‘I’m not opposed to funding social programs, but let’s do it without pretending there’s morality in extracting money from people this way.’

Tennessee ranked 29th in U.S. News & World Report’s Best States ranking for 2021. ‘Here’s the scientific explanation, and I’ll try to be brief: Our state legislature is mean-spirited, small-minded, short-sighted. And cheap.’

Every eligible restaurant should seize the opportunity of the Restaurant Revitalization Fund while it lasts. The only downsides are having to fill out an application and track the used funds.

Ida B. Wells’ words and actions put to shame efforts by state legislatures today – including ours in Tennessee – to ban the teaching of systemic racism and its detrimental impact on people of color.

Once we can get to Whataburger on a short drive from Memphis to Southaven, it might go the way of Coors beer. 

Government support is grudgingly given to public schools, because of legal requirements. In fact, our state has been sued to provide even that support. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see Richard Myers call for private money to help public schools. 

Within the span of about three days, the House and Senate imposed their Caucasian-centered, conservative will on what can and cannot by taught in schools about racism’s sordid history and harmful impact.

More than 95% of doctors have gotten vaccines, according to one survey. Do you think we would immediately have taken those shots when offered if we were concerned about their safety?

Neighborhoods are the places where life happens, and since the outbreak of COVID-19, they are increasingly where work happens for many of us. Does your neighborhood have everything you need? 

“Maybe most of all, my mother was a woman who loved her two boys, my brother and me, more than anything. It’s all in the obit. And it’s all entirely true. But then there are the parts that I left out.”

“The qualified immunity privilege serves as a cloak of protection reminiscent of Jim Crow laws and as a vestige of racism that perpetuates unequal treatment before the law. It is both bad law and bad public policy.”

While ignorance has always been preventable and COVID-19 is now preventable, nothing can prevent stupid in 100% of us. Not getting a vaccine is all about you, a selfish and self-indulgent exercise.

Road recklessness has been notable for more than a year, the rise perhaps coinciding with pandemic shutdowns. But it doesn’t seem to be diminishing, even as COVID restrictions ease.

One of the principal components of crude oil is benzene. It takes very little benzene to make a vast quantity of water completely undrinkable.

If the goal of more frequent reappraisals is not a bigger pot of tax revenue, what are we trying to accomplish? Is anyone clamoring to have the county government poke into their property value more often?

Baseball cards are becoming as hard to find as Lysol and hand sanitizer in the pandemic’s early days. A search at the old stores can lead to frustration.

The Daily Memphian bills this as an opinion piece, and the author makes efforts to endear himself to us as a local, but this is not an opinion piece by a local. It is astroturfing by the oil industry.

‘I now understand the science of groundwater aquifers and the complex of laws and regulations that keep an aquifer healthy,’ says geologist Deborah Baker Carington. ‘I also understand the very real risks an oil pipeline spill would pose to the region’s most precious resource, the Memphis aquifer.’

Lynne Turley taught music in the Memphis City Schools for 22 years. She believed that every child was musical.

RoboKiller predicts that scammers will design even smarter, more believable phone scams in the future. Spam calls could reach 70 billion and texts 90 billion by the end of 2021.

The judge deserves to be remembered as one of the most consequential public figures in Memphis during the second half of the 20th century, says Otis Sanford.