he said guns are something the MPD “takes very seriously.”

He said “guns in bad hands” are the real issue and said leaders need to look at “serious sentencing and discipline for those who violate gun laws in our state.”

Cohen asked the panel members why violence and homicides have been on the rise around the country. David Biggers Jr., executive assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, said that the answer is difficult as there are an array of causes that lead to homicides and “the root of all of them is bad decision-making.”

Cohen asked again, “Why are there more homicides this year than last year?”

Biggers replied, “No answer.”

Others on the panel said the rise in violence this year is “the magic question” or the “million-dollar question.”

But Dr. Martin Croce, the medical director of the Elvis Presley Trauma Center at Regional Medical Center, said, “I think it’s because of the ready availability of guns used by people without sense.”

Some in the audience suggested stricter penalties for gun-law violations, citing the fact that young people in Memphis aren’t afraid of going to jail here, calling it “Club 201.”

Others suggested that citizens don’t trust the police and don’t feel comfortable providing information to them for fear that they will be revealed or dragged into court.

Will Batts, executive director of the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center, said while there has always been hate against those in his community, the difference now is that it’s easier to buy guns that will kill many people in a short span of time.

Ryall noted that MPD recently rounded up many guns in a huge bust but said more needs to be done.

“There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of guns [in Memphis],” Ryall said. The access to guns is so easy that it’s an constant feeding machine. We need to look into how guns get in the hands of bad people.”