Remember the old political adage: Whenever someone tells you it’s not about sex, it always is.
When they tell you that you shouldn’t take it personally, you should.
When they tell you it’s not about money, you can bet it is.
And when a Republican State Senator tells you that a bill isn’t about ethnic profiling, you can bet that it is.
Profiles in Lack of Courage
It’s no mere coincidence of the calendar that the Republican-controlled Legislature is passing a bill just before state elections that gives election officials the right to demand proof of citizenship. In truth, this isn’t so much a bill about citizenship, but a bill to profile potential Democratic voters and to legitimize state-sanctioned harassment of them.
One thing about the leadership of the Tennessee General Assembly: Just when we think they’ve hit rock bottom, they always find one more thing to do to make our state look like a banana republic.
Senator Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville thinks he’s reassuring us when he says: “I don’t think the members (of the Senate) feel there is a profiling concern here at all.” Then again, we’d hardly expect this group to have a concern when they continue to play politics with legislation being passed in Nashville.
Finding Our Inner Arizona
Like guns in bars, this is legislation aimed to solve a problem that doesn’t exist and to wrap it into the flag of election integrity and citizenship.
It’s in essence Arizona light.
Now we assume that American citizens have to take their citizenship papers to the polls in case some creaking, myopic election official asks us to prove we’re Americans. Maybe the State Senate can send us insignias that we can wear on our coats when we vote that shows we’re “real Americans.”
Senate Minority Leader Jim Kyle of Memphis was right when he characterized it as “very un-Tennessean.” More to the point, it’s anti-American and harkens back to the xenophobic days of Father Charles Coughlan in the 1930s.
Unfunded Mandates
At a time when we need our legislators to tamp down the current of hate and nativism that runs through the halls of government, they stoke it for their own political ambitions. And to show that they are tough law and order types, they give it a penalty of 12 years if someone lies.
It all begs the question – as so much of this political grandstanding does – of what enforcement mechanism the state will fund to do all this, or is this just another one of the unfunded mandates that Republicans used to rail about when Democrats were in power but which they now enact with regularity, shoving costs to local government.
In the medieval court that is our state legislature, all of this insular thinking sounds so clever and reasonable. It’s the Capitol’s version of Beltway thinking, where they operate in an echo chamber that drowns out the voice of the grassroots which has to live with their votes.
And to Senator Norris’s incredulity at a suggestion that this new election bill will lead to profiling, it was impressive to us that he could feign amazement with a straight face.
It’s Not That Easy Being Green
Speaking of ironic statements, back here at home, Interim Shelby County Mayor Joe Ford sees himself as a “green” mayor, but he’s not talking about his lack of experience in public management.
Rather, he’s talking about his commitment to the environment. However, his recent romancing of environmental groups suggests that he needs some lessons in dating.
The leaders of the groups were called to the interim mayor’s office to hear his vision about a green future for Shelby County. They left scratching their heads, since Mr. Ford didn’t make the meeting and the presentation by his stand-ins seemed to be stuck in the 1980s. It was mostly about recycling when the leaders in the room most wanted to know the fate and future of Sustainable Shelby, our county’s first comprehensive plan for a sustainable community.
If the interim mayor wants to do something for the environment, smart growth, better transportation, livable neighborhoods and preservation of outdoor spaces, he should try reading Sustainable Shelby, the detailed plan of action that was developed by the smartest thinkers in county government and several hundred citizens and based on a countywide poll of what the public wants local government to do. In other words, Mr. Ford isn’t thumbing his nose at Mayor Wharton. He’s thumbing his nose at the many people who dedicated a year to developing a map for a sustainable future.
The Anti-Wharton
Unfortunately, Mr. Ford’s campaign strategy seems to be buily on disagreeing with whatever former County Mayor A C Wharton did or proposed. It’s just hard to imagine that running as the anti-Wharton is enough for victory. We envision strategy sessions with his political advisers as taking the Wharton platform and taking the opposite position on everything. It’s a puzzlement why they think that opposing the Wharton agenda and turning back the clock in county government is smart, since Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has an approval rating in the stratosphere.
When it comes to pandering, it seems that he can match any Republican senator in Nashville. But Sheriff Mark Luttrell, Mr. Ford’s opponent for county mayor, should be thrilled that in addition to opposing the highly popular Mayor Wharton, Mr. Ford is also anti-consolidation. It is a highly popular issue inside Memphis, and although the interim county mayor is working hard to convince the folks outside Memphis that he’s their savior from the dreaded merger, the return on this investment by him will always fall short when it comes time for the suburban voters to go to the polls and actually pull the lever for a member of the Ford family.
There is no one more pleasant on the local political scene that Mr. Ford, but when he said at his ballyhooed Earth Day presentation, “I’m proud to be green,” truer words were never spoken. When it comes to the hard work of being mayor, he is indeed green, as shown by his antipathy to all things sustainable and to a proposed budget held together by chewing gum and baling wire.
It’s one of those budgets that include projections based on vapor and economic conditions based on a Ouija board. It also is based on a hidden tax included as part of the Ford Administration’s budget projections.
Gaming the System
It’s part of gaming the system, and it seems only Andy Meek of the Memphis Daily News understands what’s going on. It works like this: Local government is allowed after reappraisal to estimate an “appeals allowance” which is supposed to cover the amount of taxes reduced from appeals by taxpayers to their new appraisals. This number is always too high, because the game is about finding the delicate balance that allows local government to increase the amount more than what’s needed while getting state approval.
The proverbial bottom line: Shelby County submitted a 21-cent appeals allowance, but it is likely to use only about half of that amount, if that. Nine cents has been used so far. In other words, a 12-cent tax increase was effectively hidden when county government announced with fanfare that it would have no tax increase in this year’s budget.
When asked about the hidden tax increase, government officials always say that they guessed too high when they estimated property tax revenues, but the truth is they never intended to guess accurately in the first place. In the end, county government had two choices: Reduce the county tax rate by 12 cents or pocket the about $15 million in new tax revenues created by it. They chose the latter.
To be fair, so did city government. It estimated a 16-cent appeals allowance, and it has only used 9 cents so far, according to Mr. Meek, adding that someone who owns a $150,000 house in Memphis paid $71 more on their combined tax bill last year than both governments needed.
As we’re learning more and more these days, government is not about public service. It’s about service in the interest of personal politics. Unfortunately, it’s become a staple in all levels of government.
>>>And when a Republican State Senator tells you that a bill isn’t about ethnic profiling, you can bet that it is. … Maybe the State Senate can send us yellow stars that we can wear on our coats when we vote.”
From wikipedia: “Reductio ad Hitlerum
“The fallacy claims that a policy leads to—or is the same as—one advocated or implemented by Adolf Hitler or the Third Reich, and so “proves” that the original policy is undesirable.
“Hence this fallacy fails to examine the claim on its merit.
Yep, time to remove this site from the favorites list.
You haven’t pulled off a serious political thought since, oh, about the summer of love, have you?
Great post. These senators are just demagogues who have no moral compass. Why do the folks in the burbs elect these nuts.
And yellow starts on a scarlet A, these kooks won’t stop until only white anglos can walk freely anywhere they want.
Anonymous #1: We certain weren’t suggesting we had an original thought on this. Bigotry dates back a long way, farther back than the summer of love for sure. We can remember the summers of hate filled with church bombings, Jim Crow laws, and hate crimes. So we don’t take bigotry casually wherever we find it.
I guess preventing the deceased from voting is harassment of Democrats!
If you statists think it’s bad now with the Republicans in control of the General Assembly, hang on to your hats. Redistricting will soon turn the tables on the Democrat gerrymandering we’ve endured for well over a century. Democrats in the the General Assembly our about to go the way of the buggy-whip. Thankfully.
How many Democrats supported the spooky gun in bars legislation?
*are* about to go the way of the buggy-whip.
so anti-socialism (how quaint), you’re in favor of bald bigotry? Welcome to the New Know-Nothing Party.
Joe Ford is definitely a “green mayor.” When a developer wants to tear down a forest and throw up houses and create more sprawl, all he has to do is show Joe the GREEN and Joe will help him out.
Joe Ford is as conservative and anti Memphis as any Republican on many issues. He is a DINO (Democrat in name only). Although I hate to vote for a Republican, Ford is a disaster who threatens to undo the good work of A C Wharton and Luttrell is at least reasonable on progressive issues.
I encourage all Democrats to quietly push the button for Luttrell and then switch back to the other Democrats.
Antisocialist:
Please get some of the gerrymandered maps that Republicans have drawn. Remember the district that went from Cordova to Hein Park just to keep Bill Gibbons as a county commissioner. Please get some of the gerrymandered maps from Republican-controlled states. Your vision of the future convinces that Tennessee is the next Texas. God help us.
Does anyone else feel like we are stuck in a dance marathon here? I pretty sure I have learned the moves: one step forward- one step back.
Bald bigotry. For requiring voter identification. Interesting.
Statists keep their race cards at the front of their wallets.
The next Texas. That doesn’t sound so bad to me.
Fair point about Republicans and gerrymandering too, although the context I had in mind was the General Assembly.
On a related note, it will be interesting to see how many Democrat Congressional districts will remain in Tennessee after redistricting? I’m guessing only one or two. Thanks to the Democrats’ identity politics, it will be easy for the General Assembly to draw the Congressional Districts to reduce the number of Democrats
in Congress!
I like Texas. Can we change our name to the Republic of Tennessee?
I liked this site when editorials were positive, creative, visionary. Several recent posts have little to do with Memphis becoming a “Smart City”. The blame game will get us nowhere.
“Dog Days in County and State” and “Pimped Out Gun Vote” “Count the Tosses” substantially lowered the bar, with whining, crudeness, and irrelevance.
It is time for Smart City Memphis to think about its core mission. Let me remind you: “Smart City Consulting’s blog – named one of the most intriguing in the U.S. by Pew Partnership for Civic Change – hopes to show how Memphis really is and could be through alternative questions, fresh approaches and new ideas.”
Not my place to defend, but one could just place these posts in the “show how Memphis really is” category. We have an uphill battle based on local and regional political trends and leadership (or lack thereof). It’s not a hopeless situation, but it is fair to demonstrate that change will not be easy and will likely be resisted by powerful individuals.
anti, we all know why this is such a hot topic right now, it’s fueled (in many if not most cases)by the exact same tribal hatred of the “other” that caused all sorts of bad, bigoted legislation in the past, the Black Codes; the immigration legislation of the 1920′s that limited immigrants from southern Europe like my Italian forebears, while allowing unlimited numbers from northern Europe; the anti-Chinese immigration laws of the 1800′s; the incarceration of Japanese Americans in the 1940′s, the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings, poll taxes, literacy tests, etc., etc. It’s not “just” about voting integrity, it’s for a lot of scared white people, about securing a semblance of a tribal white America. NOw is everyone who suports it coming from that place? No, of course not. But the GUT appeal is definitely a bigoted one.
and btw, I support enforcing current immigration laws, but the GOP which I used to support is in BIG BIG trouble demographically if it continues down this road. America is increasingly looking like a different nation than the GOP’s constituency.
But I guess if any one poll worker doesn’t like the way I look, or my accent, he or she can make me whip out my birth certificate, for whatever reason they deem right? And they don’t have to justify it do they?
Antisocialist: Bigots keep their code words at the front of their vocabulary. It’s always about founding fathers and our American pride, but we know what the code words mean, and this time around, we’re not going to let them get used without calling them what they are.
Ethan Knight: We’ve never really thought we had a mission statement for this blog but to discuss what really matters to the future of this city. Politics, governance, and inadequate political representation matter big time, and that’s why we write about it fairly regularly.
Packrat: All we can say to you is amen, brother.
If according to Ethan Knight this post was noteworthy for its “whining, crudeness, and irrelevance,” please write more of them. This was right on.
“lessons in dating,” LMAO. Who appointed Ethan to the community censor? Haven’t seen him at the water fountain lately. Ford hack?
I am used to seeing Memphis as a city carried forth by the private industry. I admit, as a native Memphian, I forget about the possibility of good governance.
Antisocialist must think there’s a Bolshevik behind every tree but I’m sure he supports the less fortunate by redistributing wealth via the income tax. But I digress.
The property reappraisal and property tax rate scam has been around for a long time and the Memphis media usually has not explained what happened until the Meek article.
The media usually repeats the spin from the city and county, but the Memphis and Shelby County combined taxes increased almost 20% this year (2009-2010); and because of that our elected officials can tell us there will be no tax increase for 2010-2011 and we will bow down in thanks.
And while I’m on the subject, I wish the media would be clear about “budget cuts”, i. e. whether the cut is to a “proposed budget” or to the “current” budget and then tell us how much the “proposed” budget (cuts or not) will increase over the current budget.