Archives

Categories
Music Music Features

Beale Street Music Festival 2017: Saturday

FedEx Stage

Amy LaVere • 2:30 P.M.

This local heroine up and got hitched to Austin’s Will Sexton, and now they’re inseparable, both onstage and off, to great musical effect. Her upright bass playing and plaintive singing lead the group through her original songs, with echoes of country, gypsy jazz, blues, rockabilly, and moody mambo.

John Paul White • 4:00 P.M.

John Paul White

Co-founder of Grammy-winners The Civil Wars, White has more recently pursued a solo career in the same vein of traditional American songwriting. Starting with basic folk-rock instrumentation, he’ll then add subtle atmospheric touches to his arrangements. Fresh off a collaboration with Rodney Crowell, he’s clearly on a roll.

Dawes • 5:35 P.M.

L.A.-based folk-rockers Dawes released their fifth studio album, We’re All Gonna Die, last fall. Reminiscent of Jackson Browne’s The Pretender, the LP is packed with songs that feel timeless and lived-in, with snatches of bright acoustic guitar, clean electric guitars, and swirls of keyboard chords providing a bed for the lyrics.

Drive-By Truckers • 7:10 P.M.

Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers are the undisputed kings of alt-country. An essential track is “Self Destructive Zones,” their gritty ode to a hair-metal guitarist who is on the verge of commercial success until Kurt Cobain takes grunge mainstream overnight and puts an end to the era of hair and “pointy, cheap guitars.”

The Revivalists • 8:50 P.M.

The Revivalists

If you need more saxophones in your life, The Revivalists have you covered. Fresh from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, this soulful septet is bringing its infectious dance beats to the Bluff City. Not unlike last year’s sultry soul-rockers, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, The Revivalists bring back vintage funk and roots-rock styles.

Kings of Leon • 10:30 P.M.

Formed in Nashville in 1999, family-band Kings of Leon began with a sound not unlike a punk-rock Creedence Clearwater Revival. Now, the band has turned stadium-sized, with seven studio albums, 12 Grammy nominations, and four Grammy wins under their belt. Kings of Leon released their most recent album, WALLS, last fall.

Bud Light Stage

Lil Wyte • 2:10 P.M.

This white rapper from Frayser has proven himself legit, working with Three 6 Mafia and others for over a decade and regularly showing in the U.S. rap charts. Known for his rapid-fire delivery, he’s staked out his own style both musically and pharmaceutically, creating a blend of medical cannabis.

Kongos • 3:45 P.M.

Kongos

South African siblings by way of Arizona, this musical family treads the slightly rockier side of pop with four-to-the-floor stompers colored by synth and accordion textures. Produced and polished, they nevertheless bring some surprises to their compositions, with clever hooks, breakdowns, and singalong choruses.  

Griz • 5:20 P.M.

Self-described future-funk DJ GRiZ (aka Grant Kwiecinski) crafts dramatic songs with sci-fi noises, late-night TV horn squeals, and R&B-inspired beats. A veteran of festivals such as Electric Forest and Lollapalooza, GRiZ has collaborated with incendiary guitarist Eric Krasno and livetronica legends Big Gigantic.

Mutemath • 7:00 P.M.

Not exactly a throwback, not exactly a “contemporary act,” New Orleans rockers Mutemath embrace the freedom of 1960s rock-and-roll without sacrificing modern relevancy. 2009’s Armistice was the band’s biggest hit on the charts, but 2015’s Vitals might be their most confident effort.

Wiz Khalifa

2 Chainz • 8:40 P.M.

Dirty South vet 2 Chainz has had an incredibly long and diverse hip-hop career since his 1997 debut with Playaz Circle. He’s worked with everyone from Lil Wayne to Drake and Kanye, while keeping up a vigorous schedule of solo releases that made him a pioneer of trap. Consistently creative and usually ahead of his time, 2 Chainz looks to light up the Bud Light Stage audience.

Wiz Khalifa • 10:25 p.m.

Genuine pop hitmakers come along only so often in a lifetime, but Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa is absolutely one of them. From the early days of “Say Yeah” to his most recent No. 1 “See You Again” (a tribute to the late actor Paul Walker, which spent 12 straight weeks atop the Billboard charts), Wiz can certainly be relied upon.

River Stage

Dead Soldiers • 2:20 P.M.

This Memphis band wowed audiences at South by Southwest this year and is energetically promoting their new album, which takes their earlier work in a more eclectic direction. Blending horns, fiddle, and layered harmonies over a solid rock foundation, with forays into old-world music, their shows are guaranteed to energize.  (See Cover Story on p. 10)

Deer Tick • 3:50 P.M.

Deer Tick

Folk-rock without being retro, and boasting an unpredictable gritty streak, this Rhode Island outfit is now in their 10th year. Steadily growing into a bigger sound with more recent albums, with the addition of keyboards and occasionally horns, the group walks a fine line between Americana and innovation.

Highly Suspect • 5:25 P.M.

Three-time Grammy nominees Highly Suspect are an alt-rock group from Cape Cod. Formed by brothers Rich and Ryan Meyer with their friend and guitarist, Johnny Stevens, Highly Suspect are reminiscent of Oceansize without all that impossible-to-dance-to compound measure. Who needs 11/4 when you have songs like “My Name Is Human”?

Silversun Pickups • 7:00 P.M.

Silversun Pickups achieved both critical and commercial success with a career built on a foundation of layers upon layers of guitar harmonies. Their debut album, Carnavas, is packed with Billboard-charting singles that set the tone for the next decade-and-a-half of releases that are by turns quiet and delicate and loud and overdriven.

X Ambassadors • 8:40 P.M.

X Ambassadors

This Ithaca, New York, rock quartet has certainly made its mark on the pop landscape in a relatively short period of time.  The band’s 2015 major-label debut VHS features chart-topping singles such as “Unsteady” and “Renegades,” and more is yet to come.  

Death Cab for Cutie • 10:20 P.M.

Death Cab for Cutie

Seattle’s Death Cab for Cutie has been labeled lots of things over the years: “punk,” “emo,” “indie-rock,” etc. But the truth is, simply, that the band makes great pop music, and there is no greater evidence than their 2003 hit “The New Year.”

Orion Blues Tent

Daddy Mack Blues Band • 2:15 P.M.

Daddy Mack Blues Band

With a lineage going back to underground blues legends the Fieldstones, the Daddy Mack Blues Band is as “Memphis blues” as it gets. Mack Orr delivers the pain on lead vocals and guitar, and his fine band does the rest.

Blind Mississippi Morris • 3:50 P.M.

A Clarksdale native from a family rich with musical heritage, this award-winning harmonica player/bluesman is a perfect fit for the festival, reminding us of the sounds that made Beale Street great. With over 20 years of performing under his belt, expect to hear the blues done right.

Carlos Elliot Jr. • 5:30 P.M.

Carlos Elliot Jr.

Carlos Elliot Jr.’s claim to be a blues pioneer is rightful. The Columbian singer/guitarist has successfully channeled his love for the hill country blues of North Mississippi into a rich stew of Latin and African influences, most notably on 2015’s Del Otun & El Mississippi.

Corey Harris Band • 7:10 P.M.

Effortlessly combining elements of Delta blues and reggae, Corey Harris has earned his reputation as one of the finest working musicians in the game today.  He already has over 15 albums under his belt, but 2003’s Mississippi to Mali might be his best.

Ronnie Baker Brooks • 8:55 P.M.

Paul Natkin

Ronnie Baker Brooks

Few pedigrees read as strongly as that of Ronnie Baker Brooks, the respected Chicago blues singer/guitarist and son of the legendary (and recently deceased) Lonnie Brooks. His newest album, Times Have Changed, was released earlier this year.

Big Head Blues Club • 10:45 P.M.

There are supergroups, and then there are supergroups. Big Head Blues Club combines members of the mighty Big Head Todd and the Monsters with well-known blues cats Cedric Burnside and Lightnin’ Malcolm and the dynamic Ruthie Foster on lead vocals.  It can’t be missed.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Good Tidings

As the Tennessee General Assembly winds down, we find ourselves more gratified than usual. For one thing, the solons up thataway managed to bite the bullet and actually pass a major new tax bill to fund long overdue improvements in the state’s seriously needy roadways. The good thing about the 6 percent tax increase on gasoline at the pump (that’s 10 percent for diesel) is that a substantial hunk of it will be paid by the 18-wheelers and doubled-up dinosaurs that come wheeling through Memphis in such quantity on a daily basis, contributing more than their share of wear and tear to our thoroughfares.

Never mind that the legislature’s conservatives made certain to “balance” (actually, over-balance) the gas tax with massive new tax cuts to benefit corporations and the well-off. We’ll do our best to give the benefit of the doubt, one more time, to those who imagine that such giveaways actually create a “stimulus” to growth or an incentive to new industry. But no such rosy scenario can justify the Assembly’s decision to accelerate the expiration of the Hall tax on interest and dividends — a modest levy that disproportionately affects the wealthy and has been the source of needed revenues for the state’s cash-strapped municipalities.

Nor has there ever been a true rationale for the ongoing abolition of the estate tax (the “death tax” as its critics disingenuously call it), something which only the tiniest percentage of the state’s ultra-wealthy have ever had to pay, and in percentages so small as to leave the well-being of their lucky heirs utterly intact.

But, after all, another throw-in to the gas-tax package — optimistically called the “Improve Act” by Governor Bill Haslam, who aggressively pushed it — is a 20 percent reduction in the tax on food and groceries. That’s something that benefits everybody — rich and poor, buyer and seller.

Politics, when it works, involves trade offs, and, all things considered, the Improve Act is a good trade off.

Another area in which the General Assembly has gotten down to business in a commendable way is that of criminal justice, where cooperation between Democrats and Republicans can be said to be flourishing. Highlights have been bills to facilitate the employment of rehabilitated felons and to reduce the pain and effort and cost of expungement. Such measures have a positive effect on workforce recruitment; at the same time, they serve as encouragement for Tennesseans determined to correct past mistakes and to improve their lot in life.

To be sure, there have been legislative actions to carp about — like the absurd bill, steamrollered through both chambers, that removes impediments to the sale of silencers for firearms and was sold on the basis that its intent is to safeguard citizens’ hearing. The gun lobby still has too much power in the General Assembly.

But, as we have noted more than once, not much time was wasted this year on such misbegotten measures as the “bathroom bill” targeting transgenders or the “natural marriage” act with its presumptuous challenge on a matter that the U.S. Supreme Court seems to have resolved by its recent ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.

And, one more time, private-school vouchers didn’t make it.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Field Is Set for June 15 General Election in House District 95

L to r: Vaughan, Ashworth, Schutt, Tomasik

After the tabulation on Thursday of the vote in the special Republican primary for state House District 95, the field is now set for the special general election of June 15.

Kevin Vaughan, an engineer, real estate broker and Collierville School Board member, narrowly edged former Germantown alderman Frank Uhlhorn to win the seven-candidate GOP primary.

Vaughan will vie in the general with trial lawyer Julia Byrd Ashworth, the Democratic nominee, and two independents, student Robert Schutt and Libertarian activist JimTomasik.

With all 18 precincts counted in the district which includes portions of Colliervile, Germantown, and Eads, Vaughan ended with 1,066 votes to Uhlhorn’s 1,017. The rest of the GOP field finished in this order: Billy Patton, 751 votes; Missy Marshall, 682; Gail Horner, 247; Curtis Loynachan, 134; and Joseph Crone, 58.

Ashworth, who was unopposed in the Democratic primary, had 363 votes. There were two write-in votes in her primary, and two also in the Republican primary.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Monuments and Memories: The Confederacy and Jim Crow

Sometimes there is an obvious synchronicity at work in human affairs. There certainly seemed to be something like that going on this week in relation to the question of monuments and memorials.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans took decisive action to dismantle and remove three Confederate-related statuaries from places of prominence in his city and promised to complete the task by removing three more in the immediate future. He made it clear that the time had come to stop glorifying such shrines of national disunion in much the same way that then South Carolina Governor and now UN Ambassador Nikki Haley did when she removed the Confederate flag from her state Capitol building in 2015.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu

Haley’s action was in response to the horrific murder of nine African-American church members by an addled racist who almost literally had wrapped himself in the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy. Landrieu expressed a similar motivation by referring to the creation of the Confederacy as an attempt to “tear this country apart.” It was a blunt and arguably overdue reaction to lingering romantic fantasies regarding what was basically a last-ditch defense of human slavery. This is the same Mitch Landrieu, by the way, who in 2014 answered the inaugural “Summons to Memphis” issued by Memphis magazine, our sister publication, and came here to deliver an inspirational message about various new directions in urban policy. Clearly, he believes in leading by example.

So, it appears, do Memphians Howard and Beverly Robertson of Trust Marketing, who this week, at the National Civil Rights Museum, were to unveil a campaign on behalf of the Lynching Sites Project of Memphis, described in their press release as “a nonprofit Tennessee organization formed to locate and mark known lynching sites.”

To be sure, we write this in advance of their scheduled press conference and cannot vouch for all the details of the Lynching Sites venture. As we see it, memorializing the places where such public horrors took place during the era of Jim Crow is akin to the concept of remembering the Holocaust at the various worldwide ceremonial sites that do so. And not much different from the memorials to Pearl Harbor or 9/11, for that matter.

Tragedies and misprisions of the past require our attention quite as much as do the heroics of history, real or imaginary, and it is hard to conceive of anything more directly counter to the pomp and self-deception of the numerous monuments to the Confederacy that remain.

How does that famous quote from George Santayana go? “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Shhhhooot!

For some time now, there have been legal restrictions on the purchase of epinephrine products, which, under such brand names as Sudafed, were long used freely by sufferers from sinus conditions and colds to eliminate nasal congestion. But, as chronic sniffle victims know well, to buy such a product now requires purchasers to sign a register form at the desk of their pharmacy, thereby to ensure that they are not buying in quantity. The reason is that law enforcement agencies tracking the scourge of illegal methamphetamine long ago discerned that large quantities of store-bought epinephrine were used to mass-produce that drug on the black market.

So are we now going to have to apply similar safeguards on the purchase of oil filters at auto parts stores? We ask after apprising ourselves of testimony from state Representative Tilman Goins (R-Morristown) in the course of arguing his bill (HB 11) to eliminate state restrictions on the purchase of silencers for firearms. Responding to a challenge from Representative Bill Beck (D-Nashville) in the House Civil Justice subcommittee last week, Goins said that, after all, a shooter could get the same effect by choosing to “screw an oil filter on the end of your gun.” That, said Goins, “works as well, if not better, than available silencers in the market today.”

The far-fetched sound of that was nothing, however, compared to Goins’ disingenuous argument that passage of his bill would leave in place significant federal restrictions on the sale of silencers, including a $200 tax and provisions for a background check that could last for as long as a year. All HB 11 would do, he said, was to “[put] Tennessee in a position where we are deferring to the federal government.” But Goins would concede, under questioning, that legislation similar to his own is afoot in the U.S. Congress. It would eliminate such special restrictions, leaving the purchase of a silencer (a.k.a. “suppressor”) in “the same category as a rifle or a shotgun.”

Beck literally threw up his hands as he evoked the image of James Bond and of “endless” state legislation on “guns and exploding ammunition.” He asked: “What do we need silencers for?” And Goins answered that, among other advantages, the din of firing-range floors could be reduced, and deer hunters would be better enabled to hear their prey. 

Representative Martin Daniel (R-Knoxville) asked the obvious: Wasn’t one of the reasons for the general ban on silencers the simple self-protective one that the sound of discharged weaponry served as an “alert” for law enforcement and ordinary citizens alike? Ah, but there remained a modicum of sound, even with the use of suppressors, said Goins, who went on to argue that “animals are bothered” by the sound of unmitigated firearm use.

We are not making up any of this — nor the fact that the Goins bill went on to be handily approved by the subcommittee. It was scheduled for action by the full Civil Justice Committee this week. An identical Senate version has already passed that body by a vote of 28 to 1.

The formal title of the legislation? “The Tennessee Hearing Protection Act.” Beck was wrong. This is not James Bond. It’s Alice in Wonderland.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Memphis Census News is Troubling

For the last week or so, local residents have been digesting the news from the U.S. Census Bureau that the metropolitan Memphis area, encompassing nine counties in three states, managed to increase its population by the grand total of 888 people during the period July 1, 2015, through June 30, 2016.

This was troubling news to the boosters among us, especially since the Memphis figures compare unfavorably to the other major cities in Tennessee. We have known for some time that Nashville, against whom we have traditionally tried to compare ourselves, has put us in its rear-view mirrors, growth-wise. During the year of comparison, the state’s capital city acquired 36,337 new residents, for a growth rate of 2 percent. Ours was a woeful 0.1 percent.

But Knoxville and Chattanooga also outgrew us. So did Little Rock, Arkansas. Only Jackson, Tennessee, which lost 61 residents in the year being measured, did worse than Memphis in our general geographic area. Oh, wait, that other Jackson, the one in Mississippi, also fared more poorly, coming in with a population gain of 563. 

Keep in mind, too, apropos the meager growth or the Memphis metropolitan area, that the nine counties which comprise it contain at least three — Tipton and Fayette counties in Tennessee and DeSoto County in Mississippi — that we had grown accustomed to envying for their visible spurts in new, shiny subdivisions and commercial strips. That these bedroom suburbs had not managed to raise the whole metropolitan complex above the curve tells us something — not just that rural terrains, which make up so much of the greater Memphis area, have been steadily shedding population (that much we knew) but that the dominant economy of Memphis, focused on our much-vaunted status as a distribution center, is not one that generates appreciable numbers of either high incomes or skilled jobs. 

If it comes to it, we can call the roll of this or that new industry come to town, but there are not enough of them to render us competitive with high-growth urban areas. And we can also make up a list of major manufacturers or corporate entities that have deserted us over the years.  

One of the bragging points of our current state administration is the Tennessee Promise program which relegates significant funding to pay tuition at Tennessee’s fairly impressive number of community colleges. No doubt 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, a skeptic regarding that program’s value, has been influenced in his views by the fact that this program is largely financed by monies originally raised by proceeds from the state’s lottery, brought into being by then state Senator Cohen to provide college scholarships for needy students with proven academic potential.

Cohen sees Tennessee Promise as going in another direction altogether — toward the provision of a generous supply of worker cadres for relatively low-paying jobs in the distribution industry. That may or may not be an accurate view, but one thing is certain: On the Monopoly board of urban America, the Memphis of today would be represented by a token in the shape of a warehouse.

In any case, the new census figures have us asking ourselves: Are we, as a community, merely standing still? And, if so, what is the alternative?

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Tennessee Legislature Trumps Cities’ Laws, Again

As has been amply demonstrated in the Tennessee General Assembly, Memphis is often on the short end of the stick when it comes to legislative actions. One recent case in point, covered in “Politics” this week (p. 8), was the action of both state Senate and state House in rejecting the city’s right to prescribe alternative penalties for the possession of modest amounts of marijuana for recreational use.

In this case, Memphis was not alone in getting the back of the hand from the legislature. The city councils of Nashville and Memphis had passed ordinances allowing their local law-enforcement arms to exercise discretion by way of citing first-time offenders with tickets and modest fines as an alternative to misdemeanor arrests carrying punishments of up to a year in jail.

To some extent, the legislative rebukes reflected a party-line reaction by the Republican super-majority that controls both chambers of the General Assembly. In a sense, both Memphis and Nashville are isolated Democratic enclaves, blue islands in a red sea.

To some extent also, both cities share a cultural matrix toward which the rest of the state is unsympathetic. That fact loomed large a few years ago when the legislature struck down a Nashville ordinance prohibiting hiring and contracting discrimination by local government on the basis of sexual orientation. The legislature’s action nipped in the bud similar action then pending in the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission.

In this instance, too, the guiding principle stated by proponents of the restrictive legislation was that state law overrides local law, and that general claim has been stoutly defended by former Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, among others, against charges of being inconsistent with a parallel insistence on states’ rights in national affairs. The retort by Ramsey and by current spokespersons for the Assembly’s GOP super-majority is that cities and counties within state lines and the federal union itself were brought into being originally by the states. Hence, the doctrine of state government über alles, which is the governing doctrine of the General Assembly at present.

An even more flagrant example of the principle looms in pending legislative action — sponsored, ironically, by a Shelby Countian, state Senator Brian Kelsey — that would impose the constitutionally dubious expedient of taxpayer-funded private-school vouchers on Shelby County alone. The bill, styled as a “pilot program,” is further limited so that its potential financial drain would apply only to existing funding for Shelby County Schools.

Kelsey’s bill advanced through a House education committee last week, despite drawing protests and nay votes from local House members from both parties.

In the long run, such imposition of state authority on matters of clearly local provenance deserve full testing by the courts. In the short run, they merit the stoutest resistance possible.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Haslam’s Gas Tax Proposal Faces Conservative Opposition

The fat lady has not yet sung on Governor Bill Haslam’s proposed gas-tax bill to pay for overdue infrastructure and roadway improvements. Which is to say, the issue remains in doubt — perhaps technically, perhaps more definitively, depending on action in the legislature this week.

Governor Bill Haslam

But state Representative Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster) last week expressed herself in both vocal and parliamentary fashion to abort the governor’s proposal, which would impose a 7-cent increase in current gasoline and diesel taxes, and the Haslam measure’s prospects may end up considerably shriveled as a result. Weaver, chairman of the state House transportation subcommittee, basically — and perhaps temporarily — junked the governor’s tax as a funding mechanism for the planned infrastructure improvements. Instead, she contrived to substitute an arrangement whereby a quarter-cent of the state’s sales tax revenues would be shifted instead to the Department of Transportation. The change would not only alter the Haslam infrastructure measure, it would alter the fundamental way in which the DOT has historically been financed — by user fees like those paid by motorists at the gas pump. 

Work on rehabbing the state’s infrastructure seems destined to happen, but the underpinning for it will change significantly if Weaver’s changes — or something like them — hold up in subsequent actions by the full Transportation Committee, due to consider the bill this week, and the House Finance Committee, as well as in separate Senate actions.

Much of the burden of paying for the long-overdue improvements will be transferred from users of vehicles — who comprise a relatively upscale slice of the population, as well as a disproportionately large number of motorists and truckers passing through. On top of that, the governor’s proposal — called IMPROVE — will reduce the “regressivity of the state’s tax system.” That’s the finding of Professor Donald Bruce of the University of Tennessee Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research. 

Bruce cites evidence that the relatively upscale group which spends considerable time behind the wheel ends up spending nearly twice as much on gasoline and motor oil as those who are poorer. Conversely, the more mobile upscale population devotes disproportionately less of its resources on food. Haslam’s proposal, which involves offsetting tax reductions, including a lowering of the grocery sales tax, would shift a larger share of the tax burden onto the relatively affluent.

If the IMPROVE plan for funding infrastructure improvements is thwarted by the same ultra-conservative opponents of Haslam’s ill-fated Insure Tennessee program for Medicaid expansion, it is not just the state at large that will suffer. Sooner or later, Tennesseans will surely catch on to who it is that is holding them back, and then these reactionaries of the legislature’s GOP super-majority will find themselves paying the piper — and not just at the gas pump.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Ill at Ease in the Trump Era

For better, and mostly worse, it’s now the era of Trump — which is either a little over a month old or almost four months old, depending on whether it’s dated from last November 8th, Election Day, or January 20th, when the current president was inaugurated.

A sense of dismay, joined at times with outrage and organized protest, has been pervasive in much of the American electorate (and not just on the side that lost the electoral vote) since Donald Trump’s ascension to power.  

To borrow from Lewis Carroll, things have not only gotten curiouser and curiouser, they’ve gotten worser and worser. The unnatural and unexplained courtship of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin by Trump has not only continued, it has escalated — along with more and more compelling evidence that the Trump campaign and the Kremlin had more than a casual relationship during the election cycle. Ditto with the new president’s ongoing war with the U.S. intelligence community, upon whom his (and our) safety arguably depends, and the nation’s media, upon whom our hope for reliable information rests.

There was a time, maybe, back during the GOP primaries and those delightful demolition derby debates with Little Marco and Lyin’ Ted, when Trump provided us with a steady source of dismayed amusement. He has long since ceased to be funny.

The reason for our trepidation has to do with the fact that, between the time these words are written and the time when they can be read, the president will have addressed Congress, fulfilling a promise (or threat) to reveal the essentials of his plan to “repeal and replace Obamacare,” which is Republican code for dismantling even the relatively bare-bones system of semi-universal health insurance that has been provided through the Affordable Care Act.        

It is worth repeating again what many thousands of our fellow citizens are saying en masse on a more or less daily basis these days at congressional town meetings: To eliminate the ACA is to deprive no fewer than 20 million previously uninsured Americans of their sole hedge against unexpected health crises. Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan and the rest of the GOP ideologues who control things now pretend they will retain protection for those with pre-existing conditions, as one example. But it is simple common sense that without the mandates of the ACA, there will be no way of funding insurance for the impoverished and desperately ill. And the conversion of outlays for Medicaid expansion into reduced funding dispersed via block grants for the states is sure to make the nation’s already stressed safety net dangerously ineffective.

Not even the spectre of presidential impeachment, which polls tell us half the Americans surveyed are willing to consider, would help much, at this point. The problem lies with Congress, which remains unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to “repeal and replace” the ACA, now that they’re actually, you know, governing. There is always 2018 and another election, we suppose, if we last that long.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Strickland’s Lists

Publicity regarding 81 persons deemed needful of a police escort while in City Hall has gone national, to the embarrassment of the city of Memphis and to its mayor, Jim Strickland, in particular.

The bottom line, affirmed Strickland to members of the Rotary Club on Tuesday, was that the list is now “under review.”

As the mayor explained it in the course of what he dubbed “State of the City Number Two,” the list was an awkward and, in some ways, unintentional amalgamation, resulting from Strickland’s unease regarding recent protesters who trespassed on his home property and a pre-existing security list compiled by the Memphis Police Department prior to his ascending to office. Strickland seemed to be acknowledging that it was a misstep, and the high likelihood is that, in its current form, it is not long for the world.

As for the rest of things, Strickland was remarkably upbeat on Tuesday, finding silver linings where there were clouds and some bona fide sunshine to boast of.

There was the “Work Local” program, which the city is pursuing in tandem with Hospitality Hub, an organization that works with the homeless. The program arranges for homeless people and panhandlers to be paid $9 an hour to work clearing blight, one of the triad of issues which Strickland vowed to do something about in his 2015 campaign. And he put the plans forth as a sample of his “Brilliant with the Basics” motto.

The mayor also spent a fair amount of time talking about another part of that triad — public safety. He noted that the city’s recruitment campaign had attracted some 2,000 applicants to join the Memphis Police Department, and that it appeared certain that the city would be increasing the number of police officers for the first time in six years.

The city has been able to attract some $7 billion in new businesses and development, Strickland said, and to dissuade other businesses, like ServiceMaster, from leaving. He also cited plans to augment an existing TDZ (tourist development zone) so as to spur new development on the riverfront, much of which would complement a current expansion of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which is in the process of creating 1,800 new jobs.

There was much else on the plus side claimed by the mayor, including substantial reductions in the city’s basic debt. And there was the matter of how the city plans to avert a Draconian deannexation plan aimed at it by unsympathetic elements in the General Assembly by fashioning its own “right-sizing” plan, introduced publicly just weeks ago and about to undergo scrutiny this next week in a series of town meetings throughout the city. The plan contemplates the detachment from Memphis, over a four-year period, of “seven or eight neighborhoods on the edges,” Strickland explained. The city would sacrifice some 10 percent of its land mass but only 1.5 percent of its population. In the short term, he acknowledged, the city would incur a loss of property and sales tax revenues of some $7 million, but the city stood to gain from having a more appropriate geographic area to service.

As in the case of the other issues he discussed, Strickland enters into the second year of his tenure with a seeming determination to confront the issues and not look for a rug to sweep them under. That’s the list that voters will judge him on.