Category: Viewpoint

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Opinion Viewpoint

Stop Buying Massive Trucks (for No Reason)

(Credit: Jon Luke Cave)

Going from a McLaren to a Ford F-450 diesel is a logical progression, right? Probably not. I’ll jump right into some numbers: over 20 percent of new vehicles sold are pickup trucks. The top three best-selling vehicles on the market are full-size pickups (Ford F series, Ram 1500, and Chevy Silverado). Why? Statistics show that the vast majority of truck owners don’t use their trucks for truck things more than a couple times per year. So, why do so many people spend $56,000, on average, on pickups when they could just buy something more logical and rent or borrow a truck when needed? People like big trucks, that’s why. 

I am a proponent of buying the right tool for the job. This also applies to car buying. If you want a practical, no frills, cheap daily driver, you get a Prius. If you want an affordable sports car, you get a Miata. If you need to haul 30,000 pounds of junk, you get a heavy-duty truck. Most people will need a truck once or twice a year. So, they go buy one and daily drive it just so they’re ready for those few hours of truck things. It’s mind-bogglingly illogical. It costs about $40 to rent the Home Depot truck for half a day. It costs an extra couple thousand per year to drive a full-size truck rather than a nice, practical Mazda 3 hatch, for example. It costs around $45K to own an F150 for five years. A Mazda 3 costs $28K to own for five years. That is a massive difference! And I didn’t pick some horrible econobox to compare to the F150, the Mazda 3 is an excellent car with an amazing interior, great driving dynamics, excellent design, and tons of space. 

I spent a week daily driving a 2013 Ford F-450 Lariat with the 6.7L turbo diesel. It’s massive. This one has the crew cab and 8’ bed which is the longest version you can buy. In fact, It’s the longest noncommercial vehicle on the market at 22 feet long and it’s also 8’ wide not including the mirrors and weighs 8,000 lbs. which is the same as 4 Mitsubishi Mirages. The big diesel makes 400 hp and a whopping 800 lbs./ft of torque which makes this thing four seconds faster to 60 mph than a Mitsubishi Mirage. This F-450 was equipped with a killer Sony sound system with a sub built in, heated and cooled leather seats, and all the other usual features. The seats are huge and very comfortable and, obviously, there is a ton of space. It has a normal glove box, huge center console, and even a third enclosed storage area on top of the dash with more 12v and USB outlets built in. This thing makes a Rolls Royce Phantom feel cramped. No complaints about the interior, especially for a 2013 model. But, as soon as you start driving, the size of this behemoth makes itself very known. It’s wider than a Hummer H1 and longer than any other truck on the market, so it’s not exactly easy to maneuver. Parking lots are a nightmare, driveways seem like they’re made by Little Tikes by comparison, and you can just forget about street parking in a city. Turning in this truck feels more like turning in a bus rather than a normal car. You can feel yourself moving sideways if that makes any sense. I emptied out my normal Germantown two-car garage to see if this truck would fit. Not even close. I pulled into the garage as far as possible and there was still a few feet of truck sticking out. The size isn’t a problem if you’re towing a gooseneck across the country, but as a daily driver, it’s immensely impractical. 

But, here’s the thing, if we all bought cars purely based on logic, we would all drive Priuses. That’s a boring world that I want no part of. So, go buy yourself a big ole parkin’ spot fillin’, diesel suckin’, garage not fittin’, hard maneuverin’ pickup if that’s what you want! But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Not quite (Credit: Jon Luke Cave)
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Opinion Viewpoint

The Case for Amending the 20th Amendment

Regardless of personal politics, all of us who have endured this strangest of “lame-duck” presidential transitions can agree that this 2020 changing-of-the-guard has been among the most difficult our country has endured, perhaps ever.

The beaten Republican incumbent president has now cried “fraud!” several thousand times, continuing to demand a whole new election, long after the Supreme Court has dismissed all of his legal complaints. More importantly, Donald Trump’s refusal to provide most of the usual courtesies provided to presidents-elect has assured that this Trump-Biden transition continues to flow like glue.

We’re not finished yet, by any means. Even top White House aides are clueless as regards what exactly Trump might do between now and January 20th. We are just three weeks from Inauguration Day, in the midst of the worst pandemic in our country’s history, alongside a Russian security breach whose dimensions are still largely unknown, and we have no idea whatsoever what our 45th president will do next. This isn’t democracy; this is purgatory.

It’s too late to change things this time around, but the current nightmare must never be repeated. It’s time to shorten the period between Election Day and Inauguration Day. To do so, our elected representatives should take a close look at the 20th Amendment, and to shrink what is now a roughly 12-week transition In no other major democracy, around the world, does the outgoing leader take so long to pass the baton to his successor.

We can either amend the existing 20th Amendment, or simply create a new one, one that would be the 28th Amendment in our nation’s Constitution. I have no idea which approach is best, but that’s why God invented lawyers.

The 20th Amendment is not ancient; it was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1933. It shortened the length of time between outgoing and incoming administrations, moving up the original Inauguration Day set in The Constitution, from March 4th to January 20th, shortening the lame-duck period by roughly five weeks.

In many ways, this 1933 change (passed unanimously by all states) was simply good housekeeping. The original 1789 Constitution dated from an era when long-distance travel usually was measured in weeks. The Founding Fathers knew nothing of trains, let alone how to change planes at airport hubs.

But by 1923, when Senator George Norris of Nebraska first proposed this amendment, a lame-duck period of four months no longer made much sense, given 13 decades of travel improvements. As is customary with constitutional amendments, however, Norris’ proposal of what would become the 20th Amendment took a decade to pass muster among two-thirds of the state legislatures for it to become law. Not much has changed, has it?

Ironically, the 20th Amendment became official in January of 1933, in the middle of Herbert Hoover’s four-month lame-duck term in the White House. The Stanford-educated engineer had been roundly beaten in the November 1932 presidential election by New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a bitter contest resembling our current one. Hoover had the misfortune of being president when Wall Street crashed in 1929, and despite his skills, the economy fell into deep depression over the final three years of his single term in office.

Unfortunately, Herbert Hoover was not a good loser. He never thought the Crash was his fault, and believed that FDR’s economic plans were hogwash. So for four long months, Hoover did next to nothing to prepare for a smooth presidential transition, as The Great Depression got more and more depressed.

Governor Roosevelt finally took office as president on March 4, 1933, and the rest is history. Ironically, by that date, the 20th Amendment had actually been ratified, and so when FDR was re-elected after a 1936 landslide, he took the oath of office, yes, on January 20th, 1937.

Given the snail’s pace at which potential constitutional amendments get ratified, someone needs to start the ball rolling, perhaps by offering up a first draft for a 28th Amendment that will override the existing 20th one. We can’t just sit on our hands, hoping that nothing like this 2020 transition nightmare won’t ever happen again. Prayer can only do so much.

Here, then, is one layman’s first draft of a revised 20th Amendment. You’ll note I’ve worked around the big holidays, of course, presuming Saturdays and Sundays are off-limits, especially during NFL playoff season. As a nation, after all, we do have our priorities:

1) Inauguration Day should be held on the third Thursday of December; the earliest it can be held is on the 11th of that month; the latest this can be done is on the 18th.

2) Members of the outgoing Congress must meet and report to said Congress no later than the first Thursday of December, to certify the Electoral Vote itself. The earliest that date could be is on the 1st of December, and the latest it could be is the 8th of the same month.

3) The newly-elected Congress should gather at the Capitol on the first Thursday of the New Year, no earlier than January 3rd, i.e. it can be as early as January 3rd and as late as January 8th. A State of the Union address should be given by the incoming President as expeditiously as is feasible shortly after that date.

I need not tell anyone how strange the events of this particular post-election period have been. This year’s court fights and Donald Trump’s abandonment of his day job for nearly three months have been not just toxic, but borderline suicidal in places. Our transition process must be tightened up, and shortened by what is essentially a month.

As we watch this year’s bizarre transition take place in real time, it may occasionally seem quaint, entertaining, or just plain different. Future historians will consider it just plain insanity. Flying on automatic pilot, the way we are now, risks national suicide.

Kenneth Neill is the founding publisher of the Flyer. 

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Opinion Viewpoint

How to Fix Our Broken Electoral System

Every presidential election season spawns calls for reform of our rickety, antiquated system for electing presidents and representatives. In light of recent events, the urgency has never been greater. Here are some options to consider that would fix our problems.

Electoral College: Take the Electoral College. (Please.) Under our Constitution, state legislatures have exclusive power regarding the Electoral College. Any federal legislation to the contrary would be unconstitutional.

You could consider having states allocate Electoral College votes by congressional district, as Maine and Nebraska do. But all that’ll do is import the pathologies of gerrymandering into the presidential election.

Steve Mulroy

Or states could allocate Electoral College votes pro rata, based on each candidate’s share of the statewide vote, rather than on the current winner-take-all basis. But this is only a slight improvement. It would still make a vote in Wyoming mathematically worth three times as much as a vote in California (because each state gets two Electoral votes, regardless of its population). More fundamentally, it would still allow a candidate with more nationwide votes to lose to a candidate with fewer. (These same two criticisms also apply to the Maine/Nebraska approach.)

And, as I explain in my book, Rethinking U.S. Election Law, mathematically, it would still allow a small number of large states to dominate the campaign and get outsized attention in governance, as they do now. Because most states have a small number of Electoral College votes (average is 11, median is 7), even the most aggressive campaign effort could only change one Electoral vote in most states. So the incentive would still be to focus on a few big states with 20 or more Electoral votes and ignore the rest.

Better is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (nationalpopularvote.com), an agreement among state legislatures to award their state’s Electoral votes to the nationwide winner regardless of the vote count in their own state. This makes every vote in the U.S. mathematically equal to every other. Swing states won’t dominate, no one is ignored, and a candidate with fewer nationwide votes can’t beat out someone with more.

Within the last 10 years, 14 states representing 196 Electoral College votes have signed on to the Compact. They’re now 70 percent of the way toward the goal of 270 Electoral votes, at which point the Compact takes effect and the Electoral College is rendered harmless.

Gerrymandering: That “proportionate share” approach works better as a solution to gerrymandering. Nonpartisan redistricting commissions should become de rigueur. We’re the only advanced democracy that still lets politicians draw their own district lines. Voters don’t choose their representatives — it’s the other way around.

But because of “the Big Sort,” with Democrats overconcentrated in big cities, even the best such commissions can’t avoid “natural gerrymanders” that result whenever you superimpose single-member district lines and winner-take-all elections onto the unruly, demographically clustered populations of the U.S.

You still have a “skew,” which allows a party’s share of seats in the House to deviate significantly from its share of the overall vote. And you still have an overwhelming number of “safe” Republican and Democratic districts, where the only real competition is in the primaries. This incentivizes candidates to move to the extremes of left and right to avoid being “primaried,” with no real incentive to work across the aisle on constructive compromise.

Even better would be at-large or multi-member district elections using Proportional Representation, where 40 percent of the vote nets 40 percent of the seats. This would help Republicans in New York and Democrats in Mississippi get their fair share of representation; make all elections competitive with high turnout; and end gerrymandering once and for all.

The Fair Representation Act, currently pending in Congress, would give states the option to go this route, which has worked well in Australia for 60 years and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for 80. (The multi-member districts would be drawn by nonpartisan commissions, but instead of a single winner-take-all election, three to five members would be elected at once, with each party getting its proportionate share of seats. And because the elections would use Ranked Choice Voting, where voters could choose their first, second, and third choices, third parties would have a decent shot at getting at least some representation.)

In conclusion, our electoral system needs real fixes. Now is the time to consider them.

Steve Mulroy teaches election law at the University of Memphis law school. He is a former Shelby County commissioner and Voting Section lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department.

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Nylon Net Building and the Fabric of the Community

CREDIT: Memphis Flyer

Coming from a small town in Arkansas, Memphis was a dream for me. When I looked for my first apartment, I was guided to Midtown, where it was deemed imperative that I get a place with hardwood floors, high ceilings, crown molding, and hopefully a balcony. Places like this didn’t exist in my hometown.

When I moved to Los Angeles, my housing search was disappointing. The few apartments with historic character were very expensive, so I moved into a soulless box.

Memphis Flyer

Nylon Net Building

Knowing I would eventually return to Memphis and longing for the character of the places I used to live in, I purchased a Crosstown duplex with 12-foot-high sliding parlor doors. I soon learned that historic preservation and restoration isn’t the easiest path. It’s a unique skillset, and those only experienced with new construction fear the unknowns. You rarely hear someone who does adaptive reuse say that a building is too far gone. They ask for incentives to help save rather than permission to destroy.

There are always unexpected factors with historic buildings, but tax credits and other incentives can help make these projects feasible. When you buy a site with a historic building, the building cannot be in the way of your development — it is your development. From a cost perspective, developers say “it doesn’t pencil”, which often means “it doesn’t make as much profit as new construction.” But a project whose sole goal is profit has never resulted in greatness.

I own a guesthouse in a historic building downtown. Visitors often arrive with a list of what they want to see: Peabody, Beale Street, the Civil Rights Museum, the Orpheum, Sun Studios. Now they add the Crosstown Concourse. For food downtown, we recommend places from the Arcade on the South end to Alcenia’s at the North, with the Majestic as a favorite in between. Where to have a drink? Earnestine and Hazel’s is a must! Our guests return excited by the history they experience. Can you imagine the vibe of Earnestine and Hazel’s being recreated in new construction? Visitors come to experience food and entertainment that reflect our culture. They seek out the authentic places.

Frank Gehry said, “In the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures.” Imagine Paris or Rome without their historic buildings. The traditions and culture might remain, but the experience wouldn’t be the same. I was surprised by how many of my guests just wanted to drive around Central Gardens and Cooper Young, but then I realized neighborhoods are unique to each city, a prime reflection of who we are. Visitors want to feel the history.

Buildings house our memories. We drive by our childhood home, even though our family and neighbors might be long gone, because there’s a comfort in continuity. This is especially important in Memphis with its rich culture, history and musical heritage. With so many icons gone, what provides continuity with the past if not the physical? Preserving our architectural stateliness is to recognize inherent value in the uniqueness of our city. It makes us a part of something bigger than ourselves. Memphis’ soul comes from grit and strife. We should wear our scars with pride.

I am a historic preservationist, but I do not believe that every building should be saved. I have a great appreciation for modern architecture and quality new construction. Preservation and economic gain do not have to be at odds. They can work together to create progress, Artists find the good, and often historic, building stock, and the developers follow. The success of these “arts districts” and “historic districts” were built on the backs of the residents and small business owners who gave their all towards reviving these streets. Once the groundwork is laid, the “authenticity” lauded, and property values increasing, developers want in on the action. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the approach is key. Memphis has plenty of empty lots, but limited historic building stock. So why do we talk about demolition?

An architect or developer who considers the architectural and cultural context of an area can be a great asset to a neighborhood. Development can enhance the existing historic fabric, reduce blight, and increase resources. But a developer intent only on maximizing their own gain will build at the lowest possible cost, sacrificing the character, context and quality that made the area attractive, essentially killing the proverbial golden goose. They drive up prices for a lesser product, and drive out the original residents and character upon which the neighborhood was built. What Memphis is, and what we become, is a reflection of us. This cannot solely be a conversation between politicians and developers.

There have been many incredible adaptive reuse projects completed in recent years: the Arrive, the Brewery, Central Station, the Chisca, Universal Life, and that miracle of miracles, the Crosstown Concourse. The Marine Hospital renovation is almost complete, and the Oliver Building (aka the Butcher Shop Building) is set for saving. These have set the bar for what our historic buildings can and should be.

Small developers have also done some great projects, often with great struggle and personal sacrifice. The character and quantity of the historic buildings, both big and small, create our unique fabric. There are many soulless cities, but Memphis does not look like “Anywhere, USA.” Our buildings are an advertisement to those considering moving here; the more you interact with visitors, the more you are reminded of this. It’s crucial for us to save and reuse the whatever we can.

This is why the fate of the Nylon Net building, aka The Southern Warehouse, is important. We should see opportunity in this boarded up building. It has gorgeous archways with brick detailing — craftsmanship which new construction cannot recreate. I envision it like a Wythe in Brooklyn or like the Distillery District in Toronto. I picture it renovated with unique design and with framed photos of the former workers when the factory was at its prime. I see those arched windows facing the train tracks, and I want to have a drink there, RP Tracks-style. When I owned the building, folks would stop by to tell me their stories: “The company sponsored my ball team.” “My dad worked here.” “I worked here for 38 years, and met my wife here.”

While the Nylon Net Building has sat empty for way too long, and we all want to see development, let’s please get it right. Demolition cannot be undone. New construction will never be able to replicate the character that currently exists there. You can see much more of the history and potential uses at facebook.com/7Vance. Our built environment is a reflection of who we are, so who are we? Are we soul or are we solely about profit?

Dana Gabrion is a television producer, real estate developer, and Memphis Heritage board member.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Losing the Latinos: The President’s Failed Strategy

CREDIT: whitehouse.gov

The national media has reported recently (and erroneously) that Latino support for Joe Biden is flagging. These reports note that Hillary Clinton, in October 2016, held wider margins of support with Latino voters across the nation.

First, “Latino” is a strange term and fails to adequately capture the vastness and diversity of the Hispanic/Latino/Latinx communities living in this nation. “Latino” creates the appearance of a monolithic culture, when in reality people descended from Puerto Rico are called Americans or Puerto Ricans. Mexicans living here are more accurately Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. People from Brazil are “Brazilian”; labeling them as Hispanic is historically and culturally inaccurate, as Spain (for the vast majority of Brazilians) has nothing to do with their identity.

whitehouse.gov

Losing the Latinos?

Latino historical assimilation here in the USA is equally complicated. In Memphis, our Latinx community is relatively young (largely dating back to the early 1990s) and has evolved from a community mainly comprised of Mexican immigrants to one that increasingly draws from throughout Central America.

The community here is younger demographically and poorer economically than the more established Cuban community in Miami. That community grew in direct proportion to the Cuban Revolution; the Miami community is relatively wealthy, virulently anti-communist, and politically powerful in the state. Miami Cubans, with a 60-year foothold in South Florida, tend to vote conservatively, but their children and grandchildren see the world beyond Cuba, which sits a mere 150 miles off their southern shore.

These differences are critical, yet largely ignored when the media covers the Latino community. For example, a recent poll suggests that Hillary Clinton was about nine percentage points ahead of candidate Trump four years ago (late in the campaign) with the Latino vote compared to where Joe Biden is now. That figure is misleading and mostly meaningless as race/culture in the Latino community is too complicated to categorize (or poll) as a single entity.

The groups comprising the Latino community have not shared a common unifying event or struggle like the African-American community to warrant polling the community as a single group. That could change, however, as the absolute horror bestowed on our Latino brothers and sisters (and children) by the Trump administration may bring this divergent vote together.

Trump’s actions include the following efforts: First, the deliberate policy, organized in the White House and executed through DOJ, of separating parents from children at our southern border and placing children (literally) in cages should serve to unite not only the Latino community against Trump but anyone with a soul.

Second, Trump’s “Puerto Rican Paper Towel Toss” and his abandonment of aid to the island after Hurricane Maria in 2017; third, his early reference to Haiti and El Salvador as “shithole countries.” Fourth, “the beautiful wall” that was never funded and only haphazardly built. Lastly, the Trump administration, certainly in violation of the law, has unilaterally changed the arc of our immigration system so that we now essentially deny asylum-seekers the opportunity to plead their case before an American judge.

This utter assault on core, fundamental, and established American values may serve as the impetus to mobilize the Latino vote. We can’t pretend to understand why, given the realities presented above, Latinos would support the president. Yet millions within the Latino categorization align with the Republican Party, and most Republicans continue championing the president heading into next month’s election.

Here in Memphis, and in the nation writ large, both the health and economic disparities laid bare and exacerbated by the pandemic have highlighted the Trump administration’s galloping incompetence. Latinos need fewer platitudes, less paper towel showmanship, and more governmental support that translates to better employment, stronger healthcare access, and the best possible public schools that the wealthiest nation on the planet should provide.

It’s not easy to understand how Latinos, in this city and in this nation, would eagerly vote for President Trump. This administration has been a catastrophe for those who view America as a nation of immigrants, as a welcoming refuge for people fleeing poverty, oppression, and political turmoil abroad. That dream endures in the American imagination, as the four-year nightmare of Trump and his policies of anger, division, and delusion ends. Soon.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and the board chair of Latino Memphis. Michael LaRosa teaches history at Rhodes College.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Come On, Lamar! There’s Still Time for Senator Alexander to Show Courage

It seems all so obvious now.

Last January 31st, Lamar Alexander, Tennessee’s senior senator, voted to dismiss John Bolton’s testimony at the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Had Alexander voted for presentation of further evidence, several others in the Republican Party may well have joined him. And we as a country might be in a very different place than where we are today.

Now that everyone knows the contents of Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, the testimony that the former National Security Advisor was willing to give might well have tilted the Senate toward a Trump conviction, resulting in a Pence presidency.
Six months later, there is no point crying over spilt milk. But it is worth taking a moment to think about what might have been, had Donald Trump been removed from office last winter.

Lamar Alexander

The past six months under a Pence presidency would have been difficult — the pandemic could care less who’s in the White House — but perhaps he would have handled the virus’ omnipresence differently. He’s no favorite of mine, but I believe a President Pence would have approached the crisis altogether differently. He certainly would have listened more closely to the doctors. And he wouldn’t have played so much golf.

Pence would have made mistakes; after all, everyone on the front lines did at first. But he and the governors, I feel confident, would have put together a cogent federal/state pandemic plan. Having been a governor himself, he would have worked closely with others from both parties.

I also believe that a President Pence would consider hourly tweeting beneath the dignity of his new position. And he would know that his new job was way bigger than his ego, well aware of where the buck stops.

By now, President Pence’s policies might have saved 25,000 lives, maybe more. At the moment, he would be in the middle of a closely contested election race, just 77 days away. The outcome would be a toss-up at this point.

The interim President would be well liked, and so would Lamar Alexander, the man who demanded that John Bolton’s testimony be heard. The retiring Tennessee senator forever would be remembered for not letting the Bad Cat out of the impeachment bag.

Lamar Alexander was our governor for eight years in the Eighties, our senator now for the past eighteen. I don’t know a Democrat in Tennessee who hasn’t voted for him a time or three. Alexander’s public service reflects competence, dedication, and civility.

Sad, isn’t it, then, that his distinguished Senate career is ending on an ambiguous note. Sad that all but one GOP senator chose to ignore evidence of the President’s criminal behavior regarding the Ukraine. Shortly after his acquittal, Donald Trump rode a victory lap in his limo at the Daytona 500, and the rest is history. Real history, unfortunately, not what-might-have-been.

Things have gone from bad to worst this past week, with President Trump’s blatant attempt to disrupt the USPS so completely in the weeks and months ahead as to make voting by mail well nigh impossible. This President’s bald attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election goes far beyond what any of his 44 predecessors had ever contemplated. Most contemporary American historians now speak with one voice, already calling Trump’s blatant power grab one of the darkest political gambits in our country’s history.

Here’s how I think our state’s senior senator could achieve a degree of redemption for his January vote. Lamar Alexander could recover much of the integrity for which he has always been admired, if he simply announced his retirement now, rather than waiting until January 2021, and by just stating the obvious: “I have lost confidence in Mr. Trump’s ability to govern these United States.”

He need not say another word; let others whose political futures are in the balance slice and dice Donald Trump’s decidedly dangerous behavior. I believe a one-sentence resignation would be well-received by most Americans, a large percentage of whom remain terrified by this human loose cannon, still rolling around in the White House.

It’s a small gesture, but perhaps Senator Alexander’s resignation would inspire others in his party to stand up to the President’s blatant attempt to meddle with our country’s electoral process. We find ourselves now in a very dark place; our retiring senator has a genuine opportunity to make things inside that place a little bit brighter.

Kenneth Neill is publisher emeritus of the Memphis Flyer, which he helped launch in 1989.

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Opinion Viewpoint

It’s Time to Leave TVA

As a lifelong Memphian deeply involved in our city’s civic community, never before have I seen a more transformational opportunity for Memphis than in the issue of whether Memphis Light Gas and Water should continue to get its electric power from TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), or find another less expensive and reliable source of power.

Next Wednesday, August 19th, the MLGW board of directors will make the critical decision of how to proceed with an RFP (request for proposals), which will tell us how much MLGW will pay for power from a new source. It is the next step – and arguably the most important step — in a prolonged search process that recently culminated with an IRP (Integrated Resource Plan). The IRP, commissioned by MLGW, is one of five studies that have said MLGW could save between $150 million – $450 million a year if it leaves TVA. Each of these studies also say that the initial savings will easily grow by more than a $100 million in 10 years.

Why is this RFP decision so important? The consensus of energy experts is that the only way MLGW can validate the savings is to issue an RFP conducted by an experienced and reputable firm that can expeditiously and accurately pull together cost bids from power suppliers around the nation that would tell Memphis what we will pay for power compared to what we now are paying TVA.

Three months ago, the Memphis City Council, realizing the importance of this issue, asked Mayor Jim Strickland to hire ACES, a national energy management company, to perform the RFP. ACES, which serves among other entities, municipal utilities and public power agencies throughout the country, operates as the procurement arm for MISO (Mid-Continent Independent Service Organization), the non-profit organization across the river which is six times larger than TVA and delivers electric power across 15 states (including parts of Mississippi and Arkansas) and into Canada.

ACES already has told Mayor Strickland that an RFP can be completed 90 days, plus a public comment period.

Thus, ACES is best suited to perform this study and is the logical choice. It would seek power bids from all sources of power, including wind, solar, gas, and nuclear. If the savings projections of these five studies prove to be true, the longer we wait to decide whether or not to leave TVA, our city could be losing anywhere from $500,000 – $1.5 million a day!

Look at it this way. The City of Memphis’ annual operating budget is about $700 million. Imagine what our city could do if we had an additional $200 million a year in extra income without raising taxes while, at the same time, reducing everyone’s utility bills by 20 percent. The Memphis City Charter allows that at least half of these savings could be used for a variety of things, including the repair of MLGW’s aging infrastructure, funding MATA, supporting economic development, improved funding for our schools, and additional funds for our police and fire departments.

This additional revenue would change the face of our city for generations and still provide all the reliable power Memphis needs at significantly reduced rates with a far better impact on our environment.

Until an RFP is done properly by an experienced company such as ACES, we will not have an apples-to-apples comparison of power costs between MISO and TVA, nor will we be able to accurately validate the projected savings detailed by the five studies.

As co-founder of $450 Million for Memphis, an independent group of civic, governmental, and business leaders and concerned citizens, I believe it’s imperative that Memphis take the proper steps its needs to leave TVA and find its power elsewhere. Our city can’t afford not to.

If you want to know more about the entire issue, $450 Million for Memphis will host a two-hour online session this Monday, August 17, from 3 p.m.-5 p.m., which will include presentations from all organizations in favor of MLGW leaving TVA. These organizations include Friends of the Earth and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. We also will have a presentation from MISO explaining the benefits of this nonprofit organization and how it works, and we will hear from our neighbors to the south and west — Entergy Mississippi and Entergy Arkansas. Their representatives will talk about their experiences after leaving their power supplier and joining MISO. In addition, there will be a presentation from a TVA distributor that also is exploring the likely possibility of leaving TVA.

The session will be live streamed at www.abetterwaythantva.org. Please take the time to watch, listen and then understand why leaving TVA and joining MISO is the biggest opportunity for change and growth in Memphis’ 200-year history.

Karl Schledwitz is chairman of $450M for Memphis.

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Trump Virus

Okay, let me answer the only talking point the Trump campaign has left: The president’s team is demanding that critics tell them what Joe Biden could have done better than President Trump to prevent the deaths of 140,000 Americans, and counting, due to the coronavirus. Obviously, this is a weak argument. You might even say it is a desperate argument.

Why? Because the only real issue is Trump’s handling of the virus.

Juan WIlliams

Already, 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the virus, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll. Another recent poll, from Fox News, had 56 percent of registered voters disapproving of Trump’s response to the virus. In fact, voters have already concluded by a large margin — 17 percentage points in the Fox poll — that they trust Biden to do a better job of leading the nation through the pandemic.

Even on a personal basis, Fox reports that only 36 percent believe Trump has “the compassion to serve effectively as president.” By comparison, 56 percent say Biden is a compassionate man.

So the American people have reached a conclusion about the performance of the incumbent: Trump failed. And that has big political consequences because the coronavirus is the No. 1 issue for voters.

By asking what Biden could have done differently, Trump’s campaign is trying to change a national conversation that has already reached a conclusion. They are kicking up a storm of distraction by arguing that even if Trump dropped the ball, where is the evidence that Biden might have done any better?

Biden answered the question last week. While Trump was promising that “like a miracle — it will disappear,” Biden said he would have to work — improving testing, tracing people who had spread the disease, and using the Defense Production Act to get U.S. companies to produce tests, masks, and equipment for hospitals.

Trump did not do those things, Biden said, but instead “raised the white flag.”

“He has no idea what to do,” Biden told MSNBC host Joy Reid last week. “Zero.” Trump’s only concern is winning the election, Biden said. “And it doesn’t matter how many people get COVID or die from COVID,” Biden added, “because [Trump] fears that if the economy is strapped as badly as it is today … he is going to be in trouble [in November].”

Let’s take Biden’s answer with a grain of salt, since he is running against Trump. But what do political reporters — people watching every day, the judges at ringside — think of how Trump is handling the virus?

After interviewing Trump for an hour, Chris Wallace of Fox said Trump’s White House still “doesn’t seem to have a handle” on the pandemic. That is damning given that Trump was warned about the potency of the virus to kill in January.

Jake Tapper of CNN offered a similarly negative judgment. Trump’s “refusal to lead has a body count,” as in the number of people who have died from the virus.

How does Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has seen Trump’s response from the beginning, judge Trump’s performance? “When you look at the numbers, obviously, we’ve got to do better,” Fauci told The Atlantic a week ago. “We’ve got to almost reset this and say ‘Okay, let’s stop this nonsense.’ … So rather than these games people are playing, let’s focus on that.”

These judgments that Trump has failed are hard to refute. It is a fact that in January Trump told CNBC he had no worry about the coronavirus because “we have it totally under control. … We have it under control. It is going to be just fine.”

In late February, Trump again steered the country wrong by tweeting that the virus is “very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

In March, as the situation grew worse, Trump blamed “Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party,” for trying to “inflame the CoronaVirus situation.”

Then in mid-March he declared, “I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” Later in March, he announced the virus would be gone in time for Americans to gather at church for Easter services in mid-April.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi  now goes so far as to call the disease the “Trump Virus.”

“If he had said months ago, ‘Let’s wear masks. … Let’s socially distance’ instead of rallies … then more people would have followed his lead. He’s the President of the United States,” Pelosi told CNN, in explaining her negative judgment of Trump.

That’s why the question of what anyone else might have done is a useless parlor game. Its only purpose, as conceived by a desperate Trump campaign, is to get people to ignore the president’s costly failure.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

“Bounty” Scandal Shows Again How Putin Owns Trump

Stop it!

There is no way to explain President Trump’s lack of action in response to U.S. intelligence showing Russia paid bounties for the murder of American soldiers. Even worse, there is no explanation for why congressional Republicans aren’t raising hell over Trump’s silence.

Juan Williams

Some military veterans are speaking up: “Putin pays bounties to Taliban enemies to kill American soldiers and not a word from Donald Trump,” says the narrator in an ad from the group “VoteVets.” In a different ad from the same group, the narrator says: “Benedict Arnold can step aside, because Benedict Donald is America’s No. 1 traitor.”

I get uneasy when political players start throwing around loaded words like “traitor.” But what’s the choice now? Trump’s only defense is to say he was not told about the intelligence and did not read his briefing book.

“Either way, it is an unjustifiable dereliction of duty,” tweeted Joe Biden, the Democrats’ nominee for president.

Trump is also hiding behind the fact that the intelligence is not totally confirmed. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed the idea that Trump did not react to the report because the intelligence agencies did not have a “100 percent consensus.” She called it a “con.”

“We would practically be investigating nothing if you had to start off at 100 percent. … Just because they didn’t have 100 percent consensus, should this not be briefed to the president of the United States?” Pelosi said.

Keep in mind the seriousness of the Russian bounty report. The Washington Post reported that in April 2019 there was an attack in Afghanistan killing three Marines and “those who planned it may have been paid a bounty by a Russian military intelligence unit to kill Americans.”

So it is hard to say which is worse: Either Trump did not read his written briefing report or his aides thought it best not to tell him. Whatever the case, it is shockingly clear that the President of the United States did nothing.

So, where is the shouting from all those flag-waving congressional Republicans? Their current silence reminds me of their quiet when the Trump administration did nothing to punish Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Trump even enlisted fellow Republicans in demonizing the FBI for looking into the plot.

Trump called the probe into Russian election interference a “hoax.” Now he is calling news of the Russian bounty intelligence a “hoax.” He is keeping Republicans in line by linking the election-tampering probe to the questions about the bounty scandal. He said this latest outrage is “possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax … wanting to make Republicans look bad!!”

But it is an outrage to play politics with a matter of life and death for American soldiers.  And it is particularly galling when you consider how they attacked people who asked questions about the Iraq War — people like me. They smeared critics of Bush’s Iraq War as traitors. So, where are today’s Republicans calling out the Trump administration for its lack of response?

The only action by the Trump administration has been to start a probe to find out who leaked news of the intelligence reports to newspapers. That diversionary tactic is consistent with Trump’s failure to handle foreign affairs throughout his presidency.

The American people see it. In the current RealClearPolitics average of polls, 52 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of foreign policy. Trump’s foreign policy failures are too numerous to list in one column, but here are some of the lowlights:

Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has not only cost Americans jobs but has ceded our leadership role in the world to countries like China.

“Trump didn’t want to hear [early reports about the coronavirus in China] because he didn’t want to hear bad things about [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping. … He didn’t want to hear bad things about the Chinese economy that could affect the ‘fantastic’ trade deal he was working on,” former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton recently told ABC News.

Trump failed to act against North Korea for the murder of American student Otto Warmbier and never got a nuclear deal with Kim Jong-un.

He has exacerbated tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians by giving enormous concessions to the Netanyahu government.

And perhaps, most dangerously, Trump failed to halt Iran’s nuclear program after ripping up President Obama’s nuclear deal — which was working.

The Democratic National Committee has started running ads hitting Trump’s stumbles on foreign policy. “Trump said he’d get tough on China,” a narrator intones. “He didn’t get tough. He got played.”

And once again, Trump — and our troops and the American people — are getting played by Russia.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Trump’s DACA Defeat

Ten years ago, 41 senators voted down the “Dream Act” which — if passed — would have allowed young people not born in America but brought here by migrant parents the opportunity to apply for U.S. Citizenship. Last week, the United States Supreme Court held that the Trump Administration’s decision to end the Obama-era protections for these vulnerable young people was “arbitrary and capricious.” Mr. Trump may not begin deporting these so-called “Dreamers,” at least for now.


In 2012, with the failure of Congress to pass the Dream Act, and right before his election to a second term, Mr. Obama took executive action in what is commonly referred to as DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This action acknowledged the political reality of that time, i.e. that if the Congress would not act to protect children from deportation, he would. 

[pullquote-2] In Tennessee, there are about 8,500 DACA recipients; in Memphis, approximately 1,800. They are young people who are not U.S. citizens but have lived here most of their lives, and hope to stay here. They attend public schools and universities, they serve in the armed forces, and they are working in healthcare as the nation faces the COVID-19 crisis.


Toward the end of his presidency, President Obama attempted to expand DACA and implement DAPA, which offered deferred action (concerning deportation) and some benefits, such as work authorization to the parents of DACA recipients.


Fast forward to 2015. Candidate Trump began his political campaign, as we remember all too well, by demonizing immigrants, especially undocumented persons, and with laser-like focus attempted to overturn any action taken by President Obama. During the notorious speech announcing his candidacy, the future president characterized the undocumented by saying, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Thus, the battle was engaged.


Upon assuming the presidency in January 2017, Trump continued his anti-immigrant rhetoric. In 2018, the president pushed to end DACA, but did not want to rescind it unilaterally, since 76 percent of the American population supports DACA.


Trump’s inaction, coupled with an increasingly vocal political base, together with anti-immigrant hardliners in his administration, including Stephen Miller, created a mini-judicial revolt when seven states, led by Texas, argued that Obama had overstepped his authority in signing DAPA and the expanded DACA. The Fifth Circuit ruled in their favor — that the Obama administration had overreached by offering benefits to DAPA recipients.


Based on this ruling, the Trump administration quickly (and haphazardly) declared that Obama’s 2012 implementation of DACA was illegal and announced its end. This ultimately led to a variety of legal challenges — the result being the 5-4 Supreme Court decision on June 18th declaring the Trump administration’s attempt to overturn Obama’s executive order as “arbitrary and capricious.” In other words, the administration failed to engage in “reasoned decision making” in coming to its resolution to rescind DACA.


Ironically, the surprise 5-4 decision (with Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority) was not a declaration of immigrant rights, but a finding of a somewhat mundane violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. In arriving at this outcome, Justice Roberts cited a landmark case near and dear to the people of Memphis. Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe (1971), which declared that administrative decisions could not offer “post-hoc rationalization;” in other words, evidence and arguments cannot be added in after the fact as efforts to bolster earlier decisions, which the Supreme Court found objectionable in both cases. 

[pullquote-1] Yet, preservation of DACA was never intended as an end in itself; DACA was seen as a protective bridge toward Congressional action. DACA provides no lasting relief for its beneficiaries who continue to live, learn, and work in a quasi-legal status that provides no permanent protections. 


While we celebrate this temporary reprieve, it is only temporary. This November, with possibilities of a new president and stronger leadership in Congress, we could see some hope for Dreamers. They want to live here in America in peace — free to work, study, and contribute to our nation as we struggle forward together. Only voters, together with the government we select in the fall, can offer the affirmation of rights and relief that Dreamers deserve.