The following is an excerpt from our February issue:

By Michael Roy Hollihan

Some numbers are stark. One in eight Memphians live at or below the poverty level. An estimated thirty percent of all Memphis children live in poverty. But some numbers are slippery. So it is with the working poor. As many as one in four Memphians belong to the vague category of the working poor. These are individuals who have jobs but have been unable to rise above the poverty line. They live paycheck to paycheck and are one automobile problem or medical emergency away from complete disaster. On the ladder of economic success, they are one rung above ground.

Most Memphians know the working poor are out there – they’ve seen pictures in the papers or stories on the news. But for the middle-class and wealthy in Memphis, it’s a problem of others. Not me, someone else. Not here, somewhere else.

Large swathes of the city are filled with the working poor: North Memphis, Downtown, Midtown, and southwest Memphis. Drive the major traffic arteries and you see hints of them. Get onto streets like McLemore, South Third, Chelsea, Summer Avenue, Danny Thomas, Raines, and Neely, become immersed in the neighborhoods, and the impression is inescapable – we are failing ourselves. Whole neighborhoods, whole subdivisions of substandard or worn-out housing, ruined streets and alienated, lost people. We may be a top twenty metropolis, but we are a top three economic disaster for our residents.

One of the most pressing areas of concern is the issue of health care. Rarely do the working poor have the luxury of indulging an illness. Being home sick means lost wages or even a lost job. Either way, it is an economic catastrophe. Persistent illness or disease, or lifestyle-associated diseases like obesity and hypertension can reduce productivity or even limit job opportunities. Meager gains melt away. Chronic problems prevent forward progress.

While some jobs, especially corporate or government routinely offer health benefits, employment at small businesses or service/distribution sectors often means no health coverage. Although insurance companies offer rock-bottom basic packages for as low as $60 per month, even this can be too much. And that assumes that potential customers are even aware of these offerings. Most working poor simply do not get exposure to health care insurance options unless it intersects their lives. (more…)

The following is an excerpt from our February issue:

By Jonathan Lindberg

On January 3, 2007, County Commissioner Henri Brooks returned to work with a bang, unapologetically comparing the hiring practices at the Shelby County Juvenile Court to that of a ‘plantation’. And so the saga continues.

One has to wonder at times if the failed Nazi regime of the twentieth century and the morally corrupt practice of slavery in the United States during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries are the only two points-of-references some with a broad platform have.

Consider Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) who on June 14, 2005, compared the tactics used at Guantanamo Bay to that of Nazi Germany. What kind of history book has this guy been reading? Nazi Germany murdered two-million Poles. Nazi Germany exterminated six-million Jews. Nazi Germany butchered eleven-million Russian citizens. What, in any of that, would merit any comparison to the suspect methods used at Guantanamo Bay? The two are not even in the same solar system.

The same can be said of ‘plantation’ statements.

The great scar running across American history is without doubt the act of slavery. Slaves were not paid for their endless work. Slaves were not free to do as they pleased. Slaves could not vote and slaves could not read. Surely, Commissioner Brooks is not suggesting the over three-hundred African-American employees at the Shelby County Juvenile Court system are enduring such conditions, or anything near. What then should a person with any sense of historical perspective make of such a comparison? (more…)

The following is an excerpt from our February issue:

By Drew Harris

Imagine a CEO of a multi-million dollar company who continually mismanaged corporate funds. Assume these actions didn’t stem from a flagrant disregard for the law; instead this gross mismanagement came from inept decision-making, poor policy and neglect for the best interests of the shareholders. Whenever problems arose, the CEO borrowed money and poured it into the problems, hemorrhaging the company’s bank accounts without considering other solutions. With mounting debts, questions would soon have to be answered.

Now imagine how the shareholders might respond. Would they allow their investments to be squandered without any response? Absolutely not. They would raise a mighty clamor; their fix-it-or-take-a-hike mantra would reverberate inside the corporate headquarters. But it wouldn’t stop with words alone. They would force action – cutting expenses, scaling back unprofitable operations and striving to get the company’s balance sheet in the black. On short notice, the company would get a major overhaul, and the CEO would be looking for a new job.

One thing is for certain about this scenario, the shareholders would not sit around grumbling about the problems – watching, waiting, and hoping that things would get better. That would be ridiculous. In the words of a creative writing teacher, “The characters are interesting, but the plot is unbelievable. It just would never happen.”

Yet this has been the story of Shelby County for years.

Unchecked growth and government spending have sent the county’s debt skyrocketing; debt service alone is millions of dollars every year. As people move to areas of the county outside of the Memphis city limits, additional services are needed. As subdivisions crop up along the county’s periphery, children have to be educated, and streets have to be patrolled. These services cost money, and developers traditionally argue that the increased tax revenue will offset these needs. But with the county’s debt and rising cost of providing services, that revenue doesn’t always cover the expense. (more…)