Author: Dan Johnson

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Outsourcing Prosperity

The last time I was in an economics class, America was only a dozen or so years removed from a period of trade surpluses and virtual isolation. German and Japanese compact cars had made inroads but were still considered a bit of a novelty — until the real hammer fell in the form of the so-called Arab oil embargo

More than a decade later, about the time Sony bought Columbia Pictures and an investment group including the Mitsubishi family became the owner of Rockefeller Center in New York, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal were encouraging all of us to learn Japanese — or else. The Japanese had already crushed the American electronics manufacturers and, as they gathered up all the monies associated with that victory, they were working on the remains of the automakers.

Now China has proven to be an extremely quick study — to the point where it has become the new bully on the block. It is defining the ground rules and near-invisible profit margins for manufacturers and retailers alike with the help of its new best buddy from Arkansas, Wal-Mart.

Manufacturing — which largely built America and its middle class, made us a genuine power in the First World War, and saved the freedom of the Western democracies in the Second World War — is all but dead. And the USA doesn’t seem very upset about it. Labor may be reeling a bit from the defeat, but they have become accustomed to diminished and constantly eroding expectations. Capital seems to be doing just fine, thanks.

It would be hard to argue with the obvious conclusion that this is simply the natural result of laissez-faire capitalism. The labor movement of the last century just postponed it for six or eight decades.

Sixty years ago, a lower class kid in Flint, Michigan, knew that he could go to work in the GM plant and, if he showed diligence and aptitude and was patient for 10 or 15 years, he would most certainly be making the kind of money that would push him into the middle class (given the UAW contract at the time, well into the middle class). And his retirement would be provided for as well.

With stock options and so forth, some of those middle-class kids born to plant foremen would find that attending a university might even boost them to the management suites.

There aren’t many of those jobs left in the US, and the benefits and guarantees that accrue to those positions are fast becoming a thing of the past.

Working conditions in China and the third world are execrable, but the vast hordes who toil in this human-rights vacuum are going to continue to be in such oversupply that they will literally compete to the death to get a tiny portion of your dollar.

Meanwhile, our increasingly sophisticated manufactured goods will continue to be built by the international low bidder using unregulated labor so desperate that they will barter the lives of their children to provide for your conspicuous consumption. And even as they express gratitude to the local overseer, they will hate you a little more every year for your distant complicity.

This is the definition of capitalism carried out to its logical conclusion: The strong continue to prosper as usual, and the weak must look to the hereafter to inherit what’s left of the earth.

When the social burdens of the poor have driven the more capable of the population to seek satisfaction elsewhere, where will our refugees go? Frankly, I don’t think Canada can handle it. And most sobering of all: When the middle class is gone and the poor have even less disposable income, who will shop at Wal-Mart?

Dan Johnson is director of computing services for the information technology department of Exel Transportation Services, Inc.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Outsourcing Prosperity

The last time I was in an economics class America was only
a dozen or so years removed from a period of trade surpluses and virtual
isolation.  German and Japanese small cars had made inroads, but were still
considered a bit of a novelty – until the real hammer fell in the form of the
so-called Arab Oil Embargo.  It was the first time the post world war generation
felt serious effects of any kind from foreign trade and it was an eye-opener
indeed. 

While auto sales to the two aforementioned Axis powers
boomed, my instructor informed me with a knowing and portentous air that within
the decade, 80 percent of the wealth of the world would be in the hands of OPEC
nations, courtesy of the runaway price of crude oil (about $30 a barrel as I
recall) and he had some pretty impressive figures, charts, and even publications
behind him.  Almost unnoticed, jobs in the manufacturing sector which had been
the backbone of American Labor and the very engine of democracy, began the mass
exodus from US soil in earnest, mostly in the direction of Taiwan, Malaysia and
Mexico while the Capital was supposed to be finding a new home in the Middle
East.

More than a decade later, about the time Sony bought
Columbia Pictures and an investment group including the Mitsubishi family became
the owner of Rockefeller Center in New York, Newsweek and the Wall Street
Journal were encouraging all of us to learn Japanese – or else.   The Japanese
had already crushed the American electronics manufacturers and as they gathered
up all the monies associated with that victory, they were working on the remains
of the automakers.  Everything they didn’t own, they would certainly control, we
were told.

But even as we quaked over the growing power of one Far
East giant, the financial markets would soon become skittish over the impending
return of Hong Kong to the remaining communist superpower.  Many voices were
raised and hands wrung, wondering aloud about what havoc these inscrutable
commies might wreak on what seemed to be the most robust and possibly the purest
capitalist enclave in the world.  

Now almost a decade after the handoff, China has proven to
be an extremely quick study – to the point where it has become the new bully on
the block.  It is defining the ground rules and near-invisible profit margins
for manufacturers and retailers alike with the help of its new best buddy from
Arkansas, Wal-Mart. 

The manufacturing that largely built America and its middle
class, the manufacturing that made us a genuine power in the First World War and
saved the freedom of the western democracies in the Second World War is all but
dead and the USA doesn’t seem very upset about it.  Labor may be reeling a bit
from the defeat but they have become accustomed to diminished and constantly
eroding expectations while Capital seems to be doing just fine, thanks.

It would be hard to argue with the obvious conclusion that
this is simply the natural result of laissez-faire Capitalism.  The Labor
movement of the last century just postponed it for six or eight decades.

Class mobility as a result of the acquisition of wealth is
one of the basic attractions of life in the US and it is proven to exist every
day, but the advances are usually incremental.  Sixty years ago a lower class
kid in Flint Michigan knew that he could go to work in the GM plant and if he
showed diligence and aptitude and was patient for ten or fifteen years, he would
most certainly be making the kind of money that would push him into the middle
class — given the UAW contract at the time. well into the middle class
— and his retirement would be provided for as well.  

With stock options and so forth, some of those kids born to
plant foremen already ensconced in the middle class would find that a stint at a
public university and a return to the management suites would allow them to
assert themselves even higher.  There aren’t many of those jobs left in the US –
far fewer, anyway – and the benefits and guarantees that accrue to those
positions are fast becoming a thing of the past.  When they are gone, how many
will be upwardly mobile then?  How many kids can sell millions of dollars worth
of life insurance or get continuous scholarships to college and medical school?

Just about everyone with a library card is aware that
around 1937 we were deep in a Great Depression that was finally broken only by a
war and the most amazing manufacturing boom in history.  But it is barely a
footnote in most US history books that we were only two or three fireside chats
away from truly embracing Communism – at least as a viable political party. 
Labor reform was right at the front of that confrontation and in those days the
workers had significant clout.  Items consumed in the USA — whether electrical,
textile or comestible — came from the USA with extremely few exceptions,  and
they were grown, built or assembled using materials from the USA. 

When Franklin Roosevelt or Joe McCarthy got a manufactured
item in their hands, it had been designed, created, transported and sold by
Americans exclusively.  They might have been recent immigrants but they were
legal, and 100% American.  Nowadays it’s a pretty good bet that with the
possible exception of foodstuffs, you cannot put your hands on a single thing in
your house that meets these criteria.

As if the current prospects for American labor weren’t bad
enough, we’re made to feel politically incorrect, greedy and insensitive if we
don’t think the Mexican border should just be opened up with a big Welcome (¿perdón?
– Bienvenido) mat facing south.  We’re not talking about manufacturing jobs
here of course but I’m more than a little suspicious when individuals of the
moneyed class (let’s just take the President of the United States,  as an
example) appear to be the ones weeping the biggest tears for the plight of the
poor illegal immigrants who sneaked across our borders fair and square and now
seem to be harassed as they set about laying claim to the lower end of the wage
scale.

There may be some truth in the assertion that this labor
competes little or not at all with mainstream American labor – although I have
to swallow hard to accept that logic.  But it does show graphically what the
effect of competing in a true global economy is like.  Is there a shortage of
American workers who do what the Mexican workers do, or is there just a shortage
of those who will do it for the same wage?  And if so, should we just
acknowledge it and quit whining?  That is after all what supply and demand is
all about. 

Likewise if you work in manufacturing and don’t know
something that your counterpart in Shenzhen doesn’t know, you better be willing
to work for what he is getting, or hope that the supply chain between where you
are and China is so poor that it makes you look good by comparison.  In America,
if you don’t have some extremely up-to-date technical skills, or maybe your own
truck, you better have a lot of money.  The good news is that if you do, you are
on the threshold of a new golden age that only the Robber Barons of the early
industrial revolution knew – before OSHA – before child labor laws – in fact
before any kind of labor reform. 

Working conditions in China and the third world would make
Jacob Riis lose his lunch, but the vast horde who toil in this human rights
vacuum are going to continue to be in such oversupply that they will literally
compete to the death to get a tiny portion of your dollar (or euro or yuan,
since we are now in a global environment).  So you won’t be able to spend very
much of it even to pay for your certified American servants because they must
compete with the new semi-legal immigrants who are far more eager and less
selective. 

Meanwhile your increasingly sophisticated manufactured
goods will continue to be built by the international low bidder in an auction of
unregulated labor so desperate that they will barter the lives of their children
to build gaudy vessels for your conspicuous consumption.  And even as they
express gratitude to the local overseer, they will hate you a little more every
year for your distant complicity. 

This is the definition of capitalism carried out to its
logical conclusion.  The free market is taking care of itself as it always has –
with the subtle violence of Darwinian determinism.  The strong continue to
prosper as usual, and the weak must look to the hereafter to inherit what’s left
of the earth.  Is that necessarily a bad thing?  Maybe not, but I think it’s
time we started looking farther down this road we’re taking to see where it
ends.  In the society to our south from which most of our illegal aliens
originate there are also wealthy, sophisticated, intelligent people.  Not as
many, granted,  but they live every bit as well as the wealthy in the US,  and
when the middle class is gone we are going to look a great deal like our Mexican
brethren. 

When the social burdens of the nouveau poor have driven the
more capable of the population to seek a bit of satisfaction elsewhere, where
will our refugees go?  Frankly, I don’t think Canada can handle it.  And most
sobering of all:  When the middle class is gone and the poor have even less
disposable income, who will shop at WalMart?

(Dan Johnson is director of computing services for the
information technology department of Exel Transportation Services, Inc.)

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

VIEWPOINT: Grounded




Untitled Document

I am incarcerated in a jet airplane at an altitude of approximately 10 feet
and holding, a position my fellow passengers and I have occupied now for something
approaching — no, there it is — 40 minutes. For 20 minutes before
that, we sat in our assigned seats at the gate followed by a pushback and 400-yard
taxi that amounts to no more than a blatant kidnapping. I believe that word
is defined as an unauthorized abduction by an agency who then restricts the
victim’s movements and makes demands. Well I got here over two hours ago
and I have heard nothing but demands. Sit here! Stand there! Take your shoes
off! Idiot! Don’t you know you can’t bring anything as deadly as
a Bic lighter through security? ( I think that’s what Sergeant York used
to capture all those Germans.) Now that I have come to my senses, I realize
that I am being held against my will. The prospect of a takeoff is just the
most immediately life-threatening fact.

I was lured into an area of the airport that must have been shut off or under
construction or some such. It was down a stupid little escalator of 8 steps
or so, supposedly to match the height of the toy airplanes they fly out of here.
The scene was missing only a bit of livestock or it could have doubled for a
second-rate terminal in El Salvador. Granted, I should have known better at
this point, but I am from Memphis and thus have become inured to serially lowered
expectations. I was among the first to board the alleged aircraft because my
poor unsuspecting travel department paid two dollars a mile for this 500- mile
flight, and boarding priority is given to morons. Their little “jetway,”
by the way, is almost exactly the dimensions of the chute they send the steers
down in the Amarillo stockyards as they make the transition from mammal to menu
item. Coincidence?

As I crouched and crab-walked my way to the second row it was also obvious to
me that this fuselage is just about the dimensions — and composition —
of one of those aluminum tubes you get when you buy a really expensive cigar.
It is small enough that they took one look at my carry-on and gave me that look.
You know, the one you get from a Maitre D’ you haven’t tipped or
a toll booth operator when you’re in the wrong lane. They promptly stole
the bag with a vague promise to return it at my destination — if I made
it.

The seat of course has to be similarly proportioned; which is to say, an average
boy of ten or so would find it roomy unless he’d just eaten or was wearing
a bulky sweater. I contorted myself into the aisle seat expectantly, knowing
that moments later I would be involved in an impromptu pas de deux with another
fat guy that would put the hippos from Fantasia to shame. At length my seatmate
collapsed exhausted into the window seat of row 2 and, as I had no room to move
my head more than a degree or two away from directly forward, I watched the
improbable trickle of fellow kidnapees go by. Do you remember Da Beearsss? The
group of stylized Bears fans on Saturday Night live a few years ago led by George
Wendt from Cheers? Well suffice it to say that, like George, this bunch never
met a bratwurst they didn’t like — briefly. This is what convinced
me finally that they intend to kill us. This little thing can’t possibly
get all of us off the ground. Frankly, considering their financial condition
I’m not even sure they have enough fuel to do it.

So here we sit. Hopeful (some of us). Resigned (the rest of us). Fat (nearly
all of us). Awaiting a restart of the now-dormant engines that would mean we
are going to defy any reasonable expectation and logic and ride this silver
Cohiba into the sky. Yeah, sure!

I’m not sure how long they intend to prolong this charade and if I had
lived, I was expected to be in Chicago tonight. I’ll email this from the
runway because we need rescuing while there’s still time. If anyone gets
this, don’t send in SWAT. I don’t think there is room for any of
the employees to be armed. Just send us a real airplane. And send us a bag of
peanuts. These guys can’t give us any without permission from a bankruptcy
trustee.

Oh God, there go the engines!

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Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

CHAIRS IN TRANSIT

As of the weekend, the Shelby County chairpersons of the two major political parties were both on the move: Democratic chair Kathryn Bowers opened up the headquarters of her campaign for the state Senate on Saturday; and new Republican chair Bill Giannini got himself elected and installed on Sunday at the biennial Shelby County Republican convention.

Both Bowers and Giannini served notice as to the shape of their priorities.

State Rep. Bowers, speaking to supporters at her Elvis Presley Boulevard headquarters, promised to do everything in her power to forestall the TennCare cuts (323,000 from the current rolls) announced recently by Governor Bredesen but so far held up by judicial review. Two other candidates — Shelby County Commissioner Michael Hooks and James Harvey –are competing in the forthcoming Democratic primary for the seat recently vacated by Roscoe Dixon, now an aide to county mayor A C Wharton. Four Republicans also seek the seat.

Giannini, elected by acclamation at White Station High School, looked ahead to the 2006 countywide elections and even further — lamenting the upward curve of latest property reassessment and thereby targeting county assessor Rita Clark, a Democrat reelected only last year and not up again until 2008.


Bowers on the stump
at her Elvis Presley Blvd. headquarters.


New GOP chair Bill Giannini with extended family
at White Station High School Sunday.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

FROM MY SEAT

ANTHONY’S DAY

Too much ink is spilled on the worldÕs miscreants. This applies to sports, and it certainly applies to this yearÕs embattled University of Memphis menÕs basketball team. Lost in the ugly headlines, sadly, are the jewels of the program like Anthony Rice.

This Saturday at FedExForum, the U of M will say goodbye to its current senior class: Rice, Duane Erwin, and Arthur Barclay. Erwin grew into a vital member of the 2004-05 squad, representing the most consistent inside threat — both offensively and defensively — for a team relatively undersized. He was the TigersÕ finest player the night they beat DePaul in January, hitting five of seven shots and pulling down nine rebounds. As for Barclay, heÕll leave with mixed reviews. He was part of a Òpackage deal,Ó cynics will argue, that brought the electrifying Dajuan Wagner (a high-school chum of BarclayÕs) to Memphis. He made news this season as much for his fists as his play, drilling teammate Sean Banks after the Texas game, then drawing a one-game suspension for throwing a punch in the first TCU contest. IÕd like to remember the guy who overcame the stigma of being a partial academic qualifier and some nagging knee injuries, a player who had one of the most unique stat lines IÕve ever seen: 10 rebounds without a field-goal attempt in the win at South Florida in January.

Say what you will about Erwin and Barclay, though, Saturday should be for Rice. The Atlanta native — on schedule to graduate with a degree in art gallery management — is the poster child for what a Division I college basketball player can be. Few Tiger fans will remember that Rice played 20 minutes in his college debut (November 13, 2001), the same night Wagner himself took center stage at The Pyramid. Over the course of his four seasons in Memphis, Rice has yet to miss a game. (He should wind up among the programÕs alltime top 10 in games played.) No Tiger has made more three-pointers than RiceÕs 214 through SaturdayÕs game against Louisville. And heÕs been as consistent as a metronome: 266 points scored as a freshman, 264 as a sophomore, 270 as a junior, 272 this season. (RiceÕs career average: 8.7 points per game.)

RiceÕs value on the floor can be divided into three equal parts:

Defense. He has consistently matched up with an opponentÕs top scoring threat, be it MarquetteÕs Travis Diener, TCUÕs Corey Santee, or HoustonÕs Andre Owens.

Shooting. IÕve said it all season long: these Tigers go as far as their shooters take them. Rice was a combined 7 for 12 from beyond the arc in wins over Marquette and Louisville. He made only 2 of 11 in losses to Charlotte and the Cardinals last week.

Ball-handling. Rice has essentially been coach John CalipariÕs backup point guard for three seasons, first b ehind Antonio Burks, this season behind Darius Washington. A more natural shooting guard, Rice has predictably adapted when called upon to run the show.

CalipariÕs postgame comments tend to center around the play of freshman point guard Darius Washington or the teamÕs scoring leader, Rodney Carney. But when asked about Rice, the plaudits are delivered en masse. ÒHeÕs the best,Ó says Calipari. ÒI have to talk to him about once every three weeks to tell him I appreciate him. He guards every day, he does what heÕs supposed to do, he doesnÕt try and do things he canÕt do. Every practice, every game, he gives you everything he has, which is what makes him unique.

ÒYou forget about him. He played great against Houston [a Tiger loss on February 5th]. He was the only guy that played. He held their best player [Owens] to two-for-nine from the floor, and made shots. No one else played. ThatÕs because he plays every day.Ó

As thoroughly unglamorous as RiceÕs college career has been, he will ironically serve as a recruiting prototype for Calipari. ÒHeÕs a four-year starter,Ó stresses the coach. ÒHereÕs a kid who wasnÕt highly recruited, and heÕs going to get a college degree. If you work hard and play hard, thereÕs a spot for you on this team.Ó

There have been grumblings all winter long in Tiger Nation, plenty of turn-your-head-away headlines that make you wonder about the kind of student-athlete hitting the hardwood these days for the U of M. And the criticism, frankly, has been deserved. Which makes this weekendÕs Senior Day so very necessary. For a young man like Anthony Rice, how fitting that he takes center stage just as he says goodbye.

Categories
News News Feature

COMMENTARY: READING THE FUTURE IN YOUR PALM

I notice that Miffy the Rabbit is on the way to the Central Library to promote literacy with his “interactive exhibit” and this fills me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, it’s nice that an author and illustrator will take the time for an event like this, but what a shame it is that we feel the need to pump up a skill and a practice as intrinsically valuable and fulfilling as reading.

The fall in regard for this experience has been a painless and gradual one but I begin to see an end to it — a leveling, a grand experiment in mediocrity. I see a future where everyone in the public at large can read at a seventh grade level (and I grant you, that would be a giant leap forward for some) but it is a purely utilitarian practice of absorbing memoranda or instructions for the use of some electronic device with maybe some comic books thrown in, but where anything approaching real literature is relegated to the eggheads on college campuses or quirky Luddite freaks who dig the smell of ink on paper.

Even if you think of yourself as particularly literate or at least respectful of the written word, your opinion and your skills have already been affected negatively by the time in which you have lived. You’re almost certainly like me, a comparative illiterate whose entire education occurred in the last century. The later in our era your education was delivered, the more questionable it was. Almost from the beginning, the 20th century and its attendant technology have been a devastating, if somewhat languorous attack on literacy.

Picture yourself as a high school student at the turn of that century. You’re tired from long hours of studying Thackeray and Dickens and the third person subjunctive. You want excitement but you just finished some very physically demanding chores and don’t have the energy to play any of the new athletic pastimes, like basketball or golf. What do you do in those leisure moments?

Well, you put the Reed-Kellogg grammar book back on the shelf between the untranslated Aeneid and the excerpted speeches of Cato and Pliny the Elder and you pick up (drum roll, please)É a book. Fiction. Probably Mark Twain or Robert Louis Stevenson. You do that because of your growing reverence for the intricacies of the English Language and the subtle beauty of its written word. Also because there is absolutely nothing else — of a sedentary nature – to do in this whole wide turn-of-the-century world.

Just a few years later you might instead have chosen to fiddle with the crystal radio set your uncle gave you for Christmas and try to tune in some scratchy ragtime music or a speech by President Taft. A decade beyond that the tiny crystal would have become a Philco console that looked for all the world like a four foot tall cathedral. But as the darkness gathers on this October evening you huddle next to the fire and try to save coal oil by turning your lamp downÉas you read.

If you are a geezer like myself, you were born almost coincident with commercial television which begat cable, which begat satellite, all of which converged into computers and I-Pods and the internet and cell phones with cameras and Palm Pilots with cell phones and remote controls for all of them. I swear! A remote control for a portable CD player that weighs less than a ham sandwich! How lazy is that!

Reading was always a window for folks like me to places we were destined never to see and adventures we would never really have — except in our imaginations. But over time the flickering window of the cathode ray tube has intruded deeper and deeper into that territory. If you slide the last few yards down that slippery slope you will begin to play some of the stunning new breed of video games and then you will know it is over. The computer has so subsumed us in this incarnation that it is becoming a simulation of ourselves — our better, or at least more buff and more capable selves – and if we allow it, we are reduced to a macabre mix of electronic simulacra and fleshy voyeurs in our own lives.

Some, a minority of them to be sure but still an appalling number, have surrendered their sense of well-being and personal achievement to events as ephemeral as the momentary glow of a matrix of colorful phosphor and a ribcage thrumming explosion in 5.1 surround sound. If you think I exaggerate this effect; if you think this is just an eccentric little fad and are not a little frightened by this, hang around the office water cooler until you hear a conversation between two twenty-x year old ‘gamers’.

They did not have the advantage I had of being born in the pre-Dumont Broadcasting era when sometimes you could turn on your grainy little twelve inch screen and get a screenshot of an Indian with crosshairs and lines and circles – or nothing at all. Don’t get me wrong when I say this, because I love reading and truly revere this greatest of all languages. But I was just a kid not so different from the kids today and if I had had a choice between reading the fantasies of Jules Verne or watching — no, experiencing an extremely realistic electronic simulation of what my life would be like as an NBA superstar or the pilot of a jet fighter, which would I have chosen? As Bart Simpson would say — Duh!

Technology apologists — and they are many — will make the point that all these advances are still based in literature. Even the video games have scripts and dialogue and movies are just drama freed from the restrictions of the traditional proscenium, right? Sure. There are obvious exceptions but for the MTV trained film editor, a four second shot equates to a lingering visual caress of contemplative depth and lighting is determined by how much TNT was used in the scene. Dialogue and story, the writing — the literature of the medium — is the victim, and so are we. That’s why we need to Miffy the Rabbit to promote a skill which is not only essential to our modern lives, but a complete and utter joy when subject matter and interest are joined in the mind of an avid reader, if there are any of you left out there.

So go home tonight and read something longer than an essay by a whiny curmudgeon or a bunch of pre-digested opinions masquerading as news. Don’t read the latest blockbuster because you think it will be the topic of conversation next week. Don’t read something to study for your next witty rejoinder or to enhance your chances of advancement at work, or even to broaden your mind.

Do it just for the sheer pleasure of it because yours may be the last generation that can understand that. If you are a real reader, you probably have a book or two in mind that are like old friends you revisit from time to time. You know exactly what I mean. If you don’t, you just proved my point. Just turn up the volume and have a nicely simulated evening.

(Dan John is a director of computing services for Exel Transportation Services, Inc.)

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

MAGNANIMOUS HOOKS: NOBODY HAD “HARD ON” FOR HIM

After listening to testimony from lawyers for both Michael Hooks and the state of Tennessee, Chancellor Arnold Goldin Wednesday ruled in Hooks’ favor and ordered Hooks reinstated as a candidate in a forthcoming state Senate election. Goldin thereby struck down a prior adverse ruling against Hooks by the state Election Registry and state Election Commissioner Brook Thompson, who had declared the Shelby County Commission chairman ineligible to run for the seat because Hooks had not met financial-disclosure deadlines.

Reviewing a record that showed historic inconsistency between enforcement actions and deadline requirements of state and local election officials, Goldin said it would be “fundamentally unfair” and “difficult to justify” disallowing Hooks’ candidacy for the District 33 seat, vacated recently by longtime incumbent Roscoe Dixon, now an aide to Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton..

Goldin’s action means that the Democratic primary will now be a three-way race between Hooks, state Representative Kathryn Bowers, and James Harvey. A fourth candidate, state Representative Joe Towns, had also been disallowed by the state agencies — in his case, for failure to pay accumulated fines relating to violation of disclosure requirements — but Towns did not appeal the finding.

Hooks’ reentry means that Bowers, who doubles as Shelby County Democratic chairman, will have another name candidate to contend with and not just the relatively unknown Harvey.

Bowers had called a press conference Monday to deny that she had used her political influence to get Hooks disqualified — an allegation that Hooks insisted Wednesday he had never made.

“I think she’s just looking for publicity. I never once thought that or said that. That would make them [the various state officials who signed off on his disqualification] dishonorable. In fact, they’re not. I’ve worked with them for many years. They don’t have a hard on for Michael Hooks. They’re just interpreting the law and trying to do their job.” One of his first legislative missions, if elected, will be to reconcile “discrepancies” between the state and local election codes, Hooks said.

“I think the judge did the right thing to let the people decide who they want to be their state senator. It won’t be determined by nit-picking or hag-nagging. It’ll be on the issues,” said Hooks. Acknowledging that the delay caused by his litigation had inconvenienced his campaign somewhat, he said, “We kept working. Of course, we stopped spending and planning our advertising campaigns and so forth. We’ll have to catch up.”

Categories
News News Feature

JURY FINDS LOGAN YOUNG GUILTY

Football booster Logan Young Jr. was convicted on all three counts of a bribery and conspiracy indictment in federal court Wednesday.

The jury deliberated less than four hours before returning its verdict. Young, 64, showed no reaction as it was announced before a packed courtroom.

Young secretly paid former Memphis high school football coach Lynn Lang $150,000 to get defensive lineman Albert Means to enroll at the University of Alabama five years ago. Lang was the prosecution’s star witness in the seven-day trial.

Young did not testify. U.S. District Judge Daniel Breen placed a gag order on all trial attorneys, Young, and jurors until after the jury makes a decision on a forfeiture matter Thursday morning.

Young will be sentenced later.

PREVIOUS (2/1/05)

Mano a Mano

By midday Monday, it was apparent that Logan Young was about as likely to take the witness stand as he is to lead the University of Tennessee band in Rocky Top.

Once upon a time, prosecutors and defendants faced one another mano a mano in dramatic courtroom confrontations. Now we get accountants, bank clerks, and the thrilling sight of Young accuser Lynn Lang briefly reentering the courtroom, folding his massive arms across his massive chest, and staring across the courtroom at the witness box into the unblinking eyes of … Young’s 67-year-old female housekeeper.

It’s been that kind of trial. The Super Bowl of Sleaze has featured brief moments of action interrupted by long recesses and mind-numbing bench conferences that make a City Council meeting seem thrilling. On Monday, the defense team’s Hail Mary motion for acquittal fell incomplete, and Young’s fate and liberty are now in the hands of the jury.

Young is in a jam because of his own words and actions, which may or may not include paying $150,000 to Lang. He was officially indicted by a federal grand jury but unofficially indicted (and already convicted) by The Commercial Appeal and football fans on the Internet, where the trash talk has been going on for more than four years. If he gets off, it will be an O.J. acquittal in many eyes. Jurors will have the final word, but until they do, let’s see what lawyers say that might shed some light on this case.

A book called Sponsorship Strategy by Robert Klonoff and Paul Colby, published in 1999, is popular in some legal circles. The authors, who have experience as both prosecutors and defense attorneys, argue that “less is more” in criminal trials and “Keep it simple, stupid” is good advice. The point: Don’t over-prove your point.

Writing in the Texas Tech Law Review, another lawyer, Bill Allison, said, “There is a phenomenon at work in the minds of jurors that says, when you start putting on multiple witnesses to prove the same point, you must have some doubt about that point.”

Neither the prosecutors nor the defense attorneys in the Young trial have talked to the media, so their strategy can only be guessed at. But “less is more” seems to be the rule for both sides. In the media and on the Internet, of course, it’s just the opposite. More is more. More rumors, more names, more links to other rumors and names. Lang sidekick Milton Kirk, recruiting analyst Tom Culpepper, Internet pundit Roy Adams (aka Tennstud), and NCAA investigator Rich Johanningmeier are household names. But none of them testified at Young’s trial.

Nor did representatives of most of the seven schools that talked to Lang about obtaining the services of Albert Means. Alabama athletic director Mal Moore was barely on the witness stand for 10 minutes and skated through his testimony. Memphis high school coaches Tim Thompson and Wayne Randall were subpoenaed by the defense but did not testify. Newsweek journalist Richard Ernsberger, who deserves more credit than he has gotten locally for his reporting about Lang and Means, testified for approximately two minutes about a single line in his book, Bragging Rights. He wrote that Lang told him, “Logan Young? I’ve heard his name. But that’s all I know about him.”

Former University of Memphis coach Rip Scherer made a cameo appearance to deny promising Lang’s wife a free law school education. Scherer said he earned $250,000 a year, or less than half the compensation of his successor, Tommy West, whose star defensive lineman for the last three years was Means. Former Georgia coach Jim Donnan also testified, denying that he paid Lang $700 cash but also blurting out “not enough” when asked how much he got paid at Georgia. It turned out that he made $700,000 one year, possibly as much as the entire jury put together.

Other witnesses for both sides were also brief, possibly because their testimony was so suspect. Former Alabama assistant coach Ivy Williams, a defense witness, was dreadful. He denied talking about Means in more than 200 conversations with Young. Alleged middleman Melvin Earnest, nicknamed “Botto,” denied driving Lang to Young’s house but admitted being friends with Young for more than 20 years and “borrowing” money from him. Did he pay it back? “Not all of it, most of it,” he testified.

The defense witness who got the most face time in front of the jury was Young’s accountant, David Pearson. Attorneys methodically led him through a series of Young cash withdrawals and Lang cash deposits. The amounts never matched, but there was, prosecutors noted, “time correlation.”

“Follow the money” is the prosecution’s advice to the jury. If the jury finds the money trail as murky as the testimony, Young will walk.

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Sports Sports Feature

FROM MY SEAT

JOY IN JACKSONVILLE

A sportswriter needs angles like a football needs air. Here are my favorites as kickoff for Super Bowl XXXIX approaches.

Will Terrell Owens play, and if he does, will he dance? The EaglesÕ wideout is the most hyped player in the NFL. (HeÕs not overhyped . . . he really is a great receiver.) But star quality aside, has his broken right ankle healed enough for Owens to be a threat to the PatriotsÕ patchwork secondary? My guess is that Owens will suit up, if for no other reason than to serve as a decoy. HeÕs the kind of player who would draw a defenseÕs attention if he took the field on crutches. Which will be an advantage for quarterback Donovan McNabb and PhiladelphiaÕs multipurpose dynamo, Brian Westbrook.

Is Tom Brady the coolest quarterback since Joe Namath? The guy has started eight playoff games in his career . . . and won eight. HeÕs played in two Super Bowls . . . and been named MVP of both. Playoff interceptions from Brady are as frequent as Florida blizzards. And heÕs been on the cover of GQ. The guy is a certifiable winner, and if he beats the Eagles, heÕll join Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana, and Troy Aikman as the only quarterbacks to win three Super Bowls. Much more of this and the famed Hancock Tower in Boston may get a new name.

Can Donovan McNabb become the second black quarterback to win the Super Bowl? Maybe we should ask Rush Limbaugh this question. Peyton Manning is the leagueÕs MVP, and Brady is as cool as the Fonz in his prime . . . but McNabb may be the most dangerous quarterback alive. HeÕs running less than he did earlier in his career, but heÕs still extraordinarily elusive, bowing only to Michael Vick in the scrambling category. And heÕs turned himself into a solid decision-maker behind the line of scrimmage. (It helps to have the kind of time PhillyÕs line regularly gives him.) It may not be politically correct to pay attention to a quarterbackÕs skin color, but the ÒmagnitudeÓ of McNabbÕs winning a Super Bowl is ironic, in that he will better represent todayÕs game than did Doug Williams when he won Super Bowl XXII 17 years ago. Ten years from now, there will be more quarterbacks — black or white — playing McNabbÕs game than that of old-school Brady. Donovan McNabb is actually more of a prototype than a pioneer.

Are the New England Patriots a dynasty? TheyÕre getting there. The Pats have to win this Sunday to become the second team to win three Super Bowls in four years. (It should be noted the one season they didnÕt raise the Lombardi Trophy during this run — 2002 — they didnÕt even make the playoffs.) What will stand out in historical terms when the Patriots are compared with the likes of the SixtiesÕ Packers (Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Jim Taylor, Forrest Gregg), the SeventiesÕ Steelers (Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert), and the EightiesÕ 49ers (Montana, Ronnie Lott, Jerry Rice, Roger Craig) is that New England doesnÕt have anywhere near the star quality those teams did. Tedy Bruschi? Ty Law? Deion Branch? Brady and Corey Dillon are on their way to Canton, but Dillon was a Bengal when the Pats won their first two titles. Perhaps the greatest compliment this TEAM can be given is that theyÕve achieved dynasty status in a free-agency era where keeping stars together for five to ten years is well nigh impossible. Which brings us to our next angle.

Is Bill Belichick the greatest coach since Lombardi? His playoff record (9-1) is the equal of the Packer legend. And as noted above, heÕs won championships without the cushion of superstars at five or six positions. This is, in part, a chicken-or-egg matter. Do the likes of Mike Vrabel and Richard Seymour become such money players through the lessons of their sideline master . . . or does the coach benefit from a collection of players with that unique, battle-ready strain of football DNA? Like the finest marriages, itÕs a perfect combination of the two.

Who will be the biggest stud on the field come Sunday? Easy answer: New England kicker Adam Vinatieri. (Stop laughing.) When Vinatieri stepped up and drilled a 48-yard field goal to open the scoring in Pittsburgh during the frostbitten AFC Championship, it was all over but the crying for the Steelers. This guy has already won two Super Bowls with eleventh-hour field goals. Cold weather doesnÕt shake him. Wind doesnÕt bother him. Pressure? Go to Iraq and youÕll see pressure. The EaglesÕ David Akers is a fine kicker himself, but Vinatieri is on his way to the Hall of Fame.

My prediction? New England 24, Philadelphia 16.

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News News Feature

COMMENTARY: THE HARDEST WORKING MAN IN SHOW BIZ

After getting out of the army in 1946, Ernest Withers took his first photo of a bluesman, Memphis Slim, who was visiting from France and playing on Beale St. “He had a buddy he played with who played so bad they called him ‘Slopjaw.’ I took the photo for him to send back to Paris. His daddy had seven wives show up at his funeral!” Mr. Withers laughs today. Fifty-eight years later, Withers is going strong, still taking pictures every day and reminiscing about the sights and sounds he has seen and heard in his almost sixty year photography career.

Last week Withers picked up the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service of Journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, an award reserved for the likes of Winston Churchill and Gloria Steinem. This week, Withers will be one of eighteen recipients of the Keeping the Blues Alive Awards from the Blues Foundation. Blues Foundation Director of Administration Jay Sieleman proudly commented, “Clearly Dr. Withers has long been deserving of this award. His photographs–blues and otherwise–rank up there with the greatest of all times. The Keeping the Blues Alive Awards are proving to be an uplifting experience because people like Dr. Withers and others like him rarely get notice for their work.” (The Awards luncheon is open to the public Saturday at the Gibson Lounge at 11:00 a.m. but is sold out).

Awards are not the only thing in Withers’ life right now. He has just released another volume of amazing photographs entitled Negro League Baseball, yet another feather in his cap of great American genre photo books, which also includes Pictures Tell the Story and The Memphis Blues Again. Negro League Baseball begins with an introduction by the “Say Hey Kid” Willie Mays. “He knows me very, very well. I was taking his picture when he was just a child. The scouts were looking at William Perry in Birmingham, and then they saw Willie Mays and picked him out as well.” Upcoming book signings for Withers include one in Boston at Panoptican, one in New York at the International Center for Photography in mid-February, as well as one here in Memphis at Burke’s Books at an undetermined date.

Withers is the living history of Memphis as well as Beale St., having spent the last sixty years working on the street or in the nightclubs. Withers has taken entertainment photos (as well as others) from the 1950s and 1960s up until today for national newspapers like The Chicago Defenderand Memphis’ Tri-State Defender. He also snapped romantic shots for on-the-spot sales at the clubs on Beale St. back when it was the center of African-American nightlife for the South. It is virtually impossible to write a book on Memphis history (music, civil rights or other) or open a museum on Memphis history in the 20th century without tapping into Withers’ archives, which grow every day as he continues to take the pictures that tells the story.