Tag: Congressman Steve Cohen

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Cohen to Introduce Articles of Impeachment against Trump

In the wa

Rep. Cohen

ke of Charlottesville and President Trump’s apparent defense of the white nationalists who were the focus of disturbances there, Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen, ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, announced Thursday morning that he will introduce articles of impeachment against the President.

The Congressman’s statement follows:

August 17, 2017

Ranking Member Cohen to Introduce Articles of Impeachment Against President Donald Trump After Comments on Charlottesville

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] — Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, today announced that he will be introducing articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump following the President’s comments on the horrific events in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“I have expressed great concerns about President Trump’s ability to lead our country in the Resolution of No Confidence (H.Res. 456) that I introduced in July with 29 of my colleagues; however, after the President’s comments on Saturday, August 12 and again on Tuesday, August 15 in response to the horrific events in Charlottesville, I believe the President should be impeached and removed from office. Instead of unequivocally condemning hateful actions by neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Klansmen following a national tragedy, the President said ‘there were very fine people on both sides.’ There are no good Nazis. There are no good Klansmen.”

“We fought a World War to defeat Nazis, and a Civil War to defeat the Confederacy. In reaction to the downfall of the Confederacy, and the subsequent passage of the Reconstruction Amendments to our constitution, the KKK embarked on a dastardly campaign to terrorize and intimidate African Americans from exercising their newly acquired civil rights. Subsequent incarnations of the Klan continued to terrorize African Americans with lynchings and civil rights murders such as the assassination of Medgar Evers and the killings of Schwerner, Chaney, Goodman and other civil rights workers.”

“When I watched the videos from the protests in Charlottesville, it reminded me of the videos I’ve seen of Kristallnacht in 1938 in Nazi Germany. It appeared that the Charlottesville protesters were chanting ‘Jews will not replace us’ and ‘blood and soil,’ an infamous Nazi slogan, as they marched with torches that conjured up images of Klan rallies. None of the marchers spewing such verbiage could be considered ‘very fine people’ as the President suggested.

And it certainly appeared the participants were in lock-step. Some of the white nationalist protesters were interviewed by the media, such as Sean Patrick Nielsen. He said one of his three reasons for being there was ‘killing Jews.’ Another was Christopher Cantwell, one of the white nationalist leaders, who said he couldn’t watch ‘that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl’ and said he hoped ‘somebody like Donald Trump, but who does not give his daughter to a Jew,’ would lead this country

 As a Jew and as an American and as a representative of an African American district, I am revolted by the fact that the President of the United States couldn’t stand up and unequivocally condemn Nazis who want to kill Jews and whose predecessors murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, and could not unequivocally condemn Klansmen whose organization is dedicated to terrorizing African Americans.

“President Trump has failed the presidential test of moral leadership. No moral president would ever shy away from outright condemning hate, intolerance and bigotry. No moral president would ever question the values of Americans protesting in opposition of such actions, one of whom was murdered by one of the white nationalists

 Senator John McCain rightfully tweeted this week that there was ‘no moral equivalency between racists and Americans standing up to defy hate.’ Senator Marco Rubio tweeted, “Very important for the nation to hear @potus describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists.”

President Trump has shown time and time again that he lacks the ethical and moral rectitude to be President of the United States. Not only has he potentially obstructed justice and potentially violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, but he has also shown that he is incapable or unwilling to protect Americans from enemies, foreign and domestic. Neo-Nazis and the KKK are domestic terrorists. If the President can’t recognize the difference between these domestic terrorists and the people who oppose their anti-American attitudes, then he cannot defend us.”

Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor who was an outspoken critic of Adolph Hitler, said:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

“They have come for me, and for the majority of my Congressional constituency. Accordingly, I must speak out today after what happened on Saturday and our President’s subsequent response. It is morally and legally incumbent upon me, based on my oath of office, to introduce articles of impeachment.”

###

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Memphis Immigration Lawyers Fear the Worst, Look to Congress for Relief

Greg Siskind (l); Barry Frager

President Trump’s executive order creating new immigration bans has not left Memphis unscathed. Among the affected are the proprietors of two local law firms specializing in immigration matters, although both see their clientele as being the true victims, not themselves.

“These are harsh actions by the Trump administration, and they are already affecting a lot of people, by their tone as much as by their action,” said Barry Frager of the Frager Law firm. “People will fear leaving the U.S. on trips, uncertain as to whether they can get back. All this is increasing fear in the immigrant community as a whole, especially among the Muslim community.

Muslims constitute maybe 15 percent of his firm’s trade, said Frager. And he estimated that the effects of his practice would be a “wash,” given the balance between some emergency work that will come his way and the expected reduction in calls for the routine assistance that his firm provides — visas, green cards, and general compliance with a host of normal immigration requirements.

“Clearly, people will respond when they are afraid,” Frager said. “But under the Trump administration we do not expect a friendly environment where we’ll be able to help more people. I’m concerned that well be able to help less people be successful in matters affecting their status.”

Greg Siskind of Siskind Susser, another firm specializing in immigration matters, expressed similar thoughts. In the short term, “it’s not impacting us financially,” Siskind said of the Trump ban, which, for a projected 90-day period, has put a stop, regardless of visa category, to normal travel of non-citizens back and forth between the U.S. and seven Middle Eastern nations — Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Suden, Libya, and Syria.

The Trump ban also includes an absolute 120-day halt to admission to the United States of refugees fleeing the consequences of the civil war in Syria.

Siskind estimates that his Muslim clientele constitutes “from 15 to 25 percent” of his firm’s total.

Amid impassioned protests at several American airport locations, a federal judge in Massachusetts on Saturday night ordered a stay in enforcement of the Trump ban that had the effect of freeing up several hundred non-citizens who had been blocked on their re-arrival in America from trips to several of the seven affected nations.

But that accomplished only partial relief, noted Siskind. “For every person who was stuck in the airport here, there are probably 100 people abroad who can’t get back in.” That included “dual nationals,” people with passports from Canada as well as from one of the affected nations. “We do a lot of work for doctors, and a lot of them are from Iran or Syria,” said Siskind. He estimated that “from 5 to 7 of the top 10” physicians’ cases that his firm handles involve immigrants from Syria.

Like Frager, Siskind is dubious about the constitutionality of Trump’s actions, which both lawyers saw as targeted at Muslims, despite pro forma denials from the administration. On the basis of such additional news as was available on Sunday, Siskind did express a hope that immigrants from the seven affected nations who already possess green cards might find the barriers to their travel relaxed.

Both Frager and Siskind held their optimism in check, however, pending further developments. Both were hopeful that legal actions from the A.C.L.U and other opponents of the ban could accomplish some relief, but both saw Senator Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s Attorney General-designate, as the animating source of the President’s action, and both feared the worst on that account.

Both lawyers were also dubious about Congress’ ability to affect the outcome.

Said Frager: “My feeling is that the establishment portions of both the Democratic and Republican parties don’t quite know what to do right now with Donald Trump’s Presidency. I believe that the establishment doesn’t agree with the Trump administration but doesn’t know what to do about it.”

Siskind has similar sentiments — with a pointed edge to them. “I’d like to see what Congress will do, but they, and the normal agencies of government, seem to be sidelined, including our two Senators,” he said on Sunday. “I know where [9th District Congressman Steve] Cohen stands.” (The Memphis Democrat is vehemently opposed to Trump’s action.} “I’d like to see where [Republican 8th District] Congressman [David] Kustoff stands. They’ll be judged for a lot of years on what they do in the next week or two.

“If Congress just stands by and lets this happen, it’s a bad sign for what we’re going to see for the next couple of years.”

For the record, Senator Lamar Alexander issued this statement later on Sunday:

“This vetting proposal itself needed more vetting. More scrutiny of those traveling from war-torn countries to the United States is wise. But this broad and confusing order seems to ban legal, permanent residents with ‘green cards,’ and might turn away Iraqis, for example, who were translators and helped save lives of Americans troops and who could be killed if they stay in Iraq. And while not explicitly a religious test, it comes close to one which is inconsistent with our American character.”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Cohen Won’t Attend Trump Inauguration

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen

Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen joined civil rights icon John Lewis (D-GA) and what may turn out to be a substantial number of other political figures in announcing Monday that he will not attend the Friday inauguration of Donald Trump as President.

Cohen, who has represented the 9th District since his first election in 2006, made the announcement Monday morning at Mason Temple of God in Christ during a commemorative celebration of the life and works of Dr. Martin Luther King on MLK Day.

Telling the Flyer that a series of insulting tweets from Trump about Lewis became “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Cohen praised the Georgia congressman as someone who had “risked his life” for human rights. Trump’s tweets had come in the wake of the Lewis’ own statement that he would not be at the inauguration.

The Congressman said Trump’s attack on Rep. Lewis were particularly egregious “coming on the eve of the Martin Luther King weekend.”

Cohen said he had already been distressed by “an accumulation of distressing remarks, actions, and appointments” on Trump’s part, including “his questioning President Obama’s birth for years, the racist, misogynistic statements he made during the campaign, his inability to tell the truth, and his mocking of a disabled person,” as well as the President-elect’s attacks on Senator John McCain and actress Meryl Streep.

“This is a president who does not act presidential,” Cohen said, adding that, as a history buff, he regretted having to miss so signal an event as an inauguration ceremony.

Cohen said further had he had attended confidential briefings about Trump’s compromised behavior and circumstances and that “there’s more to it than Russia.”

Cohen had made his disregard for Trump clear in recent days, comparing him to deceased formerr Cuban strongman Fidel Castro.

In an interview with CNN last week, Cohen said, “The last two people I remember in this Western Hemisphere who were soclose to Russia were (businessman) Armand Hammer, who loved oil and money, and Fidel Castro, who loved to talk for long periods of time, hated disloyalty and dissent and eliminated it, and was very much an egocentric individual.”

And, in an issues meeting with constituents, the Congressman had warned about the prospect of a new “Dark Ages” under Trump.

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Politics Politics Feature

Herenton and Cohen: Still at It

Neither current Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen nor former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton have any intention of hanging it up. 

Those two realities, each with significant bearing on the coming year and beyond, were made evident on the last day of calendar year 2016 when the two familiar public figures each addressed separate public prayer breakfasts. Both made some possible waves with their remarks.

Herenton was the guest key-noter at the first New Year’s prayer breakfast held by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland at the Guest House at Graceland. Though his speech conformed in general to the theme of citizen volunteerism enunciated by Strickland at the event, the former mayor’s most widely noted statements had to do with what he saw as the imperative of the city’s African-American community to improve its circumstances, not by appealing for help from others but through action of its own.

Or, as Herenton, who served from 1992 to 2009 as the city’s first elected black chief executive, put it: “No one can help us if we don’t help ourselves. It’s up to us, to protect us from us.” That was his preamble to a series of statements about urban crime that were bound to be received either as a provocation or as a challenge, depending on the attitude of the listener.

With the fact of a dramatic rise in the Memphis homicide rate serving as the background of his remarks, Herenton made a point of focusing on “black male youth” and “black-on-black crime” and laid a major portion of the burden for addressing the problem on the affected population itself. 

“The people who are shooting, they aren’t riding deep in Germantown and Collierville,” he said. “They’re riding in Orange Mound. They are riding in Binghamton. They are riding in Frayser.”

The public entities normally charged with dealing with crime were “floundering,” said Herenton, who, without mentioning names, cited the offices of the sheriff and the Juvenile Court judge, as well as the Memphis/Shelby County Crime Commission. He went on: “I’ve had some people tell me the answer to this city’s problems would be if we had an African-American mayor. The critics used to say the same things about me. I was the first black mayor, and people would say we need a white mayor. I don’t care what color the mayor is. All I want is a good mayor.”

To the end of enabling Strickland to become just that, Herenton called for 10,000 African-American men to volunteer as mentors for black youth. “They need to help this mayor with blight, tutoring, after-school programs, the Boy Scouts — all kinds of things.” Herenton referred to such a collective effort as constituting a “new path,” a term he also uses to describe his ongoing proposal for model charter-school dormitories in Shelby County for youthful offenders.

• Cohen’s remarks, made some miles away at the Holiday Inn Select on Democrat Road, were the highlight of former City Councilman Myron Lowery‘s annual prayer breakfast.

An advance news release from the Congressman’s office had served as a teaser for the event, promising “a major announcement … regarding his future in the United States Congress.” 

That both addressed existing reports of Cohen’s possible exit from public life and gave them further fuel, but toward the end of his remarks at the breakfast, the Congressman decisively dismissed the prospect.

“There have been some rumors around that I was going to retire,” Cohen said. These, he said, waggishly, citing statesman/financier Bernard Baruch as the author of remarks normally attributed to Mark Twain, had been “greatly exaggerated.” 

Cohen declared categorically: “We’ll be here in 2018, and we’ll be here in 2020. I plan to run for reelection.” He declared he was a better Congressional server today than ever before and said, “I’ll do it as long as you want me to do it.”

The Congressman disclaimed yet another rumor, that he intended a future run for the Senate. “It’s cool to be in the United States Senate,” he said, “[but] this state is red.” Noting his first abortive race for Congress in 1996, when he was defeated by Harold Ford Jr., as well as one for Governor in 1994, Cohen said, “I’ve tilted at windmills before. … I’m not running for another office the rest of my life that I can’t win.”

Vowing always to “speak truth to power,” Cohen warned of imminent dangers to the Affordable Care Act, public education, and the environment resulting from the combination of a Donald Trump presidency and a GOP-dominated Congress.

Cohen said the forthcoming Trump administration has sold out to “Exxon and Russia,” a fact presumably signaled both by Trump’s choice of the giant oil company’s CEO Rex W. Tillerson as secretary of state and by the president-elect’s non-stop flattery of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Noting the Russian government’s dependence on international oil sales, Cohen said, “All they want is to drill the Arctic.”

As for Trump, Cohen said he did not trust “this presidency not to use the IRS or the FBI” as tools against dissenting citizens, and he warned, “When an individual becomes the power and not the country — like Benito Mussolini — that’s fascism.”

In an apparent reference to Congressional Republicans’ intent to have the Constitution read aloud, Cohen said, “I hope when they read the impeachment clause, they understand it.”

Though most of his remarks concerned issues of domestic import, the Congressman made a point of stressing the importance of a “peaceful solution in the Middle East.” Referring to renewed controversy over Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank, Cohen said, “What the Israelis are doing now is wrong. … We need peace there. Israel needs peace.”

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Editorial Opinion

Memphis’ Big River Crossing is a Game-Changer

CREDIT: bigrivercrossing.com

bigrivercrossing.com

As is well known, the city of Memphis sprawls a good bit. In fact, we are used to hearing politicians contend that, area-wise, Memphis is larger than Chicago, although that claim has an apocryphal ring to anyone who has driven through the Windy City from north to south.

It is undeniable, though, that over the weekend an event occurred on the downtown side of Memphis that will both magnify its size and extend its borders enormously in the eyes of the outside world.

This was the event known as the Big River Crossing, a commemoration that occurred in tandem with the completion of the Main Street to Main Street project that now links downtown Memphis with downtown West Memphis — and does so via an innovative pedestrian/bicycle pathway extending all the way across a refurbished Harahan Bridge, heretofore used only by trains. At night, moreover, the bridge has the capacity to be visually spectacular, thanks to a lighting system that can shine in “architectural white” or, as it did on Saturday and Sunday nights, in dazzling rainbow colors.

This new addition to the city’s landscape is no serendipity. It is the result of years of visionary thinking and liberally applied elbow grease on the part of several local pioneers, who, in tandem with counterparts across the river in Arkansas, worked together to accomplish what, at first blush, had seemed a crazy idea, even to some of its most avid backers.

The father of this project is the distinguished trader/investor Charlie McVean, but he had help in designing it, funding it, and executing it from a host of others — notably the late Jim Young of Union Pacific Railroad in Little Rock, who overcame his industry’s bias against shared rail/pedestrian structures, and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, who went to bat for the project in Washington and ended up making it possible through the acquisition of a $15 million TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant that completed the necessary funding package.

The TIGER grant not only significantly underwrote the project (technically known as the Main Street to Main Street Multi-Modal Connector Project) but also made it possible for both of the bookend cities, Memphis and West Memphis, to undertake significant rehabilitation of their downtown cores. It is one of those rare circumstances from which environmentalists and urban-growth enthusiasts can both take heart.

And McVean and his collaborators aren’t resting on their laurels. They imagine further work on the adjoining Mississippi River levees that would result in a recreational artery extending all the way to New Orleans and to the creation of what would be, in McVean’s words, the world’s largest land park.

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Memphis Gaydar News

Memphis LGBT Community and Supporters Gather in Cooper-Young

Crowd gathered on Cooper in front the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Center.

In the wake of Sunday morning’s horrific mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando, the Memphis LGBT community and its supporters gathered in front of the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Center in Cooper-Young Sunday night. 

The vigil drew an estimated 300-400 people. Speakers included Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, Congressman Steve Cohen, and Executive Director of the MGLCC, Will Batts.

Batts pointed out the historic significance of gay clubs as a sanctuary for the LGBT community. “They were a place where I could be who I was,” he said.

Strickland said, “I know there is more love than hatred in this world,” adding that he was comforted by seeing the crowd gathered in support.

Mayor Jim Strickland

Mayor Strickland speaks to crowd.

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Editorial Opinion

“No Deal”

It has only been a few weeks since the speaker of the House of Representatives, without seeking the concurrence of the president of the United States or even bothering to consult him, chose to invite the head of state of another nation to

address a joint session of the Congress. And it was on a matter, moreover, which was even then the subject of delicate negotiations between this country and a potential adversary, Iran.

As expected, that leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, had a view of the issue that was diametrically opposed to that of President Obama. No problem on that point: People and nations differ. The timing, however — just as negotiations with Iran were reaching the crucial point and (no accident, either) just before Netanyahu faced an election back home — was atrocious. And the issue — the very sensitive one of a deal with Iran to restrain that country’s ability to make a nuclear weapon — was no small matter. Neither was the matter of this country’s constitutional checks and balances, which Speaker John Boehner’s partisan power move, at the very least, put in jeopardy.

Steve Cohen, the 9th District congressman who happens to represent Memphis, more or less said all the above back then, and we were happy to quote his words editorially, deferring to him as a Jewish American, a lifelong supporter of Israel, and a patriot.

Putting all the breaches with tradition and good sense aside, the fact is that Netanyahu spoke well and forcefully in his address, the point of which was to condemn the proposed agreement with Iran as a “bad deal,” which, in his view, made it worse than no deal at all.

But there was something terribly wrong with his logic, as there is, to an even worse degree, with a follow-up letter by 47 Republican senators to the reigning Ayatollah of Iran instructing him, in essence, to disregard the proposed deal — to reject it, rather, on grounds that the Republican Congress had the power to strike the deal dead by not ratifying it and would almost certainly do so.

Now this effort to scuttle a pending treaty, to further hobble the elected chief executive, and to nullify, not just weaken, the checks and balances of our political system, is not only egregious, it is patently in violation of the Constitution, both in letter and in spirit. It is in fact, borderline treasonous. Once again, though, leaving that aside, it ignores the fundamental point of view, as did Netanyahu, that the five other nations participating in negotiations with Iran — Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany — have made it clear they will not join the United States if it should follow Netanyahu’s advice and jettison the pending deal. They, in fact, are likely to forgo the existing multi-national sanctions they have adopted in deference to the U.S. position and to resume trade with Iran, leaving the United States out of the loop and Iran home free to do as it chooses with its nuclear program. That’s what’s wrong with Mr. Netanyahu’s logic and with that of  the GOP barn-burners in Congress. And, along with a trampling of the Constitution, that’s the bottom line of what “no deal” actually means.  Iran wins outright.

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Editorial Opinion

Cohen On Netanyahu

Close study of major changes in official American policies and attitudes reveals a principle that has been informally given the name of “Nixon-Goes-to-China” — a reference to President Richard Nixon’s historic 1971 diplomatic opening
to a country that U.S. officialdom had always withheld recognition from.  

During Nixon’s early prominence, he was a scourge of what he and other Cold Warriors scorned as “Red China,” and it was only from that well-established position that he could so dramatically change positions and tilt for a change in policy.

So we come to the current controversy over a decision by the Republican leader of the House of Representatives to issue an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to do so not only without consulting Democratic President Barack Obama but to make sure the president knew nothing of the invitation in advance.

Who better to come to grips with the matter than our own 9th District congressman, Steve Cohen, who, in a public statement, identifies himself as both “a supporter of the state of Israel and a Jewish American.” His views on the Netanyahu matter derive from an undeniable sincerity.

Cohen has declared that he will not attend Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. He noted the insult to Obama and the breach of precedent involved in the invitation by Boehner. He pointed out that the Israeli prime minister is a candidate in forthcoming elections in his own country, and that Netanyahu has improperly used video footage of previous speeches before Congress in his electoral campaigns, making the United States government an involuntary campaign supporter by proxy.

Cohen then noted the uses to which the Netanyahu visit will likely be put: “The Speaker’s invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu is political gamesmanship and it is a very dangerous game. The prime minister’s use of the U.S. House chamber as a stage to argue against the comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, which is currently being negotiated among Iran and the P5+1 — the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, is reckless.

“While Americans and members of Congress may disagree on anything, even foreign policy, providing a forum of such immense prestige and power to the leader of another country who is opposing our nation’s foreign policy is beyond the pale. It endangers the negotiations, insults the good faith of the other nations involved in the negotiations, and emboldens Iran who may well view this schism in our government as an opportunity for advantage. While we can disagree with our president, we as a nation should be as one on our foreign policy and any disagreements should be presented in a respectful, appropriate and time-honored manner.”

Cohen concludes: “[M]y support of Israel has not wavered but I believe that this speech at this time and brought forth in this manner is dangerous to Israel as well as inappropriate. Nothing should come between our two nations. The actions of the Speaker and the Prime Minister have caused a breach between Democrats in Congress and Israel as well as the administrations of the United States and Israel. My lack of attendance does not mean I will not be aware of the content of the speech nor does it mean I won’t follow the commentary both pro and con, but I will not be part of the spectacle.”

Agree or disagree as you will, this is well and powerfully said.

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Politics Politics Feature

Harold Collins On Verge of Declaring for 2015 Memphis Mayor’s Race

The 2015 Memphis mayor’s race can be considered underway, at least informally, following the announcement this week that city Councilman Harold Collins has formed an exploratory committee to consider seeking the office.

Collins has made two hard-hitting public appearances in the past week. In the first of these, at the Frayser Exchange Club last Thursday, Collins characterized recent outbreaks of mob violence by youths as “urban terrorism” and called for more direct action against offenders than is currently the practice at a Juvenile Court undergoing reforms at the behest of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Participants in “serious crimes,” which Collins defined as including mob actions like those at Poplar Plaza last month and in the vicinity of Crump Stadium last Friday night, should face a prosecutor, a judge, and the prospect of jail “within 24 hours,” the councilman said.

Councilman Harold Collins

In a meet-and-greet at the Evergreen Grill Monday night, Collins repeated that formulation and made an aggressive pitch as well for an enhanced summer jobs program for disadvantaged youth, as well as expanded mental-health programs.

He also charged that Mayor A C Wharton’s 

current administration had done little to acquaint small-businesses owners with the fact that city funding had long been available to help them expand and prosper. “They’ve done a terrible job of getting the word out,” he said.

Collins went on to allege that, following the election of Wharton as mayor in 2009, “Nothing changed except on the seventh floor,” which is where the mayoral offices are.

Others known to be considering races for mayor next year, besides Wharton and Collins, are city councilmember Jim Strickland, former councilmember Carol Chumney, current Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar, and former Commissioner James Harvey. The names of Councilman Myron Lowery and former Memphis School Board member Kenneth Whalum have also received mention.

  

• Proponents and opponents of the various state amendments have been engaging in a good deal of arithmetical calculation, based on a unique formula called for in the state Constitution.

It works this way: An amendment is deemed to have passed if it nets a number of votes equal to a majority of the votes cast in the governor’s race. Similarly, an amendment fails if the votes for it total less than a majority of the votes in the gubernatorial race.

As it happens, this year’s race for governor is, by universal consent, a shoo-in for Republican incumbent Bill Haslam. The state’s weakened Democratic Party emerged from its virtually unnoticed August 7th primary with a nominee, retired East Tennessee contractor Charlie Brown, whose only claim to fame was the similarity of his name to that of a cartoon character and whose resources for a serious race are essentially nil. And Haslam is otherwise confronted by an array of generally unknown independents.

The situation is hardly a recipe for a massive voter turnout in the gubernatorial race, so that the threshold of success for each of the four proposed constitutional amendments begins at a fairly low level. That fact makes any prediction regarding the outcomes of the amendment votes uncertain.

Amendment 1, which would cut into the blanket protection of abortion rights  provided by a state Supreme Court decision of 2000, declaring the state neutral on abortion, and restricting privileges to those enabled by federal judicial authority, is by all odds the most controversial and the most intensely contested.

Addressing a Vote No on 1 rally held at the Racquet Club last week by the Tennessee Democratic Party, 9th District congressman Steve Cohen held forth on the threshold issue, telling the pro-choice activists in attendance that bypassing the governor’s race would work against their interests and increase the chances of passage for the amendment.

It was urgent, therefore, said Cohen, that they should vote in the governor’s race. Cohen offered his own preferred candidate — John Jay Hooker, an octogenarian Nashville lawyer who, at intervals in the previous century, had been a serious Democratic prospect for governor but who, many fits and starts later, is best known these days as a litigant for direct election of state appellate judges (a matter which, as noted below, is at the heart of another amendment on the November ballot). 

“Do what I’m going to do. Vote for John Jay!” said Cohen.

Speaking to reporters after yet another rally, this one held at the Kroc Center on Monday on behalf of Amendment 2, Governor Haslam addressed the converse possibility — that proponents of this or that amendment might be advocating a de facto boycott of the governor’s race in order to lower the voter threshold for their amendment.

“I obviously don’t like that,” Haslam said. “I think it’s important for people to understand all four of the amendments and to vote for anything on the ballot.”

At the rally, a panel consisting of Haslam and former state Supreme Court Justice George Brown of Memphis, with lawyer Monica Wharton serving as moderator, had made the case for Amendment 2, which the governor said was necessary to provide “clarity and predictability” on the matter of appointing appellate judges.

As Haslam noted, the amendment would make it “clear in the law that what we’re doing now does fit the definition of the Constitution, adding one step, that the legislature can approve or disapprove” an appointment, giving the governor a chance to respond within 60 days. At present, the state employs the so-called “Tennessee Plan,” allowing gubernatorial appointments of appellate judges, who are then subject to yes-or-no retention elections at eight-year intervals. 

Both Brown and Haslam suggested that appellate judges were in the position of impartial referees in athletic contests. Playing to local sensitivities, Haslam said, it wouldn’t do for a referee in a Grizzlies game to have “a Kevin Durant jersey” on under his striped shirt.

Haslam made a bit of fresh news when he told reporters afterward that he supported all four of the amendments on the November ballot, including Amendment 1, which he characterized as allowing the state’s laws on abortion “to match what the federal laws are.”

• The great Charlie Cook, whose widely syndicated “Cook Report” is one of the most respected political tout sheets in the country, made an appearance at Rhodes College, Monday, under the auspices of the school’s political-science and history departments.

Speaking in Barrett Library on the subject of “Why is D.C. Dysfunctional?” Cook outlined the current dismal approval rates of President Obama and congressional Republicans in opinion polls and said, “Nobody’s happy.” He noted that Republicans were progressively losing support with minorities, younger Americans, and women — all categories whose proportion is growing in the electorate — and suggested that the GOP would be well advised to “shut the hell up” about social issues.

Democrats have their problems, too — including a growing public unease concerning the leadership of Obama, particularly in the realm of foreign policy, which has attained an unusual degree of importance with voters, Cook said.

The GOP can expect modest gains in both House and Senate this year, but not enough to affect the enduring state of gridlock, predicted the noted analyst.

He was cautious about predictions concerning 2016 presidential prospects, though he did say there was “a 25 to 30 percent chance” that, despite expectations, Hillary Clinton would not seek the Democratic nomination. 

Cook, whose wife is from Memphis, is a frequent visitor to the city.

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Politics Politics Feature

A Curb on “Anything-Goes” Politics?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

M. LaTroy Williams, who has registered the names “Shelby County Democratic Club” and the “National Democratic Party USA,” both of them shell organizations without real function or current membership, became, as of Monday, the subject of a far-reaching temporary restraining order from Circuit Court Judge Karen Williams.

In the waning days of a summer election season that has seemed, almost in a biblical sense, to have been always with us, that ruling could have repercussions beyond the tawdry machinations of Williams’ cynical efforts to aid in the long-odds, insurgent effort of lawyer Ricky Wilkins to oust four-term 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen.

And it could transcend the results of the election itself.

Judge Williams (no relation) has enjoined M. LaTroy Williams to cease and desist in relation to several outdoor signs blatantly and falsely indicating that candidate Wilkins has been endorsed not only by the Democratic Party nationally, but by President Obama.        

The judge went further, ordering Williams to cease and desist with a variety of printed hand-out materials as well, and her ruling could strike at the heart of a lucrative local election-year “balloting” racket, which has several well-known practitioners who charge candidates huge fees to appear on glossy sample ballots bearing their photographs — or, alternatively, to keep their opponents off such ballots.

Jackson Baker

Wilkins chats with reporters in a WDIA holding room

Most of these ballots bear some variation of the word “Democratic” in conjunction with official-sounding names of groups, which, in most cases, are either moribund or never existed in any real sense. Williams’ vehicle is the “Official Ballot” of the “Shelby County Democratic Club.” Other ballots put out by competitors bear such names as “The Official Shelby County Coalition of Democrats Ballot” and the “Official Ballot of Greater Memphis Democratic Club.”

None of these ballots is issued by, or reflects the actual choices of, the Shelby County Democratic Party, which has just published its own ballot guide under the name, “Official Shelby County Democratic Party Ballot,” bearing the seal of the State of Tennessee and a few words of text from SCDP Chairman Bryan Carson.

That the only hand-out ballot reflecting any live, functioning, official local version of the Democratic Party could get lost in the plethora of so many fake versions was sufficiently worrisome to Carson that he issued a public warning about “rogue ballots” prior to this year’s first major election, the May 6th party primaries for county offices.

M. LaTroy Williams doubles as a perennial candidate, having waged — and lost — several campaigns in his own right, most recently in the Democratic primary for Shelby County Trustee in May. He is the leading bogus-ballot entrepreneur in Shelby County, with rake-offs that handily lead the pack, according to a study done earlier this year by political blogger Steve Ross of vibincblog.com.

And now he has transcended mere paper balloting — taking his fool-the-eye arts into the realms of TV commercials and free-standing political campaign signs. Last week, local TV viewers were treated to a political commercial featuring a make-believe news announcer bringing “breaking news” — namely, that the “National Democratic Party, U.S.A.” had endorsed Ricky Wilkins for Congress.

Then came the outdoor signs, communicating the same message, with the additional fillip of symmetrically matched portraits of President Obama and Wilkins, divided by the official symbol of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)and the words “has endorsed,” constituting a clear visual indicator that the lucky congressional challenger had earned the nod of both the president and the Democratic Party at the highest level.

The realities are that the “National Democratic Party, U.S.A.” bears no relation to the real DNC or to any legitimate Democratic Party organization in Tennessee, as a spokesperson for the DNC and Roy Herron, state Democratic chairman, made abundantly clear in statements on Monday.

As for Obama, the president long ago endorsed not Wilkins but Cohen’s reelection bid, a fact newly confirmed by the actual DNC and by a formal statement released by the president back in April.

As Representative Cohen noted in a press conference Monday morning, the sign was not only designed to “deceive the voters,” it was illegal, bearing no indication of who paid for it, as required by election law. Cohen made a conspicuous effort not to link the sign, with its false message and false credentials, to his primary opponent and, in fact, invited Wilkins, perhaps with tongue in cheek, to join with him as a “fellow Democrat” in renouncing the faux organization, the bogus message, and the whole tawdry make-believe.

Within the hour, both Wilkins and Cohen appeared, sequentially, on WDIA on a call-in show hosted by Bev Johnson. After his turn in the studio, Wilkins chatted with reporters in an adjoining holding room.

The challenger quickly dispatched with the idea that he might join Cohen in renouncing Williams’ activities, commenting acidly, “It sounds to me like Mr. Cohen is now being the crybaby that he accuses me of being.” That was in reference to Wilkins’ charge that Cohen had interceded with national officials of the AFSCME governmental workers’ union to inhibit Local 1733 of AFSCME from endorsing Wilkins.

“I’m not going to join him in doing anything,” said Wilkins, who called Cohen “hypocritical” for raising questions about “campaign pictures” featuring himself and President Obama. And he took the opportunity to repeat previously stated doubts about the genuineness of Obama’s endorsement of Cohen.

“The only voice we’ve heard is Steve Cohen’s voice. Everyone in the media accepts it as true because Steve Cohen said it. It has not been verified.”

Wilkins acknowledged that he had been the beneficiary of some of M. LaTroy Williams’ faux ballots but categorically denied having anything to do, financially or otherwise, with the TV commercial or the outdoor signs. “It didn’t come from my campaign,” he said.

Wilkins later issued a hands-off statement about Williams:

“As for the individual groups supporting Ricky Wilkins For Congress, we do not control nor manage their activities. We welcome the free expression of supporters and have no involvement in the preparation or placement of their materials,” read the statement, which continued, “When you are trying to defeat an incumbent Congressman, you need a diverse and wide-ranging group of supporters. We welcome and appreciate all supporters.”

As it happens, Judge Williams had already made her own statement with the restraining order, directing defendant Williams to “take immediate action to remove from public view and/or access all items identified to be restrained in this pleading.”

Those “items” included far more than M. LaTroy Williams’ outdoor signs. The order contained language both precise and far-reaching in defining the impermissible (e.g., “[d]istributing literature, disseminating information or in any way communicating or implying any misleading information regarding the political party affiliation of a candidate or group”).

The order is, indeed, so broadly stated that, if sustained in a subsequent hearing, it could literally transform the local political landscape — one littered by long tradition with so much indulgence of false and disingenuous claims that a legitimate and credentialed claimant to high political office could actually profess to “welcome and appreciate” it.