Tag: Tennessee Waltz

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Politics Politics Feature

It’s a Go for Bowers!

“I’m ready to fight! I’m ready to roll my sleeves up!” Those words, delivered by a spunky Kathryn Bowers outside federal court on Tuesday, were, to say the least, a vivid contrast with her last several appearances before a group of assembled media.

The week before last, a glum-looking Bowers left a hearing before U.S. District judge John D. Breen, at which she asked for extra time to examine evidence and told reporters that her health was suffering because of stresses related to her situation as a Tennessee Waltz defendant.

The next week, a visibly drained Bowers announced her resignation from the state Senate on medical advice — an act that gave local Democrats a chance to nominate a successor for the November ballot. And only days after that she was pulled over and cited for DUI, after sideswiping a UPS truck on Interstate 240.

So who was this refreshed-looking woman in a spiffy white pantsuit smiling at ease Tuesday, with her equally relaxed attorney, Bill Massey, at her side?

Clearly, someone who, after reviewing the government’s video- and audiotapes and other evidence, decided she had a chance to beat the rap — unlike her predecessor in state Senate District 33, Roscoe Dixon, who was convicted earlier this summer of several counts of bribery and extortion similar to those confronting Bowers and now awaits sentencing.

“Not guilty,” Bowers said Tuesday morning, to the astonishment of almost everybody besides herself and Massey. Certainly, assistant U.S. attorney Tim DiScenza, chief prosecutor in the case, was buffaloed and confessed in court that he had been expecting an effort at plea bargaining and had been unprepared for what actually happened.

Tentatively, Bowers’ trial is set for April — though that could change as a result of a pre-trial hearing now set for January.

All of this had to have an impact on another Tennessee Waltz defendant, former state senator John Ford, Bowers’ colleague for the briefest of times in the General Assembly’s senior chamber.

A somewhat prescient Ford said last week, just before the news of Bowers’ DUI incident, that he harbored doubts that her resignation from the Senate necessarily meant she was determined on a change of plea to guilty. “She’s had real bad health,” Ford said then. “I’m privy to some stuff. I mean, long before all of this came up.”

Hobnobbing before last weekend’s Memphis-Ole Miss game at Oxford were former Mississippi governor Ronnie Musgrove (left) and Harold Ford Jr., the Democratic nominee for U.S. senator in Tennessee. Another local hopeful attending the game, won by the Rebels, was Steve Cohen, the Democrats’ nominee for Congress in the 9th District.

Ford, who resigned from the Senate more than a year ago, has from the beginning been considered the star player in the Tennessee Waltz saga. That’s largely because of his own longtime notoriety as a flamboyant and influential player on the state scene, but it owes something as well to the general fame of the Ford political family — particularly in a year when his nephew, 9th District congressman Harold Ford Jr., is a well-publicized candidate for the U.S. Senate.

John Ford’s trial for multiple counts of extortion and bribery was originally set for October, just before the fall election, but has been reset for early next year. The former senator said last week he wouldn’t disclose his legal strategy, but he promised “a correct presentation” and insisted, “I don’t have to prove anything. They have to prove something!”

One clue to what that correct presentation won’t include: any reference to the independent movie filmed by undercover informant Tim Willis in the same downtown office space where one of the government’s videotapes has shown then-Senator Ford pocketing FBI cash. That money, several thousand dollars worth, was handed over by a supposed representative of “E-Cycle,” a fictitious computer firm used as an FBI front.

“That’s news-media talk. That don’t mean nothing!” Ford scoffed about speculation that he might claim only to have been an actor in Willis’ fictional drama.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Bryson‘s two-day visit to Memphis last week was characterized by an unusual form of ambivalence.

Bryson, a marketing specialist and freshman state senator from Franklin who has been regarded as a potential GOP star, is smart enough to know that incumbent Democratic governor Phil Bredesen is well ahead in all the categories that count — money, poll standing, and name recognition.

But Bryson also knows that Tennesseans as a whole may have become a bit uneasy about Bredesen’s health during the governor’s recent prolonged absence from the public eye — due to a mystery illness that was tentatively identified as caused by a tick bite.

Even key Republicans will say privately that the GOP nominee has little chance if the governor’s health holds up. But key Democrats will tell you privately that they are concerned about what could happen in the event of a further prolongation of Bredesen’s illness or a serious future relapse

Meanwhile, all the GOP challenger can do is keep his campaign going while the future sorts itself out.

Last Thursday night, Bryson’s statewide bus tour arrived in Shelby County — “county 94 in our 95-county tour,” as the candidate put it during a brief address at GOP headquarters in the Eastgate shopping center. (A Friday morning visit to the office of the Center for Independent Living would be the highlight of his second day in Memphis.)

At the Eastgate stop, Bryson revealed himself to be a ready man with a quip. He recalled that he had first run in 2002 for then state senator Marsha Blackburn’s seat, vacated that year by the soon-to-be-elected member of the U.S. House. “I ran for that seat to fill those pumps,” Bryson said.

Somewhat later, after alleging that Bredesen had referred to the issue of illegal immigration as “not my job,” Bryson paused for a couple of beats, then continued: “Pretty soon he’ll be right. It won’t be his job. It’ll be my job.”

As for serious content, Bryson rolled out a series of issues that seemed designed to out-do Bredesen on both his left and his right flanks. On the one hand, Bryson lamented the governor’s paring of some 200,000 Tennesseans from the TennCare rolls, maintaining that he himself had made a proposal that would have kept some 67,000 of that number — uninsurables, in the main — on the program’s rolls.

“He [Bredesen] said it was ‘reckless,'” Bryson said. ‘Well, it’s time we had a heart.”

As for the other flank, Bryson made a point of espousing the proposed amendment to the state constitution that would limit marriage to “one man and one woman” and that he, among other GOP legislators, had been instrumental in getting it on the November general election ballot.

Bryson said that he was “puzzled and disappointed” that the governor had not signed on to the amendment.

As eight new members of the Shelby County Commission were sworn in last Thursday, there was a mixture of the expected and the unexpected.

As many might have predicted, newly elected Henri Brooks conformed to what had become her habit as a state representative, rising for the Pledge of Allegiance but not reciting it.

Less predictable was the commission’s new seating arrangement. As devised by new chairman Joe Ford, the seats no longer begin with District 1, Position 1, and continue through District 5. They are arranged randomly. “I wanted to mix things up,” Ford explained. Visibly disappointed was new member Mike Ritz, who would have had first dibs under the old arrangement.

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Politics Politics Feature

Exit Bowers

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Although many in the media made merry in the last week or so with a scenario in which former state senator John Ford might use as a defense in his forthcoming extortion trial a private film made by undercover informant Tim Willis, the prospects for any such miraculous rescue took another hit this week.

As of press time, state senator Kathryn Bowers, one of Ford’s fellow indictees in the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting that netted several state legislators last year, has not yet changed her plea from not guilty to guilty, which would follow the lead of several other indictees, including former Shelby County commissioner Michael Hooks Sr., who did so only last week.

But Bowers seemed to be preparing the way for such a plea change when she announced on Monday her decision to vacate her District 33 state Senate seat, effective September 1st.

Bowers’ decision, communicated first by letter to Lt. Governor John Wilder, the Senate’s presiding officer, and later to the media, followed a statement about health concerns she had made last week. On the day Hooks changed his plea before U.S. district judge John D. Breen, Bowers asked for additional time to consider her own plea.

The other shoe dropped with Bowers’ Monday statement that she was formally resigning her office on “medical advice.” Her resignation comes in time for the local Democratic Party to appoint a successor on the November ballot for her District 33 Senate post.

The party will have until September 28th to meet and do so, said Jim Kyle, the Democrats’ Senate leader. Kyle also noted that illness and a finding of legal ineligibility were the only two allowable reasons for a certified nominee to exit the ballot. The medical out also leaves intact Bowers’ pension arrangements.

The diminutive but influential legislator is scheduled to make a formal plea in her extortion case on September 5th, four days after her official resignation date.

In her letter to Wilder, Bowers repeated her declarations of last week that she had experienced “considerable stress … that has taken its toll on my health.”

The precipitating incident, she said, was a near-accident last week in which, in the course of returning from a Knoxville conference on minority health matters, she lost control of her Chevrolet Blazer when the tread separated from one of the vehicle’s tires.

Bowers said on Monday that she mulled things over after returning to Memphis and made her decision to resign over the weekend. She called party caucus chairman Joe Haynes of Goodlettsville, who tried to talk her out of resigning, she said. (Haynes issued a statement Monday expressing “regret” at Bowers’ decision.)

A factor that hastened her decision was her determination to “spare the people of Shelby County the expense of a special election,” Bowers said. She gave no indication of what her plea would be at her court date, saying that her legal status had not entered into her thinking.

The likelihood of a plea change to guilty was being taken as a given elsewhere, though — especially since her attorney, William Massey, had said after last week’s hearing, “We’re always reevaluating our position, in light of everyone else, in light of the discovery we’ve had,” and gone on to tell reporters that it was possible a trial would not be necessary.

In the meantime, a brief flurry of excitement had been created by WMC-TV reporter Darrell Phillips‘ disclosure that FBI informant and sting go-between Willis, who aspires to be a filmmaker, had actually made a movie in the same office space used for sting purposes by the phony FBI computer company E-Cycle.

The movie, which employed the services of Circuit Court Judge and sometime actor D’Army Bailey, featured a sting plot remarkably similar to the one employed, with Willis’ help, by the FBI. Unofficial word came from sources close to John Ford indicating that the former state senator might attempt to represent FBI videotapes of himself accepting cash in that light.

One problem: The money doled out by the FBI — some $50,000 in Ford’s case — was not play money but bona fide U.S. currency that went into the bank accounts of the defendants or presumably was spent. In any case, the recent actions taken by Hooks and Bowers would not seem to provide any aid or comfort to Ford or assistance to his defense strategy.

In the wake of Bowers’ departure, speculation immediately went to the question of who might be nominated by the Shelby County Democratic executive committee to succeed her. The committee’s next scheduled meeting is September 7th, but it would have three weeks after that date to formalize a decision.

One likely candidate would be realtor Steve Webster, who ran second to Bowers in the August statewide primary election. In his race, Webster, a former Bowers supporter, eschewed direct references to the incumbent’s pending legal problems. Which is to say, he has burned no bridges with Bowers’ support group.

The exit of Bowers from the District 33 seat underlined several ironies related to the Tennessee Waltz saga. Bowers’ unsuccessful opponent in the special 2005 Democratic primary to fill the seat was Michael Hooks Sr. And the seat had been made vacant in the first place by the resignation of longtime incumbent Roscoe Dixon, who earlier this summer was convicted in federal court on several counts relating to the Tennessee Waltz sting.

Dixon had vacated his Senate seat in order to accept a job as an aide to Shelby County mayor A C Wharton (who demanded and got Dixon’s resignation upon his indictment in May 2005). The former senator then lobbied for the Shelby County Commission to accept as his interim successor one Barry Myers, a longtime Dixon aide who himself was indicted on Tennessee Waltz charges, pleaded guilty, and became a witness for the government. (Sidney Chism, currently a Shelby County commissioner-elect, got the commission’s nod instead of Myers.)

Given that kind of history surrounding the seat, local Democrats will no doubt employ special care in selecting a Senate nominee to replace Bowers on the November ballot.

The name of Hooks, who had resigned his own commission seat just previous to his guilty plea, was omitted from the roster of commissioners that appeared on the agenda forms at Monday’s regular commission meeting. Nor was the former commissioner included among the exiting members — seven in all — who were cited for their service and given commemorative plaques.

But two of those departing members — Bruce Thompson and Chairman Tom Moss — made a point of acknowledging Hooks’ service prior to the start of regular business.

Joe Ford Jr., third-place finisher in last month’s Democratic primary for the District 9 congressional seat, made a point last week of reaffirming his endorsement of that primary’s winner, state senator Steve Cohen.

Ford also posted lengthy comments on the “Space Ninja” blog rebutting claims by the Tri-State Defender that his candidacy had not been serious and may even have been designed to detract from the primary efforts of another candidate, outgoing county commissioner Julian Bolton.

After debunking the newspaper’s claims and making the case that he and several other candidates had waged more viable campaigns than Bolton (whom the Tri-State Defender had endorsed), Ford concluded:

“The purpose of American representative government is to ensure that all people have a voice in the government. And when all people stated their choice, like it or not, more people wanted Senator Cohen than any other candidate. Cohen could not have won this election without receiving a good number of African-American votes.”

Although problems associated with the vote-reporting process (see Feature, page 19) made it difficult to say for sure, preliminary estimates suggest that Cohen may have received as much as 20 percent of the district’s African-American vote.

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Opinion

The Next Storm

“That was the trouble with corruption. The bigger the players who went down, the bigger the headlines got and the worse the city looked. So it was always the little ones — the ones mixed up in things they didn’t necessarily ask for, the ones who wouldn’t be missed — who were sacrificed. And the big fish eased back under their rocks to let the storm blow over.”

That passage is from T. Jefferson Parker’s new novel, The Fallen. The setting is San Diego, and the sordid backdrop — that city’s public pension-fund scandal — could be taken right off the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Where will the next storm in Memphis come from? Pension plans? Tennessee Waltz? The Memphis City Schools? Election problems? Mayor Herenton’s reelection? The Memphis Charter Commission? In the spirit of the college football polls, here are six candidates for you, the readers, to rank.

The next chapter of Tennessee Waltz. Now that Michael Hooks Sr. has pleaded guilty and Roscoe Dixon has been convicted at trial, what will John Ford and Ward Crutchfield do? Ford and Crutchfield were the longest-serving and most powerful politicians indicted in Tennessee Waltz, and both have so far indicated that they will go to trial. But Dixon’s trial was brutal and will probably get him a longer sentence than Hooks. If Dixon, Hooks, Ford, or Crutchfield decide to unburden their conscience, or maybe even if they don’t, there will be more indictments.

PSPB stands for public-sector pension burden. Get used to seeing it. Pension problems threaten to bring down General Motors and Ford and reached scandal status in San Diego, a city much richer than Memphis. Memphis appears to have its pension plan adequately funded, but there are warnings — pension concerns were the original impetus for the Memphis Charter Commission, and the city’s bond rating was lowered last year.

Without a whistleblower like the insider who exposed the problems in San Diego, PSPB problems stay under the radar. They’re not media-friendly, and the feds can’t “get a wrench around it,” as former federal prosecutor Hickman Ewing Jr. used to say. But the basic problem of funding retirement benefits with taxpayer money is nationwide.

Election problems. Remember when elections consisted of 60 percent turnouts, decisive victories, and gracious concession speeches? The norm in Memphis these days, it seems, is a turnout of 25 percent or less, a victory margin of less than 1 percent or a “winner” with one-third of the vote, and a post-election challenge by the loser. And three weeks after the election, the Shelby County Election Commission is still going over the votes and hasn’t come out with a Voter Turnout Report.

The Memphis Charter Commission. Direct democracy has come to Memphis. Will the seven commissioners play it safe, or will they present voters with one or more blockbuster referendums in the October 4th, 2007, city election? Activist agendas around the country include term limits, no tax increases without voter approval, and, in Arizona, a $1 million lottery award to encourage voting.

The Memphis City Schools. Another one of those big-picture stories that is hard to get a wrench around. Memphis is pulling for Superintendent Carol Johnson, but the top assistant she brought with her from Minneapolis suddenly left last month, and recent headlines included classrooms without schedules or textbooks, a principal resisting arrest on Beale Street, and a fight between a parent and student and a police officer.

A fifth term for Willie Herenton? Harold Ford Jr. will get the headlines until November, but after that, attention will shift to Herenton, who runs in October 2007. Steve Cohen’s victory with 31 percent in the 9th District Democratic congressional primary gives hope to others with limited but loyal followings in a multi-candidate field.

Herenton is well entrenched with operatives, including spokeswoman Gale Jones Carson on the state Democratic Party executive committee, all-purpose special assistant Pete Aviotti, newly elected Shelby County commissioner Sidney Chism, MLGW president Joseph Lee, and city attorney Sara Hall. He remains the heavy favorite.

Correction: I mistakenly reported last week that Pat Kerr Tigrett’s Waterford Plaza penthouse is for sale. Another Waterford Plaza penthouse is for sale. I regret the error.

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Cover Feature News

School For Scandal

High school civics and Political Science 101 were never like this.

“You know, and that just how it works, I mean you don’t come out, out of the Senate with 17, yo’ shit don’t fly. If you don’t come out of the House with 51, yo’ shit don’t fly.”

That’s Barry “Bag Man” Myers lecturing to undercover FBI agent L.C. McNeil on the arithmetic of passing legislation in the 99-member House and 33-member Senate in Nashville. Crude, you might say, but accurate. At the Tennessee School For Scandal (TSFS), we cut through the s*** and get to the f****** point!

Tired of paying $5,000 or more each year in college tuition? Bored with pompous professors droning on about the separation of powers and a bunch of dead dudes? Looking for something more than football games and beer parties? Would you like to, in the words of adjunct instructor Myers, “make some f****** money”?

Then consider enrolling in correspondence courses at the elite U.S.-government-inspected TSFS and learn the art of the semi-hustle, the false statement, the concealed microphone, the rigged stock offering, the big juice, the sneaky non-entrapment, and the do’s and don’ts of taking a payoff. Our instructors are the best bag men, political crooks, and undercover snitches in the business. Enroll now, because when they get certified, they’ll be leaving TSFS for some of our most exclusive, uh, federal institutions, and their office hours will be sort of restricted, if you get our drift.

At TSFS, our graduates know how to get ahead. Myers learned from one of the best, former state senator Roscoe Dixon, who graduated from TSFS to land a $100,000 a year job with the Shelby County Mayor’s Office! (The former senator, unfortunately, will not be teaching this session, but his lessons are available in a special boxed set of tapes.) Want to go grad school? John Ford and Ward Crutchfield will show you how to make lots more than $100,000.

At TSFS, all of our lessons in the politics of the hustle are available on audiotape, and if you enroll now, you can even get a free black-and-white videotape of an actual payoff shot by master cinematographer Tim “Tape Recorder” Willis! Meanwhile, here’s a sample of our latest offerings.

Methods of Political Upward Mobility 101:

Students will get an overview of opportunities in the public and private sector. No experience required. Instructors Barry Myers and L.C. McNeil of E-Cycle Management demonstrate basic techniques in this snippet from May 2004.

Myers: “Oh man. I wish I could come on y’all’s payroll, but see, like I say, the only thing is that, in three months, I mean this shit’ll be over with and I’ll be a public official, and I couldn’t be on nobody’s payroll and shit. But then, I figure like this. I still be able serve ya’ll some good, ’cause if I’m the senator, hell, I still can introduce the same shit that Roscoe’s on, you know, carry on.”

McNeil: “Right. That’s where it, that’s where it gets lovely for everyone because, you know, you get this thing flowin’ like a fine-tuned machine.”

introduction to government work 101:

Introduction to Government Work 101: You can’t eat your way to prosperity. Sure, there are lots of parties and free food, but being a legislator has a downside too, as we see in this session with Roscoe Dixon and L.C. McNeil in August 2004.

Dixon: “I don’t know. I just need to get in the big leagues, man. You know we knock around, you know legislators, we don’t make no money, man.”

McNeil: “Really?”

Dixon: “Sixteen thousand.”

McNeil: “How you make it off of that?”

Dixon: “I don’t know. It must be the man upstairs. You put your office allowance in there, you might get to 23. Per diem, may get to 27. You got to spend most of that per diem, you know, hotels and stuff like that … Man, you be lucky you can clear 30.”

McNeil: “Right.”

Dixon: “Ah, everybody, everybody got some semi-hustle, ah, goin’ and, ah, this would be a hell of a opportunity, ah, cause really you’d be controllin’, ah, county government, I mean operatin’ and runnin’ it.”

McNeil: “Okay, explain it to me ’cause I get, I get lost in the shuffle. I’m thinkin’, you know, unless you goin’ to be governor you can’t get no better than bein’ senator, right?”

Dixon: “Of yeah, you can get better. People don’t know that ’cause this will be operational, I mean you be operational, I mean, physical documents coming across your desk.”

McNeil: “Okay.”

Dixon: “Well, let’s see where we gon’ built this road. Let’s see if we gon’, ah, ah, get this contract, do this, or modify contracts.”

McNeil: “Right.”

Dixon: “I mean it’s administrative, ah, it, the position A C had talked to me about was the deputy CAO.”

(Four months later, Dixon was named deputy CAO by Mayor A C Wharton. After Dixon was indicted in May 2005, Wharton forced him to resign.)

Advanced Government Work 501:

Yes, rigging road contracts is lucrative, but the hours and paperwork can be a bitch. If you’re a lawyer, TSFS will show you how to parlay that into big money. Listen in as Chattanooga bag man and school board member Charles Love tells undercover FBI agent Joe Carson about 78-year-old senator Ward Crutchfield of Chattanooga aboard a yacht in Miami in December 2004.

Carson: “Let me ask you the other thing. I was curious. On Ward, he gets $150,000 a year from the school board? You’ve got to be kidding me. The school board has got that kind of money? Does he have that much work?”

Love: “I’m telling you, man, we spent … Let me tell you how much we spent on attorneys outside of Ward Crutchfield last year as a school district: about $500,000.”

Carson: “Why would you need to go outside of Ward if you are paying him that much?”

Love: “He doesn’t have the expertise. For example, if somebody sues the school district, which we have been sued, we get sued every month on something.”

Carson: “Oh, I’m sure.”

Love: “At one point the board is saying, why don’t we get rid of this guy?”

Carson: “Crutchfield?”

Love: “Yeah. I said why don’t you do it. I ain’t doing it.”

Carson: “I agree with that.”

Love: “Political suicide. Everybody said, well, political reasons, nobody is saying it, but it’s implied. It’s worth the $150,000 to keep him because he does go to Nashville and he has a direct link to the school board to take to Nashville to tell them Hamilton County needs this, Hamilton County needs that. It’s more of a support advocate than an attorney. Now, he will ask for an opinion, maybe every four or five months, ask for an opinion. He’s been doing that for 20 years.”

Carson: “You are kidding me? He could make a pretty good living just doing that.”

Love: “Ward Crutchfield is the kind of attorney that, if he’s your attorney and he goes into court, ain’t a whole lot of discussion, and he usually wins. You know what I’m saying? Ward has gotten guys off for murder, you know what I’m saying? They may get 10 years for first-degree murder because of who he is. He knows all the damn judges, he knows all the people in the courthouse.”

Carson: “I guess $150,000 buys a lot.”

Love: “Buying his influence more than you are buying his legal expertise.”

Carson: “That’s what we are doing basically, isn’t it?”

Love: “That’s what you are doing.”

Carson: “I guess it technically would be a conflict for him to be a state senator?”

Love: “It is. If somebody pushed it, it would be.”

Carson: “And votes on appropriations for schools.”

Love: “Uh huh.”

Carson: “Geez. You know what? Everybody has got their own thing. Good for Ward.”

Love: “Everybody has got their deal.”

Bag Man for Beginners:

This introductory course is for risk-takers who are undecided about their major. Some graduates go from politics to the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office. And some go both ways! Feds love bag men because they’re truth tellers. Without a client, they’re nothing. As assistant U.S. attorney Tim Discenza told a jury recently, “Do you think Barry Myers would come in and lie and say he was doing something for Roscoe Dixon just to get himself convicted of a felony?” This May 14, 2004, exchange is between Myers and L.C. McNeil.

McNeil: “But see, that’s my thing. I don’t want, I like to deal with folks like yourself that are careful. I don’t want a lot of folks that’s talkin’.”

Myers: “Right.”

McNeil: “And shit like that, ’cause I don’t talk about my business. You know, the fewer the people that are involved the better. You know, when Tim first said to hook up with Barry, I’s like, well, you know, I kicked it with Barry, but is Barry cool, is he down? He’s like, Barry is cool.”

Myers: “Oh yeah. I mean I’m very loyal, man. My thing is, I’m going to protect the senator and the other legislators. That’s my job and stuff.”

McNeil: “Cool.”

Myers: “That’s jus’ the way I’m gon’ do it, because I been operatin’, carryin’ Roscoe’s money long before you and Tim come along. I was toting the money for them. Whenever somebody wants to do something they would come to me.”

Advanced Bag Man 301:

A follow-up to our introductory course, this one’s offered at our Chattanooga campus, with a special field trip to Miami! In December 2004, Charles Love discusses Ward Crutchfield with Joe Carson.

Carson: “Okay. We’ve given Senator Crutchfield, what, three or four thousand dollars?”

Love: “Three thousand dollars.”

Carson: “Three thousand dollars and other than him saying, yeah, I’ll support it, co-sponsor it, he hasn’t … I would like to see him insert that as opposed to Senator Ford.”

Love: “Okay.”

Carson: “Okay? I don’t think that’s unreasonable, do you?”

Love: “No.”

Carson: “And you can tell him, hey, for some reason it got dropped out, if it was there originally. If it wasn’t there, that’s one of our four things and you have those bullets that I sent you on why we have the … So that’s it with that.”

Love: “Okay.”

Carson: “But if you’ll talk to him as soon as you get back in, if he agrees to do it and will do it, call me and I’ll just call him and wish him a Merry Christmas, and thank him for adding that for us. Okay? I want to stay in touch with these guys.”

Stock Market Stings 301:

Instructors L.C. McNeil, Tim Willis, and Joe Carson. Learn how to talk about fake companies and snare unsuspecting lawmakers by putting dollar signs in their eyes. Plus some cool stuff about the stock market and stock offerings, as you’ll hear in this 2004 conversation between Myers and McNeil.

Myers: “So y’all thinkin’ y’all could possibly make $10 or $20 million off this deal?”

McNeil: “I’m explain to you how this works. When you start a company, if your company starts off and it has legal precedence, meaning there’s legal, there’s legislation that regulates the way business is to be done. Then, after that, you have contracts with certain individuals and certain companies that guarantee you’re gonna do a certain amount of business. Then you can go public. And once you go public, there’s so much interest in your company because, one, it’s a legalized, how do I say, business interest.”

Myers: “Okay.”

McNeil: “Then you take it a step further and you already have contracts, and it’s like a no lose. It’s like people are mandated to have to use your services. So it drives the stock prices up. You can start off with, ah, maybe anywhere from, you know, what they call a penny stock. I’ve never done like the penny stocks side. I’ve gone anywhere from 10 to 50 cents a share. Almost up to a dollar a share.”

Myers: “Okay.”

McNeil: “When I did the dot-com business, ah, music business, I did two of them. The first one was at 10 cents, the second was at 50 cents. First one, when I finished and when we pulled out of it, and it basically, I mean, it went under because all this stuff was being stolen off the Internet.”

Myers: “Stolen off the Internet, yeah.”

McNeil: “You know what I’m sayin’? But a 10 cent stock, it went to almost $15 a share. You see how much we make?”

Myers: “I don’t need to become a state senator. Shit, y’all makin’ the real money.”

Undercover Operatives 701:

An advanced course by invitation only. Students must show strong background in acting and criminal behavior. In February 2004, instructor Tim Willis demonstrates his stutter step as he tells Roscoe Dixon that E-Cycle wants “first call” on used computers. Note how carefully Willis walks the line on entrapment. Notice who suggests working through regular channels and who brings up the subject of money first! Fooled you, huh? A master at work. Or as prosecutors like to say, today’s defendant is tomorrow’s witness.

Dixon: “I mean, why do you want to be up there?”

Willis: “Oh, so they can have first dibs on all of this.”

Dixon: “You takin’ all this.”

Willis: “Right.”

Dixon: “Ain’t one or two computers comin’ outta’ here on that, first thing. I mean folks just don’t want ’em.”

Willis: “Right, I, I, I see, I see what you’re sayin’. But then what else is, you, you see what they, their, their whole intention is. The, if they can show that they have a contract with the state of Tennessee, to, to take in this, this, this is a sizeable amount. Just imagine all across the state. They could say they have a contact with the state of Tennessee where they have first.”

Dixon: “But they hadn’t, they hadn’t talked to the state of Tennessee. If you see what I’m sayin’?”

Willis: “Naw. I talked to somebody in an office that …”

Dixon: “You talked to General Services?”

Willis: “Naw.”

Dixon: “In other words, they don’t know what they’re doin’. They, they as lost as a man in the moon.”

Willis: “Uh huh.”

Dixon: “There needs to be some conversation with people who are over this … You have an orderly process. Basically, now what you can do is put a offer on the table, this is what we’d like to do. What do you think about it? And they’ll tell ya’ yea, nay, or let’s modify type of thing.”

(Dixon makes a phone call, and the conversation resumes a few minutes later.)

Dixon: “I mean, how old is the company?”

Willis: “This, this, this is a new branch of an older company. This is a offshoot. So this has only been up and runnin’, man, maybe two years. Something like that.”

Dixon: “Are they tryin’ to be national?”

Willis: “Yeah, they, they actually tryin’ to go public. They tryin’ to take this, this part of the company public. And by doing, what they been instructed they need to do is to have contracts with major, large companies, large corporations and recycling their computers. They looked around and said, well, hell, let’s go after state. Nobody’s goin’ after state contracts.”

Dixon: “Uh huh.”

Willis: “Let’s go after that. We get two states, we definitely can take this thing public, you know? And so that’s their goal. Their goal is to take that company public inside of five years.”

Dixon: “Uh huh.”

Willis: “Do whatever they have to do to take it public. They don’t, they don’t, whatever, ’cause once they take it public they all multi-millionaires.”

Perjury 201:

Students will learn the difference between perjury, making false statements (or what the feds call “Section 1001’s”), and having sudden memory loss in front of a grand jury. Former Memphis City School Board member Michael Hooks Jr. was charged last week with making a false statement. But Roscoe Dixon wasn’t, even after this session with the FBI two weeks before he was indicted in May 2005. TSFS graduates know when to say no — and that’s no lie!

FBI: “So I just wondered if in 2004 you never took money from Tim Willis.”

Dixon: “No.”

FBI: “Okay, no you didn’t. And he never gave you money in an office, in that office.”

Dixon: “No. No.”

FBI: “Okay.”

Dixon: “Not to my knowledge. Not to me anyway, to my knowledge. Let me, let me just research my memory. He took us to dinner.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Race Factor

We all saw the demonstrators in the plaza in front of the federal building last week, their signs and shouts accusing the government of both racial and political bias in its prosecution of Roscoe Dixon.

Racial, in that former state senator Dixon and most of the others accused in the Tennessee Waltz scandal are African Americans. Political, in that most of them are Democrats. And a little conversation with one of the protesters, a friendly enough gentleman, fused those two categories together into a third: Ford Democrats.

The idea was based on the fact that Dixon, state senator Kathryn Bowers, and (to say the least) Dixon’s former Senate colleague John Ford were prominent among those caught in the FBI sting. These were all members of the diminished but still influential political constellation that was brought into being 30-odd years ago by former Congressman Harold Ford Sr., who now resides in Florida and intervenes in local affairs only once in a while.

One of those occasions, under way as we speak, is that of his son and political heir, Harold Ford Jr., squeaky-clean and scandal-free and currently attempting a U.S. Senate race from the springboard of the 9th District congressional seat he inherited from his father back in 1996.

Though there is still a rough cleavage in inner-city Memphis politics between forces loyal to the Fords and those partial to Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, the old rivalry lacks the fire. It is well understood that Harold Jr. aspires to national prominence, not local, and that even a defeat in the Senate race would not consign him to mucking about in the trenches of local ward politics.

Yes, there are members of the extended Ford family in this or that political office, and a new generation of hopefuls running for yet others, but the simple truth is that “Ford Democrats,” pending the outcome of that Senate race, are not so much a political force as they are a faction — one of three more or less co-equal ones — in the Shelby County Democratic Party of today.

It is doubtful that the FBI, or the U.S. attorney’s office, either, is interested in mixing it up with the Del Gills of the world to determine the pecking order of that embattled satrapy.

To what, then, do we owe the preponderance of Ford-faction African-American Memphis Democrats in the ranks of Tennessee Waltz indictees? Racism? Innate disposition? Political targeting?

Answer: none of the above. One need look no further than Barry Myers, the Dixon factotum whose motor-mouthed extravagance in the FBI’s surveillance recordings — even more than his testimonies, past- and future-tense, for the government — is crucial to the shaping of the Tennessee Waltz’s cast of characters.

When “L.C. McNeil,” the pseudonymous FBI agent posing as vice president of the bogus electronics firm E-Cycle Management, asks the counsel of Myers, an early contact, about likely collaborators in pushing the firm’s legislation in return for payoffs, it is Myers, not the FBI or the TBI or the U.S. attorney’s office, who determines the identity of the eventual stingees.

He scornfully advises the agent to stay away from “the white boys” when several white legislators, mainly Republican ones, are mentioned. But he’s an equal-opportunity excluder; he also steers the agents away from the likes of Joe Towns, an independent-minded black Memphis Democrat, whom he dismisses as a “nonentity.”

Myers is insistent that “E-Cycle” confine the spread of its lucre to a relatively small group of legislative intimates. These, he assures the presumed E-Cycle executives, are the “niggas” you can trust. It’s our thing, he tells the agents, or, as one would say in Italian, cosa nostra.

There, rather than through some imagined predatory scheme of the federal government’s, is the likely explanation of how the subjects of the Tennessee Waltz sting ended up being profiled. There may be further organized protests, but the most effective appeals on these defendants’ behalf are more likely to be heard in courtrooms than in public plazas.

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News

Roscoe Dixon Guilty on All Counts!

Former state senator Roscoe Dixon was convicted Thursday on all five counts in his bribery and conspiracy trial in federal court. The early-afternoon verdict was returned within an hour after jurors had returned from their Thursday lunch break.

The jury — composed of seven whites and five blacks and with the same seven-to-five preponderance of women to men – had deliberated a day and a half before delivering its verdict Thursday afternoon. There was no visible emotional response from either the prosecution or the defense side or from spectators in the courtroom as the verdict was read by a female juror in a matter-of-fact voice from a microphone stand facing presiding judge Jon McCalla.

Assistant U.S. attorney Tim DiScenza nodded politely to Dixon, who will remain free pending a September 8th sentencing, as the two of them departed almost simultaneously through the wooden gate dividing the trial-area proper from the spectator seats.

On his way out of the courtroom, Dixon gave hugs to his wife, Gloria Dobbins, and city council member TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, who had sat by Dobbins holding her hand before the verdict was read. “It’s all right,” Dixon said quietly to each.

The former state senator, who had held influential committee posts before resigning early in 2005 to become an aide to Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton, was the first Memphis defendant to have gone to trial in Operation Tennessee Waltz and the first major legislative figure to be tried for a plea of Not Guilty.

The jurors had listened to five days of testimony including several hours of video and audio tapes secretly recorded by the FBI. On Wednesday, the first full day of deliberations, they had sent questions to Judge McCalla asking for elaboration on the concepts of “predication” (the process whereby a defendant’s prior conduct is considered to have predisposed him toward commission of a crime) and “entrapment.”

That circumstance may have offered some encouragement to Dixon, his supporters, and his defense team. Dixon’s lead attorney, Coleman Garrett, had argued that his client was the victim of a conspiracy orchestrated by the government itself.. But the defendant’s fate was probably sealed when, under both direct examination and cross-examination Tuesday, he had conceded taking sums from the FBI’s undercover team, who purported to be representatives of “E-Cycle,” a computer recycling company seeking legislative favors.

U.S. Attorney David Kustoff issued a statement after the verdict thanking the jury and praising the prosecution team and the FBI for their efforts. Pointedly, his statement contained the following paragraph:

”Operation Tennessee Waltz is an ongoing, active, continuing investigation. The people of Tennessee and their elected officials need to understand that where the public trust has been violated, the United States Attorney’s Office will prosecute. This office will continue to aggressively pursue those elected officials who engage in public corruption.

That, plus the 90-day wait for sentencing, fueled speculation that Dixon may feel pressure not only to take part as a government witness in subsequent Tennessee Waltz trials but possible to offer new information about further colleagues that could result in charges against them.

The former senator was asked about that possibility during a post-conviction press conference outside the federal building, and both he and attorney Garrett declined to comment on the possibility. Instead, Garrett reiterated his belief in the entrapment defense which jurors had ultimately rejected.

Dixon himself fluctuated between acceptance of his fate, saying he was in the “big boys’ league” and could “take his medicine,” and continued defiance, insisting that the charges against him were part of a concerted effort to undermine a Memphis “power base” and to “steamroller a generation of black leadership in Memphis.” He praised Garrett and said he was “glad” he decided to testify. He encouraged other defendants in Tennessee Waltz to go to trial so people can “see how the government acted.”

Garrett also encouraged other defendants to fight. “I believe in the final analysis if everyone will stand up on their hind legs and fight back, this thing can still be turned around,” he said.

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Opinion

“Big Dog on the Porch”

Superficially, Roscoe Dixon is the most sympathetic of the E-Cycle cast of characters, which may have been a factor in his decision to testify. In their undercover roles, E-Cycle bigwigs “L.C” was a jive-talking dot-com millionaire looking to make another score if E-Cycle became a public company and “Joe Carson” was a befuddled “whatever-it-takes” chief executive. What they knew about legislative process, the environment, or computer recycling you could write on the head of a pin.

On tape, Dixon protégé and bagman Barry Myers came across as a foul-mouthed hustler. Expletives are no longer deleted in trial transcripts, and jurors got a full week of Myers employing the F-word in all its variants, as in, “I want to make some f***in’ money!” Cooperating witness Tim Willis learned or had the gift of being able to fake sincerity. So well, in fact, you wondered if he was acting or speaking from the heart when he played the part of the free-spending lobbyist who longed to “be a player.”

The Dixon the jury saw on tape was an amalgam of political godfather, long-suffering (and in his mind underpaid) soldier with ambitions to become a general, and corrupt politico with a conscience. He didn’t cuss, at least not much. He initially took E-Cycle seriously and made sincere inquiries for them through proper government channels. The financial favors he asked “for Barry” were piddling compared to the $30 million and $250,000 paydays in stock-market funny money envisioned by L.C., Carson, and Willis if Dixon came through. When he took money, he left some on the table, literally, and shared it with family and friends. He had his hand in the cookie jar, but Team E-Cycle was bidding for the jar, the major appliances, the whole kitchen. On the stand and under the gentle questioning of his attorney, he was good old Roscoe, son of Whitehaven, Army soldier, National Guardsman, married to the same woman 25 years.

But jurors also saw, again and again, a sinister side to Dixon that suggested where Myers learned the ropes. Dixon was “predicated” on the entirely real issue of dental care for Tennessee children, which he could influence as head of the TennCare oversight committee. The contortions he went through to distance himself from bribes — Myers called him “scared of his [expletive] shadow” — made him look conniving as well as guilty. He lied to himself and others, including FBI agents, in a taped interview two weeks before he was indicted.

If Dixon learned a few things about trial preparation and the potential benefits of testifying from Harold Ford Sr., the government has learned a few things too. Prosecutor Tim DiScenza was thorough and methodical. Instead of hitting the jury with details at the start of the trial, as prosecutors did in the Ford trial, he brought out his big guns — Myers, Willis, Carson, and L.C. — right away. Then he produced the phone records and bank records and closed all the legal loopholes. Finally, in case jurors had forgotten anything, he called an FBI agent to the witness stand to present a chronological summary of the case. (At Flyer press time, he was cross-examining Dixon.)

What was chilling about the tapes was how much worse it could have been if Willis and Myers had not turned and the government had not acted. Myers was planning to succeed Dixon in the state legislature and even said he had his mentor’s office copy of the state seal. None of that Mr. Smith Goes to Washington idealism for Myers. His moral compass was his little black book of dirt on various “niggas” and “white boys.” Dixon dreamed of being mayor of Memphis or, to come down a peg, General Sessions Court clerk, with an empire of appointed employees and credit cards. In 2005, he was hired as assistant chief administrative officer by Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, described by Dixon as part of “the network” with him and Ford. As a “big dog on the porch,” Dixon had influence over contracts and the dirt on his “big juice” pals, who also had the goods on him, ensuring that the corruption would continue.

Assuming that prosecutors won’t rest until going after the supply side as well as the politicians, the Tennessee Waltz is a watershed in Memphis history. Before this week, I figured the government was hoping Dixon would plead guilty. After seeing and hearing the tapes, I believe the Justice Department wanted to try the case and air the dirty laundry in the court of public opinion. A guilty plea would have been open to spin and dissembling.

Categories
Opinion

Dixon Trial Under Way

When former state senator Roscoe Dixon goes on trial this week, he may draw some lessons from the most famous political-corruption trial in recent Memphis history.

Charged with bribery, Dixon is the first of the Memphis defendants to stand trial in Operation Tennessee Waltz. Jury selection began Tuesday in federal court, with opening statements expected on Wednesday. Dixon’s fate could influence the thinking of other defendants, including Michael Hooks, Kathryn Bowers, Calvin Williams, and John Ford.

The trial is the most closely watched political corruption trial in Memphis since 1993, when former congressman Harold Ford Sr., the brother of John Ford, was found not guilty on federal bank-fraud charges. It was the culmination of a 10-year investigation by federal prosecutors of Ford and the banking empire of brothers Jake and C.H. Butcher Jr. of Knoxville. Ford was actually tried twice, but the first trial in 1990 ended in a mistrial because of juror misconduct.

Although the cases are different, Dixon and his attorneys face some of the same circumstances that confronted Ford 13 years ago: extensive pretrial publicity and media coverage, racial overtones, an experienced team of prosecutors led by assistant U.S. attorney Tim DiScenza (who was not involved in the Ford trial although he was on the staff at the time), and the decision about whether or not to let Dixon take the stand.

No one made better news copy than Harold Ford when he was under attack. After he was indicted, he accused U.S. attorney Hickman Ewing, then head of the office for Western Tennessee, of leading a political vendetta. The two men exchanged sharp words in a parking lot of the federal building, although they never squared off in the courtroom because Ewing assistant Dan Clancy tried the case.

Ford played to his constituents, insisting that having the trial in Knoxville instead of Memphis would eliminate prospective black jurors. When the trial was moved to Memphis, he kept up the pressure. The jury for the first trial included eight blacks and four whites. After testimony was completed and jurors had begun their deliberations, presiding judge Odell Horton declared a mistrial because juror contact with the defense team had made “a mockery” of justice.

Jurors for the second trial, three years later, were chosen from the Jackson, Tennessee, area, once again amid protests that Ford was not getting a fair shake. The sequestered jury included 11 whites and one black, which seemed to confirm Ford’s fears. But the congressman and his Washington, D.C., attorneys played the hand they were dealt and won the case.

Ford was a textbook study in self-control. He wore the same conservative suit every day of the trial, chatted pleasantly with reporters, and showed little expression to the jury. And in a departure from his first trial, he took the stand to testify. In a dramatic confrontation with Clancy, he “took the blows” about his financial irresponsibility, while also painting a sympathetic picture of himself as a hard-working son, father, and businessman. The government, meanwhile, relied mainly on a succession of bank examiners and FBI auditors to make its case. After weeks of charts and financial details that strained the jury’s attention span, Ford’s testimony was the turning point.

Dixon, characterized as “a plodder” by his political associates, lacks Ford’s charisma and compelling personal story, should he decide to testify. In two high-profile federal court trials in Memphis last year, defendants who declined to testify got mixed results. Football booster Logan Young was convicted, while former Shelby County medical examiner O.C. Smith went free when the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

Dixon unsuccessfully tried to have his case dismissed on grounds that the FBI’s bogus computer company E-Cycle Management targeted only black legislators. All of the Memphis defendants, and eight of the 10 Tennessee Waltz defendants to date, are black.

Dixon’s biggest problem, of course, is the evidence against him, including tapes describing his assistance in getting a bill passed for E-Cycle and his share of $9,500 in payoffs. In the Ford trial, there were no tapes, and jurors said they were unclear about exactly what he did. “Taking the blows” could be fatal for Dixon.