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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Randy Haspel’s column, “Give ‘Em Hill” …

I hate people who make Hillary look good. It’s a conspiracy wrapped in a plot inside a fraud.

CL Mullins

Oh look, Hillary won a Kewpie doll. Oh wait, that’s Trey Gowdy. Make it a Kreepie doll.

Jeff

Actually he’s the kid holding the banjo in Deliverance … all growed up.

Packrat

“Dueling Banjos” is his “Eye of the Tiger.”

Jeff

About Toby Sells’ post, “City Engineer Steps Down in First Post-Election Departure” …

He was also the point man who had to rationalize the dangerously designed and indefensible bike lanes on Riverside and was roundly shouted down by residents at the public meetings.

The idea for placing more parking meters downtown was boneheaded, discouraging Memphians from coming downtown. I am glad to see Mr. Cameron leave, and I just hope the next departure will be Mr. Rogers from Memphis Animal Services.

Memphis Tigers

My dad and I rode the Riverside bike lanes almost every weekend. Nobody says a word when they shut down Riverside for a couple months every year, but squeeze out lanes for bicycles, and everyone goes insane.

FUNKbrs

Wow! Absolutely right! Taking over 10,000 motorists a DAY and halving their traffic lanes (and doubling the accident rate) is a small price to pay so Scooter and his dad can ride those bike lanes almost 50 times a year. After all, two to three dozen cyclists a day used those bike lanes! Those selfish motorists! Equally hard to understand is the selfish public expecting to park on a public street! The nerve!

Hopefully, the new mayor will end the tyranny of PC and/or connected, tiny-but-vocal special-interest groups before all the traffic flows and parking in Midtown and downtown is ruined.

ALJ2

To all the folks vilifying the evil PC bike lanes: Just keep in mind that unless you’re able to differentiate yourself as a neighborhood, then you have little to offer. If our product (that is Midtown and downtown) looks and feels exactly like Cordova, then we have nothing meaningful to offer, and convincing people to infill and redevelop becomes an impossible task.

If you allow street life to develop and have your auto commute lengthened by 180 seconds, we can start to differentiate our product in a profound way. If we hold fast to a car-centric vision, then we’re exactly like all the other second-tier Sun Belt cities. Remake the whole of Midtown and downtown in the spirit of Harbor Town and watch what happens.

Apok

If Toney Armstrong’s department would enforce the law on Riverside, those bicycle lanes would still be there. Daily commuters should not use that road as their route.

Clyde

When Exxon/ISIS kicks the price of gas up to $10 a gallon you’ll all be scrambling for your Schwinns.

Nick R

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s “Bacon, Cheese Dip, and Rocket Scientists” …

Ah, the crappy commentary from The Memphis Flyer. Show some more political bias!

Chris Hopper

Perfect, Bruce! Hillary, too, brought home the bacon in the BS “Bengotcha” hearings.

CD

What’s the difference between this editorial and 50,000 plastic cups that say “Pancho’s Cheese Dip?”

Ichabod McCrane

About our elderly …

Isn’t it ironic that conservatives will whine and complain over giving a single mother $200 to feed her hungry kids or provide medical care for our elderly but not bat an eye over wasting $5,000,000 on investigations to hurt Hillary’s presidential bid?

Jim Brasfield

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Jimmy Carter and Fred Thompson: A Worthy Pair

A pair of circumstances this week reminded us that — current cynical views of our political system notwithstanding — honorable individuals do seek public office, manage to gain it, and behave honorably while doing so.

Former President Jimmy Carter

One reminder came on Monday, with the visit to Memphis of 91-year-old Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, who, accompanied by his wife Rosalynn and country singers Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, were here as volunteers with Habitat for Humanity to begin construction on a new home for a North Memphis resident.

It was, said international Habitat CEO Jonathan Reckford, who was on hand for a press conference noting the event, the 33rd such work project performed for Habitat since 1984 by the Carters, who began home-building efforts of their own almost immediately after leaving the White House in 1981.

When completed, the new Memphis house will be part of some 99 projects in Shelby County that will have been brought to completion by Habitat using volunteer efforts for its completed projects, which beneficiaries pay for with low- or no-interest loans. 

President Carter noted the democratizing effect of Habitat’s efforts this way: “It breaks down the barrier between the wealthy and the poor. Habitat opens up a way for people to work alongside poor people and get to know them personally. Those people are just as smart as I am, just as hard-working, and have the same values.” 

Carter, who sounded and looked strong, minimized the effects of the metastasized melanoma for which he is currently receiving treatment.

Reckford was candid in saying that the selfless efforts of the irrepressible Carters had put Habitat on the map, allowing it to have reached a total of some 360,000 completed projects all over the world. The former president isn’t through with Memphis; he promised to be back for more home-building on Habitat’s behalf next year.

Former Senator Fred Thompson

That’s one kudos we owe. Another goes to not-quite-native son Fred Thompson, a Middle Tennessean who graduated from then Memphis State University in 1964 and then began a rise that saw him become a player of note in both national politics and the entertainment industry.

Thompson’s strong, authoritative persona made him a natural in such movies as Days of Thunder, The Hunt for Red October, and Die Hard 2, and in his running role as District Attorney Arthur Branch in TV’s Law & Order series. These thespian efforts were woven into a life that included service as Republican counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee of 1973, as U.S. Senator from 1994 to 2003, and as a declared candidate for the presidency in the 2008 election cycle.

It was Thompson whose questioning for the Watergate committee elicited the fateful news of President Richard Nixon’s incriminating taping system. As a Senate candidate in 1994, he raised eyebrows in his party, then engaged in a full-fledged fishing expedition against Bill and Hillary Clinton, known as Whitewater, by condemning what he saw as an increasing tendency to gain political ends by criminalizing the opposition.

Like Carter, Thompson maintained a sense of ethics in office, and both deserve our heartfelt appreciation.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

It’s Paul Ryan for Speaker — for better or worse

Want to hear a good one? For much of the last month, the House speakership being vacated by Representative John Boehner (R-Ohio) was going unfilled because the sizeable super-right minority of Republican House members who call themselves the “Freedom Caucus” were finding Boehner’s most likely replacement, Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) too “moderate” to hold the job.

Having basically run off Boehner and another possible successor to the leadership post — Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-California) — on grounds of being too soft toward President Obama or Planned Parenthood or congressional Democrats or whomever, the Freedom Caucus gang was surely choking on a gnat if they were gagging on Ryan, whose reason for entering politics had been his self-confessed youthful swoon for the writings of objectivist icon Ayn Rand.

Somehow, though, the far-right House members have apparently found themselves out of any other acceptable options, because the word is that, on Thursday of this week, the votes are on hand for Ryan to be elected as Speaker of the House, when Boehner formally steps down.

So Paul Ryan, who not too long ago was nominated by his party to be vice president, will have now slipped down a notch to become third-in-line for the presidency, no matter who gets elected president next year. That’s what the Constitution provides.

Never mind that Ryan has never forsworn the philosophy of Rand, whose guiding ethical principle was to trust in human selfishness as the only motive needed to guide the government of mankind. The speaker-to-be is still, so far as we know, an exponent of that 21st-century derivative of Randism which holds that society is divided into makers —the privileged minority who profess to need nobody’s help — and takers — the mass of mortals who, to one degree or another, require some measure of concern or assistance on the part of their government.

Not only is the makers/takers dichotomy an unethical point of view, it is woefully inaccurate, inasmuch as the supposed “makers” class contains as many moochers dependent on government protection of inherited wealth as it does innovators or manufacturers of tools necessary for life. And conversely, the so-called “takers” are often the toilers who provide the muscle or the man-hours to actually keep the wheels turning that allow the ticker tape (or, these days, the digital dial) to reflect some measure of economic progress.

Even so, we take our satisfaction when and as we can. And if the party that now controls both elected houses of Congress on the basis of its hatred of government per se is willing to name someone as leader who at least pledges — as Paul Ryan has done — to forgo the right to shut down government by rejecting a routine debt-ceiling increase, then maybe that’s the best we can hope for.

So here’s a weak whoopee that the GOP is willing to abide by some measure of economic common sense. Maybe they’ll even get tired at some point of exploiting Benghazi!

But that really would be asking too much.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ post, “Bill Would Remove Hoover’s Name From FBI Building” …

Politicians should be focused on rewriting the future, not rewriting history.

JR Moody

Hey, who let Congressman Trey Gowdy in here?

Packrat

The name of the building should be changed. This man was a pure racist and shouldn’t be honored in this manner. If it’s history, put it in a book, not on display so an ever-changing world sees hate honored. Kudos to Representative Cohen and all who voted to end this madness.

Time Up

It is a mistake to vilify prominent gay Americans from the time before gay rights became acceptable to the mainstream. J. Edgar Hoover may not have been the most moral character in American history, but we can look back on him as a successful and powerful man who was gay and who demonstrated the falsehood of some things generally believed about gay people in that time, and some things that are said and written in this time.

It’s possible that Steve Cohen, being a straight liberal, doesn’t understand the desire of gay Americans to identify prominent (even if closeted) gay Americans in history.

Brunetto Latini

We vilify Hoover, not because he was closeted and needed to be, but because he did everything in his power to ruin the lives of gay people, closeted or not. Not because he was in the pocket of the Mafia, but because he attempted to derail civil rights for all Americans.

Hoover was a fascist lowlife who just happened to be gay.

Mia S. Kite

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s column, “Curb Alert” …

I got kicked off the Nextdoor.com site. What a bunch of uptight assholes. Absolutely no sense of humor. All I said was, “Dude, nobody wants your broken TV.” The guy was trying to sell a 50-inch broken TV for $250. For that they tossed me.

Mudgirl1

Wow, Mudgirl, I’ve never heard of anyone getting kicked off Nextdoor.com. I’m guessing my neighborhood needs to step up its game. We’re pretty snooty though, and for the most part we don’t have “curb alerts.” We do have the usual complement of paranoid “suspicious” persons alerts.

Back to topic: curb alert for the Ole Miss football season — Bwahahaha!

Jenna Sais Quoi

I am tired of Jeb Bush mouthing the falsehood that his brother kept us safe. Donald Trump has been wrong about so many things, but he is right that George W. Bush failed to keep the U. S. safe. Bush and his administration ignored warnings from the CIA and FBI of possible terrorist attacks before 9/11. He had the CIA report “Bin-Laden Determined to Strike in America” and took no actions to protect us. Not one. With the country and most of the world behind him, Bush could have focused on destroying al-Qaeda completely after 9/11.

Instead, he got us into an unnecessary war in Iraq and allowed al-Qaeda to grow stronger during his terms. Bush did not keep us safe, and Jeb Bush would be wise not to mention his brother’s name.

Philip Williams

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s column, “Memphis Makes a Change” …

Hypocrisy is another word  for dishonesty, and liberal is another word for dishonest. 

Reading The Memphis Flyer is like traveling to an alternate universe where up is down, especially when the editor decries and is “saddened” when former Mayor Herenton took “cheap shots” at A C Wharton, but mere moments before, took the cheapest of cheap shots at former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee. 

I am no fan of Mike Huckabee, but I am also no fan of the dishonest. You chose to use the word “Christian” as if it were a four-letter word, then had the unmitigated audacity to add “sleazeball?” And you call that being “progressive,” inclusive, open-minded, and tolerant? 

You and your liberal rag are the real sleazeballs. 

Frank M. Boone

Editor’s Note: The term used to describe Huckabee was “Christianist.”

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Tim Sampson’s column, “Thanks, Mayor Wharton” …

As a loyal supporter of Mayor A C Wharton, I concur with Tim Sampson’s thoughts. Opponents blamed the Inquisition on him, the race riots in Watts, the overthrow of the Roman Empire, you name it, but not one time did you hear the man complain.

Time and history will record his name, not only as a footnote as mayor, but as a kind-hearted man who loved his adopted city more than some of us who were born at John Gaston Hospital. Take your rest, Mr. Mayor. You are mighty deserving.

DeeCee

About Toby Sells’ story, “Memphis Wins $30M for Foote Homes” …

Glossing over what is ostensibly the end of traditional public housing in Memphis with an article that trumpets it as a victory over blight renders a historically significant moment in providing affordable housing as merely an afterthought in our march toward “progress.” 

The slow and inexorable movement away from affordable housing provided by public entities in favor of a model that puts it primarily in the hands of the private market is a decades-long shift in public policy that has much to do with the burdensome cost of maintaining such facilities as federal support has declined. However, it is also an ideological choice to “de-concentrate” poverty through a mixed-income approach to developing communities that has very uncertain outcomes for the residents who are displaced by this process. 

Past resident opposition to demolition efforts at Foote and Cleaborne homes goes unmentioned in the article, reinforcing the notion that this solution was the only viable alternative for the neighborhood. Until we fix the systemic issues that cause the benefits of society to be distributed unequally among our community, affordable housing will continue to be a pressing need.

The fact that the removal of public housing complexes has opened up valuable downtown real estate to more speculative uses should not go unnoticed. The impending demolition of Foote Homes is a much more complex issue than simply a straightforward decision to combat blight.

Travis Allen

Some say there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans. That may have been true at one time, but not today. The recent debates make it clear that the two major parties occupy different planets.

Republicans are locked into guns, anti-government and anti-abortion rhetoric, rehashing Benghazi, and trashing the president and Hillary Clinton. They show no respect for each other.

The Democratic debate, on the other hand, offered a civilized discussion of real issues. It was very clear which party appeals to grown-ups.

Lou Ronson

About Jackson Baker’s story, “What Strickland Will Do” …

When it came down to it, white folks voted for the white candidate. I absolutely deplore this idea of trying to make this a “colorless” election when white folks win. White folks vote based on color, more than not, just like black folks. Heck, the Republicans “recommended” Strickland, a supposed Democrat in the election. How many times have they recommended an African-American Democrat that was running for mayor, or any position for that matter? We don’t have media outlets that make that clear because the major ones are run by white folks.

Sure, I can handle the truth if 20 percent of African Americans crossed over to the white candidate. I have voted for white candidates, even white Republicans. I wouldn’t agree with their reasoning in this case, but I sure could respect it. I just can’t trust the truth from the bumbling idiots at the Shelby County Election Commission.

That being said, I didn’t think when African Americans voted overwhelmingly for Herenton in 1991 that the city was going to fall off into the Mississippi, and I don’t think it will in this case, either.

1Memphomaniac

Mempho, it is very likely many of the votes cast by “white folks” were based on the issues, including the pension issue, the MPD, Save the Coliseum, Memphis Animal Services, and those advocating for a comprehensive plan and for economic development reform, etc.

Time to take the “everybody-is-racist-but-me” glasses off.

Barf

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Memphis’ Winning Streak

Here we are on the seam of two athletic seasons, and we’re getting a little giddy. There’s the collegiate football season still underway for the University of Memphis, but already, with the Tigers not just bowl-eligible but undefeated and, after the near-blowout victory over Ole Miss, ranked, the commentators are saying, quite seriously, the Tigers could play in a New Year’s Day bowl. For the uninitiated, that’s when the Big Boys from the Big Conferences play their bowl games.

Now, if we can just manage to stay off the cover of Sports Illustrated — as dependable a hex as any uncovered thus far by paranormal investigators. And beyond that, if we can manage to hold on to Justin Fuente for a season or two more.

And basketball season is right around the corner. We’ve learned, happily, during the course of the last several seasons, that we no longer need be dependent on the basketball Tigers’ pulling rabbits (and NCAA bids) out of the hat, because, hey, we’ve also got the Grizzlies, dependable title challengers in the NBA’s tough Western Conference, year after year. They’ve been on the cover of SI already — and ridden out the dependable curse the Fates always bestow on the headiness that comes with that honor. Now maybe the Grizz are immunized from any further blowback, such as the playoff loss that followed the last such cover, in 2013.

As always, a little rain must fall, however. The fact that success on the part of Josh Pastner and the basketball Tigers isn’t quite as imperative for our mental health and psychic well-being as it used to be doesn’t mean that Pastner and company get a pass, especially if this becomes another season in which the Tigers are no longer a factor in the national rankings. We have this uncomfortable feeling — shared by many sports pundits — that it’s this year or else for Josh. Like him or not, the Svengali who preceded Pastner got Memphis sports fans spoiled in that regard.

In other ways, we seem to be, well, getting there. Against all expectations, the Bass Pro Shop version of our iconic Pyramid turned out to be just the kind of new and shiny tourist draw that we hoped it would be. Not that it helped turn things around for Mayor A C Wharton or the irredeemably tainted Robert Lipscomb, the two personages who did the most to arrange the presence of that magnetic bauble on our riverfront.

Wharton’s elected successor as mayor, the thus far likeable and city-government-wise Jim Strickland, will start out his term in January. Like any political honeymooner, he’ll have the community’s best wishes at his disposal — for a while, at least.

He would do well, however, to remember that his predecessor, in two city elections within the last decade, won elections with 60 to 70 percent of the vote. That number came all the way down to 22 percent on Election Day this year.

Even as we are enjoying the successes of the football Tigers and the Grizz and the hope that it will spill over into the political life of our community, it pays to remember: The scoreboard can change in a hurry. Let’s hope it doesn’t. We like the idea of being on a winning streak.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Candice Baxter’s cover story, ”Size Matters” …

I can’t see mass acceptance of 500-sq.-ft. houses, but I do think downsizing is a very real trend. I suspect people have had their fill of bloated mortgage payments for 3,000-plus-sq.-ft. homes in the burbs. Then again, oversized houses are now being built in Rossville, so who knows.

Apok

The problem is, what started out as an affordability movement has gained the attraction of profiteers. Tiny houses were originally being offered for under $30,000. Now, it is not uncommon to see price tags that range $70,000-$100,000.

My concern is that tiny houses are going to eventually get priced beyond the reach of average people for no other reason than market manipulation. If builders can get people to pay $350,000 for a tiny house, they will save themselves the money and materials that it now takes to build a McMansion as pure profit. The prices on tiny houses need to be kept reasonable, affordable, and within reach of modest- or low-income people.

Lisa Hartford

I admire the creativity and ingenuity that goes into designing and building these tiny houses. I’m not sure I could live in one.

Jamie Outlaw

Do tiny mobile houses attract tiny tornadoes?

Jeff

About Toby Sells’ story, “Gannett to Buy CA Parent for $280 Million” …

Now we have a monopoly on news production in Tennessee by a company that has repeatedly demonstrated that it values its shareholders a thousand times more than it does the communities it’s supposed to be serving.

Get ready to be inundated with pre-packaged dreck that is assembled in some word-distribution center at the expense of long-time employees who contribute to the local economy.

B

Lame as the CA is, the Nashville Tennessean (owned by Gannett) is even worse. Earlier this year they had a front-page article on Kroger’s new everyday low prices. Coincidentally, Kroger is a huge advertiser with them.

Kilgore Trout

About Jackson Baker’s post, “Wharton Backer Schledwitz Issues Election-Day Letter Conceding Strickland Victory” …

Gosh, I hope no one gets injured moving from one bandwagon to another. Sounds like it is already starting. Someone needs to ensure that Corey B. Trotz and Morgan & Morgan are on speed dial.

Tom Guleff

About Kevin Lipe’s post, “Matt Barnes Talks to Media About Reported Derek Fisher Incident” …

Matt Barnes was a dirty player on other teams. I was disappointed he became a Grizzly. I am doubly disappointed now.

DatGuy

I suspect that somewhere between the “Matt Barnes is a shameful excuse of a man” take and the “no-talent media hacks are searching for a story that isn’t there” take lies the truth of this matter. But even then, who gives a crap? This is TMZ territory, a side-boob distraction at Huffington Post, a Twitter spat between Kim Kardashian’s rump and Donald Trump’s hair. In fact, the comedy-drama of this incident echoes one of the episodes of Ballers, a not-good HBO show about current and former NFL players. It’s titillating gossip, nothing more.

Unless the NBA punishes Barnes, should fans of his team care what he does off the court? There are plenty of assholes in the NBA, NFL, MLB, etc., some with rings, some who own teams. Shaming and policing athletes’ behavior can be fun (as long as one is at a safe distance when doing it), but it has little effect so long as the athletes in question are producing on the court, field, diamond, etc.

iggy

About Chris Shaw’s story, “100% Fresh Juice” …

Nice article about Juicy J. Many times an artist isn’t given much recognition from their hometown, but The Memphis Flyer has always given this artist and many others their due props. Kudos for a job well done.

Friend of The Memphis Flyer

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Shelby County Commission: A Matter of Law

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Not unexpectedly, a bid by the Shelby County Commission to hire Julian Bolton, a former commissioner, as the commission’s independent attorney has been turned back by the existing county attorney, Ross Dyer.

Jackson Baker

Terry Roland

Dyer cited the county charter in ruling basically that the new attorney — any new attorney — would have to be agreeable to him and would have to be a member of his staff. It is as if King George III determined that the 13 American colonies could function “independently,” so long as their actions were subject to approval by the House of Lords.

Those members of the commission who arrived at Monday’s meeting in a giddy state of expectation were understandably dismayed and predictably backed away from the substitute resolution that Dyer’s s staff had prepared.

Not to be foiled, the irrepressible commission chair, Terry Roland, immediately hired Bolton as a special attorney to figure out how to get around Dyer’s ruling. An odd quirk in the charter apparently allows for such ad hoc — and temporary — outsourcings.

At press time, Dyer had not responded, though he could conceivably claim to have the option of hiring Bolton himself to counter whatever move Bolton makes on behalf of the commission.

And we halfway expect to hear from somebody involved in this curious caper some variation of the ubiquitous Donald Trump punchline: “Julian, you’re fired.”

But let’s be serious. The background of this seemingly outlandish matter is a conviction on the part of a commission majority (transcending matters of race or party) that the administration of County Mayor Mark Luttrell has not played fair and square with commissioners on matters of county spending, and on the contrary has usurped the commission’s authority to approve a budget by issuing incomplete and/or misleading reports on the county’s fiscal situation, and by attempting to play commissioners off against each other by dangling now-you-seem-them-now-you-don’t “surplus” funds.

What the commission majority wants is the same wherewithal possessed by the Memphis City Council, which back in the 1990s was able successfully to engage its own permanent full-time attorney, Allan Wade, who continues in that role and is responsible to the council and only to the council. It is this capability that County Attorney Dyer, who insists he represents all county officials, administrative and legislative, maintains is denied the commission by the County Charter.

The issue of an independent attorney is by no means the only matter dividing the commission from the Luttrell administration, but it has become the lynchpin of a generalized rebellion in which the commission intends to assert itself not merely as the administration’s equal but also as its superior in matters of governmental oversight.

What has become a full-blown power struggle has come to rest on a legalistic point involving attorneys and may well end up being contested by adversary sets of attorneys and finally decided in a court of law. We know that we should be comforted by this fact, but for reasons we can’t fully explain, it is making us uneasy.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Making Crime Pay in Tennessee

Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary

Back during the 1970s and 1980s, many states and the federal government enacted stiffer, often mandatory, punishments for drug offenses. The “war on drugs” resulted in a rapid increase in the number of imprisoned

Americans. The resulting burden on the public sector led to the emergence of private, for-profit prison companies.

In 1983, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) began lobbying to build and operate state and federal prisons. Their claim was that they could provide the same quality of service offered by publicly operated prisons but at a lower cost. One year later, CCA was awarded a contract for a facility in Hamilton County, Tennessee. It was the first instance of the public sector contracting management of a prison to a private company.

In the years since, the privatization of state and federal prisons has grown rapidly, with other corporations getting into the for-profit prison business. Today, CCA operates nearly 70 facilities nation-wide, and provides incarceration for around 80,000 prisoners. In Tennessee, the company houses about 19 percent of the state’s incarcerated population.

Private prison lobbyists claim that the private sector saves resources through greater efficiencies. They also claim that governments can benefit in the short-term through the direct sale of correctional facilities to private companies and can save money when constructing new facilities. However, Government Accountability Office (GAO) studies have shown these benefits to be mostly illusory.

What is clear is that for for-profit prison businesses, the more “customers” you have, the more money you make. Nationwide, it’s a multi-billion dollar business and growing. Profits often come at the cost of those working for the prisons. From a GAO report: “Privately managed prisons attempt to control costs by regularly providing lower levels of staff benefits, salary, and salary advancement than publicly-run facilities (equal to about $5,327 less in annual salaries for new recruits and $14,901 less in maximum annual salaries). On average, private prison employees also receive 58 hours less training than their publicly employed counterparts. Consequently, there are higher employee turnover rates in private prisons than in publicly operated facilities.”

In Tennessee, the public prison system is under severe strain. Guards are quitting the public system in droves, due to changes made to their schedules and the less-than-stellar wages they are paid. The natural reaction on the part of our business-minded Republican governor and state legislators may well be more privatization. But expanding the role of private prisons and making crime pay for “Big Incarceration” is a short-sighted solution.

Re-examining sentencing policies, guard compensation and hours, and funding our public prisons at an adequate level — thereby keeping them under public scrutiny — is a much better way to go than attempting to “save money” via more privatization of what should rightfully be a government function.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About the Flyer’s editorial, “Suburbs of Nothing” …

Please let us folks in the ‘burbs know when Memphis becomes one of those walkable, lively urban environments. By ‘lively,” I don’t mean lively with gunfire, either. Or perhaps the Memphis mayor could start to heal the breach by simply sitting down and talking with the suburban mayors, something that has not happened in years.

Perhaps he could start the conversation by explaining why the city filed a lawsuit in federal court during the schools debate and described us as racists. Actually used that word, too. Because that is one of those things we still, as the article says, “perceive as undesirable.” Until then, I think we are happy being “nominally independent.” Seems to be working for us pretty well.

Arlington Pop

“Seems to be working for us pretty well.” It’s all relative. Compared to other metropolitan areas, suburban Memphis is performing at about the same level as the central city. What the article did not mention from Mayor Cornett’s speech was the fact that demographics show that those under the age of 35 are overwhelmingly choosing to reject the suburbs of their parents’ generation for vibrant central cities with more urban settings. They are choosing community and character over acres of bermuda and lengthy commutes. If a metropolitan area’s central city lacks the quality of life this group prefers, they are simply bypassing the entire metropolitan area for destinations with vibrant urban centers. In other words, the decline of a city inevitably yields a decline (or stagnation) of its suburbs.

Barf

The only “under 35s” moving into Memphis are those without children, those with children who can afford private school, and those who have no idea what they are doing (the uninitiated) because they transferred here from wherever and made the mistake of believing what HR-recommended realtors told them. And those without any other choice.

Ichabod McCrane

Sorry, but a bad day in Midtown Memphis is better than a good day in Arlington.

Gpearson

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s column on magical thinking …

“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” — H.L. Mencken, 1926.

OakTree

About Bianca Phillips’ post, “CBHS Student Not Allowed to Bring Same-Sex Date to Prom” …

Maybe this Catholic school needs to listen to their leader, Pope Francis: “Religion has a right to give an opinion as long as it is in service to the people. If someone asks my advice, I have the right to give it to them. The religious minister, at times, draws attention to certain points of private or public life because he is the parishioners’ guide. However, he does not have the right to force anything on anyone’s private life. If God, in creation, ran the risk of making us free, who am I to get involved? We condemn spiritual harassment that takes place when a minister imposes directives, conduct, and demands in such a way that it takes away the freedom of the other person.”

Charley Eppes

About the Cooper-Young Fest …

I attended the Cooper-Young festival Saturday and had a great time, except the crosswalk at Central and Cooper does not have a cross signal for pedestrians.

This event was heavily attended. I crossed the intersection twice. The first time, there were no police to direct or to ensure the safety of pedestrians. On the return trip, there was a policeman with his back to Central so he could not see, and he was engaged in a conversation on his phone. When he got off his phone, he finally realized the 200 pedestrians had taken matters into their own hands, or their own feet, so he began blowing his whistle and began yelling at the final stragglers.

This was a great crowd of decent respectful citizens. Can’t the city afford an automated crosswalk? It would utilize the cops better and would be a hell of a lot safer for everyone else.

David Blakely