Apparently, there is no hunger more intense than being power hungry.

It’s proven on a daily basis by Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris and his sycophant, Tennessee Representative Curry Todd.

Hardly a day goes by that an action of the Norris-Todd cabal doesn’t leave us wondering if they ever bother to tend to state government business.  Clearly, they prefer to meddle in the affairs of local government, to mandate their biases as local policy, and to make sure there is no level playing field when it comes to local intergovernmental decisions.

They play regular role as the playground bullies, asserting their dominance over any issue that deepens their power base and strokes their unquenchable political egos.  As we’ve said before, at least Mr. Todd has an excuse: we think he had too many basketball balls hit his head during his stellar career as a local hardwood legend.

Quest for Power

But Mr. Norris doesn’t have an excuse.  He’s intelligent and gifted, but he’s turned into our very own Newt Gingrich, captured by his own grandiosity and undone by his own egotistical belief that he’s always the cleverest boy in the room.  It’s been sad to watch Mr. Norris’ fall as a relatively effective member of legislative bodies to a shill for narrow partisan leanings that undermine the qualities that made Tennessee great in the first place: generosity, pioneer spirit of camaraderie, compassion, and a sense of a shared and better future.

Along the way, he sacrificed his principles on the altar of his own quest for power, and as a result, today, there is no local decision that he isn’t willing to interfere in and there is no pandering so demeaning that he’s unwilling to do it.

The latest example is the Norris-Todd bill which suggests that their political interests trump legal annexation reserve agreements negotiated by the county mayor and every mayor of every city in Shelby County and ratified by every city government and by county government.  The Norris-Todd duo introduced a bill in Nashville to remove a large area of Memphis’ annexation reserve area in east Shelby County.

It’s an unprecedented interference by the Tennessee Legislature into the agreements reached in 1998 in the aftermath of the “tiny towns” controversy following the passage by the Legislature of Chapter 1101 mandating the establishment of growth boundaries in Tennessee counties.  State law said: “In any county with a charter form of government, the annexation reserve agreements in effect on January 1, 1998, are deemed to satisfy the requirement of a growth plan. The county shall file a plan based on such agreements with the committee.”  In that way, the annexation reserve agreements that existed at that time in Shelby County became the starting point for additional negotiations to satisfy Chapter 1101.

Good Faith

The ultimate annexation reserve agreements resulted from a process that involved the Shelby County Mayor, the mayors of every city in Shelby County, and representatives from the largest utility, the largest school district, the largest Chamber of Commerce, the soil conservation district, two people appointed by the county mayor, and two people appointed by the mayor of the largest city.

It was a process characterized by difficult negotiations, but in the end, all governments in Shelby County came together to enter into an agreement that set the future boundaries for each city, ending conflicts and lawsuits between governments.  As part of the process and to show its good faith, City of Memphis relinquished 150 square miles of land that were in its annexation areas and those areas were taken by the smaller cities.

It’s the kind of good faith now lacking in the actions of Mr. Norris and Mr. Todd.  That said, some think it’s possible that neither of them expect their conniving about the annexation reserve agreements to become law.  Instead, they may be throwing out this abhorrent bill as a tactic to make their upcoming bill more attractive, the one to give schools owned by the county school system to the towns when they set up their own municipal school districts.

That bill was already floated by Mr. Todd, but Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell said the bill was “inappropriate” and it was tabled.  For now.

Here, we think this bill is aimed at giving the municipal districts even more taxpayers to prop up their walled-in community schools.  All in all, it has a certain putrid smell that’s becoming familiar with the Norris-Todd wheeling and dealing.

Councilmen Nailed It

There is no doubt that, regardless of what Mayor Luttrell thinks, the bill to give county schools to town districts is going to be resurrected in a matter of weeks unless Norris-Todd get their way on the disposition of the schools. Until they, we expect even more of their good cop (Norris), bad cop (Todd) routine, because it is aimed at forcing their will on the broad-based transition planning group that has been doing a remarkably good job in considering the future of a unified school district.

As for the annexation reserve agreements, member of Memphis City Council said it well:  Chairman Bill Morrison said: “If Mark Norris wants to run the county, he should probably run for county mayor.  It’s kind of ridiculous that Nashville, with all the problems we have in the state, wants to run Memphis and Shelby County, and they want to run them into the ground.”

Councilman Myron Lowery referred to it has a “stunt” from people practicing “the self-serving politics we’re getting out of Nashville” these days and from people who regularly change the rules in the middle of the game.  Councilman Jim Strickland said he was “old-fashioned” enough to think that “agreements should be honored…and local folks should be allowed to handle local issues” without the interference of “Big Brother.”

It’s Mr. Norris’ behavior that makes it absurd that he is chairman of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, whose mission is to serve “as a forum for the discussion and resolutions of intergovernmental problems.”  As the chief intergovernmental problem for Memphis and Shelby County, it’s even more ironic that he leads a “think tank” whose purpose is to identify smart policy for the future.

Bend Over

In one of its reports, TACIR wrote that the need for a dependable and consensus framework for annexation is because “at times, the powers of the legislature could be abused.  This abuse could take the form of the passage of annexation acts against the wishes of local government officials and citizens.”

The Norris-Todd annexation reserve bill is proof positive that TACIR got it right.

TACIR has been a driving force in applying the growth policies encapsulated in the 1998 state law, and it seems only logical that if Mr. Norris is now taking aim at destroying the legal intergovernmental agreements entered into in 1998, he should step down as TACIR chairman.

It’s hard to think of anyone in Nashville who has been more detrimental to intergovernmental relations, because when he talks about intergovernmental relations, it usually starts with making the City of Memphis bend over.

Attacks on Planned Parenthood patients in Tennessee have intensified.  I received notification on December 28 from the Director of the Tennessee Department of Health that although we had been informed that we would receive HIV prevention and Syphilis prevention funding to provide these services to our clients, we were suddenly not approved and would not receive any of the grant monies previously promised for 2012.

We have been providing HIV testing, counseling and education with these federal funds since 1999.  The United Way administers the grant in Shelby County and when I asked them why, they had no reason.  When I asked the Department of Health staff supervising this area why, they had no reason.  It seems this was an entirely political decision designed to hurt the people of Shelby County by denying them their most qualified and most trusted provider of health care.

This continues what seems like a concerted effort in Tennessee and Shelby County to hurt Planned Parenthood and the patients we serve.  And we want you to know THE TRUTH.

Please continue your support in all its various forms. This latest news of our HIV and Syphilis prevention funding loss will not hold Planned Parenthood back. We’re here.

To donate online, click here.

Barry Chase, CEO Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region

If you have any we can post, please email them to tjones@smartcityconsulting.com.

Another week goes by and yet another CA article about service cuts at Memphis International…. With theAmsterdam flight generating over two billion in economic impact since its inception, do you think Smart City could do a round robin with local stakeholders taking about the service cuts and ideas for saving our International flight which has more of an impact than some of the companies that are located here…. (on another note it would be fun to read round robins of local leaders and progressives on other Memphis issues).

A few thoughts on saving our international service that other cities have employed.

1) Asking our business and civic leaders to make it a company / city policy to use the flight for employees traveling to Europe and beyond. The Cincinnati business community did just that the save their Paris service.  Make the commitment public so the flying public understands they need to use the service or loose it.

2) The chamber should bring together Delta and FedEx to see if FedEx can make use of the flight for cargo. I am sure they do this to some extent but can it be increased? Keep in mind that FedEx has for years lobbied Air France for non-stop Paris service. They should be willing to put their money where their mouth is to save Amsterdam service by placing additional cargo on the Amsterdam flight.

3)  During the first year of the fligh,t we did C&VB advertising. Promoting the city and the flight through web banner ads is inexpensive. C&VB should have a partnership with Delta to do joint web banner ads across Europe and beyond. Think Elvis sites, Music sites,  anytime someone in Europe does a goggle search a Memphis via Amsterdam flight banner ad should come up, etc., etc.

4) Mayor Wharton should appoint a community of ambassadors between Memphis and Amsterdam. In the many years of air service can we point to a single cultural exchange?  How about a trade and cultural mission. Amsterdam is a capital of finance, high tech, culture – we should be forging cultural and business relationships. Those relationships will not only help us keep the flight they will enrich both cities. The mayor really could help drive business and cultural relationships and I bet people would be thrilled to serve. Are we even sister cities with Amsterdam?

“Once a city loses international routes — as Portland did in 2001, when Delta ended Portland-Japan flights — they are difficult to restore.”

“Since its launch on June 27, 1995, more than 2 million customers have flown Tennessee’s sole nonstop flight to Europe, generating more than $2 billion in statewide economic impact.”

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_597442.html

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/06/ports_gamble_on_delta_pays_off.html

Wayne Risher – The Commercial Appeal:

I was wondering if you could talk about the Memphis-Amsterdam flight and how it’s performing, now that it’s down to four days a week? And also, could you speak to any plans for further reductions in the frequency of that flight in the near future?

Glen Hauenstein:

We are looking at the financial performance real time on this. And it seems to be doing better with a reduced frequency level. And so we’ll continue with that and analyze that as the data comes in. Of course, we’re not really in the peak yet. We’ve got December and January to come in and I think it’d be a better question to ask next spring.

Decades later, the results are nothing to celebrate. An aggressive demolition policy failed to create a better neighborhood. Instead, it led to a different kind of stigmatized inner city. The chaotic, dirty and declining urban condition of the mid-20th century gave way to the urban prairie of the 21st.

This section of St. Louis, just northeast of downtown, is an extreme but far from exclusive example of the impacts from public policy that heavily favors demolition in neglected areas.

During the 1950s, politicians, planners and architects consistently preached neighborhood clearance. A 1951 article from Architectural Forum titled “Slum Surgery in St. Louis” (pictured left) is accompanied by a map that categorizes almost all of St. Louis’ downtown and inner city as “blighted” or “obsolete.”

The city had two agencies to clear its slums. The St. Louis Land Clearance and Redevelopment Authority demolished targeted areas and sold them back to the private sector for less than market value. The St. Louis Housing Authority cleared land as well and constructed new public housing complexes for displaced residents.

A newly constructed Pruitt Igoe and its soon to be gone surroundings. Click here to see an enlarged version (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

The Housing Authority constructed the infamous Pruitt-Igoe complex, but it also built more successful housing projects on smaller scales nearby.Those projects however, were still not enough to stabilize the neighborhood or slow down the clearance of this part of the city. For the Land Clearance and Redevelopment Authority, much of the land remained undeveloped, and in many cases, stuck in the city’s hands.

The physical legacy of that era is a neighborhood that hardly qualifies as such. Aided by demolition, nature has slowly taken over the grid with disappearing sidewalks, blocks with nary a building in sight and six-lane streets that drive through green space. Below are a series of aerial images from today that showcase some extreme examples of what comprises this section of inner city St. Louis.

‘Slum Surgery in St. Louis’ photo courtesy of Michael Allen

A month ago the Wire spotted an incredibly intricate rendering of American highways, drawn in the style of a subway map. The work was done by graphic designer Cameron Booth, a Sydney, Australia, native who moved to Portland in 2007. Booth says transit maps are “definitely a passion of mine.”

In addition to his day job providing transportation infrastructure designs for Parsons Brinckerhoff, he runs a blog devoted to transit map design. Inspired by the beauty of the London Tube map, Booth completed a metro-style look at the Interstate Highway System in 2009. The map’s popularity – it’s been viewed nearly 100,000 times on Flickr and included in a book – led to the completion of an even more impressive feat in late 2011: a map of the entire U.S. Highways system.

Atlantic Cities caught up with Booth to discuss the challenge of imposing one form of transportation on the map of another. City-minded viewers of Booth’s work may be confused by some of his scaling. On the interstate map, for instance, the dot marking the city of Dayton, Ohio, is noticeably larger than that of New York City (see the third image in the gallery below). That’s because Booth’s transit-style maps favor major road connections over population or importance.

“Some people have a lot of trouble with this interpretation of a once-familiar road network,” Booth says.

You originally drew the “Interstates as Subway” map back in 2009 — presumably in your free time. What in the world inspired you to do that?

Back in 2009, I ran across quite a few “simplified” renderings of the Interstate system on the Internet — all of which were interesting and very different from each other. Some other commenters were calling these “subway-style” maps, but to my mind, none of them captured the essence of the best transit diagrams. They didn’t use different colors for different “lines,” or show clearly differentiated “transfer stations,” for example. So, taking my design cues from the Tube Map, I set about designing my own vision of the Interstate system. The original version probably took me around 80 to 100 hours of work in Adobe Illustrator (spread over the course of a few months), using Wikipedia and Google Maps as my main sources of information.

Why import a British design for an American highway system?

The Tube Map is a truly iconic piece of information design. These days, with the transit diagram an almost ubiquitous design form, it can be difficult to realize exactly how revolutionary the visual approach taken by the Tube Map was in the 1930s when it was first designed by Harry Beck: thick, brightly-colored, starkly angled route lines with geography reduced to the barest elements.

The diagram emphasized connections and station sequencing over geographical reality and helped make visual sense of a vast and chaotic transportation network.

Originally only grudgingly released by the London Underground as an experimental pamphlet in 1933, Londoners quickly embraced the Tube Map as their own and it now stands as an instantly recognizable symbol of their city, even with all the changes it has undergone throughout the years. In a way, my design is a tribute or a homage to that pioneering work. Very few U.S. transit maps come close to the beautifully clean design of the Tube Map (New York having discarded the diagrammatic look after Massimo Vignelli’s map of the 1970s), so it just seemed the most appropriate choice.

In early 2011 you completed an updated version of the map to correct what you call “poor design choices and sloppy technique.” To the untrained eye things look pretty much the same. Can you explain what you mean by this, and how you improved some of those choices/techniques?

My first attempt certainly doesn’t look bad, it’s more a case of me learning new skills in the intervening two years and applying them to the newer version. I definitely blustered my way through the first one — there’s only a very rudimentary underlying grid and I eyeballed the placement of quite a few elements rather than using the precise tools available to me in Adobe Illustrator. Everything in the second version has its position determined by a grid and mathematical placement of points.

I was more confident in my design choices the second time around and this allowed me to add extra detail without sacrificing the clean, open look of the original. Examples of this are showing the east-west splits in I-35 in Dallas/Fort Worth and the Twin Cities in Minnesota — something I didn’t even attempt in the first version [see the gallery for these details]. These splits are the only ones in the entire Interstate system, so I thought it was definitely worth showing them in all their idiosyncratic glory.

In December you released a new map: this one of the U.S. Highways. That system is much more extensive than the interstate system. What were the some of the challenges you faced drawing this map that you didn’t face in the earlier one?

A lot more roads! While there are a lot of missing numbers in the Interstate system, almost every number between 1 and 101 is used for the (older) U.S. Highways System. And a lot of these routes are long — stretching from border to border in many cases. You might think that would make the network more gridlike and easier to work with, but in a lot of places, the roads twist around and cross over each other  — things start getting really confusing. There are some cities where a lot of highways converge and these were the most problematic. I also decided to show decommissioned historical routings of highways (the thin lines on the map) and these took a lot of research (and time!) to get exactly right.

You write on your site that as a result of these challenges the U.S. Highways map took you more than a year to complete, and at various points you were convinced it was impossible to do.

The biggest frustration was getting started and creating a convincing scale for the map that was going to work across the entire map. I always like to start the map at the most difficult point and work my way outwards from there: in this case, that was Memphis, Tennessee. Off the top of my head, there are seven or eight U.S. Highways that pass through there, some of which cross the Mississippi River to West Memphis. It’s a ridiculously complex intersection, so simplifying it down to a nationwide scale while still retaining some idea of how the roads interact with each other was a tough problem to solve.

Your maps have a clean quality that stands in contrast to the messy design of typical road maps. What are some of the stylistic differences you see between road maps and transit maps, and how do you account for them?

In my opinion, transit maps should really only have one purpose: telling passengers where to get on and off. Transit maps are about connections, not the geographical actuality of the routes. Get on here, change trains here, get off here — shown in a form that’s quick and easy to read intuitively. Road maps, on the other hand, are all about geography — they show every twist and turn of the road, every exit and interchange, accurate distances, points of interest and more. They’re meant for serious, detailed perusal, and give you the accuracy you need to actually navigate along the road system to your destination. Anyone who tries to take a road trip using my maps is going to get lost at the first exit, but that’s not what it’s for!

Highway and transit interest groups don’t always get along. Are we being too bold to view your maps as a suggestion that these two groups put aside their differences and work together?

The original Interstate map was definitely a comment on America’s love affair with the automobile. In a way, the Interstates are our transit system. The car is definitely here to stay, but there needs to be room (and funding!) for transit as our population increases and ages. It’s simply not sustainable to continue building ever-wider highways: there has to be alternative ways to move people around.

This may be like asking to choose a favorite child, but is there a segment of your maps think is particularly well crafted?

A lot of the time, it’s the little things that make me happiest. On the Interstate map, I’m particularly proud of the roads from Wisconsin through Chicago and up into Michigan. It’s a complex area, but it just looks really clean and well-designed. I also really like I-26 from Kingsport, Tennessee, to Charleston, South Carolina — it’s a dead straight line from one end to the other, yet fits into the network around it really well [see the gallery for this detail].

Below, a slideshow of some of the most interesting portions of the map. All images courtesy of Cameron Booth. Images are available for purchase here.

“Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try – that’s my fate, too.”
-11th-grade African American student, Berkeley, California

Washington, DC is finally getting a green waterfront development to be proud of.  A 42-acre redevelopment along the Anacostia River, The Yards will comprise some 1.8 million square feet of office space, 400,000 square feet of retail and cultural spaces, 2,700 rental and for‐sale homes, and a significant riverfront park and esplanade.  With a great in-town location along a Metro line and only a few blocks from the US Capitol, and with some excellent green features, the project has been certified gold under the LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot program.

With government support for the arts on the wane in most places, here’s a city singing a different tune:

“…The mayor has a plan. That plan has been to reestablish municipal support for the arts through the cultural office, and to enhance and expand city efforts that support artists and their organizations. This has taken the form of everything from maintaining the city’s cultural fund, which provided $1.6 million in grants directly to 201 arts groups this year, to rethinking non-arts programs so they might provide support to the sector.”

In 2010, for instance, the city came up with an innovative use of community block grants enabling $500,000 in federal stimulus funding to be used for eight arts-related projects.

Can you guess what mayor, what city? (Not Boston, that’s for sure.)

It’s Philadelphia I’m talking about, and for the third time since I began this blog in 2009, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has won notice from me because of his support for the arts (see here and here).

Now, as the article I quoted from above (in the Philadelphia Inquirer, printed in late December) notes in its last paragraphs, the money Philadelphia devotes to the arts is only $4 per capita, much lower than the leader, San Francisco, which devotes $90 per capital to the arts, thanks to a dedicated hotel tax that dates back to 50 years ago (it’s 5.3% today).

But Nutter is talking the talk in a difficult environment and, I hear, he shows up to support the arts. A while back, Nutter appointed a Cultural Advisory Council to devise an arts plan, with the goal of creating a roadmap to keep creative activity going on in Philadelphia. It recently reported:

The vision plan sets a goal of increasing the city’s investment in the arts from $7 million in fiscal 2010 to $20 million in fiscal 2014. That $13 million increase will bring its public spending on arts and culture up to the per-capita average of $11 found in 20 cities studied by the task force.

Now I have a bigger task for Nutter. I notice that he is vice president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and I wish he’d get the art on the agenda there. In the group’s programs, it’s bad enough that “Arts” is lumped into Tourism, Arts, Parks, Entertainment & Sports.

Worse, that page is bare.

UPDATE, 1/12: Reader Jeffrey Barg reports, in a comment below, that Philadelphia today announced another art-lifting initiative – a two-year marketing campaign supporting Philadelphia’s varied visual arts scene and the many artists who make it the colorful canvas that it is. The highly integrated campaign, the result of a first-of-its-kind partnership among 10 city organizations and cultural partners, will tout Philly’s eclectic art offerings — everything from museum stalwarts to independent collectives to plentiful public arts to popular annual events.

Again, bravo, Philadelphia.

From Hartford Business.

Private cultural and arts programs in Connecticut must play a greater role in revitalizing communities and attracting new businesses to receive state funding under a pilot program. On July 1, the Connecticut Office of the Arts will consolidate four of its local arts funding programs into one initiative; double total funding to $3.1 million; hand out fewer but larger grants; and focus on recipients’ place-making.

“We’re not going to kill Big Bird, but Big Bird is going to have advertisements,” Romney said, while speaking at Homer’s Deli in Clinton, Iowa.

Like virtually every other conservative candidate, Romney has had it — had it! — with government expenditures like public broadcasting, and he wants to save taxpayers money by cutting federal funding to programs like PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts.

There are many good arguments – aesthetic to social to economic – for using public money to fund the arts. There are also arguments – philosophical and practical – for not using public money this way.

But Romney’s threat/promise isn’t about arguments. For the past 30 years, opposition to government funding for the arts has been a rote exercise for Conservatives wanting to demonstrate ideological bona fides. It’s not just about opposing arts funding, it’s about actively seeking to defund the arts (two different things). Arts funding is shorthand for a laundry list of evils; from rampant government handouts to profligate spending, suspicious values, and out-of-touch elitism. Framed in these terms, who wouldn’t be opposed? Opposing arts funding checks the boxes on numerous fundamentalist Conservative issues.

Because it does, no amount of argument – good things the arts do, what a great return on investment they are, or the mountains of studies designed to convince – makes a whiff of difference. It isn’t about the arts.

It’s a cliché, but true: Those who frame an issue control it. Republicans want to win the support of moral absolutists and those who believe, as Ronald Reagan famously said: “government is not the solution, it’s the problem.” In this fight, the arts are collateral damage, symbol rather than target. For all the right reasons. The arts are shades, not blacks and whites. The arts are messy collective investment and experiment. They’re about undependable ideas often intended to provoke rather than reaffirm. The arts represent, for a certain class of politician, a threat to “traditional” values.

As long as fundamentalist ideological conservatives are able to define the issue, the arts lose. Period.

I think as long as it’s about money, the arts lose. As long as the conversation starts with funding, the arts lose. Yet that’s where the arts often start; if the debate is about money, then we try to prove what a good investment the arts are.  But the problem with economic impact studies is that if someone isn’t in the market to invest – no  matter how good the return is – they won’t. Concurrently, the problem with arguing aesthetic value is that if the aesthetic values aren’t my aesthetic values, they don’t sound compelling to me.

Conservatives have been successful not because they have a better economic case, but because they make an argument about values. In a time when people are angry over a sour economy and a lack of accountability for those they perceive got us there, they preach caution, living within our means, and trying to impose more responsible behavior. Argued in these terms, again, who wouldn’t sign on?

Against this, how does arguing for public funding for the arts get anywhere? The argument seems so… small… so self-serving. By the time it’s about money, the argument has already been lost. The arts actually are about values. The question is how to argue them before the argument ever gets to funding.

This annual holiday in honor of America’s great nonviolent prophet, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is always a timely occasion to read the inspiring words of a minister who understood that his faith called for him to stand up for those traditionally frozen out of public decision-making and whose fair right to vote and equal opportunity were illusions.

Dr. King understood that change often flows from the civic tension that forces people to confront myths and half-truths and insincere calls for more time before change is made.  Most of all, Dr. King teaches us still that it is important for people of good will to step forward to work for the benefit of people whose interests are often ignored.

While Dr. King’s words have deep meaning at any time, they have even more impact this year as the unified school board works to create a public education system that treats every child in our community equally and equitably.  It will not be easy.  Already, we have seen the clever justifications for separate town school districts that are often fueled by a racial prejudice not condemned by more sensible advocates of the concept.

Some of the language in the school debate have been ugly and the raw emotions on display in the Collierville hearing last week was a stark reminder of the tendencies by some to divide our community in “us and them” terms and to call for the sensitive treatment that was never shown to others as county school policies created racially identifiable schools in Southeast Shelby County and Arlington.

Shelby County has the opportunity to unite as a people behind the shared belief in quality education for all.  The truth is that if the students in Collierville schools went to sleep one night and woke up the next day as part of a new unified school district, they would never know anything had changed.  They would be in the same schools, they would have the same teachers, and they would remain part of the same socio-economic class that is the most significant determinant to classroom achievement.

We suddenly hear a lot of rhetoric about better results from smaller districts, but the silence was deafening on this concept when Shelby County Schools was in charge.  It’s a safe bet that if there had never been a unified school board, we’d never have heard this sudden commitment to small districts. As we’ve said before, the ultimate irony is that if these suburban voters had approved consolidation, the two school districts would have been preserved and this issue would never have arisen.

Because of the undercurrent of race and class that bubbles beneath the surface of the school discussions, it’s the perfect time to reflect on Dr. King’s words.

Address to 1st Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church:

And we are not wrong; we are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie (Yes), love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I want to say that in all of our actions, we must stick together. Unity is the great need of the hour  and if we are united we can get many of the things that we not only desire but which we justly deserve. And don’t let anybody frighten you. We are not afraid of what we are doing because we are doing it within the law.

Letter from the Birmingham Jail:

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.”

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood…Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.

To ensure compliance with federal regulations concerning a public participation process that promotes continued public awareness and access to the decision-making process, the Memphis Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) presents the Direction 2040: Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) for public review and comment. The official review period begins Tuesday, January 17, 2012 and concludes February 17, 2012.

The Direction 2040 LRTP can be accessed and downloaded from the Memphis MPO website: www.memphismpo.org (for additional background information on the planning process, please visit the Direction 2040 project website: www.direction2040.com; the plan document will be available at the project website beginning Tuesday). The plan can also be found at several libraries throughout the region (a list of the libraries is attached and is included with the document on the MPO’s website).

You can send your written comments to Ms. Pragati Srivastava, MPO Coordinator, in the Department of Regional Services at 125 North Main Street, Room 450, Memphis, TN 38103 or by email to Pragati.Srivastava@memphistn.gov. Oral comments may be provided to Ms. Srivastava by calling (901) 576-7190. The Department of Regional Services must receive all comments for consideration by 4:30 p.m. on February 17, 2012.

The Memphis MPO, the forum for public decision making regarding metropolitan transportation planning, will hold a Transportation Policy Board  meeting on February 23, 2012 at 1:30 p.m. at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, 3030 Poplar Avenue, Memphis, TN 38111 to consider the adoption of this plan.

To ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), persons having disabilities that require aids or special services to participate either in reviewing of the Direction 2040 LRTP or participating at the February 23rd meeting may contact Mr. Carlos McCloud, at (901) 576-7156, fax (901) 576-7272, e-mail Carlos.McCloud@memphistn.gov, no less than 5 days prior to the day of the meeting.

We know we imagined it, but we thought we heard much of Memphis say “amen” when they read Church Health Center founder and executive director Scott Morris’ January 2 op-ed column in The Commercial Appeal.

Dr. Morris urged Memphians to emulate University of Memphis basketball coach Josh Pastner in their lives.  “His first response to stress is to be kind and compassionate and then to offer constructive instruction,” he wrote after hearing the 34-year-old coach tell a player during a highly contested game that he loved him before telling him what he was doing wrong.

“All too often, we deal with the stress of life in ways that are not helpful. We become angry. We blame others. We look for excuses. Rarely do we turn to the person we are coaching, mentoring or working with and say, ‘I love you.’  I know many of you think the Tigers’ woes would be resolved if he were more harsh and tough on his players, but to what end? Do we really want victory if the cost is having the coach cursing and humiliating players?”

We were reminded of the answers to Dr. Morris’ questions the next day with the eulogies that followed the death of former University of Memphis and Hall of Fame basketball coach Gene Bartow.  When he was hired at “Memphis State” from a small Indiana college, he was either 39 or 40 years old.  He did not curse and became as famous nationally for his positive, upbeat attitude as for his won-loss record.

In a sentence, he was the “kind of coach you’d want for your children,” the late Memphis Mayor Wyeth Chandler said after his team played for the national championship in 1973.  It’s impossible to find anyone who has a negative comment to make about him.

“No coffee, no tea, no drinks, no four-letter words,” said George Lapides, former Memphis Press-Scimitar sports editor. “I really believe Gene is one of the nicest human beings God ever put on this earth.”

If Josh Pastner is channeling anyone in his job, it sure seems like it’s Gene Bartow, and it’s impossible to think of a better role model.  As Dr. Morris wrote in his Commercial Appeal op-ed:

“I do believe that Pastner’s approach to stressful situations is worth adopting for the New Year. If we could decide to greet the stress of the moment with a positive attitude — yes, even with love — then I think good things would be more likely to happen. Offering kindness is always a healthier way to deal with others. Living a healthy life has as much to do with how you handle stress as it does dealing with a specific disease.

“My New Year’s wish is that you condition yourself to deal with the stress of life the way Pastner does in a game. Responding with kindness can help hold at bay the health consequences that come from anger and despair. And, no, it doesn’t mean you will win in every situation. But you will be more likely to end the day understanding what truly matters and making healthier choices.”

It was his knowledge of what mattered that led to Gene Bartow’s healthy choices that were eulogized last week by basketball fans everywhere.

My mother was from the East Coast, and she had a bevy of funny expressions. A short person was “two jam-pots high.” No one was ever just big; he or she was “great big huge.” But my favorite expression was, “Wouldn’t that just rot your socks?” It expressed good-humored annoyance with something or someone (often me!).

One of the things that rots my socks is the misuse of the English language. I’m no grammar zealot and I’ve been known to make my own mistakes (usually the result of poor proofreading), but at least I care about words. While it’s true that corporate communicators need to aim at colloquial language—we don’t want to be so colloquial that we assault our readers’ eyes with errors. Here are 25 of the most common ones you should watch out for:

Spelling

1. Writing “then” when you mean “than.” The first is a description of time—“I wrote the sales letter and then I wrote the advertisement”—while the other is used when making a comparison—“I am more sick of this picky client than you are!”

2. Misspelling “bated breath.” If you write baited breath, everyone will suspect fishing is your favorite hobby. The word should be spelled bated, which comes from abated, meaning held.

3. Using “accidently” instead of “accidentally.” There are quite a few words with -ally suffixes (“incidentally”), and these should not be confused with words having -ly suffixes (“independently”). Accidently makes it into some dictionaries but it’s regarded as a variant. It’s wise to avoid variants if you can, because some people will become more concerned about your spelling than what you’re selling.

4. Writing that something has “peaked your interest.” We’re not talking mountain climbing here. The correct word is piqued.

5. Confusing “racked” with “wracked.” If you are racked with nerves, you are feeling as if you are being stretched on the torture device, the rack. You rack your brain when you try to write difficult stories. Wrack, on the other hand, has to do with ruinous accidents. With luck, this won’t apply to your writing, but it might just apply to the stock market, which has been wracked by recession.

Word usage

6. Confusing “into” with “in to.” The word into is a preposition (a linking word) that answers the question, where? “Donna walked into her office before noticing her CEO was sitting at her desk.” Note that the “where” needn’t always be a physical place—Donna could also “go into business” or “go into graduate school.” But, on those occasions where in and to just happen to end up beside each other, they must remain separate words. For example, “Peter walked in to see his supervisor.”

7. Misusing “literally.” If your boss said, “I literally felt like firing the entire department,” would you think she really meant that? No! She meant it metaphorically. Small comfort, I know, but help her retain at least a few well-trained staff by stopping her from ever using literally unless it’s the actual (literal) truth.

8. Confusing “edition” with “addition.” I know both words sound alike, but they mean totally different things. An edition is the form in which a text (usually a book) is printed, an issue of a newspaper or magazine or a version of something that’s a little different from the ordinary (for example, an experimental edition of a play). Addition, on the other hand, is what you do when you add up numbers (1 + 1 = 2), when there is an increase (“there was an addition to our taxes this year”) or when you expand your house (“the addition of the deck increased the value of our house significantly”).

9. Saying you made a 360-degree turn, when you changed direction. I’ve had many (otherwise bright) bosses say they made a 360-degree turn when they meant that they turned around completely. But think about it: If you turn around so that you’re facing in the opposite direction, you’ve actually made a 180-degree turn.

10. Being redundant. Repeat after me: PIN stands for personal identification number. Therefore, you cannot say PIN number without being redundant. Similarly, CD-ROM stands for “compact disc, read-only memory,” DVD stands for digital video disc or digital versatile disc and ATM stands for automated teller machine. Thus, don’t repeat the word disc or machine. Furthermore, never describe your “favorite pet peeve.” Stick with “pet peeve” alone. “Personal favorite” is another noxious phrase. Can you ever imagine an impersonal favorite?

11. Failing to understand the difference between “hone” and “home.” To hone is to sharpen. You can hone a point but you home in on a target. This is why they don’t call those birds “honing pigeons!”

12. Saying something is a “mute point” instead of “moot.” Moot means open to discussion or debatable. Mute means silent. Much as we all might appreciate more mute points, they’re not only ineffective, they’re also incorrect.

13. Using “centered around.” Think about that phrase for a second. How could anything be centered around something else? The correct phrase is “centered on.”

14. The inability to distinguish between “e.g.” and “i.e.” The abbreviation e.g. is Latin for “exempli gratia” meaning “for example”. The abbreviation i.e., on the other hand, stands for the Latin “id est” meaning “that is to say.” So, you might write, “We like vegetables—e.g., broccoli, green beans and cauliflower.” Or you might write, “We like all vegetables—i.e., we’re healthy eaters.”

15. Misusing the word “penultimate.” This word means second to last: November is the penultimate month of the year. It does not mean “super-ultimate” (e.g., “He’s the penultimate father” is incorrect).

16. Using “irregardless.” While irregardless does appear in some dictionaries, it’s always listed as “non-standard.” That’s because it’s meaningless. The “ir” cancels out the “regardless.” Stick with plain old regardless.

17. Confusing “flush it out” with “flesh it out.” To flesh out an idea is to give it substance. But if you’re trying to drive a criminal, an injustice or bad behavior out into the open, you want to flush it out.

Grammar

18. Using“could of,” “would of,” “should of.” These are all 100 percent wrong, born of our sloppy speaking styles—could’ve, would’ve, should’ve. What you want to write is could have, would have, should have. We all coulda, woulda, shoulda become better at grammar.

19. Using “me and somebody.” I tell my children that it’s common courtesy to put the other person first. Thus you should always say, “Fred and I went to the gym together,” or “Suzie and I saw that movie.”

20. Using “that” instead of “who” (and vice versa). If you’re writing about people, always use who. If a company president says, “employees that are affected by layoffs will be greatly missed,” no one is likely to believe him because he’s treating them as objects by using the word that.

21. Using “they” when referring to a business. “Starbucks said they would give everyone a free latte today.” Although this might sound right, the correct sentence is: “Starbucks said it would give everyone a free latte today.” And if that grates on your ears, then rewrite the sentence to avoid the problem: “Starbucks is offering everyone a free latte today.”

Style

22. Using “orient” and “orientate” in the same piece of text. Both words are correct, meaning to determine one’s position with reference to another point or to familiarize (someone) with new surroundings or circumstances. That said, the latter choice is British and widely considered “incorrect” in the U.S. Bottom line: If you spell theater (rather than theatre), you should also use orient.

23. Using “toward” and “towards” interchangeably. Both words are correct, but again, the latter is British and the former is American. Which you choose depends on your audience. And whatever you do, be consistent.

Apostrophes

24. Using “it’s” when you mean “its.” This is a mistake I see every day—whether on the Web or in print. The rule is so breathtakingly simple that everyone should learn it’s stands for it is. The possessive version, “The dog chewed on its bone,” somehow prompts people to throw in an errant apostrophe. Whenever I see it’s, I always reread the sentence to ensure the correct meaning is it is. And when I see its, I reread the sentence to ensure it doesn’t mean it is.

25. Using a random apostrophe. Is there a worse mistake than “The photo’s are for sale at 50 percent off”? Remember, apostrophes are used only in two cases: to signify a letter has been omitted (in “it’s” it represents the missing “i” from the word “is”) and to signify possession (“The dog’s dish of water was spilled by the anxious owner”).

Don’t use random apostrophes—or make any of these other mistakes—or you’ll be rotting your readers’ socks.

A former daily newspaper editor, Daphne Gray-Grant is a writing and editing coach and the author of 8½ Steps to Writing Faster, Better. She offers a free weekly newsletter on her Web site, the Publication Coach.This story first appeared on Ragan.com.

When Rhena Jasey decided to become a public-school teacher, her friends were appalled: “You went to Harvard!” she recalls them saying. “You should be a doctor or a lawyer.”

Jasey is one of four teachers profiled by director Vanessa Roth and coproducers Dave Eggers and Nínive Calegari as they address the hottest question in education reform: how to attract and retain great teachers?

That, education experts agree, is the single most effective thing a school can do to boost student achievement. Real wages for teachers, the filmmakers argue, have been in a 30-year decline.

One subject, a history teacher and coach, makes just $54,000 after 15 years on the job. He supplements that by driving a forklift—indeed, the film reports that 31 percent of US teachers take second jobs to get by. But instead of support, they get the blame for lackluster test scores. With more than half of the nation’s 3.2 million public pedagogues coming up for retirement in the next decade, American Teacher succeeds in reframing education’s abstract ideological battles in terms of kitchen-table realities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzvD9v7CbEE&feature=player_embedded

The folks at the Family Action Council of Tennessee suggest that they stand like a rock on their principles.  That shouldn’t be particularly hard for them since it’s a rock that they’ve climbed out from under.

Even in an era where we have all become accustomed to the “Big Lie” as political strategy, the Family Action Council deserves the title as “Big Liars.”  It’s not just that they spew hatred and prejudice, which were never values in the families we know, but that they so proudly lie about the fact while preying on people clinging to the belief that there is always a scapegoat who can be blamed for their frustration with a changing world.

It’s tempting just to ignore them, because it’s inarguable that they’re on the wrong side of history.   Heck, they’re even on the wrong side of Christianity as they selectively obsess on a verse in the Bible to magnify their fixation on homosexuals while absolving themselves from any Biblical sanctions about divorce and other heterosexual behaviors.

Their political base is dying out, replaced by more tolerant and more moderate young people who aren’t interested in vilifying women who control their own bodies, objectifying homosexuals as if they are the cause of all that ails America, and condoning bullies in our schools.  In a world known more and more by diversity and tolerance, they cling to the world where white men make the rules and decide who is a winner and who is a loser.

Scoundrels

If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, the very last refuge of the scoundrel is patriotism posing as religious dogma.  Because of it, The Family Action Council is both anti-American and anti-Christian, building on the pretense that its extremist opinions about everything from the founders of the U.S. to religious principles are actually facts.

George Orwell saw it coming: “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it is becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed…”

Research at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts were not curing misinformation. “Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.”

These studies help to explain why people like the Family Action Council inhabit a closed belief system where they pick and choose only what allows them to wall themselves off from uncomfortable truths. It’s how they lie about the bullying that led to the death of a young Tennessee boy and suggest with a straight face that gay-hating bullies in school should be given protection to torment their peers with name-calling and intimidation.

WWJD?

It’s a classic case of blaming the victim, because they have to shed even the last shred of their humanity to attack the suicide of a teenage boy as caused by his homosexuality rather than the attacks and intimidation by gay bashers in his school.   We’ve heard it all before from these apologists for basest form of human behavior (sorry, we mean family value).  They exist in an echo chamber that justifies everything from torture at Abu Ghraib to murder of abortion doctors to attacks on gays.

They’ve also learned this about The Big Lie: the bigger the smear, the more it sticks. And as they have proven, there is no shortage of smear artists.  It’s all reminiscent of the days when similar people used the Bible to defend segregation, poll taxes, and “Tuesday is the day for blacks” at public facilities on the basis of their religion.

It’s no wonder that given a choice between discrimination and equal liberty, the right wing extremists – all while professing an unyielding belief in small government — choose government intervention over personal rights on issues like same sex marriage.  Given a choice between anti-gay bullying on the schoolyard and anti-gay epithets, they come down on the side of the bully.

We predict confidently that there will be a time when the Family Action Council will be viewed with as much disbelief and disgust as we now view Father Coughlan’s hate-filled sermons of the 1930s.  As the Family Action Council the meaning of Scripture and parses words to support its pre-existing prejudices, it joins other false prophets proven over time to be absolutely wrong in their theology.

Flat Earth Society

History has a way of overtaking religious bigotry, from the Inquisition to the Crusades, from bloody conversions to Christianity and Bible verses used as justifications to take people into slavery, and from anti-Semitism to Copernicus.  In other words, the Bible accepts things that we condemn today and we accept behaviors that it condemns.

The Bible is not a science book.  It is not a history book.  It is not a human sexuality book.  It is a sacred book.  It seems at times that those who tell us repeatedly that they have the most faith are the ones who actually have the least, and because of it, they need everything in the Bible to be unquestioned, such as the age of the earth or the origins of humankind.

It’s an anti-intellectual theology that treats the Bible as if interpretations of its verses haven’t changed drastically over time nor that the culture and context of the time when it was written aren’t relevant in understanding them.  If, as the Family Action Council believes, homosexuality was a prime concern of Biblical times, it’s strange that Jesus said nothing about it nor did the Jewish prophets, and while people like those at the Family Action Council obsess on six or seven verses in one million to justify their political positions, none of these verses refers to same-sex orientation as it is today.

There are many people of good faith and deep faith who are wrestling with these questions in honest and sincere ways.  Some feel that while they have no personal objections to gay relationships, they see the Bible as unyielding and unequivocal on the subject.  And yet, Christianity celebrates heroes who changed their minds about the meaning of various Bible verses, and even if we believe that the Bible is infallible, it’s still dangerous to assume that some humans are convinced that they are infallible in their interpretations of what it says.

The Five Percent

In times of great change in history, there is often a brand of extremism that does everything possible to resist and to attack the symbols of that change.  Gays are a convenient stalking horse for extremists, who promote the fiction that 5% of the people in this country have an agenda that is eroding the rights of the rest of us.  If American history tells us anything, it is that it is the minority that must fight and campaign for their full rights.

More to the point, some of the most religious, church-going people we know are gay.  If Family Action Center wants to quote Bible verses, how about the ones warning about judging others and casting the first stone?

The degree of manipulative distortion today seems to know no bounds, and at times, the real war on terror appears more accurately to be a war on reason.   Jingoism is an American tradition, but it’s hard to think of an era when the truth has been as effectively dispatched in pursuit of political gain and personal hatred as it is today.

Every utterance of the Family Action Council proves it so.

We dwell in an age of political corrosion, of ideological coarseness and crudity. But for the balloon-puncturing by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart it would be downright dispiriting. This extremism in the country’s political culture and language kicked into high gear three decades ago at the national level, has since devolved increasingly to the state level, and now threatens the political discourse at the local level, which has remained largely immune to this phenomenon of immaturity and smallness. How did we arrive at this sorry state?

The explosion of political party primaries during the 1970s in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate, with their single-issue litmus tests for candidates of the two parties, coupled with ever-increasing numbers of gerrymandered legislative districts concocted by the two parties to insulate their incumbents, has brought us to this pivotal point in our national life, when it is extremely hard for a moderate voice to be heard, much less survive. Even a candidate for dog catcher better have a position these days on his religious beliefs. It is no wonder President Obama is turning prematurely gray after only two years in office. Increasingly, he is the only adult in the room in Washington.

Now, of all the powers wielded at the local level of government, it is the use of land, of private property, that stands out as distinct from the powers exercised by the federal and state governments. States certainly possess the sovereign authority to “guide” their localities when it comes to land use (and a few dare try), and the feds get their nose under the tent through environmental regulation, but land use remains jealously guarded by local officials and those who voted them in. Indeed, no level of government likes the next level of government telling it what to do.

When it comes to land development proposals, the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) syndrome is a well-honed performance art in U.S. municipalities and counties. NIMBYism has been deeply ingrained in the local culture since the 1960s, when all forms of authority began to be questioned. We know it when we see it; we have learned how to deal with it. After all, people fear change. They are comfortable with what is already down the street. And can you really trust the government to do what is right?

When one surveys this broad landscape, then, not only locally but also nationally, an unsettling thought steals in. At what point might the local NIMBY pattern of navigating the land use world merge with the more recent rigid harshness of our national—and, increasingly, state—political worlds? Can such a merger be avoided in the land use game? Will it?

Back in the early 1990s, when I was chairman of a sizable, regional planning and regulatory agency in Maryland, I met one hot evening with a citizens advisory committee (CAC). The CAC had been assembled to advise the planning staff on the drafting of a new area master plan for heavily populated Montgomery County. A small rebellion had been brewing within the CAC; a rump faction—a kind of Tea Party, if you will—felt empowered to use its advisory role to instruct the staff to delete all references in the plan to a highly controversial but long-planned regional highway that would traverse this particular area of the county. Staff members felt things beginning to spiral out of control. Members of the press were attending the CAC meetings and writing stories. Sometimes an elected legislator would attend and observe and, of course, be observed observing.

So I went that night to hear people out and then explain the facts about the process. The room was crowded: the media had gotten wind of what was up; legislators, pro and con on the highway issue, were there to watch, but not to speak; and other citizens showed up to listen. I spent the better part of two hours fielding questions and comments from the CAC, especially its rump faction, not all of it pretty, and then closed with a simple message: they could meet as often as they wished, but the master plan schedule would not be delayed, and the long-planned Intercounty Connector highway would remain in the new master plan. As I was leaving, a state legislator—a highway opponent—sidled up to me and very quietly said, “When are you going to get that highway built so I don’t have to keep voting against it?”

I miss the days of that kind of ironic wit tinged with a dash of self-knowing cynicism in our politicians, especially at the federal level. We have gone in a single generation from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Representative Anthony Weiner. From a demigod to a demagogue, both of them, as it happens, products of the same state political party. The nation’s bipartisan model of governance has been replaced by an ideological model. The goal is no longer to make a deal but to destroy the other side. The right is especially effective at using invective, but the left is trying to catch up. Their handicap is that the nation is, for the most part, center-right in its political orientation. Moderation has always been America’s bedrock strength.

Indeed, have you ever noticed that, when they speak, in small settings or large, liberals love “humanity,” conservatives love “individuals,” and moderates love “people?” And then reflect upon the fact that the Constitution carefully opens with the enlarged words, “We the People.” The Framers naturally grasped a wisdom both timeless and true, a wisdom lost on too many leaders today.

Of course, the use of land—and by that I mean, for our purposes, the regulation of private property by local government—is not a left/right proposition, at least not in the eyes of the general public. There is nothing liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican, about where to put a new office complex. But land use is certainly political in a small-bore sense. To be sure, the left may trust regulation more than the right, but when it comes to the use of land, regulation is an equal opportunity power wielded by populists and elitists alike. As with all things governmental, it comes down to whose ox is being gored and whose pot is being filled.

For close to a century, ever since New York City adopted the nation’s first zoning ordinance in 1916, land use regulation has meant—in its most fundamental guise—the separation of uses through zoning. Very often, the separation of uses has really meant the separation of classes or races of people when it comes to where they live and where their children go to school. After all, it was a conservative U.S. Supreme Court in 1926 that ruled zoning constitutional despite the pressing issue of property rights precisely because the justices intuited that zoning effectively separated classes of people in terms of their housing—into apartment districts, small-lot districts, and large-lot districts. Longstanding private covenants supplemented the new zoning tool by ensuring that races, nationalities, and religions could be excluded by residential neighborhood, including within apartment co-ops, regardless of a household’s income or class. Despite a 1948 Supreme Court decision that such covenants would not be enforceable in court, they remained very much alive until the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

So land use regulation, or zoning, has been political since its inception, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that in a democracy as long as individual rights are protected and due process is accorded when the majority acts. Life is political. As practitioners, we understand that behind every land use fight lie private property values. We are frequently told that “development” is bad and “community” is good. Do you know what the difference is between a development and a community? Twenty years—the time it takes for trees to grow and memories to fade. And some 50 years after that, a push will quite often be made to get that once-objectionable development or building designated as historic. (It takes about 50 years because no one seems to like the architecture of his or her parents’ generation.)

I learned this after witnessing or mediating many conflicts over proposed projects and requested historic designations. One struggle in particular sums up the local land use dynamic. An inner suburban downtown was dying—it was the 1970s and 1980s, a rancid period for the American city (captured perfectly in The French Connection)—and at that downtown’s core, its heart, lay an abandoned art deco movie theater and a rapidly emptying, adjacent shopping center. Revitalization proposals began emerging during the 1980s and 1990s: either tear down those old, decaying, single-story structures and begin anew with gleaming towers, or preserve and restore the historic center and build great things upon that foundation. It is the classic four-query land use dilemma: What does the property owner want? What does the community desire? What will the market say? What role should government play?

Presenting itself front and center, then, was the iron triangle of land use: the applicant proposes, the neighbor opposes, the government disposes. Thus, through struggle and compromise over several years, a viable, acceptable agreement emerged that involved a shared vision of saving some downtown buildings in Silver Spring, Maryland, and sacrificing others for new development and uses, with both private and public investments in the bargain as well as in the shared outcomes.

We presently find ourselves in the fourth year of the Great Recession, which—despite official announcements to the contrary—is still very much affecting the lives of most Americans. And its stranglehold shows no sign of relaxing. This structural economic dislocation is something we have not endured for some 70-plus years. Except for health care (thank you, baby boomers), every sector of the economy—private and public—is retrenching.

Sour times such as these serve to reinforce and magnify political fringes as they take advantage of a fearful situation and assault both reason and civility. The Great Depression had radio’s Father Charles Coughlin—conspiratorial, anti-Semitic, far right—and the Great Recession has radio’s Glenn Beck, which even the “fair and balanced” television network of “truthiness” could no longer tolerate. Take his latest outrageous pronouncement about the recent slaughter of scores of Norwegian youths by a far-right gunman at a summer camp sponsored by Norway’s Labor Party, in which Beck somehow managed to equate the campers to the Hitler Youth. Beck is obviously beyond the pale, but he is by no means an isolated phenomenon. He is the proverbial canary in society’s coal mine. He is the id to the egomania that is corroding our national politics by elevating discord and belittling compromise.

So will this long-running, acrid political farce seep down from the national capital, as well as from some of our statehouses, reaching into our localities and infecting them as well? Will the familiar NIMBY syndrome morph into something much more sinister, as happened in the disturbingly metaphorical Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

It is incumbent upon us to make sure that does not happen. It is our mutual responsibility as citizens of a republic and a community to prevent that infection. We should vow, at least to ourselves, “Not on my watch.” Land use regulation in our multifaceted communities faces enough challenges already. Take just three common dynamics:

• People say they dislike sprawl, but they hate density. (We can work on that sentiment.)
• Folks everywhere are for transit so long as the next guy uses it. (We can talk about that.)
• Everyone supports “smart growth,” as long as it is restricted to the city. (We need some more time with that one.)

At the end of the day, all the nuttiness we sometimes experience in the land use game does not come close, by and large, to the relentless, irresponsible extremism we see on television and hear on the radio emanating from our various capitals.

The politicization of land use in America is still a relatively manageable affair. Let us strive to keep it that way. Or do something even more daring: Let us embark upon an effort to undo the 30 years of ideological warfare in America before it also overwhelms our local governments, not to mention our shared sense of community.

Now that would be a truly radical notion. If nothing else, such an effort would at least instill hope, badly needed, of returning us to the path toward a more perfect union.

District 1 Councilman Bill Morrison – school teacher and former HR professional – takes over as chairman of Memphis City Council, and his record as a calm consensus builder, bridge builder, and conscientious leader was on display with his comments at his swearing in for a new four-year term as Councilman on New Year’s Day.

Here are his comments which he called “Common Ground”:

It is an honor to be here today and address you as Chairman of the Memphis City Council.

It is an honor to serve with my fellow Council members and I cannot express in words the amount of respect I have for each of you and the enjoyment I have working with you as we move Memphis forward. I would like to thank my colleagues for the trust they have placed in me; a responsibility I do not take lightly. I would like to thank Mayor Wharton for his stewardship of our great city, and know that in all endeavors, public and private, the Mayor is a credit to his family, his city, and to the distinguished office to which he serves.

I want to recognize my mother and brother who are here today.  They are the strategist for my campaigns and my life.

Most, I would like to thank my daughter Sarah for the love and support I always receive – and know that you are the inspiration for the public servant I seek to be.

I remember well four years ago when I was first sworn in as a freshman member of the Memphis City Council.  I still remember the sense of awe and humility I felt as I pledged to be an honest, honorable, and faithful public servant.  It was humbling for an 8^th grade teacher from Frasier.  …a job, I might add, that prepared me well for the “spirited” exchanges we often have on the City Council.

In my career, I am a teacher.  But over the past four years, I have become a student.  And every day I learn more and more from the many people whose paths I cross and the individuals who have entrusted me to lead.

We are a great city – a city on the horizon.  We are the city of FedEx and St. Jude, AutoZone and Elvis.

But, we are a city where many live in abject poverty, and the rate of infant mortality is unacceptable.

We are a city where the gap has widened between the poor and powerful, and the life expectancy of our youth is unspeakable.

We are a city where the most influential man in the world, Steve Jobs, came to receive a transplant; yet many of our own children have run out of life.

It is our moral obligation as leaders to steer our city on the road to economic recovery and provide prosperity for all our citizens.   It is our moral responsibility, not to defer to the powerful, but to lift up the weakest among us.

Recently, the world lost a great champion of democracy, and Havel’s words still inspire:  “Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.”

Over the past year we have faced challenges; hopeless and absurd.

The national economic downturn has had a devastating impact on communities across the United States.  Bankruptcies are occurring at alarming rates with entire city governments left insolvent.

At home we have seen a decline in our tax base, unacceptable unemployment, and poverty and blight threaten to define us as a community.

But we are a city of survivors!

Last year the Council and Mayor were forced to make some unpopular and painful decisions to avoid the bankruptcy and devastation that has swept other municipalities throughout our nation.  With a heavy heart we had to cut jobs, city services, pay and benefits.

As a Councilman and as a citizen, I want to thank the city employees and their families for the sacrifices they have made, and know as we prepare for the future, you will not be forgotten.

The worst is behind us!  And, perhaps it is at the point we hit rock bottom, we found common ground.

Memphis is stronger today.  We are on the cusp of economic recovery, and the plans we have made will positively impact our community for generations.  Major relocations and expansions such as Electrolux, the Great American Steamship Company, Mitsubishi and City Brewing Company could be the beginning of a renaissance for our city.  Today, crime is down. Unemployment is finally starting to improve. We are making great strides in the consolidation of our schools.  We have witnessed the advent of the Green line, the expansion of bike lanes, and improvement to our parks, Riverfront, and Fairgrounds.

We are celebrated throughout the world for our top-notch medical facilities, the Civil Rights Museum, the Memphis Zoo, Graceland, theater and arts, and the history of our music.  And last year, we are a city where a basketball team, rose from obscurity, and taught us to believe.

I believe in Memphis; its promise and potential.  I believe in our Mayor and my fellow council members, and know that working together we will overcome the social and financial challenges we face.  I believe in the promise of a great city; a shining city on a bluff with room for everyone looking for a way.

I ask for God’s guidance in the year ahead, and conclude today with the words Paul wrote to the Philippian Church:  “In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”