Tag: scandal

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Scandal Shmandal

Gary Hart (Photo: Laurence Agron | Dreamstime.com)

Who remembers Gary Hart? If you’ve had as many as 50 birthdays, you almost certainly remember the former Colorado senator and two-time candidate for the United States presidency. If you remember Hart’s name, you likely remember another: Donna Rice. You see, Gary Hart had a girlfriend. And (sit down for this) Gary Hart was married at the time.

I’ll share a brief slice of American-scandal history for those of you who may not remember Hart and friend. Only 47 years old in 1984, Hart sought the Democratic nomination in an election that would send Ronald Reagan back to the White House for a second term. Hart seemed Kennedy-esque: lots of dark hair, a solid jawline, sparkling pearly whites. It wasn’t until the next presidential campaign, though, that we learned just how Kennedy-esque Gary Hart truly was.

In the spring of 1987, thanks to journalists doing what we do, America learned that Hart had carried on an extramarital affair with Rice, a woman he claimed was nothing more than a “campaign aide.” But when a photo of the two in each others’ arms appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer, that was the end of the next Kennedy and any hopes he had of occupying the Oval Office.

I’ve thought of Gary Hart often the last few years, every time the name Donald Trump makes news. It’s been 36 years and nine presidential elections since that tabloid cover ruined Hart’s political rise. But what the hell has happened to presidential scandal? Gary Hart was nationally ridiculed for an extramarital affair and Donald Trump has already served a term as U.S. president.

The notion of Trump being excluded from a campaign for the highest office in the land over a mistress seems as laughably silly as a desert coyote coming back to life after repeatedly blowing himself up as he hunts a roadrunner. But that’s the America — that’s the office of U.S. president — we have before us, here in 2023.

How does Donna Rice on your candidate’s resume compare with being twice impeached in your first try at the presidency? How does shagging someone who doesn’t wear a wedding ring you placed on her finger compare with federal charges of absconding with enough classified documents to stuff your bathroom? How does ruining your marriage compare with being the cheerleader for an insurrection mob during your last month as president?

It’s astounding. Rewind to those innocent, clearly naïve days of 1987, and candidate Trump would have been ruined by an association with the likes of Stormy Daniels … his “Donna Rice.” Here in 2023? That association is merely one of three likely indictments candidate Trump will face as he leads (is that the right word?) the Republican party into the election year of 2024.

Jimmy Carter — as decent a man as has ever occupied the White House, if not a great president — essentially turned over the presidency in a 1979 speech when he dared mention an American “crisis of confidence.” Short on confidence? Swagger? Not us hearty Yanks. Let me ask you: What kind of confidence in America do supporters of Donald Trump show when they ignore one scandal after another, each larger in impact than the one before? This is the best we can do? Two impeachments and three indictments. Not to mention, ahem, three wives. (Psst … Donald Trump had a girlfriend, too.)

I was 18 in 1987, and plenty naïve. Even at that age, I wondered if a man might actually be able to lead even if he failed as a husband. My foundational thought was that a man could not lead if he didn’t care fully for the office of president and the country that office represented. He might make mistakes (as Carter did) and he might be short on qualifications (as Reagan was), but an American president would never make us feel scandalous as a country. That was my innocent thinking at its worst. I know Gary Hart would appreciate.

Frank Murtaugh is the managing editor of Memphis magazine. He writes the columns “From My Seat” and “Tiger Blue” for the Flyer.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: (Another) Tale of the Tapes

I don’t understand the scandal that’s arisen over the
destruction by the CIA of the tapes it made of interrogations. I mean, isn’t
this SOP for the Bush administration, and, indeed, its Republican forebears?
Isn’t that what the Bushies did with millions of e-mails that disappeared from
the White House’s servers, as well as with (and about) billions of dollars in
Iraq that have disappeared into the ether (a.k.a Halliburton). And, isn’t that
the way Papa Bush (and Reagan before him) handled the cover-up of the
Iran-Contra scandal?

It’s obvious what happened here. The CIA had to choose the
least of several evils: risk the tapes coming out, with a resulting blowback
from the Muslim world the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Abu Ghraib, or
destroy the evidence and throw yourself on the mercy of the courts (and the
public) by saying, “Hey, there was nothing illegal in the tapes,” or, “We did
it to protect our agents,” or some other such nonsense. Risk having all who
participated in “enhanced interrogation” (read: torture) prosecuted, both
domestically and by international tribunals as war criminals (with the tapes as
“Exhibit A”), or risk pissing off a few senators, congressmen and federal judges
about the destruction of evidence (read: obstruction of justice).

Remember what happened when the images of Abu Ghraib were
released to the public? The Bushies weren’t going to let that happen again. So,
this was obviously a cost/benefit analysis that was performed by the CIA,
probably with the complicity of the Pentagon (which authorized “enhanced
interrogation”), and arguably with the knowledge of the White House (it’s come
out that the President’s counsel, Harriet Miers, knew about the tapes), and the
determination was made that the consequences of destroying the tapes were far
less damaging than the consequences of having them come out.

If Republicans learned any of the lessons of Watergate, it
was that (a) that tapes can easily be destroyed, erased or altered (e.g., the
Rosemary Woods 18½ minute gap), and (b) that if you don’t destroy, erase or
alter tapes, they can be used to impeach and/or prosecute you (e.g., the
Butterfield taping system in the Nixon White House). The conventional wisdom
about the Watergate tapes which eventually did Nixon in was that if he had
destroyed them before they came to light, he might have been able to withstand
(or avoid altogether) impeachment, since they were the most damning evidence of
his criminality. So, why not destroy evidence of war crimes?

Part of the cost/benefit analysis done in reaching the
decision to destroy the tapes was that, just as happened with Abu Ghraib, only
the low-level flunkies would ever be held accountable for their destruction, and
for the mayhem they recorded. We’re already seeing that, with the finger being
pointed at a single, now-retired CIA official. The Republicans have learned how
easy it is to hoodwink the public, not to mention the Congress and the judicial
system, into believing that anything they or their minions do is only the
responsibility of the dupes who’ve done it, not the authors of policy
themselves. That’s how the prime movers of Abu Ghraib avoided their
accountability moment.

In the case of these tapes, can there be any doubt that the
folks who authorized the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including Rumsfeld,
his deputy Steve Cambone, David Addington (now Cheney’s consigliere), Alberto
Gonzales and, last but not least, John Yoo, would have been at risk for criminal
prosecution if the graphic result of their authorization had ever come to light?
And since no one has admitted to waterboarding (except for the accusations of
its victims), and since there is no independent evidence of its having been
practiced, the people responsible for implementing the policy that allowed it
will probably skate.

And, of course, despite the flurry of demands by members of
congress that the tapes’ destruction be investigated, Congress won’t do
anything, at least not anything meaningful. Oh sure, there will be some “show
hearings,” but nothing will come of them because Congress is a paper tiger.
Hasn’t it proved that by its failure to hold in contempt any of the witnesses
who’ve evaded its subpoenas, which it clearly has the power to issue? It’s
never done its own investigation of how or why we invaded Iraq (we’re still
waiting – two years later — for the Senate Intelligence Committee to release
the second part of its report on that issue). Nor has it dealt with the many
remaining unanswered questions about 9/11, or the entire Katrina debacle, has
it? It still hasn’t found out who was responsible for the billions of dollars
that went astray in Iraq, and it still hasn’t begun to hold Bush and Cheney
accountable for all the things (illegal wiretapping, rendition, etc.)
that warrant accountability (read: impeachment).

And getting the Justice Department to investigate the
tapes’ destruction would be another example of asking the fox to investigate a
break-in at the hen house. The new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, judging
from his confirmation hearings, has an obvious dilemma about whether or not
waterboarding (which is apparently shown on the destroyed tapes) is torture: He
was actively involved, as a judge, with the prosecution of one or more of the
“detainees” whose lawyers were either denied access to the tapes or told they
didn’t exist.

And, most importantly, the techniques which are undoubtedly
demonstrated on the tapes were facilitated by the Justice Department itself.
Remember, it was people like John Yoo and Jay Bybee who issued opinions
approving torture when they were part of DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel. That is
the legal authority the new CIA director, Michael Hayden, was relying on when he
told his employees, just before the story of the tapes’ destruction broke in the
New York Times, that the techniques recorded in the tapes were “legal.”

So the Congress obviously isn’t going to investigate the
tapes’ destruction (at least, not effectively), the justice department can’t
investigate it (or shouldn’t, on conflict of interest grounds). So who does that
leave to investigate it? A Special Counsel, maybe, like Patrick Fitzgerald, who
couldn’t even nail the malefactors-in-chief in the Plamegate scandal, settling
for little Scooter Libby? And, of course, Congress has little stomach left for
Special Counsels. The Democrats remember all too clearly the excesses of Ken
Starr, and the Republicans are still fuming from what they consider the excesses
of Patrick Fitzgerald.

The only thing that will happen as a result of the
destruction of the tapes will be sanctions imposed by the courts against the
government’s lawyers where terrorist prosecutions are pending for lying about
the existence of the tapes. And it is possible that one of those sanctions may
end up being the dismissal of one or more of those prosecutions. Big deal. Other
than that, I expect no one will be prosecuted for what is an obvious obstruction
of justice. Nor will they be prosecuted for authorizing the techniques that were
apparently graphically displayed on the destroyed tapes. No foul, no harm.

So, while the
guy they’re pointing the finger at for authorizing the destruction may go down
for the count, if the past is prologue, we can expect this most recent example
of Republican cover ups to be covered up, once again.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: It’s Time to Come Out

Idaho Republican senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig is still trying to ride out the stormy aftermath of his arrest for soliciting sex in a Minneapolis airport men’s room last spring — much to the delight of Democrats and late-night comedians.

Not content with becoming merely a momentary national punchline, Craig seems determined to drag, er, stretch his notoriety into a long-running sitcom. He has continued his tireless efforts to wiggle out of his conviction for weeks. He held a press conference to deny he was gay and thanked all those attending who “came out” to support him. Oy.

This week, he began making the rounds of the national talk shows to plead his case, dragging his poor wife along behind him, keeping the story alive for yet another news-cycle. Republicans desperately wish he would just go away. Democrats hope he keeps, uh, stalling until the next erection, er, election.

And in a, um, stroke of serendipity straight out of La Cage aux Folles, Craig was inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame (who knew they had one?) this week. I bet that ceremony wasn’t at all awkward.

Yes, it’s funny, but it’s also stupid — and oh so predictable. Another sexual hypocrite seems to pop up every week. On Monday, a Vatican official was suspended after being caught on a hidden camera making advances to a young man. The official said that he was only pretending to be gay as part of his work. He frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men in order to gather information about “those who damage the image of the church with homosexual activity.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, give me a break.

Last Thursday, October 11th, was the annual “National Coming Out Day,” sponsored by gay and lesbian groups across the country. The purpose of the event is to urge those folks who are in the closet to stop covering up their true sexuality and live openly gay lives. It’s a great idea.

Imagine our world if all the sexual hypocrisy were to go away. Sure, we’d learn we have lots of gay elected officials, but what’s wrong with that? They’re already gay, after all. Now they’d have to be honest too. And that’s never a bad thing.
Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: (AP Photo/Troy Maben)

“Idaho senator Larry Craig quit his Senate seat,

saying that he wanted to spend more time not being gay.”

— David Letterman

The arrest of Senator Larry Craig (Perv-ID) in an airport bathroom sex sting and his vacillations about resigning make writing a column just plain fun. Craig said he kept the incident quiet so he could consider his options. It was yet another good decision by bathroom-stall enthusiast “not gay” Craig, deftly avoiding a media circus.

The mix of politics and religion has always been a hypocrite-magnet and brings to mind my award-eligible column about the Rev. Ted Haggard (who opposed gays even as he was hiring a male hooker and buying drugs with church money in a hotel room) entitled, “Ministers Should Do More Than Lay People.”

But this story floors me. At first, I thought Craig was like many of our grandfathers and dads — an out-of-touch old man who did not know the gay signals. After all, he was caught in this sex sting in a state that elected a pro wrestler as governor. Perhaps they took a hard line on bathroom-stall toe-tapping for fear it would lead to more musicals. Then, when his fellow GOP leaders did not defend him, and he did not even get a “you’re doing a heckuva job” out of President Bush, I figured that Craig probably had a history of such conduct.

The Democrats were handed yet another election-year gift and thought they had seen the last of yet another GOP right-winger. There they were, standing around Craig’s twitching body, poking him with a stick (which I bet he likes), when suddenly the Craig camp (a camp you do not want to send your son to) said he might not resign. Dems, who were afraid they might actually have to come up with a reasonable alternative agenda to defeat the GOP in the fall, fretted.

Gays were torn over whether to be happy that Craig was forced to reveal his actions or offended that this creep is gay.

Craig’s June guilty plea in Minneapolis and rumors that he had done this before in a train station in Washington, D.C., created a dilemma for Democrats. On one hand, they had a great chance to embarrass a Republican, but they had to do so by condemning a gay guy who supports public transportation. When events defy logic, you can rest assured politicians are involved.

Craig said that he is not a guy who will go down easy. I bet the arresting cop disagrees. Standing beside his wife and adopted kids, he said that he wanted a do-over on his guilty plea. His defense is going to be — and I am not kidding — that his plea was not intelligently arrived at. Now if you ever wonder why our legal system is messed up, look no further than Senator Craig — a “lawmaker,” remember.

I would argue that, unlike openly gay males, closeted ones like Craig hurt their families by perpetuating a fraud about their sexual orientation. For you homophobes out there, you should be more supportive of those who come out. Richard Simmons is not going to sneak up on you in a bathroom in his candy-striped short-shorts. He’s out. It’s the guys with secret sex lives who are the problem.

I have long said that the GOP is misguided when it espouses minimal government and individual freedom yet seems obsessed with pushing laws to make it difficult for consenting adults to do what they want as long as no harm is done to anyone. We haven’t caught bin Laden. We’re running massive federal deficits. We have bigger problems than persecuting people for what they do in private with a consenting partner.

It is hard for Craig to think about the surge when he is constantly fighting an urge.

Incidentally, what sort of cop signs up for sitting in a toilet and tapping his toe in hopes that a gay dude will hit on him? The cop from the Village People?

It is comforting to know that our phones, e-mails, and bathroom stalls are now monitored by our government. It seems the only two things they are not watching are their spending and our borders!

Ron Hart is a Southern libertarian who writes about politics and life. His e-mail address is RevRon10@aol.com.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The Tennessee Stud: Fred Thompson’s Womanizing Ways

Well, that didn’t take long. Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson declared for president on Jay Leno this week and three days later, the press starts digging into ol’ Fred’s dirty laundry. And there’s plenty to dig into, if today’s London Daily Mail story is any indication.

A few excerpts from the Mail‘s profile of big Fred: A Mail investigation raises serious questions about whether the affable Thompson is the committed pillar of ‘family values’ that conservatives take him to be.

His second wife, Jeri, is a blonde 24 years his junior. They wed in 2002 after Thompson was advised that if he wanted to become President he needed to quell a reputation as a womaniser that earned him the nickname the Tennessee Stud.

His conquests include the five times-married “Elizabeth Taylor of country”, Lorrie Morgan, and three-time-divorcee Georgette Mosbacher, known as the “Divine Mrs M”.

Moreover, when Thompson married his first wife, Sarah Lindsey, at Lawrenceburg Methodist Church in 1959, she was already two months pregnant with their first child.

There’s more, lots more. Read the Mail story.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Snake, Rat, or Martyr?

Whatever the final resolution of Memphis’ current political soap opera — dubbed “The 2007 Political Conspiracy” by chief protagonist Mayor Willie Herenton — there would seem to be little doubt as to the fate of one principal, lawyer Richard Fields. One way or another, Fields will take a fall; indeed, he has already suffered one.

Designated as the chief villain of what Herenton alleges is a blackmail plot against him — a “snake,” in Herenton’s term — Fields is now in an untenable situation. Even if, as many believe, he ends up being exonerated of the mayor’s specific charges (orchestrating an elaborate sex sting against Herenton), Fields will have inevitably plummeted to earth from a once-lofty position, his wax wings burnt and melted like some presumptuous Icarus come too close to the sun.

In the classical sense, Fields is an object lesson in hubris — a Greek term denoting prideful and ultimately ruinous overreaching. Well-regarded for years as a dedicated civil rights attorney, Fields seems to have made a decision some years back to establish himself as a power broker second to none in the city’s history.

That phase of his life may have begun as far back as the school-superintendent years of Willie Herenton (see “City Beat,” p. 12) and crystallized in 1991 when Fields was one of the few whites who actively supported Herenton in his successful bid to become the city’s first elected black mayor.

For some time thereafter, Fields remained close to the mayor, but he quarreled seriously with other mayoral intimates, like former city attorney Robert Spence, who would later accuse Fields of wanting to dictate city contracts. And, after an off-and-on period of close collaboration, Fields — or Herenton — decided in the last year or two, for whatever reason, to open up some real distance in the relationship.

That fissure seems to have coincided with turbulence in Fields’ private life — including the latest of four divorces, all from African-American women. (Fields himself is Caucasian, and his enemies — notably blogger Thaddeus Matthews — have broadly insinuated an almost Freudian hostility on his part to black men, especially those holding public office.)

In the meantime, Fields had made a somewhat feckless Democratic primary race against then state senator John Ford in 2002, finishing well out of the money (in every sense of that term). The experience, along with his long proximity to the city’s powerful and often imperious mayor, seems to have pushed him in the direction of kingmaking.

Largely on the strength of his ties to Herenton, Fields got himself elected to the Shelby County Democratic executive committee in 2005, in a party convention dominated by Herenton ally Sidney Chism and reformist leader Desi Franklin. (If Fields’ relations with Chism, since elected to the County Commission, are now necessarily strained, he apparently remains close to Franklin, a possible City Council candidate this year.)

Then came Fields’ pro bono involvement, alongside the legal team of the state Republican Party, in an effort to void the state Senate victory of Democrat Ophelia Ford over the GOP’s Terry Roland. Though the effort was ultimately successful, Fields had meanwhile been forced off the local Democratic committee amid accusations of a political conflict of interest.

Undaunted, Fields got his hand back in the political process almost immediately, with widely circulated broadsides enumerating the purported liabilities of certain judicial candidates in the 2006 August general election and calling for their defeat, while touting the prospects of others. His efforts seemed to some an attempt to replicate the influence of the old “Ford ballots,” voter guides put out at election time by former congressman Harold Ford Sr.

Since many of the candidates opposed by Fields were black and since his ballot choices, by design or otherwise, received most attention in largely white precincts of Midtown and East Memphis, he was accused — perhaps ironically, given his personal history — of a racial bias.

Whether for that reason or some other, Fields amended at least two early judicial choices, substituting African-American candidates for white candidates he had promised to support. To some, that took the gloss of his supposed high-mindedness.

Fields was back at it again for the fall elections last year, with newly distributed ballot choices in partisan races, taking sides with a number of Republican candidates against their Democratic opponents. That brought new outcries, especially among fellow Democrats, some of whom tried anew earlier this year to expel Fields, newly elected to a new version of the Democratic committee. That attempt was ruled out of order by the party’s new chairman, Keith Norman.

During the runup to the party’s reorganization, Fields had made public statements about “vetting” Norman that suggested to some he had handpicked the new chairman — a fact that prompted a clearly offended Norman to make a public disavowal of that scenario.

Fields continued in his new career as would-be power broker, sending out letters attacking old foe Spence in the latter’s Democratic Party primary contest against ultimate winner Beverly Marrero in yet another special-election contest, this one also for a state Senate seat.

Meanwhile, Fields was increasingly given to temperamental outbursts — some marginally understandable, as when he became unruly in Criminal Court judge Rita Stotts‘ courtroom last year and had to be removed by her bailiff during a legal process in which he apparently thought his son had been unfairly targeted.

There were instances of alleged assault — one against lawyer Jay Bailey; another against radio talk-show host Jennings Bernard, who filed a formal complaint. There were hostile reactions by Fields to routine, even friendly media attention, which culminated in an attempt by the erstwhile civil-libertarian and First Amendment supporter to have the media banned from public meetings of the Democratic committee.

Though this action would patently have violated the state’s Sunshine Law, Fields’ motion was formally vetted by Norman before being dismissed out of hand. (After last week’s events, Norman demanded and got Fields’ resignation, his second in two years, from the executive committee.)

That brings the Fields saga to the present and the ongoing legal/political saga pitting the mayor, his allies, and double (perhaps triple) agent Gwen Smith, who alleges that Fields hired her to entrap Herenton sexually, against Fields and other alleged adversaries of the mayor, some of whom may have had no other involvement in things than to favor Herenton’s taking leave of his office.

It is hard to imagine that an FBI agent would, as Herenton charged, take part in an illegal conspiracy designed to defeat his reelection. What seems more likely is that a sting may have been getting under way, perhaps urged on by Fields, centering on the relations of the mayor and beer-board chairman Reginald French, a Herenton ally, with topless clubs seeking liquor licenses.

Just what is what in this affair may be determined — and in short order — by the special prosecutor requested by District Attorney General Bill Gibbons. And whatever the legal and political consequences to others, the options available to Richard Fields in the end game seem rather starkly circumscribed.

In this age of the real Tennessee Waltz and the fictionalized Sopranos, they range from possible criminal charges on one end to political “rat” on the other. Even if Fields proves to have had the purest of motives, he seems above all to have been an overreacher.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Organizers hold our city’s first “Zombie Walk” on Beale Street, with volunteers dressed up as the living dead. One of the participants hoped it would become an annual event and told reporters, “Memphis has never seen anything like this.” Actually, it looked pretty much like any Saturday night on Beale Street.

Greg Cravens

An ultrasound confirmed that the Zoo’s panda Ya Ya is indeed about to become a Ma Ma. Pandas rarely give birth in captivity, so if all goes well, the cub would be one of about a dozen pandas ever born in the United States. Meanwhile, the proud papa should be handing out cigars. What? Artificial insemination? Oh. Well, maybe whoever used the syringe — or however the heck they do it (we really don’t want to know) can do the honors.

Undercover police posing as truck drivers arrest 25 pimps and prostitutes at a truck stop on Lamar. “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” say Three 6 Mafia, and we learned it must be even harder for the women, since some of them wanted to charge the “truckers” only $20.

Ophelia Ford tells reporters she is not an alcoholic and then refuses to see her family when they drive to Nashville to help her out. Sigh. We’re pretty certain Ford will be in the news a lot in the next few months and not because of any work she does as a state senator.

More than a few MLGW employees have been making more than $100,000 a year with overtime pay — sometimes even doubling their already generous salaries. It’s just one thing after another at MLGW these days. Isn’t there another utility around here that we can use?

Categories
News The Fly-By

Free MLGW?

MLGW just wants to give us a little credit. ¶ Actually, it wants to give natural-gas customers an average $50 in credit, to be exact. After charging consumers for a pre-pay natural-gas buy, MLGW is planning to issue a $25 million refund next month. In order to receive a discount on a winter gas supply, MLGW planned to buy natural gas from the Tennessee Energy Acquisition Corporation during the summer months. But a recent audit suggested the utility should have gotten a short-term loan instead of slowly amassing the funds through ratepayer contributions.

And for a company already struggling with an image problem, even giving back can become a controversy.

At a City Council committee meeting last week, some council members wanted the utility company to mail its natural-gas customers a refund check to restore public confidence.

“We are consistently telling people their meter is right, yet you have been charging them for gas they’re not using,” said Councilwoman Barbara Swearengen Ware. “It may cost you some money to restore their confidence. My constituents don’t trust a credit on their bill.”

But MLGW auditor Lesa Walton said mailing refund checks to the utility’s roughly 360,000 natural-gas customers would cost $284,000.

There are other problems with issuing checks. About 2 percent of the utility’s bills are returned each month. And let’s face it, if you tell everyone in the city that the utility is going to be sending out $50 checks, you might as well make it open season on mailboxes.

“Common sense dictates that you don’t want to spend $284,000 to write a check when you can issue a credit,” said council member Jack Sammons. “We would have $25 million scattered in mailboxes all over town. I think we’ve lost all common sense … if we tell them to issue checks.”

Given the risk of theft and the cost, I think issuing $25 million in checks is a spectacularly bad idea, but I understand Ware’s point of view.

Right now, it’s the middle of May. Soon, air conditioners will be running full blast. The credit is only for natural-gas customers, but those customers may see their $50 credit quickly eaten up in high electricity bills. Will those people really feel like they got their money back?

I’m not sure there’s any way for the utility we love to hate to restore the public’s trust. But putting cold, hard cash back into ratepayers’ hot little hands would certainly help.

Without the audit, the average MLGW customer would never have known about any pre-payment plan. (In fact, council members kept trying to find out who exactly made the decision to pass that cost onto customers but were repeatedly thwarted by attorneys for both MLGW and the council.) Even if a ratepayer somehow heard about a pre-payment charge — applied over several months and slipped in as part of the purchased gas adjustment (PGA) — they would have been hard-pressed to find it itemized on their bill.

The council approves the base MLGW natural-gas rate. Because the natural-gas market is no longer regulated, the PGA is added to account for the fluctuating cost of natural gas as well as the cost of storage, transportation, and delivery. The utility calls the PGA a cost-recovery mechanism, but I call it passing costs onto the consumer. Which is fine, until you find out you don’t know what you’re paying for.

A savvy consumer could have gone to MGLW’s Web site and seen that the base price of gas is roughly 72 cents per ccf (hundreds of cubic feet) plus the PGA. From September 2006 to April 2007, however, the PGA ranged from a high of almost 57 cents per ccf (in November) to a low of 13 cents (in April).

The pre-payment amounted to about 5 percent of the PGA, but if that’s somewhere on the Web site, I couldn’t find it. And if you want to know how much of the PGA is commodity costs or transportation costs, good luck.

Each customer’s credit will depend on their household’s usage of natural gas for the past eight months, so the amount of each credit will vary. But, unless the credit comes with an easy-to-understand chart and a billing history, customers have no way of really knowing if the amount they get is the amount they paid.

I guess we have to trust them. Utility staff say they’re working on transparency, and I’ll give them credit for that. Of course, they’ll have to take my word for it.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Three teenagers are charged with using a homemade bomb — apparently a bottle filled with gunpowder — to blow up a portable toilet at a construction site in Eads. They are nabbed when a neighbor’s video surveillance system catches them in the act. Police say parts of the toilet are blown more than 300 feet away. They don’t say what parts, and we don’t want to know.

Despite all the hype, Three 6 Mafia put on a rather clean show at the Memphis In May Music Fest. In fact, the only real problems came from the showbiz veterans. Iggy Pop launches into a typically profanity-laced show, and “a whole lotta shaking going on” takes place during Jerry Lee Lewis’ performance — but in front of the stage instead of on it, when rowdy festivalgoers start fighting.

Greg Cravens

A group of police officers admit they met after hours to arrange illegal shakedowns of drug dealers. The cops told fellow officers they were all going to choir practice. And everyone believed them? Well, the whole “stang” operation, as they called it, fell apart when one of the officers “sang” to federal prosecutors.

Zookeepers have artificially inseminated the panda Ya Ya and are now monitoring her every action to see if she’s pregnant. Apparently it’s hard to tell, so 24-hour video surveillance will help them determine any changes in what The Commercial Appeal describes as “her usual habits of bamboo eating, sleeping, and relieving herself.” Sounds like a nice life.

Acting MLGW president Rick Masson decides that former president Joseph Lee and former vice president Odell Horton won’t get severance pay. And taxpayers won’t have to pay Lee’s legal fees. That’s a welcome surprise. Call us jaded, but we had already prepared ourselves to see those things listed as line items on our next utility bill.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Feeling the Sting

When, as virtually the last matter taken by the prosecution in former state senator John Ford‘s Tennessee Waltz trial, a $50,000 Rolex watch came into evidence, Ford and his support group, which included numerous members of his immediate and extended families, seemed of good cheer.

As was chronicled here last week, Ford felt sunny enough after that day’s testimony to engage in banter with the two FBI agents, Mark Jackson and Brian Burns, who had testified to being the originators of the entire Tennessee Waltz sting — the means whereby Ford and several other state legislators and other public officials had been induced to accept money in return for legislative favors.

If the watch — a gift from developer Rusty Hyneman that prosecutors were attempting to use as “predication” (proof of Ford’s disposition toward corruption) — had an outer-space element (it was partly made of material derived from a meteorite), so had the sting devised by Jackson and Burns and acted out by three other principals, FBI agents “L.C. McNeil” and “Joe Carson” (the names were pseudonyms) and undercover informant Tim Willis.

The premise of the sting was that a computer-recycling firm calling itself E-Cycle (it was an FBI shell company, as things turned out) needed expert assistance from the likes of Ford and was willing to pay for it — in the senator’s case, to the tune of $55,000.

Aided by defense attorney Mike Scholl, Ford felt that he had a strong prospect for nothing worse than a hung jury (indeed, Scholl would base his closing argument on an appeal to each juror to “act as an individual”).

The very fact that he felt like engaging in humorous asides with the professed architects of his then-pending peril was evidence that Ford and his supporters saw the predication case to be weak enough that he might indeed catch a break from one or two jurors.

Evidently Ford was right, but not right enough. When jurors fell to deliberating on Wednesday, following closing arguments, they did deadlock on the charge of extortion — an indication that Scholl’s claim of entrapment had found some sympathetic ears.

Equally tenuous were the three counts of witness intimidation — all ultimately resulting in not-guilty findings, at least partly because the main witness against Ford on that count, Willis, had seemed disingenuous or worse during a hard day of cross-examination by Scholl.

But the charge of bribery was buttressed by what seemed an endless series of videotapes showing Ford being handed money — $55,000 altogether — by McNeil, who had made sure to connect the payoff to specific talk about legislative action by Ford.

Ford’s mood had conspicuously turned gloomy by Thursday afternoon, when jurors and other trial principals were reconvened to hear Judge Daniel Breen‘s ruling on a definition requested by the jury: What precisely was the meaning of the term “under color of official right”?

When the judge ruled that it referred to actions by a public official, the feeling had almost palpably spread to all followers of the trial that some tide had turned against Ford. In fact, the question had to do with the extortion count, but its import was more general, and, as it turned out, there was no disagreement among jurors on the bribery charge.

Whatever sentiment there was that racial or political factors might have influenced the Tennessee Waltz prosecution (and on the latter score there was and is a considerable amount of suspicion; see City Beat, p. 14), the jury of six blacks and six whites did its duty by the evidence confronting their eyes and ears.

Hypothetically, all of this could come undone in the course of some appeal. In any case, John Ford has very little in the way of a breathing spell. Though he remains free on bond, he is up for trial again next week in Nashville, on charges relating to accepting money in return for legislative favors — this time on behalf of a real company.

• Shelby County assessor Rita Clark, the Germantown homemaker and Democratic activist who surprised herself and everybody else by winning her maiden political race in 1996, then went on to win twice more, won’t run again in 2008.

Clark announced her decision to members of the Shelby County Commission during budget hearings on her department Monday morning.

Asked to accept a 5 percent cut for the next fiscal year, Clark declared such a thing “impossible” and then went on to tell the commissioners she would not run for reelection and didn’t want to saddle her successor with a departmental budget that was too small.

Elaborating on that later on, Clark said, “My budget now is the same as it was when I came into office. There’s no way we could continue to provide an appropriate level of service with less.”

Although she had worked in other candidates’ political campaigns, Clark had never made a race of her own until 1996, when the late Democratic eminence Bill Farris prevailed on her to run against incumbent assessor Harold Sterling.

Clark was widely regarded at first as a pro forma candidate — someone to maintain her party’s presence on the ballot. She ultimately proved to be much more — fighting a hard mano-a-mano campaign against Sterling by questioning his hiring of a personal trainer and an out-of-county assistant.

She won in an upset, going away, and in the process her continued success suggested to many Democrats that, all other factors being equal, someone of her race and gender made an ideal countywide candidate.

To date, no other Democrat — except for Mayor A C Wharton — has been able to crack the Republican monopoly on countywide offices.

Commenting Monday on her decision not to seek reelection next year, Clark cracked wryly, “It’s just time. I’m afraid if I ran again, my husband would oppose me. And I couldn’t beat him.”

• Both Democratic candidates for the vacant District 89 state House seat, Kevin Gallagher and Jeannie Richardson, held campaign fund-raiser/receptions last week, as that campaign begins to mount in earnest. Two Republicans are also competing for their party’s nomination: Wayne McGinnis and Dave Wicker Jr.

Responding to at least one Gallagher supporter’s published skepticism concerning her residence (and the identity of her Midtown housemates), Richardson, a former inhabitant of Mud Island, said, “The people who live here with me are my son, my daughter, and my granddaughter, and I do hope they’ll all be active in my campaign.”

Both parties’ special primaries will be held May 31st, with the two winners facing each other in a July 17th general election.

• Still feeling their oats are a group of local Memphis bloggers who have been sought out of late for audiences by political figures like state Senate speaker pro tem Rosalind Kurita (D-Clarksville) and Memphis mayoral candidate Herman Morris.

Now, the group, whose efforts are pooled under the umbrella site memphisliberalblogosphere.blogspot.com, have been asked for another sit-down — this time by teacher Bill Morrison, a Democrat who ran a game but ultimately unsuccessful race for Congress last year against 7th District incumbent Marsha Blackburn, one of the Republican Party’s stars.

Morrison evidently plans to take on another behemoth — this time City Council incumbent Jack Sammons.

Both Sammons and his friend and fellow Super-District 9 council member Tom Marshall are presumed to be candidates for reelection, but each is also rumored to be still considering a race for mayor.

• It is still too early to write “finis” to the mayoral field. As of Tuesday morning, 14 petitions had been pulled from the Election Commission, and only one person — former Shelby County commissioner John Willingham — had actually filed.

Incumbent mayor Willie Herenton, presumably to cover his flank, made a point this week of dispatching a letter to Shelby County mayor Wharton, his erstwhile campaign manager, advising him that “no circumstances” would prevent him from running again and adding significantly, “I trust that your support will be evident.”

Without Wharton, who is still under pressure from potential backers to make a race, the “top tier” of mayoral candidates is generally considered to consist of Herenton, city councilwoman Carol Chumney, former MLGW head Morris, and Willingham. Some regard former FedEx executive Jim Perkins as belonging in that list, and there is talk also of a candidacy by entrepreneur/businessman Darrell Cobbins.