I would like to direct every one to Chris35tn’s blog, titled Are You Kidding Pot! As you will see, several bloggers respond to Crony, but as you will also see there are no comments by Crony. Wuzzup? Crony is not a figment, and the other bloggers are not hallucinating. Chris35tn erased them.
Erasing is lame and intellectually dishonest?
The blogger wants to speak in public, but evidently he don’t like to be contradicted. When you get around him make sure you agree, and don’t show dissent. Or you will be left wondering where your brilliance went.
The headline in his original post is emphatic, punctuated with exclamation marks and declarative statements. That led me to believe that he was passionate about the subject, and was up for real exchange and spirited debate. But as you breeze through his blog and notice that my comments are not there, I want y’all to come to the same conclusion that I have, that some people are fake. They don’t wanna talk, they want one way conversations.
Erase my comments. He may as well erase them all, as now, the thread that is left is incoherent and dishonest. I responded to prompts that deserved a response, I commented all throughout. With an alternative viewpoint, I held his topic up. He removed my essence from his conversation, now all he has is a husk. Nobody’s comments are in context, and the integrity of his blog is compromised. In it’s original exchange, the topic had educative value and honesty. Now it’s just his drivel. Go visit the ruins.
Go on over there and read what not to do with your blog. I was shocked not to see my comments on his blog as I was not rude to him or any other blogger. I wasn’t off topic. Nor was I patronizing. The blogger was expressing his opinion, and I was expressing mine. Without venom, bitterness, or anger. I wasn’t trying to persuade him to my position or debate him. I thought we were having a public conversation. I was even citing sources and providing links for those of you who were interested in the topic, he raised, so that you could see the other side for yourself.
The point of the back & forth is to enlarge the debate, A & B keep the floor open until someone else -C- jumps in with their observations.
Go check his blog.. He was spitting some tired tripe I had heard before. But since he was saying it publicly, I took it as the opportunity to address the arguments. Respectfully. Politely. Point by point. That coward erased the rebuttal. He didn’t want y’all to see how intellectually sloppy his arguments were. I picked him apart. So he erased my jewels, which were for your benefit.
I don’t know why he erased my posts. For the most part I was in agreement with him. But some of "facts" he was spitting were nonsense. Being a professional researcher, I wanted him to at least qualify some of it, because he was offering his opinion on a serious subject, as stated fact. We are all free to believe what we must. But some of the stuff he was kickin’ was outright irresponsible speech. Have a laugh. Go read it.
But I must warn you that because my comments are not there to freshen up his space, your reading experience will be choppy and somewhat diminished.
All I can say to people who want to write online essays is disable the comments. Learn blogger etiquette. And read Who Let The Blogs Out by Biz Stone.
Keep it real. And when you don’t want others to have an opinion about your thoughts. Keep quiet.
Can you guys tell me how (or why) incumbents always manage to balance the budget and create surplusses in government during election years?
The middle years during their terms contain deficits, or manage to spend every dime alloted in the budget. But during election years, everything suddenly comes up sunshine & blue sky's. The politicians find fiscal responsibility.
So. It was revealed yesterday that city is in the green (black), by 30 million dollars. And this money is going to be put in the cities "rainy day" fund. (it'll probably rain a torrrent after the election). let me stop hating. Congratulations city managers, I bet you can't do a surplus 6 years in a row.
1-and how come taxpayers don't get a refund on surplus?
2-Who is the cities bank? What institution physically holds the 30 million on their balance sheet?
3-Who (real name, real individual) is the fund manager responsible for "investing" the cities money? What fees annually does he receive for this service? is it a percentage? or a flat rate?
4-What does the city invest in with the money? surely they don't just stick it in a mattress or stuff it in a can in the mayor's cupboard.
5-Are there any politics of money management? Do investment banks bid on government contracts, or is the choice of service provider somebody's sole discretion?
6-The great secret of wealth making is to use OPM (other people's money). I once heard a CEO of a Fortune 500 posit the question-why would he need to literally own a billion dollars, if he could CONTROL a billion dollars? His point was that in the world of finance, controlling an asset is as good as owning the asset. Citizens OWN the money, but a bank somewhere CONTROLS the money. I guess my question speaks towards the INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT. Who is profiting from Controlling the cities money. I mean a guy can do alot of smooth day trades with 30 million dollars on margin. The trader will get paid his fees, and the government will keep the profits accrued from investing the surplus. But the actual owners of the money will get dick.
7-Banks have strong lobbys. I presume the bank that holds the money of Memphis would lobby on the cities behalf. Who are they?
If any of y'all can help me with this, please do. I am curious. I just wanna follow the money.
I think I could feel better about the Invisible Government, if I could actually see the money. Maybe, the city should have a visitation day, where we (citizens, residents, tax payers) stroll through the bank vault like it's Graceland and marvel at our tax dollars at work.
The public pronouncements about crime by the mayoral candidates goes something like this: "I plan on working with the city & county police department to combat crime."
According to Carol Chumney, crime is her number one issue, and she has a plan to stop it. I am going to take her at her word. Supposedly her plan is better than the Mayor’s. I wonder what she knows that he doesn’t?
Does she have influence in hoods with Gang leaders? Does she personally know leading figures in the world of organized crime? Can she place a call in the hood and through personal appeal alone, make certain criminal activity stop, because she knows the Boss? Does the criminal element respect her? I mean, does she have street cred? Could Carol Chumney walk through say, Binghampton or Riverside without a bodyguard and get the respect & love from the shorties and bangers?
If she doesn’t have one to one relationships with the hood superstars (and they do exist), how will she exert influence on this problem? Crime is a serious social issue. A cape & magic lasso ain’t gonna cut it. Neither will demonizing easy targets. We (residents) need practical solutions, and not a sloganeering superwoman. Now is not the time for posturing.
From an institutional standpoint, let’s examine whose job it is to handle crime in this area, and let’s start from the top down. From federal to local.
What group keeps files on criminals? Who actually has a budget dedicated to paying informants? Which organizations are in charge of setting up and managing undercover / sting operations? These are not ghost exercises or rhetorical questions. On a day to day basis, there are real people participating in this process.
It is popular to claim that there is a war on crime. Then the question is, who is in charge of prosecuting this war? Where and how are they conducting their campaign in our city streets?
The Commercial Appeal, and the major networks shock us every night, in feature stories that tell us that gangs are public enemy number one. They are corrupting our children, and over running our neighborhoods, and it is they from whom we need to take back our streets. According to the local DA & Gang task force, there are 110 gangs operating in Memphis. I don’t know how many hundred or how many thousands of people this 110 gangs translate into, but the dossier on these gangs indicate that the groups are primarily Black groups & Mexican groups.
Though there is data that says white supremacists, & Outlaw Motorcycle Groups form gangs. Law enforcement ain’t gonna be staking out Germantown, Collierville, Cordova, & Millington, looking for Hell’s Angels, Rebel flags & Diablos. For now, white boys on Kawasaki’s, Harley’s, & Ducati’s are safe.
From a law enforcement perspective this means the focus, the energy, & the scrutiny is on Black men, & Hispanic men. Sorry to racial profile ya, Blacks & Hispanics, but the data says in your neighborhoods is where the action is.
When politically neutral language is stripped from the mission statement, the war on gangs & the war on gang related crime in this area, less euphemistically becomes a war on blacks & hispanics. (War is the states characterization of their own activity, not my words.)
The word "gang" is abstract, a faceless pronoun indicating them. Criminals. A band of hoods. Put faces to gangs (like the DA has) and the gang is a synonym for blacks, and gang is a synonym for browns. There. Now we’ve said it. It is what it is.
The computerized NCIC_type database of members and perps, tattoos, nicknames, graffiti, addresses and faces confirms it.
The police cruisers that fight this war, will be cruising black neighborhoods looking for enemy combatants. And for sake of argument assume, in the war on crime, the focus on Black neighborhoods is not outright racism. The Intelligence is what dictates that the law enforcement focus resources on these areas.
The prisoners locked up downtown, and at the penal farm do talk and inform on their free confederates, still roaming the neighborhood. And the authorities intend to use that information the way fishermen use a net.
Gangs may be highly organized (most are loose) but they are not nearly as organized as the people, who on a day to day basis, patrol the hoods arresting & surveilling them. Those people are trained professionals that have huge budgets that are approved by Congress.
The staffs, the expertise & the budgets are enormous. Quite literally, the best of the best are already involved in the effort to combat crime, and they use the exact same techniques they use to fight terrorists. House to house urban warfare.
The Carol Chumney crime plan (or anybody else's for that matter), whatever it may be, will have to supplement the work ALREADY being done, on a daily basis, in gang neighborhoods by the U.S. Department of Justice. That is: the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, & the US Marshals Service. Gangs already have formidable opponents. Carol is going to be hard pressed to become tougher without sacrificing civil liberties.
If that wasn’t enough social pressure, on a daily basis, gangs also have to contend with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. That is, the United States Secret Service (for ID theft & counterfeiting) and the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Even with this many guns trained on them, and the full power of the state aimed at blacks (gangs), & browns (gangs), the public is not satisfied. In their fear & insecurity, they insist on even more pressure.
It don’t stop. The gangs (blacks) also have to contend with the Shelby County Sheriffs, and the Memphis Police Department.
The hood is a police state. We don’t have to stretch to figure out where the 200-600 new cops the tough on crime crowd advocates are wishing for will wind up. The new cruisers and new guns are being justified as deterrents to gang activity. And to protect your property.
(And they will probably raise your property tax to do it)
Carol Chumney, Herman Morris, Willie Herenton all say they will get tough on crime. But what crime will they be trying to get tough on? And what specifically do they mean when they say they will work with Homeland Security, & the US Department of Justice? How specifically will they work with city & county police? What will they offer or tolerate in their city?
According to Mythology of Crime & Criminal Justice by Victor Keppler & Gary Potter, the monetary damage from street crimes total 10 Billion dollars a year. While the monetary damages from white collar crime is 231 billion dollars a year. No matter what your political persuasion, we all know, no candidate (current or prospective), from either party will ever advocate allowing affluent neighborhoods to become a police state as preemption of & prevention of crime. Overbearing surveillance & patrol is reserved only for controlling the Dangerous Classes and allowed in certain zip codes only. (I suggest you read the book, Controlling the Dangerous Classes: A Critical Introduction to the History of Criminal Justice by Randall G Shelden) Your city & county is bankrupt, not because thugs with stick up notes & baggy pants & bandanas entered into city hall & robbed the place at gunpoint. But because some people you trusted (public servants & bureaucrats) pen-stroked & fund transferred the money away. Via crony capitalism & white collar crime.
Between the threat of terrorists, & the threat of gangs, much of the public is hallucinatory. Afraid to walk out of their door. When the truth is, there is more NON-CRIME, than CRIME in this city. Most of our neighbors are honest & hardworking. Some of the money being directed to law enforcement should be directed to other Departments, Agencies, & Organizations. That money could be better used in a preventative manner, to help poor, instead of being used up in the penal & prosecution loop.
Because of mismanagement of public funds & no management of human resources, the only solution for crime that is being explored is 1-more police & 2-lock ‘em up. No leader is addressing the relationship between crime & poverty, or crime & education, or crime & mental health or crime & drug use, or crime & employment.
I am waiting for any one of these clowns to tell me how they intend on making the machine work for the bulk of us. How can government use government resources for the sake of the constituents & residents?
Nobody knows more about anything than the FBI. Knowledge wise they are God. They are in charge of domestic surveillance. They are an enduring institution in Memphis. They’ve been surveilling Blacks in Memphis since Jim Crow & Cointelpro (no joke). They know alot. They’ve been interviewing & interrogating this areas criminals (at 201 & the penal farm) continuously for a long time now.
Law enforcement is not all they do, nor is it all they know. Nobody has more well trained experts in scientific or technical areas thatn they. All they don’t know, they can quickly learn. They have a field office in Memphis. These people use alot of money, and alot of manpower, and alot of resources to set up stings and play games and entrap the criminal element. It seems to me that some of that government intelligence and government knowledge could be put to constructive use. Instead of running through the society and only playing destructive games, why not constructive role play? Or initiate positive social experiments. Setups that entrap people into doing good.
Our schools (like elite prep schools) could be preparing kids for power, but instead they are dumbing them down, and turning out students who are functional illiterates incapable of managing their own communities. Kids who feel alienated from the political process and the system that educated them. Who despite 12 years of history & civics classes & state schools, don’t even know their basic rights as citizens. Schools that educate them for jobs that won’t be available when they graduate. And routinely turn out invalids incapable of creating their own job.
You excuse it anyway you like. (As a victim of the Memphis City Schools) I’m pointing fingers. The leaders solution to the social breakdown is to put cops(a security force) in the schools. And the cops are not there to teach civics or criminal justice. They are there to be the pre-wardens. Acquaint kids with life in 201. Control the animals. The mayors may as well put 20 foot high walls around black neighborhoods, if they insist on turning the schools into OZ, and controlling crime with more cops. In city hall, instead of flying the state flag of Tennessee, they should replace it with the flag of the police state.
Police and law enforcement perform a wonderful service. But I don’t think we wanna live in a place where in order to feel safe it takes a policeman on every corner.
myfoxmemphis is like a small town. Provocateurs, citizens & activists all smashed into a small room. Laughing, joking, arguing. The opinions & insults traffick back and forth. Conspiracy’s hatch. I liken the noise to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Despite all the yelling, eventually the price will be set. I think all of this activity represents community & progress. Ultimately what results can be cathartic and purifying.
Online community. Market wisdom. Rumors. Conspiracy theories mixed with Intelligence. I mean both types of intelligence: information and wit. This is insider trading.
I feel privileged to be among you, to add my voice. I represent a cynical view of our situation. The smug classism. And unethical, back alley aura, of dirty leadership. I’ve come to accept. I used to try to hold myself above it, but now I get low in the mud. Right in the thick of the s**t, with the political operatives & pimps, and love it. I am an artist, slash advocate of the common man’s struggle. I’m corporate enough to understand legitimate business but street enough to understand the hustle.
I think I am justified in the position I hold because it is born from observation. I am a product of the Memphis City School system. If I know nothing else, I know Memphis. And I love it.
I used to ride the MATA bus (53 Weaver) from Westwood to the Memphis College of Art everyday. A backpack, a camera, & a sketchbook. I was just poor. A lurker. Voyeur. Observer. But I glamorized my poverty as living the life of the people. Ain’t nothing like public transportation to cram home the idea of class separation.
Don’t believe me? Then get on a bus and ride by a gated community. All kinds of observations pop up. Contrast the conversation on the bus against whatever you see out of the window. Every new car and every manicured lawn represents a concern (the discourse of property) the have nots don’t have. I imagined that every person inside those large homes were warm & happy. Whatever the hell they were feeling, I knew their problems weren’t my problems (& vice versa.) I thought, if we didn’t have the same problems, was it fair to assume we had the same leaders? I came to the conclusion that as an organizing or grouping principle, property trumped race.
As a have not, I realized that I didn’t need a leader, I needed an interest group to belong to. Walking the city, with my camera strapped around my neck talking to people I came to understand that people’s attitude about each other & our city depended on their zip code. And almost nobody (from any zip code) spoke about this cities civic leaders as if they mattered.
From 38109 to 38103 to 38104 to 38117 to 38116 to 38138 to 38027, it’s as if we take care of ourselves & our families, and the LEADERS are irrelevant. Who knows what the f**k they do? It’s all secret, cheap & dirty. Funds go into the county & city coffers, then promptly disappear. Like a magic trick. Hot air & pneumatics. No accountability. No explanation. No receipt. Like doing business with a Russian bank.
For us in this area Government is this monstrous mob-like thing that do what it do. But it has no philosophy behind it’s operation, besides grab power for yourself, grab power for your political party, or grab power for your cronies. One thing for certain, the resources aren’t spread with the idea of improving all society or bettering all people. Make no mistake about it, millions are wasted (or pilfered).
No matter who gets into office, they always manage to spend every dime.
I don’t know about y’all but I am tired of watching / participating in this farce. I am ready to sabotage the old order & have it replaced with something more honest & more transparent. Something realer than flowery talk & self service.
I haven’t saw a politician current or prospective who even remotely has anything like a vision. It’s the same old blah blah blah hot button pushing reduce crime improve education hold down taxes, with no specifics or public debate. Spewed at us with a straight face, as if we are fools.
Fortunately for us, the time has arrived where political power can be undermined. Because of communication & information networks, going forward, politicians won’t have it so easy. Pretty soon they won’t be people we look up to and depend on. All they will be are clerks. But that depends on us (taxpayers & citizens) standing up.
I believe in the wisdom of the crowd, and that in force it can make the leaders responsive to the real issues. Or at least compel them to a vision. I hope there are others that feel like I feel, and are working to bring an end to the nonsense we have had to put up with since. . . .before Herenton.
I want this city too become a mob breathing down the neck of it’s leaders & influence peddlers. I mean, the entire aristocracy, including self serving preachers & greedy banks.
I am here to say hi & rant. Maybe, one by one, we can take our government back.
Blog prompts that act like traps, initiate the conversations. I’m very optimistic, with hope, that all of this talk will calcify into action and the disgruntled poor & middle class can take our city back from: criminals, the mayor, city council, school board, county commission crooked cops, and the bureaucrats who mismanage our resources. Demagogues & Preachers who split the community into saved christians versus all others (heathens) or set the scene for race war with inflammatory language, white against blacks. Should be served notice via this community, that we will no longer fall for that BLEEP.
Myfoxmemphis is like a small town. Everybody knows somebody else’s business. And look at the number of posts generated here daily, it’s obvious that we are all willing to air our neighbor’s dirty laundry in the town forum.
Police & private business surveils us (for our protection & our security of course). Citizens have to use art & Sousveillance to watch them back. Obviously, complaining & voting is not enough. Pretty soon groups are going to have to band, and appropriate their power.
F**k voting for insincere political operatives. I am ready to blog, wreck careers, and fight back. Everything I know about politics I learned from Dick Cheney and local crony capitalists.
And I don’t mean just King Willie. I’ve learned more from our previous practitioners.
Boss Crump, Henry Jim Crow Loeb, the Chandlers, Big swingin’ Dick Hackett, the Imperial Ford family, Bill Morris, and Bobby Lanier.
Herenton may not be all good, but let’s not be naive, it takes a village to wreck a city. He is doing nothing different from the previous 6 occupants of city hall. In fact, he’s following their blueprint. If change is needed, we need a change deeper than just an exchange of bodies. This city need a new ideology.
------Memphis, if you are tired, stand the f**k up. I’m with you.-----
