campaigning

Today was a day to remember.

A little before noon, I got a call from a reporter saying that four of Mark's opponents in the primary -- Albert Reiderer, John Fairfield, Chuck Eddy and Henry Klein -- endorsed Alvin Brooks in the general. At their press conference, Eddy and Fairfield said that Mark is a loner who can't build consensus, that no one likes him, and that you can't learn government from a book.

The reporter wanted to know if Mark would be available for an on-camera interview that afternoon, to respond. I said yes, and booked it for 1:30.

I promptly told the other folks working the campaign. One of our team said, "We need to get as many folks down here as we can, to stand behind Mark."

So we got to it.

We sent out an e-mail to our supporters list. I put together a press release. And we just started pounding the phones.

Soon we had a huge crowd of people gathered outside the headquarters. A lot of them were wearing the bright-orange campaign shirt. Some were holding up yard signs and hand-written signs reading, "WE WANT THE FUNK!" A couple people even brough dogs, who they dressed up with orange bandanas with "Go Funk!" written on them.

As the press began to arrive, it suddenly occurred to me that our official campaign page has a link to a video of members of the City Council praising Mark for his 18 years of service to City Hall. They were voting on a resolution honoring him, which was sponsored by ... Chuck Eddy.

And, wouldn't you know, the video also has Fairfield saying that Mark had done an amazing job, and that they should play chess some day.

So I whispered that in all the reporters' ears, and promised to send them links later.

So the whole thing goes off great. The energy was incredible. Later one of our team said, "That was like a Frank Capra moment."

A little later I'm in the office and I see this hand-written note from Albert Riederer congratulating Mark making it out of the primary and saying how he hopes they'll work together in the future.

And, I come to find out, Riederer has an appoint scheduled with Mark for 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

Of course, he didn't show. It's obvious he never planned to attend. (More about Riederer tomorrow.)

Ah. Kansas City politics.

P.S. Check out the coverage on Channel 41 and Channel 9

tif b.s.

Finally, finally, finally.

FINALLY

The Kansas City Star has finally called Mayor Kay Barnes on her bullshit about tax-increment financing.

(You may recall I wrote about this scam a while back.)

Herroner Barnes's stock answer to questions about this program run amuck has been that it benefit the city because it brings in more money. Kind of like investments.

But she has never offered any proof. She's just said it. And the Star has quoted her, and left it at that.

So today -- finally, finally, finally -- they gave us some facts. And whaddaya know? They refute Condo Kay.

From today's article:

City officials said the 54 current TIF projects have accrued significant benefits to the city — which is why the incentives were approved. But they haven’t been able to fully quantify the financial benefits versus the costs.

And...

Budget analysts estimate the city will reimburse $79 million to developers in the budget year beginning May 1, up from $47 million this year. Nearly two thirds of the estimated increase will be related to the IRS complex and downtown entertainment district.

And...

The budget calls for redirecting nearly $17.6 million in sales tax to developers next year, while overall sales tax collections are only expected to go up about $10 million

And...

The 3/8-cent ATA sales tax collections (this pays for bus service for poor people)are expected to increase by $737,500, but transfers of that tax to TIF developers are expected to go up by $1.1 million, for a net loss

And...

Some projects provide little new revenue for basic services. This is because workers and revenues are moving from a building that was not part of a TIF district to a TIF development. In these instances, the taxes that previously went for general municipal services are now directed specifically to the development.

The IRS center, for example, is moving workers from several non-TIF buildings in Kansas City to a TIF building downtown. The project is also attracting new workers from Kansas, but the earnings tax revenues from those workers will be directed into the project and not to city coffers.

Meantime, the city's economic development efforts in the rat market have been an unbridled success, with tens of thousands of the disease ridden, infant-biting vermin breading and thriving in Barnes's era of no money for rodent extermination.

barnes has been a boon for rats

I've got a free trial subscription to this new pay-per-view blog the Star has started. And earlier today I read a sneak preview of a column there by Mayor Kay Barnes. It's supposed to go in the paper. Maybe Sunday. But the column appears to be offline now.

Anyway, the column is as you might expect. She says Kansas Citians have to be careful in choosing the next mayor to ensure that we continue on all the great progress the city has made over the last eight years.

I'm not sure why they took it down, but I have a hunch it's because she wanted to add something about rats.

See, when Barnes was putting the finishing touches on her propaganda, 150 everyday Kansas Citians gathered at City Hall to talk about the kind of progress they'd like to see in Kansas City.

Highlights:

Gunshots ricocheting through neighborhoods, roaming pit bulls, crumbling tennis courts, negligent landlords and ill-prepared students were on the minds of many. Some of the most poignant comments came from residents pleading for more rodent control in the wake of a rat chewing off the nose and part of the lip of an infant this week.

That's right.

In this 21st Century American city, a rat chewed the nose and lip off of an infant's face.

What the article doesn't mention, but was reported in the Star earlier this week, is that under Mayor Barnes's administration the City recently slashed rat extermination from its budget. Quote:

The city funded a rat-control unit in the late 1990s and early this decade but closed the unit for about three years because of budget cuts

Ah yes. Progress.

A tenant-less arena. An in-the-red entertainment district downtown. A $30-million increase in tax kickbacks to well-connected developers who build projects in the richest parts of the city.

And life has never been better for rats.

Way to go, Kay.

attacked by robots

I wanted to post today. Of course I wanted to post, what with the good news.

But when I went to post I found a message saying my site had been shut down by anti-spam robots.

But I eventually beat them back by deciphering a secret code. And now I'm back. For better or worse.

I guess I need to buy this:

kcur forum 12

bla bla bla

Can we just vote already?

kcur forum 11

One more thought on Shields's shift from crime to global warming. Is it because she has Al Gore envy? Or is it because she's an alleged criminal? You know, indicted and all.

kcur forum 10

So Klein steps in and says, "When are we going to talk about crime? We're the 16th most dangerous city in the nation."

So Kraske obliges, turns the question to Katheryn Shields, who talks about...

Global Warming.

kcur forum 9

Am I asleep?












(When are they going to start fighting again?)

kcur forum 8

Is Al Brooks asleep?

kcur forum 7

"Becky, this is henry Klein and you can't do that. Becky. This is Henry Klein again."

kcur forum 6

Sheeeeeeet. Did Glazer just endorse Funk? He even called for a round of applause for him.

kcur forum 5

Katheryn Shields has a lone applauder in the front row. Sounds all nice and loud in this cavernous auditorium. Probably plays good on radio.

kcur forum 4

SO while they're talking about education, about all the stuff they'll do about the KC school district, not once mentioning that the best way to help is to cut back on the tax incentives to developers that are robbing schools blind, allow me a moment to talk about this wonderful building we're gathered in. This forum is in the auditorium at the Liberty Memorial WWI Museum, which is sumptuous in the extreme -- brand new velvety red chairs, smooth hardwood walls, automatic soap dispensers in the bathroom. As Borat would says, very nice.

Wonder who paid for it.

kcur forum 3

This is great. I can't even keep up with it. Kraske went right for the juggler on the negative campaign crap and all these usually stiff pols started dishing out the punches. Riederer took it straight at Nace, who everyone knows is behind it. Then Klein turned to her and called her out. Then Funk. Then even Eddy told about the automated message he got from Nace herself caling, absurdly, for an end to robo calls.

I wish I could type faster. It was one of the best KC media moments I've ever seen.

kcur forum

So Kraske goes right into the tough question, about these phony negative robo calls I wrote about this morning. And Riederer steps up and nails it, openly accusing Nace and Brooks of being behind them.

And so Kraske turns it to Nace, asks her point blank if she's behind the calls. And she says No! And she goes on to say that there were negative calls against her. But to my knowledge, there were no such calls. Haven't heard about any calls against her. Haven't heard about any negative postcards against her.

Dare I say the L-word?

kcur forum

I'm at this mayoral forum hosted by KCUR. They wanted bloggers to come and cover the thing live, so here I am, a completely biased reporter. Don't see many other laptops here. I might be the only one covering it. Never done one of these live boggerage things. My only fear is coming off too snarky. Usually at least three of the candidates at these things say something exceedingly stupid. So here's hoping I can bite my tongue, er, typing fingers.

robo calls

Yesterday KC voters received automated calls that were ostensibly made on behalf of the Mark Funkhouser campaign. We didn't have anything to do with them. In fact, we steadfastly agreed early on not to use them because they're totally annoying. So someone else did them, I guess to make Mark seem annoying while saying "Albert Riederer" and "negative" over and over. Kind of a two-birds-with-one-stone thing.

Here's the message:



Note the line, "There should be laws against this..." And then listen to this, from Becky Nace:



Hmm. So within hours of an annoying automated call saying there ought to be a law, Nace delivers her own automated call claiming she's the one who'll ban them.

Am I the only one who sees layers upon layers of absurdness here?

commercial

pix

We came home with more than 500 photos. They're all online now. I've arranged them into a few photosets.


Monkey business (In which wild monkeys get very, very close to the newlyweds).


Pretty flowers.


The happy couple.


Los perros de Costa Rica.


Honeymoon sunsets.

hugo chavez

Before traveling south, I was pretty much pro Hugo Chavez, though I didn't know much about him. My thought was, If poor folks like him, he must be good. Plus, I gotta admit, I got a kick out of his strident speech at the UN.

But in Costa Rica I got to talking about him with a Canadian ex-pat who owned one of the places we stayed at. He and his wife hate him. They say he's insane, that he wants to be a dictator and that someone needs to put a bullet in his head. That same day, as it happens, Chavez closed a Venezuelan-owned factory in small town on the C.R. coast, stripping 400 people of their jobs, apparently in political retaliation for President Oscar Arias's recent criticism of Chavez.

These were the first blows to my respect for Chavez. Arias is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and he's leading an international effort to limit arms trade. He also pushed unsuccessfully to transform Central America into the world's first de-militarized region. It didn't work out, but he did persuade Panama to get rid of its military in 1994.

I still have a fair amount to learn about Arias, but at first glance he seems my kind of guy. So if Chavez is taking petty vengeance against him and his nice country, I'm naturally going to be suspicious.

So I come home and pend an afternoon researching him, trying to find trustworthy reports. And I can't make heads or tails of it until I come across a study by the International Crisis Group. They seem an honorable, trustworthy group, and their report is damning.

While Chavez appears to have some well-intentioned plans, it looks as though his economic strategy is suicidal and, worst of all, he's consolidating pretty much all of the government under his direct control, he's using extra-constitutional military groups to intimidate the opposition and silencing his critics (even going so far as to shut down one of the country's oldest TV networks).

So consider me an anti-chavizta hence forth. No me gusta.

el borat

I have become the American version of Borat here in Costa Rica. Everywhere I go I speak Spanish in a naive but earnest accent and my sentences are littered with bad grammar that's kind of cute. Instead of very nice! I'm constantly saying muy bien! I've even taken to flashing the thumbs up when I'm happy about something.

On our first day here in Quepos I went to the farmacia to find something for my big toe, which I banged up pretty good when I slipped in the spa at Tabacon (tore part of my toe nail off). I went up to the counter asked asked the woman, Do you know something about the sick fingers? And I lifted my foot for her to see the mangled toe.

But so far I haven't gotten anyone to admit that they wish slavery were still legal. I guess it's not that kind of country.

cohiba

I smoked a great big Cuban cigar last night by the pool. Fantastic.

It's so strange that the best cigars in the world come from Cuba because they seem such a capitalistic indulgance.

Fortunately Allie talked me out of buying a bunch to bring home. For now cigar smoking will remain a habit only in the tropics.

manuel antonio

Now on the Pacific Coast. In the place where there are ¨more monkeys than humans¨¨ -- though I haven´t yet seen a monkey.

I did see dolphins. Lots of them. Up close. Plus flying fish. And I mean flying. Like, they fly like little birds for great distances across the water. And we saw manrays jump. And I snorkeled and fish bit at my fingers. Bright-colored fish. This was on a sunset sail.

All has not been perfect. I lost a bag with my iPod and some over-priced Cuban cigars and, worst of all, a chip with a couple of hundred pictures (including those of Allie and I covered in chocolate). But there´s still hope of reclaiming it, I left it on my chartered bus.

Too much to report, really. We´re in a funky little town called Quepos. Last night we ate in a restaurant made out of a plane that was part of the Iran-Contra scandal. We spent time on the beach, of course. Tomorrow we meet monkeys and sloths on some sort of jungle cable sliding adventure.

(BTW, I´ve caught a little of the news back home. I think it was Glorioso and Riederer. At any rate, it totally backfired, and paid off for us. Go funk!)

tabacon

All's well. The first two days have been in Tabacon, the most luxious resort we've ever been to. We have the honeymoon suite, with private outdoor jacuzzi and patio. The resort has rivers of hot mineral water you can soak in, plus a waterfall of hot water you can stand under. We've had massages, and we've been covered in chocolate. Last night we ate a delicious dinner.


There are lots of bright-colored flowers.

Tomorrow we will be on the beach.

That's enough internets for now.

bride

after party

a new man

I'm married now.

The wedding was great. As predicted, I can't remember much of it -- and I didn't even drink. But a number of people told me it was great. Some even said it was the best wedding they ever attended. Add my voice to that chorus.












p.s. I changed "fiancée" over to the right over there to "wife." Allie's come a long way since "woman," hasn't she?

wedding preception

We had a meet and greet last night at Waldo Pizza, for the out-of-town folks. It was fun. Click picture above for slideshow.

Tonight I get married. In a new suit.

endorsements

Check out what Funk's opponents have to say about him:

winding down

I'm supposed to be out of campaign mode, but I had to see the whole poodle scheme through. It paid off: The Maria video was picked up nationally on Salon.com and onegoodmove.

And, best of all, all this was newsy enough to get the Star to mention it on their blog, along with a link to the official campaign site, which has many more substantive videos waiting. The hit count's been going up.

And best of best of all, this is in addition to news that came out yesterday that our candidate is firmly in place to clear the 12-candidate primary and into the general election -- due, I suppose, to the hip campaign we've been running.

So now it's time to get married and go to Costa Rica.

on the campaign trail

I'm rapping up the last of my duties on the Mark Funkhouser for Mayor campaign before going full-time into wedding mode. I'm pretty pleased with the latest most recent stuff we've done. Check it out:

And on the more serious side:

bloggy buzz

I been working on Mark Funkhouser's campaign, mostly on the media side, and it's been going pretty good. Part of my job is to maintain the website. There's a page on there with links to all the articles and blog entries I can find that mention Mark. As you can see, it's getting pretty long. I think the blog entries are particularly cool, because they indicate what the Average Allie is thinking. (Plus, he's gotten several straight-up endorsements in the blogosphere).

Well, being a tad competitive, I decided to see how many blog mentions his competitors have gotten.

Let me start with a caveat: This survey isn't scientific, and I won't pretend to be totally thorough. What I did was a blog search on each candidate's name in Google. Below you'll find links where each one has been mentioned. I decided to leave out the big overview entries like Can't get this sozen in a box and The Candidates and Who's the Grinchiest?. I've also taken all the entries that mention Funk alond with other candidates and moved them fully into Funk's column -- for one because, obviously, I'm biased toward him and, two, because, quite frankly, the entries are mostly positive about Funk and negative about the others. I also left out KC Buzz Blog, because they've done too damn many entries on the mayor's race, and because they aren't necessarily just regular folks blogging for fun.

Anyhoo, here goes...

Alvin Brooks
KC Mayor's Race - Alvin Brooks -- Alvin Brooks

Chuck Eddy
A cuppa Kansas City whine -- Chuck "We Need Bridges" Eddy -- People of KC Support Cancer Instead of Chuck Eddy

Janice Ellis
Tell Me Lies -- Janice Ellis -- Janice Ellis Sees Stars

John Fairfield
John Fairfield and His Friends -- TIF abuse reaches new heights in Briarcliff -- John Fairfield

Jim Glover
Another NPH First

Stanford Glazer
Mike "Corporate Hack" Hendricks wants to play the nickname game -- How Difficult is It?

Henry Klein
Klein Getting Desperate...Already? -- Mike "Corporate Hack" Hendricks wants to play the nickname game

Becky Nace
Just Say NO to Becky Nace -- The Backs Some Candidates Ride to be Mayor -- Becky Bartle? -- Let's not be nice to Becky Nace . . . In fact, she deserves a lot of bashing -- Can Kansas City Afford the Becky Nace Administration? -- Better Play Nace -- Becky Nace -- Deb Hermann and Becky Nace are less trustworthy than hookers

Katheryn Shields
Unethical Appraisal Gets You 20 -- Katheryn Shields Indicted!!! -- Boom -- Katheryn "I will be Mayor" Shields -- Irony in Motion -- Shields, interrupted -- Bitch better have my money: Where is my $19 Million?

Albert Riederer
Hey! Hey! Hey! Its finally Albert!! -- Riederer joins the mayoral pack

And then there's Funk:
(I didn't add links because Blogger is freaking out. Here's the news page.)
Penguin Hunting: The High Cost of Failure
Hip to the Funk?
Can Cauthen survive without Kay?
Brookside Forum Results
A Captive TIF Audit
Barnes is so KATTY
Funk TV
Transportation Issues
Klein and Funkhouser Push Ideas
Mayoral Candidates Face Off
The Media tries to determine victors
The House of Funk
Support for Funkhouser
Bring in the TIF Gimp
Mark Funkhouser is far and away the BEST candidate
Who Will He Pick?
Groupie
Fast Funk
Ming the Merciless for Mayor
Draft Funkhouser for Mayor
Funkhouser and Frevere
Funk, Authenticity, and the Cheesecake Factory
Putting the fun in Funkhouser
Sign of the times

We're also kicking their butts in the MSM.

cops

Last night I met a recently retired high-ranking officer in the KCPD named George Roberts. A videographer and I were working on short videos of folks who support Mark Funkhouser for mayor. He really impressed me.

For his little testimonial video, George talked not about more cops on the street or more jail space. Instead, he talked about broken sidewalks on Kansas City's East Side. He talked about a community that has essentially been abandoned by City Hall, and how that has more to do with the murder rate than the number of cops patrolling the street.

Kinda blew me away. Here's this white guy. Lives north of the river. Combs his hair straight back. Ordinarily my prejudice would pin him as one who could give a shit about the folks who live around Central High.

But he just cut to the chase and laid out a real progressive rap.

Then he got to talking about the current chief of police. Jim Corwin is a total reformer, according to George. Another real progressive.

I was aware that Chief Corwin has a Blue Print for the Future. But I haven't read it and I don't really know what it entails.

But my ears perked up when George told me Corwin brought in a psychologist to assess the difficulties they'd face as the department undergoes a fairly radical transformation.

Then George started talking about how Corwin is catching all kinds of heat for thestuff they're doing at a neighborhood police station on the Westside. The area has long been home to KC's Latino community. And in recent years one particular corner in the area has become a spot where recent immigrants hang out looking for work. It's been a strain on the community, so Corwin and the neighborhood cops have started providing services for these folks -- showers, laundry, etc. George told me the neighborhood leaders are happy with the arrangement. But xenophobes in Jeff City are outraged because Corwin isn't locking the folks up and reporting them to INS -- those who've immigrated here illegally, that is.

What surprised me about all this was not that KC apparently has a good police chief, which is kind of surprising, frankly. But that I'd never heard any of this.

How is it that there's a major reform effort going on in our police department, and the local papers aren't all over it?

I mean, the psychologist thing alone is worth a story, doncha think?

(Or did I miss it? I know I have trouble catching all the important stories on the Star's jumbled website.)

tim wise

Today I picked up five of the Central High debaters and we went to KCK to see Tim Wise give a talk. We were blown away. Absolutely blown away.

If any of you have a chance to see him speak, don't miss it. He's amazing.

(The picture above was taken a few weeks ago in Nashville, at a debate tournament.)

sotu

luxury

So Allie and I are reading this menu of spa goodies at the insanely luxurious resort where we'll be staying for our honeymoon (in the honeymoon suite, no less). And we're hemming and hawing over which package we should choose. And I'm like, "Duh! We've got to do the Love package!"

But Allie isn't too sure. And she mutters comething about chocalate and too much money, I'm not sure exactly.

At any rate, I leap to my feet, incredulous:

"How can we go to Costa Rica, stay in a hoity-toity resort at the foot of a volcano, and not get totally covered in chocolate?!?! It's our honeymoon, for God's sake!!!"

imitatings

barnes badgered

This is hilarious.

The shouting match part, I mean.

Regarding the actual news in the story: Are we expected to believe that Barnes had already decided to budget for the maintenance of roads before the Chamber of Commerce released a damning report which revealed we have a $3.2 billion backlog of unfinished capital improvement work? A report that the Chamber had to essentially leak to the press because they knew she and her lackey Steve Glorioso would work to kill or bury it?

Please.

So what I want to know is, why is she doing it now? If it's so important to fund maintenance, why hasn't she been doing it all along? Why did she and her rubber-stamp City Council repeatedly cut funding for maintenance of streets, sidewalks, sewers, etc year after year?

To me, the answer is obvious. She and her Yes Men/Women on the Council have been shoveling our tax dollars into the fat, rich mouths of greedy developers and their attorneys.

But what I really want to know is why the Star continues to print her boilerplate comment:

“Neighborhood concerns and economic development are bonded together,” she said. “You don’t have to pit one against the other.

“To address neighborhood and social concerns, you need to generate economic development to do it. The other option is raising taxes.

“Be alert to anyone sending a message: ‘We’ve done enough economic development and we need to focus on neighborhoods.’ We can do both.”

I mean, I understand why they print her quote. But why don't they contextualize it with some facts? Like, why don't they point out that tax revenues are flat, and that we're losing population? Both of these are pretty strong indications that the so-called economic development strategy ain't working.

snow job

taxing situation

This is absolutely ridiculous.

more tif

I might have over-simplified my explanation of TIF yesterday. Using an analogy of fixing up a falling down house, I explained that TIF is based on the estimate of how much tax revenue a fixed-up house would generate. And then the so-called "new revenue" -- the difference between the lower taxes for a run-down shack and the higher taxes for a remodeled palace -- is funneled into the development. That's before the so-called new taxes come in.

This explanation gives the impression that all of the imaginary money goes into the actual development. Like, if you're gonna deck the sheck out in Itallian marble, the taxes pay for the marble. That's not entirely true. In theory, the money goes toward stuff one would ordinarily expect a city to pay for, like new roads and sidewalks around the project, and sewer lines and such. And some of the money does. (more on that later.)

But some of the money actually does goes to the Italian marble, so to speak. For instance, with this TIF for a luxury hotel in Kansas City's richest neighborhood that the council hurriedly approved last week, some of the predicted tax money is going toward meeting spaces in the luxury hotel.

(Not exactly what I like to see my hard-earned money spent on. But who am I but an honest taxpayer, and therefore worthless in the eyes of those who approve such deals.)

But here's something you never read about in the newspaper: A lot of this TIF money goes to lawyers.

Like, MILLIONS.

And that's a BIG reason why TIF is used so much. It's a guaranteed revenue stream for a handful of politically connected law firms in town.

Here's something I wrote in the aforementioned PItch article on Wesley Fields:

Bryan Cave has earned more than $800,000 from the TIF Commission over the past three years. Fields alone has billed more than $400,000. And he continues to work for the TIF Commission even as he runs for office.

Fields is quick to point out that this isn't taxpayer money his firm is earning. He says that "approximately 90 percent" of the firm's bills have been paid by developers involved with TIF projects.

But Fields' legal bills show that's not true.

The Pitch compiled a database from 373 Bryan Cave invoices and found that half of the firm's bills were paid out of the TIF Commission's general fund, an observation confirmed by Laura Whitener, the TIF Commission's top administrator. That fund is made up of 5 percent of the taxes created by new TIF developments -- in other words, it's public money.

The TIF Commission's public meetings, at which developers pitch schemes to build parking garages, luxury hotels and, in one instance, a McDonald's, have been particularly profitable for Bryan Cave. During the first two years of its contract, the firm sent two lawyers -- Fields and Stephen Sparks -- to prepare for and sit through the meetings. "There are some times when you need to have an attorney at the table," Whitener says. "You're never going to be able to predict those times."

From March 2000 through January 2001, the two lawyers' administrative activities earned their firm more than $50,000. Since then, the TIF Commission has cut back to having just one lawyer -- Fields -- present at its meetings.

But even the other half of Bryan Cave's bills, the ones supposedly paid by developers, are eventually reimbursed with public money as well. That's because current TIF policy allows developers to include legal expenses in their TIF financing agreements, labeling them "soft costs." Moreover, developers may also be reimbursed for hours billed by their personal lawyers.

"It's a sleight of hand," Nace says. "The developer doesn't own the taxes his project will generate. It's not his money. It's taxpayer money. On the Finance and Audit Committee, we're working right now to limit the amount they can be reimbursed for soft-money expenses. And we're getting a lot of resistance."

As early as 1982, city leaders knew that the legal expenses of the Economic Development Corporation, which provides staff for the TIF Commission, were straining the city's budget. A report issued that year by the Cleaver-appointed Citizens Budget Review Committee recommended reducing those expenses by $100,000, even though back then they were a mere $155,000 a year. Instead, the council voted to increase payments to lawyers. Now attorneys are making millions from the EDC.

A 1999 Star article cautiously suggested that these contracts are doled out as part of a patronage system. With minimal notice to the public, the EDC board met off-site to retain the services of Bryan Cave and the King Hershey law firm. Lawyers at both firms contributed heavily to Mayor Kay Barnes' campaign. Bryan Cave senior partner Herb Kohn, for example, is one of the mayor's chief allies. Kohn has billed the TIF Commission for more than 200 hours -- more than $35,000.

Although this money creates potential conflicts of interest, Fields promises that as a City Council rep, he will shape TIF policy based on the community's "collective vision." It's uncertain how he would accomplish that given that he would have to step aside from many of the TIF debates at City Hall.

"If we still have the contract at the time, he would be, directly or indirectly, a beneficiary," Kohn admits. "He'll probably want to recuse himself, but that's a decision he'll want to make at the time."

In other words, TIF creates a new trough along the City's revenue stream for lawyers to feed on. They don't even have to work for it, because there's no bidding process. And the only incentive is for them to push more TIF projects, because that makes the trough bigger. (BTW, that story won honorable mention in the 2003 Missouri Press Association Excellence in Journalism contest for "Best Coverage of Government," a category in which I also took first place for a package of three stories.)

And please note that the TIF money pays for not only the TIF Comminssion's lawyers, it also pays for the developers' lawyers. Such a sweet deal, huh? Make's you think twice about law school, don't it?

So there's really NOBODY representing the public good (more on this later, too). There's no incentive to. Bryan Cave represents the TIF Commission, which gets all of its money on a 5 percent commission of all TIF projects. So, more TIF projects, more money.

It's just that simple.

And that, folks, is why the city has no TIF policy. Because if there were a TIF policy, the folks on the City Council's Finance Committee -- three of whom are running for mayor -- would have to decide when and where TIF projects will happen. And that could cut off the money trough for the developers and lawyers, all of whom make healthy campaign contributions to the committee's three mayoral candidates -- Al Brooks, Chuck Eddy and John Fairfield.

It's weird that reporters think this stuff is boring. It's straight-up graft. It's the rape of the common good for the sake of the few and the rich. What could be more interesting than that?

(Other than puppies and Britney Spears's sex life. And maybe the untimely murder of Lil Jakes.)

in a tif

A few years back, I wrote a major take-out piece on Wesley Fields, who was running for City Council. In many ways, I'm ashamed of the piece. At the urging of Steve Glorioso (who was working for Fields's opponent, Becky Nace), I really went all out and dug up every scrap of dirt I could and I put it all out there. Some of the stuff -- the stuff Glorioso tipped me off on -- was really insignificant, and probably wouldn't have amounted to much if Fields were white, or if his opponent weren't a white woman.

On the other hand, the meatiest stuff in my exposé, the stuff that got me interested in him to begin with, was that as an attorney at Bryan Cave he was one of the main lawyers representing the TIF Commission. And, it wasn't long after I moved to Kansas City that I learned that TIF (short for Tax-Increment Financing), is one of the biggest scams in the city, so it raised a red flag.

A lot of people think TIF is boring and confusing, but it really isn't. Anyone who cares enough to vote understands it in principle. Basically, it's an incentive to develop areas that are difficult to develop. That's the theory, anyway.

It's like this. Imagine you buy a falling-down shack. Taxes on it are low because it ain't worth squat. Well, as an incentive to get you to fix it up, the City offers to freeze the taxes at the worthless level. Then they figure out how much your property will be worth after it's fixed up, and they give that money to you ahead of time so you can fix your place up.

Sound like a good deal?

It's a hella good deal!

The problem I saw with this, though, was that it looked like most of these TIF deals were going to folks who weren't fixing up shacks. They were going to people who were developing farmland in the suburban Northland. People who wanted parking garages on the Plaza, which is the primo shopping district in the region. They were going to, in one instance, a gated community directly adjacent to the Plaza.

So, in my young and radical alt-weekly mind, it looked to me like institutional racism. More accurately, it seemed a social and economic justice issue, which, in an old Jim Crow town like KC, disproportionately impacts blacks. I didn't say that in the article, but I said it to folks behind the scene, in particular those who accused me of embarking on a racist attack on a promising young black candidate. (To which I now say, guilty -- at least on the Glorioso-inspired parts.)

But with regards to the real substance of the story, I was on point. When it comes to a lot of his work at Bryan Cave, Fields was (is?) a tool for what might well be Kansas City's most egregious injustice.

Because now there's proof!

There's no other way to say it: This report is a damning indictment of Kansas City.

We all ought to be ashamed of ourselves for letting this kind of enrich-the-rich graft take place on our behalf.

Check this out:

88% of TIF plans are in four Council Districts (1, 2, 4, and 6) which contain the two-thirds of the city’s population who are the most affluent, best educated and least likely to be members of a minority group.

The two Council Districts (3 and 5) with one-third of the population who have the lowest income and the highest rates of poverty and unemployment receive only 12% of TIFs.

Do you need further explanation?

It says: A program for poor neighborhoods is being used for rich ones.

Now, I remember Fields's argument in defense of TIF being used this way. It's the same as Mayor Barnes's, which was dutifully transcribed this week by her stenographer:

“Neighborhood concerns and economic development are bonded together,” she said. “You don’t have to pit one against the other.

“To address neighborhood and social concerns, you need to generate economic development to do it. The other option is raising taxes.

“Be alert to anyone sending a message: ‘We’ve done enough economic development and we need to focus on neighborhoods.’ We can do both.”

Here "economic development" is code, in part, for TIF. And "neighborhood concerns" is code, in very small part (at least, I think, in her elitist mind), to the needs of poor people.

Yet, as Reclaim Democracy's report reveals:

The use of TIF and particularly the inclusion of (predictions of how much tax new developments bring in) has grown rapidly in Kansas City over the past few years. The amount of redirected tax revenues transferred to the TIF Commission has surged by 208% between fiscal 2000 and 2004. EATS grew by an equivalent 204%. That growth coupled with findings that actual revenues of TIF plans accounted for only 23% of projected revenues should create serious concerns among the citizens and elected officials.

In other words -- going back to the fixed-up-shack analogy here -- the predictions for how much money these new projects will bring in have been way, way off the mark. But developers still get the predicted windfall up front. And that money has to come from somwhere.

So where does it come from?

You guessed it!

Poor people.

Actually, it comes from all of us.

But, as you can plainly see when you drive across the districts where the fewest TIF projects are underway, it's the poor who can least afford it.

christian science monitor

Got a nice review in the Christian Science Monitor.

sparse

Sorry I haven't been updating much. Most of the stuff that would make good blog fodder is stuff I can't really write about. I'm working on this mayoral campaign, and the candidate debates and forums have been great on the comedy end of the blog spectrum. But I can't really do that to the opponents, even if it is just straight reporting of absurd things they say in public.

It kind of felt like our candidate took the lead last week (knock wood) -- especially with this kind of attention.

Anyhoo...

I checked into the old Motel 6 this week. Didn't spend any nights there, just used it as an office of sorts to force my way through a draft of my proposal for my second book. This would be my third go at a proposal. Proposals are by far the hardest things I have to write.

I'm falling into a pattern. When the writing gets tough, I check into the Motel 6 on 87th and I-435. And I write and anguish on the frumpy little bed and I pace the tiny room and I write again. And then I always go for lunch at least once at Peachtree Buffet. And I take short walks in the tiny neighborhood behind the motel and listen to the same three Mariah Carey songs over and over again on my iPod. And then I write a little more. Dang but that Mariah sure does sing pretty.

Three days of that and I got a draft together, and Allie read it today and said a lot of it is really, really good, but that it has some structural issues. (the worst kind, of course!)

And then, perfect timing, The New York Times starts a three-part series about Pentecostalism today, which, of course, had some points I'd forgotten to mention in this proposal.

We finally have winter around here. I'm not enraged about it.

Wedding's fast approaching. Costa Rica, too.

(kind of a dump-file post. sorry.)

missour-uh

spin

I'm a little pissed off this morning.

Yesterday I planned my first ever press conference. Mark Funkhouser was scheduled to file his petitions to be candidate for mayor, so I worked with him and his staff to put together an event. Before filing, Mark read and signed a giant copy of a Commitment Letter to the people of Kansas City, which laid out a number of priorities that would guide his tenure as mayor.

It all came together just as planned, and I walked away a little high, because we'd managed to attract the daly paper and a number of TV crews.

I should've paid a little closer attention to the newspaper that morning. Of course I noticed the headlines. Even in Kansas City it's not often that you have two elected officials indicted for mortgage fraud in as many days. But I was so caught up in planning the event, it adn't occured to me that our nice little press conference about good, honest leadership might be buried under the slime of business as usual.

So what happens?

The alleged criminal fiiles for office and steals all the spotlights as reporters record her insane comments.

And I do mean insane.

Shields claims the Bush administration is almost exclusively targeting Democratic officeholders, such as herself, which the U.S. attorney denies. The mayoral race is nonpartisan.

“I am not going to give in to political terrorism,” Shields said.

I'm sorry, but that is positively deranged. DERANGED!

There's no other word for it.

Anyhoo, it's funny to be on the other side of things. All those years I was a reporter, duutifully hustling the bad story. Now I'm the flak whining, Why can't they write about the positive?

(Which isn't really true. It's more like I'm growsing, Why can't people who are so drunk on their own tinhorn power as to be certifiably insane just go away so we can have a city that works for once?)

american way

Got a mention in American Airline's magazine.

cheesy

Allie and I had a wedding shower in November.

We got lots of stuff.

One of the items in the kitty was the quesadilla make pictured above.

As we were packing up the car I looked at it and scoffed, "What are we going to do with a quesadilla maker." I thought it had garage sale written all over it.

Well, it's become my best friend. I've had quesadillas almost everyday. I've even gotten adventurous, making brie and smoked turkey quesadillas, goat cheese and calamata olive quesadillas. Below are pictures of blue cheese and pepperstea quesadillas and meatball quesadillas, which are my favorite so far.


Ham, cheese and pickle.


Blue cheese and peppersteak.


Meatball.


Meatball.


Meatball.

more info

For more information
about my book
- Cross-X -
please visit
the official website.

(But if you want to know more about me, feel free to stick around and read my blog.)

home

Last night, my uncle told me that he and my other uncle have completely cleared my grandma's house out. He said it is now empty.

I've known that they were in the process of moving her things for a while now. She moved in to her new place a few weeks ago. And we've all had conversations about what a tough time this is. And I've tried to stay the unsentimental course. My message has been everything's temporary. And the pros of Grandma finally moving to Goshen -- cultural and spiritual center of Elkhart County -- far outweigh the cons.

But then I hear that her house is now completely empty and I feel as though I've been punched in the gut.

More than any other place, Grandma and Grandpa's house has been my home since the day I was born. I don't mean that as a slight against my mom or Bob or the Minichillos. But there's something about 125 Hollywood Avenue I've never found anywhere else.

You know that old meditation cliché, when they tell you to close your eyes and, go to that special, safe place? That's where I always went.

I suppose I could go on a long memory bender.

For some reason the first one that pops in my mind is the time I ate a pound of walnuts in front of the TV. I got a horrible stomach ache and I begged grandma to give me Alka Seltzer. But she accidently gave me Efferdent. Fearing she'd poisoned me, she tried to get me to let her stick her finger down my throat so I'd throw up. But I refused, and lived anyway.

Or when I called my grandpa's bluff. Whenever I asked him what he wanted for Christmas he always said, "A good boy." So one year I cut a bunch of pictures of good boys out of a magazine and gave them to him.

Or the tree house he built for me.

Or...

I could really go on and on, and on.

But the memory I always come back to is a summer when I was home from college. It was a perfect day and I was laying in the hammock with a book and some sweetened ice tea in one of those tall green glasses they used to have. I don't remember the book I was reading, only that it was one of those good ones you don't want to end. At the close of one of the chapters, I laid the book on my chest and looked up at the late afternoon sunlight sifting through the leaves of the old pin oak. Time was moving neither too slowly nor too fast. I was young and content that I was exactly where I needed to be.

I had several more moments like that over that summer, and a few times in my visits since. But gradually the pace of life has outclipped even the serenity of the granfolks' place. I've tried many, many times to bring that feeling back. Haven't succeeded yet.

dream

It's 3:15 in the morning.

I awoke from a dream in which I saw my father again.

I was on my knees tending a garden at my grandmother's house. Except it wasn't his mom's house; it was my mom's mom's house. But my grandma (his mom) was inside. We were both waiting anxiously because we knew he was going to arrive. There was snow all around the exposed patch of earth that I was working.

Dad pulled into the driveway in his truck, the early-70s gold model. He glanced over at me and then stared at the steering wheel, obviously overcome with emotion.

I made my way to the car, feeling choked up, too, but also very excited and happy.

He got out of the truck. He acted a little slow and dazed, which seemed appropriate for a man who's been dead for 30 years. He looked good, though. Just like in the pictures.

Grandma rushed out of the house to greet him.

I can't remember what was said, or even if we embraced. I woke up before we could really get to talking.

It was a pleasant dream, if frustrating. It felt very real, but not real enough.

write

I wrote three sentences on Monday. I sent the sentences to Agent Lydia right away, fearing the worst. She said they were great. It was a major breakthrough.

I wrote another sentence today. And then I copied a paragraph from another document and pasted it on the end of that sentence.

Another breakthrough.

Not sure what's next. An outline, I suppose. Then I'll probably have to check in to the Motel 6 again, lock myself up, so to speak, and gitter dun!

This is how writing goes sometimes. Days and weeks of nothing, or what looks like nothing. Then a drip or two. Then, ahem, a flood.

Except it's not nothing in between. It's thinking as strenuous as weightlifting.

norfolk

Allie told me about this site where you can answer a bunch of questions and it'll tell you where you ought to live. She did it and it told her to move to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which she found supremely disappointing.

I did it, and all the top pickswere in the South. A bunch of places I never really gave much thought to, with the top finisher being Norfolk, Virginia.

Allie and I have actually talked about Norfolk before. It's supposedly a vegan paradise, because PETA is based there. Looks pretty cool, actually.

book meme

I've been tagged by Joel. I think I've done this one before.

Confederates in the Attic, Tony Horwitz

"We look at the little pictures, He takes the big view." Another woman wailed, "I don't want to go to hell, Lord. It's hell here."

Which probably is as good a reason as any to apologize for my lack of posting here. A lot's been going on, most of it good. Plus it's the holidays. But the "lot," in general terms is:

*Getting ready for the wedding
*Reworking my proposal for book2
*Helping Ryan and Marshawna get ready for the big tourney at MBA
*Helping Mark Funkhouser get elected mayor

I'm home alone for the holidays right now, which is kind of weird. I've stayed behind while Allie is at home with her folks so I can stick around this church I'm writing about. I'm not sure who's in town for Christmas, but if you're here, drop me a line.

Tag:
MAWG
Some Sort of Bird
It Never Happened

(you know the old saying: "That family that blogs together...)

feel good

(I love the reporter's grasp at meaning at the end.)

person of the year

I've been named Person of the Year by TIme magazine.

lil' jake's r.i.p.

I heard that the overlords of KC are going to condemn the best barbecue joint in the city and give the property to rich people.

I'm having lunch there tomorrow. So stay tuned for a full report.

But for, now, my Googling found doom foretold in a Star article published last year.

One well-known business that would be relocated should the development plan move forward is Lil' Jake's Eat It and Beat It, a popular 18-seat barbecue restaurant at 1227 Grand Blvd. [Jon] Copaken said there had been discussions with Danny Edwards, the owner, to try to find a suitable new downtown location.

"I love going to Lil' Jake's as well," Copaken said. "He is an institution downtown, and we want to find a way to satisfy him."

Suitable location?!

That's the reporter's words.

SUITABLE LOCATION?!?!

Seems to me Mr. Edwards already had a damn suitable location, one he snagged fair and square years before a bald developer with more money and more connections decided he wanted it for himself. But, of course, Kevin Collison is Copaken's unofficial stenographer. So to him, it seems, the word choice "suitable" is even-handed and accurate.

So now Mr. Edwards is -- indeed, we all are -- going to lose this venerable beacon of Kansas City culture to eminent domain. As if it's in the public's best interest to have a downtown "institution" swatted away so -- what? -- so a rich person can get richer, I suppose (but no less bald).

Seriously. I'm at a loss here. It's not like the joint is being demolished so we can have a highway we all need, or a light rail line. It's being shut down because someone with extreme privilege has decided they want it. And our ever compliant government shall make it so.

We're still living in America, right?

To think the liberals on the Supreme Court supported this crap.

You'd think we live in Zimbabwe or something. Like Robert Mugabe is running downtown.

chicago tribune

Cross-X was named one of the best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune.

upside down world

It's interesting to read about the looming Supreme Court decision on school desegregation after having worked my way through Robert Caro's Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson.

That entire, massive book is about a Herculean push to pass the tiniest, nearly insignificant civil rights legislation in 1957. I was amazed at how well the system worked against such measures, how the powers that be would invariably interpret laws and procedures such that they'd benefit bigotted whites and oppress everyone else.

This recent deseg stuff is kind of similar. From the NYT:

Justice Stephen G. Breyer let his frustration show in several exchanges with Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who argued the Bush administration’s position as a “friend of the court” for the challengers and against the school systems in both cases.

“Think, go back to Cooper v. Aaron,” Justice Breyer told the solicitor general, referring during the argument in the Louisville case to the court’s 1958 decision enforcing a desegregation order in Little Rock, Ark. “Go back to the case where this court with paratroopers had to use tremendous means to get those children into the school. That’s because the society was divided.”

He continued: “Here we have a society, black and white, who elect school board members who together have voted to have this form of integration. Why, given that change in society, which is a good one, how can the Constitution be interpreted in a way that would require us, the judges, to go in and make them take the black children out of the school?”

“Well, I understand that, Justice Breyer,” Mr. Clement said. “But I think the answer to that is that the lesson of history in this area is that racial classifications are not ones where we should just let local school board officials do what they think is right.”

There's so much in that little exchange.

Back in LBJ's time, it was the cry for local and state rights that led the conservatives' charge against integration. Now it's the opposite. Now it's conservatives' arguing that the local governments can't be trusted to do what's right, lest they discriminate by integrating.

end of the line

The tour is officially over. I've got a few appearances left, but it's not all tour like. They're just readings in places where I'll already be, like Kansas City and, um, Kansas City.

What a long, strange, fun, exhausting trip. Seems like a year ago since that first nervous reading in St. Louis. Now I'm sitting in the dinky Long Beach airport, after talking to a crowd of five at Eso Won Books in L.A., and selling all of two books, one of them to myself because I didn't have a freeby to give to my housing host.

But I've long since stopped caring about sales. The LA event was set up because I had planned to be here anyway, and the goal was to make a connection with the store's owner, which I did.

Yesterday I rented a bike at the Santa Monica Pier and rode it south past LAX and back. Then I went for a walk at sunset listening to Mile's Davis's In a Silient Way, the best beach-at-sunset album ever made. Today I drove the PCH from Laguna Beach to Long Beach, stopping at various state parks and walking the sand barefooted.

I hate to say it: I love Southern California.

It's like heaven on earth. Too bad it would be hell to live here.

Oh, what a drivellish blog entry this is. I've had so many I've wanted to write over the last several weeks. One about the night I sang a kareoke duet of "You Never Even Call Me By My Name" with an old black woman in an all black bar on the black side of Louisville. Or about Robert Caro's magnificent Master of the Senate. Or I need to rework my proposal for number 2, a prospect I'm actually quite thrilled about. Or...

See, that's what happens. I get these ideas and then they just disappear into mush, because I'm so damned tired.

Christmas music is playing. I hope this overdose of sunshine I've had for the last five years will carry me through the bleakest months in the Midwest. The sun here is as tart and satisfying as orange juice.

slam

I got my first bad review -- from my old high school newspaper. The place where I started out. The Smoky Hill Express

Under the headline, "Cross-X educational but boring," critic Kaely Moore writes:

Don't pick [Cross-X] up for a bit of light reading unless you're an insomniac and are looking for a new way to fall asleep.

She adds:

it is sorely lacking in entertainment. Perhaps because Miller is a journalist, his book is written in a relatively journalistic style. It's almost like a documentary, with no real feeling, no deep emotion, no true heart to his story. What's the fun of reading 480 pages that sound exactly like a newspaper?

Counting how many times Miller used the word "bureaucrat" (at least 17) was more fun than reading the rest of the book. Cross-X tells the stories of individual people, of their struggles and aspirations in the field of debate, but it doesn't really say anything about who they really are.

Ouch!

Call it karmic retribution, from back in the day when I'd load a blank sheet of paper in the old type writer and just go off. Kaely's an Express reporter cut from the same cloth as me!

Fist up for disaffected suburban youth!!

(BTW, they did also run a real nice article by Alan Dicker, who, judging from his story, actually read the book.)

illinois public radio

I was on WILL's show The Afternoon Magazine today. Real Audio.

university news

I got a review from UMKC's student paper.

news and notes

I was on NPR's News and Notes with Ebony and Marcus yesterday. Listen here.

malcolm

funny cats

This is for Lynn and Lora:

sanders

Amid all the mid-term hoopla, I missed out on Bernie Sander's election to the Senate. I don't know much about him, but what I've seen I've liked. He gave a great speech a couple of years ago during the House's hearings on steroid use in pro sports, in which he lamented our cheating culture. Now, as he prepares to join the House of Lords, he gives some good words to Mother Jones:

I want to focus on an issue that is almost never talked about on the floor — that is the power of big money. What are the moral implications? What do these people do when they have tremendous amounts of money? They use that money to perpetuate their own wealth and their own power. Every day, Congress works on behalf of big-money interests.

So, what is he?

You can call me anything you want. I won with the label "Independent" next to my name. If you ask me, "Are you an independent democratic socialist?" — yes, I am. But then we have to talk about what that means.

seriously?

Is this true:

In Kansas City - Installation of bathtubs with four legs resembling animal paws is prohibited.

More here.

stumble upon

My aunt Lynn got me all hooked on this new Stumble Upon thing. She says I'll get sick of it soon, but for now I'm enjoying all the random internet wonders.

trent lott

It seems nobody cares that Trent Lott has risen to the top of the Republican ranks in the Senate. But FAIR points out that he's still the same good ol' boy he always was:

As a member of the House of Representatives in 1978, Lott was behind a successful effort to re-instate the U.S. citizenship of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In 1981, the year Lott became majority whip in the House, he prodded the Reagan administration to fight for tax exemptions for racist private schools like Bob Jones University. (The Supreme Court turned down the administration’s plea in an 8 to 1 decision.)

In 1982 and again in 1990, Lott voted against extending the Voting Rights Act. In 1983 he voted against a national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., and in 1994 voted to de-fund the Martin Luther King holiday commission. In 1990 Lott voted against the continuation of the Civil Rights Act. In 2005, Lott scored 5 percent on the NAACP's civil rights legislative report card (NAACP.org, 1/06).

And no mainstream media outlet seems to have reported that Trent Lott has never even motioned toward apologizing for his long association with the Council of Conservative Citizens, or for the lies he told denying his links to the group.

In late 1998, when it was learned that the then-Senate majority leader had had a long-term association with the CCC, a racist group the Southern Poverty Law Center described (Intelligence Report, Winter/99) as "the reincarnation of the infamous White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s,” Lott responded to questions about his appearance at a CCC event by denying, through an aide, any detailed knowledge of the group, and said he only “vaguely remembered” giving a single speech to the group more than ten years earlier (Extra!, 3-4/99).

In fact, Lott hosted CCC leaders at his Senate office in 1997 and addressed its events at least three times in the 1990s. As a keynote speaker at a 1992 CCC convention, Lott heaped praise on its members: “The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy…. Let's take it in the right direction and our children will be the beneficiaries!"

I got to thinking about Lott while listening to Robert Caro's Master of the Senate as I drove to Indiana last week. It contained a quote from one of Lott's predecessors James O. Eastland, who, while still a senator representing the great state of Mississippi, declared at a 10,000-strong rally in opposition to the Montgomery bus boycott:

In every stage of the bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking niggers.... African flesh-eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives.... All whites are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers.

Yep. That was just 50 years ago.

star-tribune

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

The minute I finished Joe Miller's "Cross-X," I held the book out in front of me -- amazed, rapturous and hopeful... There are plenty of great books that argue how to fix problems. But there are very few, like "Cross-X," in which the author, with a front-row seat, finds he can't help but roll up his sleeves and jump in. It's an incredibly powerful, daringly hopeful book.

education week

From the November issue of Education Week:

Disadvantaged Students
Cross-X
by Joe Miller (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, www.fsgbooks.com; 496 pp., $26 hardback).
Book cover: Cross-X

A journalist, Miller first visited Kansas City (Mo.) Central High School at the request of its student body president, who was frustrated by its negative reputation in the news media. He found an inner-city school in which 99 percent of the students are members of minority groups, less than 1 percent score at the proficient level, and only one-third graduate, but which also is home to a prize-winning debate team that routinely beats nationally known competitors. Miller shadowed the team through its 2002 season and ultimately became an assistant coach as his involvement deepened. In this book, he describes the black debaters, their dedicated white coach, and the obstacles they faced, such as poverty, foster care, and a lack of support from school administrators and in the greater debate community. The team not only challenged its circumstances, but also took on the modern style of debate (in which high-speed recitation of evidence dominates) by emphasizing social issues and wordplay during matches. Miller’s account of the team’s year sheds light on both the state of urban education today and the status of an evolving academic sport.

teacher magazine

An excellent review from Teacher magazine:

Published: December 1, 2006
Book Review
Cross-X
A Turbulent, Triumphant Year With an Inner-City Debate Squad
by Joe Miller, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 480 pages, $26)

You don’t need much imagination to see this book as a movie. It has all the ingredients to warm the hearts of an audience. Picture Stand and Deliver meets Hoosiers.

Reporter Joe Miller followed Kansas City Central High School’s debate team through the 2002-03 season, which ended, to the surprise of many, with a top-10 finish at the national championship in Atlanta. Miller brings to the story not only a novelist’s eye for detail and a historian’s grasp of context, but also great empathy. He got so caught up in the lives and struggles of the young black debaters from the inner city that he ultimately abandoned journalistic detachment to become their friend and mentor.

Readers are likely to be similarly moved. Central is, as Miller describes it, “little more than a dangerous day care for teens.” Its neighborhood unemployment rate is 42 percent. Debate represents the best and maybe only hope that Ebony, Marcus, Brandon, and other team members have of ever escaping poverty and neglect—and of making something of themselves.
Meanwhile, their coach, Jane Rinehart, faces her own set of problems. To take the team to tournaments, she must overcome institutional inertia, lack of resources, and plain old administrative incompetence. And at the tournaments, she must deal with the the debate community’s subtle racism. It’s a constant fight, and though she often feels like giving up, the kids keep her going. “I owe my life to her,” one of them says.

Miller has written a big, sprawling book, with almost as many characters and philosophical asides as a 19th-century Russian novel. Not that it isn’t exciting—the scenes describing Central in face-to-face showdowns with snotty private schools may have you leaping ahead to find out what happens. But despite the team’s miraculous finish at the nationals, we shouldn’t forget an important fact: In a truly free and equal society, it wouldn’t seem to be a miracle when black kids succeed.

—Reviewed by Howard Good

Howard Good is coordinator of the journalism program at the State University of New York at New Paltz. His latest book is Inside the Board Room: Reflections of a Former School Board Member (Rowan & Littlefield Education, 2006).

cat zen

funky town

I owe a lot to Mark Funkhouser . He taught me more about the nature of modern-day big-city power than anyone else.

When I was a full-time reporter, Funkhouser was my favorite source. He loved good investigative reporting, and he wasn't afraid to support it. He would actually call after I'd written a particularly hard-hitting story to commend me. (On the other hand, after I wrote one of the Pitch's first forays into spoof stories, he lambasted my effort -- in front of the entire city council at a business meeting -- as "absolute drivel.")

Funkhouser wasn't a dirt-disher, though. He'd never call me and whisper the latest City Hall gossip in my ear, like so many (thankfully) did. And I hardly ever quoted him. In fact, he was quite coy. He'd never give any info until I asked the right questions. And even then his answer was usually to read such and such report or audit.

But after I got to know my way around, I could come to him and tell him everything I knew and say something like, "This TIF policy seems like legalized graft." And he might say, off-the-record of course, something like, "That's right! It is!!" (Meaning, of course, that the city's tax incentive program is perfectly legal;-)

Two of his reading suggestions completely solidified my understanding of Kansas City. One was a book called Regime Politics, which is actually about Atlanta. And the other was the Holy Grail of Kansas City documents:

The Financial Condition Forum of 2002.

Can you hear the choir of angels?

Yeah. This report is all that.

It offered everything I needed to explain to my readers how this dumb city works. (Or, more accurately, doesn't work.)

And it's written in the most clear, unbureaucratic language. Like this:

There are difficulties unique to Kansas City’s governance structure. The Mayor and City Council’s ability to provide leadership is reduced by the diffusion of power in Kansas City government. One participant characterized the structure as “cul-de-sacs of power.”

I loved that "cul-de-sacs of power" detail. Used it in several stories. Nice way to say "fiefdoms."

And this is even more direct:

The city’s financial condition is precarious and unstable, and the situation is worsened by a lack of direction and priorities.

And this, too:

The future might be a problem, according to another participant, who said the city is like a large corporation that could go down the tubes with a couple of bad decisions.

Can you believe that? A government report that actually says "down the tubes."

Kansas City, like other older urban cities, balanced its recent budget by using reserves and deferring maintenance.

Ok, so that's a little wonky. What that means is we're spending our savings and letting our house go to shit just to keep up our lavish spending habits. As in:

The condition of streets has gotten worse over the past twenty years and infrastructure has decayed.

But here's the money quote. The part where they lay out in brutally honest terms how this city is run:

Through the course of discussion, the (forum participants) listed the most powerful influences on the political environment, saying that politics is largely driven by five elements, all of which have their own political agendas:

1. Investment in my area or community (district) [meaning, council members' pet projects]
   
2. Proponents of the “big idea” or sexy idea [meaning the Jack Henry crowd and their costly schemes, like a tenant-less arena]
   
3. Labor unions
   
4. The development community
   
5. To some extent, neighborhoods

That's right, dear reader. You and I are dead last on that list. And we only have power "to some extent."

Ah, Mark. I'm sure the reporters in town will miss you! I know we mere taxpayers will.

reviews and news

Boston Globe:

"Forget the nerdy reputation that debate has. Instead think of a scenario as exciting as a sports game with high stakes like triumphing over racism, bad politics, and abject poverty... While Cross-X might have started out as a Rocky-like story of a team conquering great odds, it morphs into an important, thoughtful, and provocative look at race and class in America, celebrating the tiny -- and triumphant -- inroad that these kids made in their lives and in the world of debate."

Rocky Mountain News

Cleveland Plain Dealer

And I hit the bestseller list in Denver.

amazon top ten

Cross-X was named one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2006 by Amazon.com.

clay

I voted against Clay Chastain's light rail plan. Now I'm really sorry I did. What a great opportunity to stick it to The Man.

I voted against it because Clay is annoying, and because my good friend David Martin said it was a bad idea.

But now that the measure won, I'm bummed I wasn't part of the rebel party.

Whether the actual plan was a bad idea or not doesn't matter. What's great is that an outsider who is pretty much disliked by all the folks in power managed to push a major public works project past voters.

That never happens here!

Bond issues are the domain of the dumbass in-crowd.

Or they're supposed to be.

Ha!

I love it!!

I wish I could share in the credit.

attack ads

Salon's Video Dog offers a top ten list of the worst attack ads of the year. The one above is an absolute classic.

These are pretty funny too:





I guess politicians aren't beholden to libel laws.

velocity

A weekly paper in Louisville has written an excellent article on how the University of Louisville's debate program had an influence on me.

(And a terrific picture of Ebony Rose, too.)

election time

When Allie read the news this morning, she hooted and jumped up and down. Still excited, she went back to the Star's webpage to soak it in and gloat. Of the picture of the victorious McCaskill, she said, "She looks like a snake who swallowed a rat."

radio days

This morning Marcus and I met at the KCUR studios to record a segment for NPR's News & Notes. Ebony Rose joined us via high tech wiring from Louisville, and Farai Chideya interviewed us from Los Angeles. Best quote came from Ebony: "The master has lots of tools, but they need to be stole."

Then Coach Jane Rinehart joined us for a Steve Kraske's Up to Date. This was a great show. In my opinion, the best yet. Kraske's a deft host.

And you can now listen to my reading at Prairie Lights in Iowa City. It's probably the most debate-focused one so far. There were a lot of debaters and debate coaches in attendance. Honestly, I don't think I did so good at this one. I said "sort of" a lot. But it was a good crowd, and they seemed to like it.

tattered cover

Last week I had the great honor of giving a reading in the bookstore I pretty much grew up in -- The Tattered Cover.

It's hard to imagine a better bookstore anywhere in the country, or maybe even the world. It's huge, cozy, and independently owned. And I got the best treatment there out of all the places I've done readings so far. They even gave me an engraved bookmark, pictured above (click on the image for more pix from the event).

Since Denver is a hometown of mine (along with Elkhart, Indiana, and now KC), the place was packed with friends and family, and I sold 47 books, which quite a haul. My mom deserves most of the credit, though. As people came up to the table to get books signed they introduced themselves to me as my mom's lawyer, neighbor, bunco partner, etc.

Truly an awesome experience.

It was especially great that an old teacher of mine showed up, Paul Epstein, a man I mentioned in the book's acknowledgments. Twenry years ago he basically taught me how to write, taught me that it's not the writing but the rewriting that makes a writer. He now owns the best music store in the country -- Twist and Shout, which, like its new neighbor, the Tattered Cover, is huge, cozy, and independently owned.

dam

While in Denver I had the privilege of visiting the Denver Art Museum expansion, designed by Daniel Libeskind. Wonderful building. I didn't get a sense, though, that it had resolved the challenge of incorporating the original building, which I had grown rather fond of during my years in the Mile High city.

Click the above image for a slideshow.

local news

The Star story came out today, and it's a rather glowing article. I was also on Fox 4 last night, but the video doesn't appear to be archived.

I'll be on Kraske's show with Coach Jane Rinehart and former debater Marcus Leach at 11 today.

(One of these days I'll go back to writing actual blog entries.)

best books of the year

Publisher's Weekly has named Cross-X one of the 100 best books of the year.

more a.p.

Well, the Star story didn't run today. But the AP story was picked up by the websites of more than 50 major newspapers and TV news outlets, including FOX News, the Washington Post and the International Herald-Tribune.

Most carry a variation of the same headline: "Poor Debaters Triumph Over Rich Kids." Which is alright by me.

denver and the a.p.

It's been a heck of a week. It was so amazing to go back home and see so many people I haven't seen in so long. I've got lots of pictures, and a handful of posts I want to make (like how my mom is the best book marketer on earth, or at least in Denver), but I've been insanely busy (proposal rewrite due today). But for now I've got some media updates.

That AP story released last month has got some legs. This weekend both the SF Chronicle and Yahoo! News picked it up. Man, a lot of people read that Yahoo! I've gotten several e-mails, and have found links to the story on debate sites. And my Amazon rankings shot back up again.

Tomorrow the Star will be running a story, from what I understand. And I'll be on Kraske's show Tuesday. And on that same day I'll be taping for News and Notes.

Tonight me and the woman is going to see Borat. We need an obnoxious laugh.

tayari jones

Super author Tayari Jones put up a nice post about my book.

I'm going to buy her book, Leaving Atlanta, today. It's set inthe summer when dozens of children were murdered in Atlanta in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I remember that time. I was only eleven or twelve myself. But I don't recall the specifics. Only that the story unfolded slowly on theevening news, and that it haunted me.

Thecool thing is Tayari offered to talk with me by phone today, to strategize marketing schemes. What a blessing! There've been amazing moments like this, when folks have just come out of the blue to help me.

But the SUPER cool thing is she's goingto send her copy of my book to Niki Giovanni, and, cooler still, she urged me to write a letter to one of my heroes, bell hooks. Turns out hooks is now in Kentucky, so perhaps I can meet her when I'm passing through in a couple of weeks.