Seriously not too serious

A fair enough question:

Except that CM Evans apparently takes Twitter seriously enough to organize her expressions by discipline. It's not yet decimal classification, but apparently her intent is to steer her audience to a relative index of ideas that are clearly (or not so clearly) "finance" (vs. "local politics," which is the subject of a separate Twitter feed). If the audience strays outside the Belle Meade council member's classification system, they may get a scolding:

If CM Evans really wants "@EmilyNEvans" to scream "finance" rather than "politics," she might consider changing her account header photo of a TEP poster promoting political equality to something with dollar signs on it; just so that we understand the clear, unyielding structure of her various Twitter accounts. And I have to say, her "politics" account describes itself as, "I am the Metro Nashville Council Representative for the 23rd District." I want to avoid "taking Twitter too seriously," but that sure sounds more like a feed dedicated to her district rather than to general discussions on local politics. We may need clearer user instructions on CM Evans's various accounts.

Otherwise, she might consider not taking herself so seriously when someone responds to her tweets outside the lines (or inside the lines; who really knows?), thus upsetting the order of things.


UPDATE: Who's she calling "some blogger"? I didn't used to be persona non grata back when I was pinning spurious attacks to the mat and getting the word out. I guess we can chalk up the council member's indirect Twitter response to the lessons of the fealty of big shots and politicos as expressed by campaign operative Richard Jemmons in the film Primary Colors: "That's what these guys do. They love you and then stop lovin' you."


UPDATE: Just found this email excerpt from CM Evans to me dated almost exactly four years ago in which she writes a bio to be used in a panel for which she recommended me. Unlike other email correspondence from around that same time, she does not write that this was to be "off the record," so I'm assuming it is okay to quote her, especially since she is a public official. Aw, hell, what am I thinking? Of course, it is okay to quote her because these words went public in February 2011 anyway:

Mike Byrd is a resident of the Salemtown neighborhood in North Nashville. He writes one of the most prominent local blogs, Enclave, that covers neighborhood, local and regional issues. As an astute observer of Metro Government, Mike is responsible for breaking more than a few stories.

 I guess it wouldn't have sounded as good in 2011 if she recommended me as "some blogger."



UPDATE: I was working through and weeding out my direct messages on Twitter and I found another past exchange between CM Emily Evans and myself that once again defies her more recent treatment of me as a trivial bete noire in the local political sphere.

Our direct messages involved me asking for her advice on a panel discussion to which I had been invited in 2010, along with a couple of other local bloggers. I obscured the names and positions of other individuals we discussed because the point I want to make is not about them but about her supportive expressions of my use of social media. Here is a redacted screen shot of the exchange:

I was not always just "some blogger" in her eyes.

Everyone is entitled to change their opinions of others, but since Emily Evans is out there publicly making negative assessments of what I do in social media, I intend to continue to try and balance the record with her more positive, remarkably candid comments.

Nashville said to be possibly taking a giant leap ahead on Tuesday (but likely leaving North Nashville behind)

The Obama Administration is reportedly going to roll out its 2015 budget today, and the Mayor's minions are all abuzz that POTUS may drop $75 million on Karl Dean to run his bus rapid transit line down West End almost to Belle Meade. The excitement and the predictable blowback at Hizzoner's self-imposed blindness catalyzed by power and money has gone national:

For Nashville, the backlash calls to mind a recent battle over the planning of the city's half-billion-dollar convention center, which opened in May, and was a cornerstone of the administration of Dean, the second-term Democrat who has the support of the chamber of commerce and the business community writ large. Some residents and elected officials derided the project as a publicly funded gift for tourists. A similar line of attack has been heard over the particular route planners chose for the Amp.

"This bus gets the tourists from downtown to the nicer restaurant/bar district," as one elected official recently put it. "The concept is: we're not building a transit system for Nashvillians. We're building a fun bus to run tourists out to West End and the cool bars."

If President Obama does award Karl Dean a huge grant to build a new transit line for a corridor that needs it less than any point north or south of downtown, it will merely the latest stanza in the dirge I sing for the support I once held for Barack Obama.

The President's stimulus package, if properly funded, could have been a dramatic turnaround for our nation's cities and our national workforce. It was constricted by a leader who has preached the virtues of bringing the unrepentant, uncivil GOP along.

Obamacare is not much more than Romneycare.

Federal education policy has been directed at privatizing public schools and managing high-stakes testing with an eye to giving big business more control in school districts.

Our foreign policy continues to be marred by Bushian tactics, including the civil-rights-violating detention of prisoners. Mr. Obama's drone-slaughters of civilian targets have far exceeded anything Dubya ever did.

And now, instead of granting rapid transit in working-class communities or in neighborhoods predominated by people of color, President Obama may reward Nashville for serving the entertainment and tourism industries one more time before Karl Dean leaves by subsidizing party buses to run visitors to-and-from their hotels, bars and honky tonks quickly.

A President who has been more comfortable serving up tepid Republican pablum may enable a Democratic Mayor who is himself a nice fit for red-state, neo-liberal Tennessee politics.

If Nashville wins this grant today, then it could complete Karl Dean's tenure of serving Nashville's wealthy and influential while leaving communities like North Nashville behind. The Amp is the perfect compliment to the Music City Center. If funded it will be a subsidized pleasure line on which tourists can depend.

And those who make promises that it is only the first step in BRT extended to underserved communities cannot back up those promises. Despite their empty promises, they are going to stand by this Mayor to the end. It's not illogical. If you want to play, he's the game in town. However, Mayor Dean--being term-limited and having higher political aspirations--will never have to be accountable to deliver on those promises.

If the federal government does come through, I predict that in a few years, when we're told there is no more grant money and the budget is too overextended to serve places like North Nashville, Amp supporters will be eating their promises. The best thing that can happen now to bring everything and everyone in Nashville back down to earth is that Obama finds another neo-liberal Mayor elsewhere to support in 2015.


UPDATE:  The Obama transit dept. is recommending $27 million next year for the Amp. If approved it is a little more than 1/3 of what the Mayor's Office wants. So, which 1/3 of the project will get built and which 2/3's waits to see if federal money shows up in 2016, 2017, 2018? Downtown to West End gets BRT first? Without $75 million in 2015, how much longer does North Nashville have to wait for its promised bus rapid transit lines to materialize?

Also, consider this one: “Evidence suggests expanded rail operations produce higher ridership gains than more bus service.” There is a reason the BRT grant is called "Small Starts". It is not nearly as bold as rail, which would create more ridership. The fact that BRT is cheaper, but limited to the hotel and entertainment corridor suggests that the Mayor's Office not only plays it safe in choosing locations, but does so on the cheap. Rail would have made a bolder, more attractive statement.

Club owner and real estate developer acknowledges that he set the timeline for Metro to follow on the ballpark

Staying out of politics? Sounds fishy.

It is an old story. Developers play their hands close to the vest in order to leverage the best deal they can from the other parties involved. A developer sets a deadline and we have to take him at his word unless we want to try and expose a bluff; doing so itself a risk.

And once again, this time at old Sulphur Dell, a developer has the upper hand in determining the fates of our local community.

Yesterday another shoe dropped in the stealthed saga of building a ballpark at Sulphur Dell. The Nashville Scene tells us that the motive for the Mayor's Office pushing this deal through is based on the position of the Nashville Sounds owner and real estate developer (what a one-two punch!) Frank Ward that he will not kick in what the Mayor sees as his share for development ($50 million) of the project if the deal is not done by December 31. But get this: he will not address the concerns of the unwashed masses because he prefers "to stay out of politics":

"So there's a timing issue there," he says. "Would I buy the land without a stadium being there? No"....

Administration officials say they're confident he will proceed with the private development, citing (frequently) his background in real estate. But Ward insists that keeping the project on track affects all the parties involved.

"There are a lot of balls in the air, and to all of a sudden let's call timeout, I think, would have drastic effects on everything that's trying to be accomplished," he says.

Asked about concerns that the public might not have time to weigh in on the project, Ward balks.

"I prefer to stay out of the politics," he says.

Got it? With the right hand, the club owner seems to be discouraging vital, but messy democracy and a more public process of community development and urban planning. But with the left hand, he insists that he is not engaging in politics. I would argue that discouraging public participation in the planning of a new ballpark is in fact very much staying in politics. It is the community planning equivalent of voter suppression. I would also argue the ignoring community concerns (especially those raised in October at the Farmers' Market) is a form of politics that developers exercise all the time to keep the upper hand in financial dealings.

The Mayor's Office insists that they can find someone else to assume the $50 million development cost if Mr. Ward does not follow through (he is under no contractual obligation to do so). If they are being honest with us, then why does Metro have to shrink its timeline to accommodate a developer who may not even pay the $50 million if the ballpark is approved before Dec. 31? Who is actually in charge here?

And while you ponder that one, consider this: the argument that the Mayor's Office makes about being easily able to find developers to pony up tens of millions lost if this developer balks is like the position it took during construction of Music City Center. Reality at the convention center has been different. Karl Dean now uses tax abatements to lure developers, costing us more money for his huge brick-and-mortar prize.

I'm an avid baseball fan. I've been a loyal supporter of the Nashville Sounds ball club for two decades. I've attended games. I've been a season ticket holder. I've given them free publicity by blogging them. I don't see that support changing in the future. Developers are after all, perennially going to act like developers. Baseball will still be baseball.

And believe you me, as a Salemtown property owner I am committed to seeing smart, balanced growth in my neighborhood, prompted by more walkable options here.

However, when the ball club decides it wants to be my neighbor and when it asks for special treatment and exceptions in the community planning process without addressing my questions on how their changes are going to affect my family's quality of life, I am not going to go along quietly with them. To passively go along with the ball club when so much substance is at stake would be to engage in politics.



UPDATE: Nashville Scene follows up on the story with news that an amendment will be introduced to obligate the Sounds to pay a penalty each year the $50 million tract of land stays undeveloped. I tend to believe that developers always ought to be obligated to put skin the game if they are serious about making money.

The aspirations of Megan Barry: how has being a cautious progressive helped her?

I am a recovering supporter of Megan Barry, so I took some interest in a recent Tennessean editorial on her bid to woo the business class kingmakers over at their reportedly favorite watering hole. First, erstwhile journo Bruce Dobie claims that the suits are fretting about their choices next time for Mayor. Before droning on about Barry, I have to point out that there is a certain irony in Dobie maintaining that these are the people who actually do the choosing of executives to run county government--votes be damned--and yet, their own system has left them without a candidate to run county government.

But I digress:

Second, progressive goo-goo [a.k.a., "good-government"] front-runner Megan Barry makes them nervous.

Barry, a Metro Councilwoman, has been the most public and out-front candidate to date. A resident of the not-so-mean streets of Belmont-Hillsboro, Nashville’s ground zero for left-leaning politics, Barry is known for successfully sponsoring a workplace anti-discrimination measure for the city’s gay and lesbian communities. She also was the force behind the proposal for Metro Government workers to receive a “living wage.”

Such accomplishments have prompted the Jimmy Kelly’s biz crowd to order a second martini and continue the search.

Dobie goes on to compare CM Barry to blast-from-the-past Betty Nixon because both appear to have the same genitalia as well as interest in being Mayor (in the interest of fairness, why didn't Dobie bring up a "youthful" mayoral candidate from the past to compare to Jeremy Kane?).

Without fail, Dobie falls back on that dated label of "goo-goo" to compare the two. Of course, he has in past columns mentioned Ludye Wallace as a favorite of good-government types, a claim that is a laugh riot to some of us "goo-goos" who have actually been Ludye's constituents. Dobie's dependency on a twenty-year-old term, as Ms. Nixon pointed out this week, is practically archaic. It also may show that he is more in touch with the bar at Jimmy Kelly's than he is with politics unfolding on the ground in Nashville.

While I am not cynical enough to label CM Barry's initiatives as symbolically liberal, they do strike this observer as incremental at best. Her living wage plan upset some council conservatives, but it did not help more than a dozen folks who work for Metro government. What about the many who were not as lucky as those few? Likewise, she hammered home demands of nondiscrimination against Metro employees, but she was barely a blip on the radar when the question turned to nondiscrimination for private companies contracting with Metro government.

Any credit she might get from me for taking boldish stands on strictly social-progressive issues is overwhelmed by my memories of her support of the conservative growth policies of Karl Dean. She voted for the new regressive stormwater fee structure that charged property owners who created less stormwater (mostly residential) more than those who generated more stormwater (mostly business). After going through the motions of holding a couple of community meetings on the proposed Music City Convention Center, she supported the largest capital project in Metro history without making any demands on the Mayor or leveraging progressive perimeters for the project. She supported Hizzoner's bid to tear down the State Fairgrounds and to sell all but a sliver off to wealthy private developers, which would have had the double-barreled effect of eradicating a working class entertainment venue and of making some potential campaign donors even more wealth. Megan Barry has mimicked, over and over, Karl Dean's market-driven habits of governance.

And where has it all brought her now that she is facing down the Jimmy Kelly's deciders? They still do not trust her.

Megan Barry has never remotely resembled a populist progressive concerned about class disparities, quality employment, equal opportunities for working people or the alienating effects of unfettered gentrification in urban areas. She has never even taken a stand as a "loyal opponent" of the Dean administration. She stays close to the social issues that are stylish among Nashville top-shelf progressives: the rights of women, equality for gays and lesbians, immigration opportunities. Granted, those kinds of issues do not risk the primary flow of money and power in Nashville; or at least they are not as risky as are unflinching looks at unequal growth, environmental justice, power imbalances in land development and class inequities. In my opinion, any future Nashville mayor worth her salt has to have taken some risks toward the left. I do not see that level of boldness in CM Barry's resume.

I don't know if Megan Barry would have been able to pull together a coalition giving her higher levels of popular votes to offset any donation losses she might have experienced by being even a part-time populist. I do see that being a full-time social progressive in lock-step with Karl Dean is not pulling her any closer to the Mayor's Office she covets. As conservative as she has been, she is still not conservative enough for the suits.

When I read "Courtney Wheeler, top aide in the Mayor's 2 election campaigns, now heads the Office of Neighborhoods" I think ...

... "neighborhoods are nothing more than campaign stops and potential pools of human capital to help Karl Dean's acquire his next office".

Courtney Wheeler is a lawyer and political operative with no listed neighborhood-related experience that I could find. From her LinkedIn resume:

Special Assistant
Mayor Karl Dean
January 2013 – Present (3 months) Nashville
Voter Protection Coordinator
Obama for America
Nonprofit; 1001-5000 employees; Political Organization industry
January 2012 – November 2012 (11 months)
Campaign Manager
Karl Dean for Mayor Re-Elect
February 2011 – August 2011 (7 months)
Director of Special Projects
Democratic National Committee
Nonprofit; 201-500 employees; Political Organization industry
August 2010 – January 2011 (6 months)
Deputy Campaign Manager
Karl Dean for Mayor
January 2007 – July 2007 (7 months)
Political Director
Jim Davis for Governor
2005 – 2006 (1 year)
Political Director
Tennessee Democratic Party
Nonprofit; 1-10 employees; Political Organization industry
2004 – 2005 (1 year)
Delegate Tracker
John Kerry for President
Nonprofit; 1001-5000 employees; Political Organization industry
2004 – 2004 (less than a year)
Field Director TN and MD
John Kerry for President
Nonprofit; 1001-5000 employees; Political Organization industry
August 2003 – March 2004 (8 months)
Campaign Manager for Rep. Jim Hackworth and Rep. Dennis Ferguson
Tennessee Coordinated Campaign
July 2002 – November 2002 (5 months)

Yeah. I'd say the Office of Neighborhoods is probably going to be run like a high-stakes campaign war room for the next few years (generating spin control, mobilizing volunteers, serving as an early warning system for the candidate, etc) instead of coordinating effective delivery of Metro services to the neighborhoods. Otherwise, why not appoint someone who has had more experience with neighborhoods?

Hizzoner does not even project due diligence in hiring qualified, experienced individuals for Metro posts. This one oozes naked cynicism and opportunism.

A largely forgotten Southern history

Myles Horton & Paulo Freire at Tennessee's
Highlander Folk School. Highlander was
an organizational midwife to the
Civil Rights Movement.

I am a recovering electoral politics nerd, so I am less interested in what The New Yorker's George Packer has to say this week about the slipping grip the South has on partisan brinksmanship in Washington than I am in his comments on broader cultural politics:

Solidity has always been the South’s strength, and its weakness. The same Southern lock that once held the Democratic Party now divides the Republican Party from the socially liberal, fiscally moderate tendencies of the rest of America. The Southern bloc in the House majority ... has no chance of enacting an agenda, and it’s unlikely to produce a nationally popular figure.

As its political power declines, the South might occupy a place like Scotland’s in the United Kingdom, as a cultural draw for the rest of the country, with a hint of the theme park. Country music and nascar remain huge ....

Southern political passions have always been rooted in sometimes extreme ideas of morality, which has meant, in recent years, abortion and school prayer. But there is a largely forgotten Southern history, beyond the well-known heroics of the civil-rights movement, of struggle against poverty and injustice, led by writers, preachers, farmers, rabble-rousers, and even politicians, speaking a rich language of indignation. The region is not entirely defined by Jim DeMint, Sam Walton, and the Tide’s A J McCarron. It would be better for America as well as for the South if Southerners rediscovered their hidden past and took up the painful task of refashioning an identity that no longer inspires their countrymen.

In the gaps that open between doctrinaire red-state conservatives and torpid social progressives there is an understated legacy of left-wing populism in the South that needs to be rekindled for the sake of social change regardless of who has control of Congress.

Hate mail

I give you a comment to me, copied to others from Molly McCluer--resident of Salemtown since 2010 and president of the neighborhood association for the past five months--which ended a long, parsing diatribe against an email I originally addressed to a developer (who then forwarded to her):

McCluer & Mayor on SNNA website

your chronic adversarial approach to any and every issue you can conjure up is harming Salemtown, and has led to the almost complete disintegration of [Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association] by the end of 2011. You are using the community to entertain yourself at others’ significant expense; you need to stop it, and do a lot of full-time soul-searching , rather than combing old emails and trolling anyplace you can find, to trigger the arguments you crave.  You are hurting Salemtown, and you need to stop it now.

This is not the first time I have received hate mail because I blogged something someone did not agree with, but it was the first time someone has accused me of dividing an association to which I have devoted so much time, energy, and money. If I were going to destroy it why would invest so much of myself in it? If I were going to bring down Salemtown Neighbors why not impugn it, attack it publicly on a regular basis in the past 18 months? I have a blog, after all.

As one who has served in various leadership positions in SNNA for years, I can testify that there were many reasons why 2011 was a down year for the association, and the actions of one person had little to do with that. If I blogged something toxic about the organization in 2011 I do not recall it. And I do not believe I pointed any fingers on this blog for SNNA setbacks. Rushing to scapegoat another individual for association problems makes no sense to me.

However, I was not going to blog on Ms. McCluer's personal attack until I found out that I was added to the business agenda of the last neighborhood association meeting at the last minute (the agenda emailed to the membership beforehand did not have me on it). Because of a previous commitment to my daughter I could not attend the meeting, but others who were there told me that Ms. McCluer brought me up unexpectedly and commented on me in ways that made them uncomfortable.

Then I received the meeting minutes from the SNNA secretary, in which Ms. McCluer's personal issues with me became a part of the permanent record of the association:

Molly addressed the group re: Mike Byrd’s blog that had negatively referred to Mike Kenner, developer of 5th & Coffee. The blog suggested that there was deception on Mike Kenner’s part to build LEED certified homes in order to obtain a variance to move forward with the development.

• Mike Kenner [principal with Kenner McLean Development who lives in Sylvan Heights], developer of 5th & Coffee property asked to address the group. He apologized for any misunderstanding but he made it clear that he never discussed building LEED certified homes in Salemtown. He builds “green”, Energy Star homes. LEED is too costly for the Salemtown neighborhood. He prides himself on being neighborhood friendly.
• A SNNA member commented that anyone’s personal blog does not represent or speak for SNNA.

I responded in no uncertain terms to the secretary that I never claimed to speak for anyone else on the blog and that I believe that this is the first time in the organization's 8-year history (much of which I have promoted in 7 years of blogging) that a member's questions about a developer have been written negatively into the SNNA minutes, which are supposed to record association business. There were no motions on me passed or approved, in fact, members present that night tell me that they openly questioned the negative comments about me (their feedback was not recorded into the minutes).

Needless to say, I am less-than-satisfied by all of this baseless spanking by an association officer on behalf of a developer. If she were not president, this would be going down a whole different way. She would have written her hate mail and it would have ended there. Unfortunately, the personal animosity continues as SNNA business.

The kicker for me: I voted for her at last year's SNNA elections. No good deed goes unpunished.

My hair cut

I have had the same barber for 20 years now. That's longer than my first marriage and still ahead of my second marriage. He's an affable guy, and we talk about lots of things: our families, trips, sports, the nature of hair, but our conversations regularly visit politics. He's firmly moderate. I never really pull out the stops like I do online or with wiseguys, so our political chats are good-natured and agreeable even as I claim to be farther to the left of anyone in the shop.

Today he was telling me about a bad boat accident in Tampa several years ago involving a major bridge that killed several people. He explained that since then whenever large commercial boats pass under the bridge they must have one particular individual, a man assigned by the federal government, on board to make sure they navigate the channel under the bridge safely. No boat can pass without him. My barber was amazed at this man's power.

I replied, "The Libertarians would not like that at all."

He looked at me quizzically. "What's a Libertarian?"

I said, "They're those people who believe that anything that the government does (sometimes with the exception of military defense) is bad. They believe that we should cut back government programs and depend on the 'free market,' which they say can take care of everything. They hate government regulations, so I'm pretty sure they would hate the idea of one g-man overseeing the navigation process."

He shook his head. "Oh, yeah. Those guys. That's just crazy. I have to tell you, I used to work in an ambulance company, and it would be total chaos if the government didn't tightly regulate the paramedics. Go over to the hospital. The medical staff will tell you it is good thing that paramedics have standards they have to follow. No way would they put up with different paramedics following different procedures."

I interrupted him, "So, would it be sort of like 'Mother, Jugs and Speed'"?

He shot back, "Yeah! Can you imagine Bill Cosby bringing in patients to VUMC? Ambulance drivers would be doing just what they needed to do to make money and that would be it. They would be cutting corners and taking risks with other people's lives. Nothing would stop them from selling drugs if they wanted to.

He segued to his current projession: "Even I'm regulated when I cut hair and I don't mind. Someone has to make sure that people are doing the right thing and not taking advantage of others just to make a buck. The free market can't make sure because its purpose is only to help us make the bucks. Who has time to make sure that every business isn't taking them for a ride?  I don't have that kind of time. That's why we elect a government: to do things we aren't able to."

I thought it was interesting that my not-so-liberal barber was able to articulate 2 or 3 activities that would break down into atavistic, avaricious chaos if a progressive government were not around to keep human flaws in check. Whenever I hear Libertarians speak they rarely address specifics, instead attacking the "nanny state" in vague generalities without any reference to the harm human beings can do other human beings outside of wicked government.

My barber is much more politically savvy.

What counts today as front-page journalism at the Tennessean

There are so many stories of import to our local communities that the local daily could have put on the front page today. What did they lead with? Klout scores.

Do you know what Klout is? No? You don't count then.

Jesus! Well, you gotta have Klout this instant! 

The highest attainable Klout score, 100, is owned by only Justin Bieber. If he is the ideal you strive for you got to go out and get more Klout now. Don't wait. Never mind that this is the "next big thing" marketed to a fickle clientele that yesterday preached that you needed a stable of Facebook friends, a bevy of Foursquare badges, and whatever else you do, GetGlue.

But I'll wager that this Tennessean story has nothing to do with reporting news and more to do with what seems to be a pattern which I noted last August of the newspaper picking and promoting the voices in local social media it assumes to be legitimate. Instead of conducting investigative journalism to excavate news that actually affects us, the Tennessean is using these select voices to promote itself and, admittedly, "to protect its brand". The editorial thrust at the Tennessean seems to be networking and generating a web of influence that will support Gannett's corporate wish list. In September a Tennessean editor even indicated that one of the reasons her company sponsors a local social media conference was to poach other companies' employees.

If you are focused on rising up the pecking order of influence in this town, the Tennessean is defining how you can do that and providing you free publicity fluff as you do. In the mean time, the newspaper is ignoring legitimate local news and is generating a vacuum that those of us who are not plugged in are going to have to step into if we want to disseminate news and information here. And the fact that the Tennessean is defining which voices count most in Nashville's echo chamber of influence makes our work that much more marginalized, and hence, that much harder.

But if Justin Bieber is your ideal and you want some clout at the local paper, you got to have your Klout this instant.

What separates Democrats from Republicans?

The fact that a goofball like Michele Bachman has a few dumb ideas doesn't mean much, in the scheme of things. What is meaningful is the fact that the belief in total deregulation and pure capitalism is still the political mainstream not just in the Tea Party, not even just among Republicans, but pretty much everywhere on the American political spectrum to the right of Bernie Sanders.

--Matt Taibbi, Griftopia

I'm still surprised when I hear people whom I consider bright, who call themselves progressive robotically repeat cliches about government getting out of the way of business. The Tea Party is more mainstream than many would care to admit.

At the business end of Guns N' Roses

It doesn't really matter if you like this aging hard rock band or not. Whether you have tickets to see them this weekend at publicly-owned Bridgestone Arena or not, it's all good.

The real question is how much bling do you think the Nashville Predators will make off this non-hockey event that should have been going into Metro Nashville coffers in these tight budget times? How many revenues originally pledged to pay for Metro services like schools, libraries, and parks in order to land an NHL club will be going into hockey club owners' pockets?

Nashville "non-profit" Entrepreneur Center receives millions in government subsidies, and then "counterprotests" Occupy Wall Street

Shorter Entrepreneur Center social media content strategy.

I blogged on the Occupy Wall Street occupations almost 2 weeks ago, about 10 days after they started in New York City. By then Occupy groups were spreading around the country, including cities in Tennessee. Today a poll came out showing that a majority of Americans know about #OWS and more view it favorably than negatively. This movement is looking increasingly like the protests for reform and revolutionary democracy that have encircled the globe since the "Arab Spring" earlier this year.

Another indication that #OWS is gaining momentum is the knee-jerk way they are attacked not just by right-wing political groups, but by other organizations not known for sniping in political debates. Take Nashville's Entrepreneur Center. For some unacknowledged, inexplicable reason the Entrepreneur Center decided to "counterprotest" Occupy Wall Street by trying to encourage its 2,000 Twitter followers to tweet against #OWS with a hashtag (#Iamthe53) originally promoted by an arch-conservative redstate.com blogger. The Entrepreneur Center's twitter stream issued a curiously polarizing battle cry:

What exactly does the Entrepreneur Center stand for again?

And the surprisingly unabashed partisanship and callousness toward dissenters, who have the right to assemble and demand industry reforms, was only the first problem for what should be a more neutral resource center for small businesses.

The counterprotest posturing is also problematic because the Entrepreneur Center, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, just received one of the largest grants from the federal government Economic Development Administration in Tennessee history ($2.5 MILLION). That money is designated by the federal government for flood recovery, but in effect it also alleviates the center of costs it might incur by continuing its private mission in Rolling Mill Hill development. This list of heavy-hitters in venture capitalism, the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, law, and health care suggests that the Entrepreneur Center is not hurting for money or influence.

This appears to be an influential special interest organization, subsidized by our tax dollars, taking a side against ordinary people who themselves are trying to leverage wider opportunities for other ordinary people at the grassroots because they themselves do not have the financial resources so readily available to wealthy EC leaders. EC counterprotesters are obviously willing to beg federal grant money that the rest of us help pay, that allows them to organize their increased resources to maintain political influence. However, rather than being satisfied with what they have they begrudge others--many of whom have been cut out of the system--for mobilizing the only shared resources they have: the masses who push for social change from the bottom.

When I pointed these problems out to the unidentified Entrepreneur Center social media manager tweeting on Friday and asked for an inventory of corporate welfare they were receiving from taxpayer dollars, all I received back was a reiteration of their company's stated goal:

So, again if their purpose is to aid entrepreneurs with their businesses, what business does the Entrepreneur Center have taking sides in social protest through social media while promoting conservative Republican attempts to torpedo Occupy Wall Street?

As I write this, #OccupyNashville is camped at Legislative Plaza near the state capitol in a departure from the focus of other Occupy groups, which are trying to occupy economic institutions (like the Wall Street financial district). Since so many protest groups hold their demonstrations at Legislative Plaza, Nashville's occupiers look merely like another in a long string of protesters, including the Tea Party. I am clueless and puzzled by why Legislative Plaza was chosen, when it seems to dilute the difference this movement intends to make.

Changing the system cannot start with protesting government, because corporations own government. Legislative Plaza seems to be a diversion. Might I suggest that a good place to take the Occupy Nashville protest would actually be places like the Entrepreneur Center where movers and shakers are. The idea of flood recovery money going to a business special interest group that is now attempting to counter dissent is dramatic, and it underscores the caste system dragging our country to hell. The dissent needs to be registered at places like 105 Broadway, Suite 200, Entrepreneur Center central, because the non-profit entrepreneurs seem to be inviting a fight.


UPDATE: I just found out from City Paper reporter, Joey Garrison (who is doing a story on the Entrepreneur Center's "counterprotest"), that EC has scrubbed their #iamthe53 tweets from their Twitter stream (there was a second one blaming stock market uncertainty on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Bill and Barack Obama's health care initiative). Fortunately, I saved a screenshot of the EC tweets, because I've seen this happen too many times. You can view their tweets in the middle of the post above. I have never understood why people who delve into social media think that you can simply wipe a dubious history out of existence. Their counterprotest really happened, and I have the shot above to prove it.


UPDATE: When contacted by Garrison, the Entrepreneur Center's PR specialist did not acknowledge the partisan tweets or claim any error in their communications tactics. He did equivocate and walk back the non-profit's earlier stridency:

“Within the bigger context of economic development and job creation, there is frustration across the country about the status of the economy,” Clay Jackson, the entrepreneur center’s director of marketing and communications told The City Paper. “The Occupy Wall Street protests, as such to me, are very undefined as far as what their goals are.”

Jackson seemed to downplay taking sides in the ongoing protests.

“The [Entrepreneur Center] stands behind people who are trying to create jobs and build companies,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s a side for us to fall on within that debate. If you see us as weighing in, it’s weighing in on the side of people who are trying to create jobs, to build great companies.”

Blah, blah, as such to me, blah, blah. That obfuscation seemed to provide the perfect hazy background for a blog post at the Entrepreneur Center site (like the tweets, anonymously written) which transformed the non-profit's social media content from hard-right hippy hater to granola-crunching tree-hugger merely observing Occupy Wall Street:

The national dialogue about Occupy Wall Street, greed and profits creates an excellent opportunity to talk about social entrepreneurs ....

Many people aren’t aware of “social enterprises,” or “social entrepreneurs”, so I’d like to elaborate. Social enterprises run the gamut of donation and grant driven non-profits to corporations that adhere to the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit.

Social enterprises are “mission-based” organizations as opposed to pure profit-based organizations and as a result of progressive businesses like Ben and Jerry’s, Toms Shoe’s, and local example Magdalene, Inc, (Thistle Farms), social entrepreneurs are changing the world.

At the EC, one of our 4 key verticals is social entrepreneurship, because building good businesses also requires building businesses that do good. The status quo of the pure profit driven corporation has changed a lot over the past several decades, and some of the greatest innovation is created by social entrepreneurs who build businesses that do good.

Commence organization re-branding. A couple of us tried to hash out EC's about-face on Twitter with the blogger, who proceeded to invite us to support the non-profit's "green" initiatives while still failing to answer my questions about how much federal, state, and local welfare they receive for their "mission".

Excuse my cynicism, but does the Entrepreneur Center's flip-flop seem convenient to any one else, given the timing of the City Paper story?

The inept left

I've said it over and over again: the shallow, milquetoast liberalism restricted to progressivism on social issues (identity and gender issues, for instance) and hobbled by dependence on partisan Democrats will never be a broadly inclusive movement. It can never be more than a limited, status quo echo ignoring basic reform of power structures and larger visions of justice.

But don't take my word for it. A history professor provided a comparison of American populism, left and right, in last weekend's New York Times, and he effectively articulates the limits of liberals that block progressive goals:

the left must realize that when progressives achieved success in the past, whether at organizing unions or fighting for equal rights, they seldom bet their future on politicians. They fashioned their own institutions — unions, women’s groups, community and immigrant centers and a witty, anti-authoritarian press — in which they spoke up for themselves and for the interests of wage-earning Americans.

Today, such institutions are either absent or reeling. With unions embattled and on the decline, working people of all races lack a sturdy vehicle to articulate and fight for the vision of a more egalitarian society. Liberal universities, Web sites and non-governmental organizations cater mostly to a professional middle class and are more skillful at promoting social causes like legalizing same-sex marriage and protecting the environment than demanding millions of new jobs that pay a living wage.

A reconnection with ordinary Americans is vital not just to defeating conservatives in 2012 and in elections to come. Without it, the left will remain unable to state clearly and passionately what a better country would look like and what it will take to get there. To paraphrase the labor martyr Joe Hill, the left should stop mourning its recent past and start organizing to change the future.

I've been told before that a local journalist once described me as "to-the-left-of-left". If the reporter said that to my face I would reply that there is not much left here to be left of. There is no popular movement for challenging the system. I may be "to-the-left-of-left" but it is meaningless relative to what passes for progressivism: fractured, reactive and desperate; dependent on party wonks and politicians who could take or leave movements or the interests of regular people.

One eyewitness's snapshot of the Nashville power structures during desegregation

The 54th anniversary of the desegregation of Nashville public schools is upon us. I have been reflecting on that tumultuous history and catching up on accounts of the time. I came across this interview with one of my favorite authors, Will Campbell, a white preacher and writer who acted as a kind of scout for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He has some interesting insights not just on how the entrenched wealthy class in Nashville used poor whites to do their dirty work, but also on the influence of the news media within the halls of municipal government:

[Benjamin] Houston: Where do you think that the power was in Nashville, based on your behind-the-scenes understanding? Where were the bases of power in Nashville in terms of running the city? ....

Campbell: A man who was the chairman of the board of trustees at Vanderbilt University was the publisher of the Nashville Banner.

Houston: [James G.] Stahlman.

Campbell: Jimmy Stahlman. He was by far the most powerful man in Nashville. He had allies, certainly, in high places, but that's partly because those allies were the ones who had stock in the Nashville Banner and he was beholden to them, the Nashville Life and Accident Insurance Company and so on. The governor at that time [Frank G. Clement], he was a good man who just wanted the controversy to all go away. He did not want protests to be happening, but he knew that he couldn't stop it.

Houston: You have commented elsewhere that politics in Nashville were fairly modern for their time in the 1950s, and yet the social and cultural mentality was much more conservative. Can you elaborate on that dynamic?

Campbell: What was it, ten or twelve, the Fugitives?

Houston: Twelve, the Agrarians.

Campbell: Yes, who were intellectuals, and they were widely respected. People would say, "he is a great poet, he is a great man, a great writer." And they couldn't go on to say, "but he is a bigot. He doesn't like black people, and he doesn't like poor people." That's another thing that troubles me . . .  Whites didn't realize that the very people who were recruiting them for the White Citizens' Council wouldn't wipe their feet on them, and used them only for their cause.

Have the power alignments and the tools of wealth in post-segregation Nashville changed much since 1957?

The Arriola and the Tahoe

Founder of organization that "partners" with Metro Schools says Stand for Children pays for political influence

Stand for Children has endorsed Karl Dean for Mayor, and it benefits from a partnership with the Mayor's Office, the Metro Nashville Public School District, and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce under the boundary-obfuscating umbrella, "One Nashville." Questions have been raised here about SFC's role in local politics, and SFC has defended itself against those questions.

I'm not sure that the local office can as easily deflect news that their national CEO admitted to an audience a few days ago that SFC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a handful of Illinois state races and backed down labor unions (the latter statement he has apologized for). The video that includes Stand for Children CEO Jonathan Edelman selling a Colorado audience on how his organization was boss in Illinois:





So, the logical questions at this point for Nashvillians include: will Stand for Children Tennessee and the Nashville branch itself be using "the best insider and minority lobbyists" to "jam their proposals down our throats"? Will SFC use the networks of students and parents it has been organizing under the pretense of fully funding schools and improving public education to check teacher unions and push agendas that benefit the Nashville Chamber of Commerce or Karl Dean?

Nashville's "single portal" for public schools promotes SFC

Will Stand for Children attempt to "go to war" here rather than work collaboratively on education legislation that promotes the common good? Will they be threatening to go out and find candidates to bankroll who support their legislative steamrolls?

Asking these questions is not accusing the Nashville chapter of guilt by association. Edelman is the CEO of Stand for Children. He is the guy who prompts their mission, develops their strategy and gives them their marching orders. Stand for Children endorsed Karl Dean, who is running practically unopposed, and in so doing they endorsed his commitments to building a school system in service to big business and his commitments to privatizing public education. Would they go as far as Edelman did to realize the Dean vision for public schools?

As a public school PTO member, I intend to keep an eye on how Stand for Children reps engage our organization. I intend to pay attention to what they prompt us to do and to whether they listen to feedback. I have concerns that their partnership with the Mayor's Office and the Chamber may dictate and filter community feedback they are open to. I also have concerns that they may pay to play school board and council members. I do not trust the notion of education policy developed through a single portal constructed by the Courthouse elite. And I intend to protest loud and long at the slightest whiff of what SFC's CEO pulled in Illinois.

In Memphis, SFC is holding a workshop "to help people (ages 13-18) become leaders in their schools." The devil is in the details of what their brand of leadership entails. Let's hope that it is not an Edelman model of leadership. In Nashville, SFC lobbies us to vote them up in rankings for a quarter of a million dollars under the auspices of "children having their very own community organizer for better schools":





Getting more money may or may not provide our kids their own community organizer. But it will definitely give SFC even more influence than they have as a partner in One Nashville and as a strong player on the political scene.

Briley's advice to the outgoing Metro Council regarding David Torrence

Former CM at-Large David Briley is concerned about the council's replacement of a clerk so close to the last meeting of this council's term before a new council takes over:

So, how does the city figure out who will take the job seriously when it replaces the Criminal Court Clerk? Making sure the process is open to everyone interested is essential. Having the Bar associations review the applicants is a good step. Appointing an independent group to establish some desirable qualifications, then review and rank the applicants could help. There’s probably no single answer to this question but there are plenty of ways to subject the process to more than just political deal making.

As it currently stands, the Council is on a path to select a replacement for the Criminal Court Clerk about 30 days after his anticipated resignation. That Council election could occur on the last scheduled meeting of this Council’s term. At least 15 of the Council Members voting at that meeting will not be returning for the next term. If history is any indicator, the number will be greater. None of these departing Council Members will have to justify their vote to a constituent. They will all have moved on if there is a problem. Having the Metro Council select a replacement for the Criminal Court Clerk on its last meeting of a term is a dangerous, political thing to do.

Briley also provides a checklist of suggestions after the jump. It bears noting that while the departing CMs do not have to be accountable for their vote to constituents, they also do not have to pander in order to keep their seats.

Serializing with a CM

CM Jamie Hollin was kind enough to invite me to participate in his project to discuss Nashville politics, "inside baseball". This is the first installment of our ongoing chat. It was fun:





The news media has passed word of this project along, but it seems like the outlets covering are using it as an excuse to re-warm an intern's smart phone video of cussing in a parking garage.

Content from Metro Inside Baseball and feedback can also be found on Twitter and on Facebook.

Dean doubles communications staff "to serve the needs of the media"

The pipeline leading from newsrooms to the pistons of government is alive and well in Nashville, given Karl Dean's hiring last week of Bonna Johnson as his Press Secretary. Johnson left the Tennessean last April to become a Public Relations Manager (no surprise there, since today's brand of journalism many times has more to do with spin and flackery than with critical questioning and unflinching reporting). Now she's carrying Karl Dean's message back to her former colleagues at the Tennessean who will no doubt continue the brainwashing that prompted them to make him their "Tennessean of the Year." At the same time, the Gannett kids will get someone close to the Mayor who can influence things for them if necessary. Looks like there will be a good chance for mutual back scratching.

In the meantime it is reasonable to ask: does Johnson's hiring catapult communications office expenses to unnecessary heights in this recession? Karl Dean has been burning Metro revenues with multiple hires of former employees of Phil Bredesen in an attempt to shore up his administration in preparation for a statewide run in 4 years. Given that the Mayor annually requires Metro departments to cut their budgets, why isn't he demanding the same from his own office? We know what dedicating a single staff member to fondle handle the media will mean to the Mayor's elections aspirations, but are the "needs of the media" really worth what we're going to pay Bonna Johnson to spoon feed newspeak back to us for the paycheck? I guess it beats overpaying those former journos at McNeely Pigott & Fox for shoveling us similar Pablum.

Depends on whose council member is being gored

During his tenure as a Metro beat reporter first at the City Paper and then at the Tennessean, I do not remember a discouraging word from Nate Rau against controversial CMs like Charlie Tygard (whom Rau once defended as "blogged to death") or Eric Crafton (whose English Only initiative Rau handled sensitively, nearly generously). But consistently with non-ostentatious CM Mike Jameson, Rau breaks out the critical analysis, regularly referencing what the Mayor's Office dislikes about him.

My issue here is not with evenhandedly treating CMs critically. I simply do not think that Rau's treatment of Jameson in particular has been the highest quality criticism.

It is no different in Rau's recent blogging on Jameson's reservations about privatizing the public Fairgrounds.  Rau blogs a somewhat rambling, disjointed, and loaded criticism of Jameson:

Jameson’s indignation could be seen as some what puzzling. He’s been a councilmember for more than seven years. He knows the ugly ins and unseemly outs of city politics.

I’ve heard it said that former Mayor Bill Purcell never used petty tactics like calling down department directors on district council members.

Somebody should tell that to Charlie Tygard and Chris Whitson, because I believe they would paint a different picture.

Since Dean was elected mayor, by my count he’s had five tough votes go through council – the Predators lease, the stormwater fee, the convention center land acquisition, the creation of the Convention Center Authority and the convention center bond resolution. Jameson has voted against three of those proposals; the lease agreement at Hickory Hollow would make four out of six.

It is fair for observers to wonder if Jameson’s opposition, no matter how eloquently justified, is rooted in politics, not policy, especially considering the weight of his stance just a year ago.

Someone needs to tell Nate that his wonderment is only fair if he goes back and actually analyzes Jameson's arguments and points out the logical fallacies point-by-point. I never remember him doing that, and I was reading the City Paper long before he was hired.

The problem is that in previous stories reporter Rau seemed to transmit what mayoral staffers either believe or spin about Jameson. The Mayor's Office told reporters that Mike Jameson was an opportunistic grandstander seeking a judgeship. Rau simply passed that judgment along without expressing any journalistic critical thinking or probing curiosity. When Jameson used the same parliamentary rules that other CMs (including Tygard) have used, Rau assumed without a second thought (or as if it had been spun to him) that Jameson used "obscure" tricks to shut down an unquestionably legitimate policy brought at an unquestionably impeccable pace. Jameson conducted council queries of Dean staffers in ways that casual observers called "polite" and "professional," yet analyst Rau was prompted to call the same act a "deposition" as if Jameson was not able to perform as anything but a slick lawyer.

But politics is an end game. If someone is playing politics then they make a rational choice for benefits that outweigh the risk involved in taking on a popular Mayor under this Metro Charter which relegates CMs to a ridiculously weak position from which to make legislative checks on the executive. While I am not happy with acquiescent CMs, I can understand that in this system their choice is either to be a Dean supporter or to find oneself isolated to the Mayor's dog house. And the fawning print media does not help break the servitude by repeating whatever their Metro PR sources tell them.

So, the insistence that a maverick is somehow gaining more than losing in opposing the Mayor on most of the most contentious issues is absurd. And yet, that seems to be exactly what Nate Rau is insisting. If it's just politics, then what is the benefit to Jameson of continuously sticking his head out of the council trenches only to face Karl Dean's howitzer? Given the Courthouse disdain he faces from the perfect storm of council conservatives, sovereign Mayor, and cynical reporters, what chance does Jameson have to win the end game that Metro politics is? Rau doesn't say, but he doesn't seem to be required by anyone to do so, either.

In the end Nate Rau fell into the same trap as many bloggers: he put up a post based mostly on anecdotes with few warrants, making a flawed case, nonsensical when judged rationally. Granted, it may make airtight sense inside the Courthouse.