River City Mud Bugle                              Democracy is what happens between elections

The new issue involves a property further north - on Summer Avenue, where Thomas managed to get a parcel owned by himself attached to an existing proposal for six commercial lots by another company, Grace Development, whose principals resisted the add-on but felt pressured to accept it by the city-county Office of Planning and Development. […]

What happened was that when the Grace Development proposal came before the council at its regular meeting last week, council attorney Allen Wade was asked by councilman Myron Lowery to explain an unusual aspect of the proposal. Wade then called members’ attention to the inclusion of Thomas’ solitary parcel, though it was unreflected in the written application itself.

When Brenda Solomito, who represented Grace Development, then pointed out that her client had reluctantly allowed the add-on at OPD’s request, several council members cried foul.

The bottom line: The zoning matter was put off until the council could sort out things at its next regular meeting on December 19th — even though, as Solomito told the council, the delay would be a serious inconvenience to her clients, whose six Summer Avenue lots were part of a larger, sprawling proposal that needed immediate closure.

Deputy OPD administrator Mary Baker tried last week to explain how Thomas’ single parcel got attached, unwanted and uninvited, to the Grace application. In a subsequent letter to city CAO Keith McGhee, she went into greater detail.

[Jackson Baker]

The the conjoined developments were first reported when Councilman Edmumd Ford asked WREG News to “stick around” at last Tuesday’s City Council meeting to witness his recusal from the upcoming vote. “There is an item that’s on there that I won’t vote on. Come on in and you will see.”

For more detail, you can listen to the relevant portion of the meeting below the fold.

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A lingering mystery in the case is just how Thomas and Cooper managed to do what billboard heavyweights Swaney and Peck couldn’t: convince the council to approve a plan.

According to criminal complaints, an unnamed informant — identified by Edmund Ford as Cooper — secured approval in October by paying cash supplied by the FBI to Ford and Peete between Aug. 30 and Oct. 27.

But how did Thomas and Cooper convince the council to approve the project the first time in May?

Both must-read stories are linked below the fold.

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Billboard lobbyist Joe Cooper and his client William H. Thomas were also partners in buying a piece of land on Poplar Avenue across from Bud Davis Cadillac, court records show.

The sale is now the subject of a civil lawsuit filed by developer Jackie Welch. Cooper and Thomas are each named as defendants. Welch seeks payment of a real estate commission worth approximately $40,000 for brokering the sale of the land to a bank. […]

The address of Thomas’s office on Sanderlin (but not his name) is listed in the criminal complaint against Cooper. The complaint says Cooper sold cars from Bud Davis Cadillac to drug dealers using the names of other people to secure the titles.

[John Branston]

Thaddeus Matthews has more.

Action News 5 has learned that Memphis City Council members Rickey Peete and Edmund Ford have been arrested on public corruption charges, alongside former Shelby County Quarterly Court member and sometimes lobbyist Joe Cooper. Cooper was also an aide to the late William B. Tanner, promiment Memphis businessman.

The two Council members are accused in federal complaints - following an investigation called “Operation Main Street Sweeper” - of taking bribes to forward favorable recommendations to the Land Use Control Board, or L.U.C.B., to repeal a moratorium on billboards on October 27th. Cooper is charged in a separate investigation called “Operation Clean Sweep” with money laundering with convicted drug dealers.

According to the complaint, Peete was paid $12, 000 at his office on three dates (September 12th, 20th and October 4th). Ford was paid $6,900 total at his mortuary.

An informant told FBI agents that he had lobbying relationships with both of the Council members, telling them that he would periodically make payments to the two for the purpose of buying influence. The informant reportedly assisted Ford in securing financing for his car and for his mortuary.

The Commercial Appeal has more information on the informant:

According to the indictment, an informant who represented clients before the City Council had an ongoing relationship with Peete in which he made cash payments for Peete’s influence.

The informant, who was facing federal criminal charges, agreed to cooperate with the FBI and DEA agents.

The indictment said the informant paid Peete a total of $12,000 over three occassions in his Beale Street office in September and October of this year.

The informant paid Ford a total of $6,900 on three occasions at Ford’s business, E.H. Ford Mortuary.

On one of the occassions, the indictment said Ford put the money from the informant in his pocket and said “I’ll drum up seven (votes) or make somebody walk out.”

WMC is now reporting that Rickey Peete was released on his own recognizance.

These are criminal complaints, not indictments. That is, they were filed without a grand jury. WMC just posted the complaints, and they are hosted below:

Operation Main Street Sweeper:
Rickey Peete
Ed Ford

Operation Clean Sweep:
Joe Cooper

The Commercial Appeal has written up a helpful timeline of events in the investigation, and investigative reporter Marc Perresquia says that Joe Cooper is likely the FBI’s informant.

This page will continue to update as details emerge.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the controversial face of U.S. war policy, quit on Wednesday after Democrats rode Americans’ anger over Iraq to victory in Tuesday’s congressional elections.

Just days after declaring his strong support for Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush said he agreed with his top war manager that it was time for a new perspective.

Bush said the current Iraq policy was “not working well enough, fast enough.”

He said Rumsfeld would be replaced by former CIA Director Robert Gates, a member of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan group that is assessing alternative strategies for Iraq.

Read the full article here.

During yesterday’s visit to Memphis in support of Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr., former President Bill Clinton made clear his choice in Memphis’ contentious 9th District Congressional race. Recognizing only the Democratic candidates for the House and Senate from the podium, the former president split the difference between Harold Ford Sr. and Mayor Herenton, who are generally regarded as the chiefs of Memphis’ two major Democratic political factions.

In his initial remarks, Representative Ford mentioned neither his brother Jake Ford nor his former primary opponent Steve Cohen by name, both of whom are competing to fill his vacated 9th District congressional seat. But after the Democratic Senate nominee introduced Clinton, the two-term Democratic president recieved a roaring applause when ackowledging Democratic House nominee Steve Cohen. If Senator Cohen wins, it will be the first time in 32 years that Memphis was not represented in the House by someone named Ford.

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To date, the mudfight in the 9th District congressional race has been viewed as largely between Democratic nominee Steve Cohen and independent candidate Jake Ford. However, in a fundraising letter from Republican candidate Mark White obtained yesterday by the River City Mud Bugle, the GOP candidate engaged in some mudslinging of his own.

The two-page letter, dated October 6 and signed by the candidate, assailed Democratic nominee Steve Cohen as a “leftist,” and accused the 24-year state senate veteran of “promot[ing] gay marriage wherever he goes, [writing] the bill to legalize drugs in Tennessee, and [being] proud of his record of allowing a 50% dropout rate in our high schools and the highest infant mortality rate in the United States.” On Cohen, White adds, “his sole purpose for being in DC is to be the most extreme liberal in the House who can be on TV and promote his own personal agenda.”

White did not spare his independent opponent either, saying of Jake Ford, “[he] only has a GED, no known background of any kind, and wants to have on the job training on the issues only after he gets elected.”

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When the candidates for Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District meet for a debate Monday at The Warehouse, one will not be among them.

Independent candidate Jake Ford confirmed in a conversation with the River City Mud Bugle that he will not be in attendance.

“It’s not that I’m not showing up,” he said. “[Joan Robinson, Events Chair for the South Main Association] just wouldn’t comply with one of the requests that I had, and that was to have an alternate moderator or to change Jackson Baker out.”

“We brought in Richard Ransom on their request,” Robinson said.

“He’s not going to be co-moderating,” Ford said. “He’s going to do exactly what he did for the one on Channel 3, which is pretty much just handle the questions from the people that are there.”

Robinson disputes that. “He is a co-moderator. He is working with Jackson Baker. That was the request when we met with [the Ford campaign]. They said they wanted an additional moderator, and we brought a moderator in on their request.”

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Journalism, at its best, goes beyond the bald recitation of facts. Sometimes it fails, and sometimes it succeeds, but it always carries the responsibility of giving a voice to the voiceless. It gives us facts we do not know while giving us a perspective that we can’t find anywhere else.

Such a journalist was Anna Politkovskaya.

The Chechen struggle for independence from Russia has been undermined and overshadowed by the violent acts of a handful of extremists. Everyone knows of the downing of the Russian jetliners and the horrific siege at Beslan.

Not everyone is as familiar with Chechen separatists being picked up by Russian military or police and being found dead days later, or the routine beatings doled out by Russian authorities as they struggle to hang onto the last remnants of their former empire. Nor are they familiar with the stories of Chechens crowded into refugee camps, nor had they heard the tales told by injured Russian soldiers fighting an insurrection for reasons that no one could explain in terms that made any sense.

Those were the stories that Anna Politkovskaya told. And perhaps they were the stories that got her killed. She was murdered in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building yesterday.

Russia can be a dangerous place to be a journalist. Politkovskaya’s death makes her the twenty-third Russian journalist murdered in the last decade, and the twelfth since Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. The murders generally consist of a modus operandi familiar to policemen that routinely see contract killings— Two shots close up with a small caliber gun, which is abandoned at the scene with no fingerprints on it. This was no exception.

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