Pending in the Tennessee Legislature is the latest magic crimefighting answer by right wing legislators – blended sentencing.  As usual, the legislature is pushing ahead in the face of research that questions  blended sentencing’s effectiveness, fairness, and due process.  The scheme is notoriously complex and costs a great deal of money to implement despite no evidence that it works, either in the outcomes for juvenile defendants or for the community’s safety. More than anything, it feels once again like barely concealed racial bias from White legislators who see African Americ ..read more

Former Memphian Bill Day is two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning. His cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons ..read more

The most glaring problem about PILOT tax breaks is that it is a massive wealth transfer – from the people in one of the cities and counties with the highest poverty rates to the stockholders of major companies generally headed up by White men. It’s a reality that calls for equity measurements to become a central part of the evaluations by the nine agencies approving PILOT tax breaks.  It’s likely that economic development officials will express skepticism that it can be done.  And yet, other places are already doing it.  Indianapolis has an “inclusive incentive scoreboard” on wh ..read more

It’s hard to remember all the times committees have set out and failed to analyze/reform/rationalize our local PILOT program but there is greater hope this time because a committee of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners is showing its seriousness at getting to greater accountability than previous hearings. That’s because it’s the Core City, Neighborhoods, and Housing Committee headed by Henri E. Brooks and Britney Thornton, respectively chair and vice-chair.  From all appearances, they are intent on cutting through the cheerleading by the usual suspects and evaluating PILOTs for thei ..read more

Former Memphian Bill Day is two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning. His cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons ..read more

Data Points: Transportation Costs 1%- Location Efficient Neighborhoods – compact places close to jobs and services with variety of transportation choices $13,496 – Annual Transportation Costs Per Household 1.7 – Autos Per Household 16,567 miles – Travel miles yearly 2% – Public Transit Ridership 6.43 tons – Annual Greenhouse Gas per Household 48% – Percentage of Income Spent on Housing + Transportation                 24% – Percentage of Income Spent on Housing           &nbs ..read more

It was April 5, 1968, and less than 24 hours had passed since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Memphis ministers, led by Temple Israel Rabbi James Wax, had worked behind the scenes to open up lines of communications between the sanitation workers union and Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb who remained recalcitrant in his anti-labor stance. The ministers began April 5 with a meeting to pray for Memphis and for people of good will to call for a union agreement to be reached.  To that date, the ministers had resisted the call to march on City Hall, but th ..read more

Former Memphian Bill Day is two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning. His cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons ..read more

Part 1 of this post was published Monday and can be read here:  *** Mass Hypnosis Truth be told, The Pyramid could not compete with the quality of the Coliseum’s construction materials  – and certainly not its acoustics – and in retrospect, it’s unbelievable that our gullible community  could be convinced by backers in the business community that a “first class, state of the art” arena could be built for $39 million (although the final cost after scope changes was approximately $62 million).   Nor were the new arena’s comfort and sight lines as good as the Coliseum.  ..read more

There has never been an arena built in Memphis with the same quality, better acoustics, TLC, and comfort as the Mid-South Coliseum. It was the culmination of a dream that began in the late 1950s for a new, all-purpose, “blue chip” public arena, and when the doors were thrown open in 1964, the building produced a burst of civic pride (building on the momentum created by the opening of the Roy Harrover-designed Memphis International Airport a year earlier) not seen again until the opening of AutoZone Park and FedExForum roughly four decades later. Anyone who bought a ticket for an event in the C ..read more