Working Harder But Paid Less
From Mother Jones: Why “efficiency” and “productivity” really mean more profits for corporations and less sanity for you. In the past 20 years, the US economy has grown nearly 60 percent. This huge...
Read MoreAuthor: Smart City Memphis
Finding the Formula for Great Neighborhoods
Memphians have often called their hometown a city of great neighborhoods. And yet, for every thriving Cooper-Young, there are neighborhoods clinging to life like New Chicago, Smokey City, and Bearwater. There is much...
Read MoreGetting It Right in City Hall
Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has an ambitious agenda that he laid out during his campaign, but one goal he set surpasses all of them for its audaciousness: To make Memphis one of the country’s best-run cities. That is of...
Read More“Real” Downtowns Have Champions
Center City Commission President Paul Morris said that a “real city” would not let a collapsed building block the downtown trolley for more than two months. His comment has been called intemperate, impolite, and impolitic. We...
Read MoreA Few Left Over Items
“Sir, I knew Andy Holt. Andy Holt was a friend of mine. You’re no Andy Holt.” The legendary putdown by Lloyd Bentsen of Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debates came to mind during the past session of the Tennessee...
Read MoreThe Creative Ecosystem: Save Odessa and Celebrate Bikesploitation
There are great ideas in Memphis that die for lack of a few thousand dollars while we chase multi-million dollar magic answers. We were thinking about this as we read about Odessa’s financial challenges. The inventive young...
Read MoreA Lot More Than One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
It’s official. At the Tennessee Legislature this year, the inmates took over the asylum. Never have so many half-assed legislative ideas been enacted into law in the history of Tennessee, and the fact that this many maleficient...
Read MoreBalancing the City Budget Is No Game
Memphis City Council Budget Chairman Shea Flinn nailed it. And every Memphis taxpayer should remember it. “You can’t be against a tax increase and reductions in services,” he said. To his point, if you’re against a tax...
Read MoreFighting the Flood Threatening Memphis
Perceptions from The Urban Child Institute There is a flood in Memphis. Every year. It may not be as dramatic as the rising of the Mississippi River but it’s much more serious in the long run. It’s the stress...
Read MoreMemphis Public Transit in Bottom Third of 100 Largest Metros
This hardly classifies as news, since it’s already widely known that we have one of the nation’s poorest public transit systems. It’s now been documented by Brookings Institution which concluded that among the 100 largest metros...
Read MoreLatest Bill Day Cartoon
by Bill Day. Memphian Bill Day is two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning. His cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons. Cartoons Archive →