What Happened?

I have been away from Memphis for ten years and what I found on my return was shocking. The Mall of Memphis was closed as well as the Raliegh Springs Mall. The Whitehaven area and the Hickory Hill area are all but ghettos. Apartments are boarded up. Some are fenced in and look like a prison. The school system is in a sambles and many neighboring communities are trying to withdraw from any affiliation with the city and possibly the county governments. The only place that there is a mall left is in the eastern part of the city. There is a murder everyday in this city and it has distrubed me greatly. The city I once new has become a stranger. I no longer feel at home here. I see a great diaster in the making. The death of a city.
And it is no wonder when you have a mayor who is harrassing the police while trying to make an arrest for drugs. It appears that he must have had some connection to the drug suspects the police were trying to arrest. So I ask you; how long are the people of this city going to sit idly by while the Herrington Mafia destroys what used to be one of the best cities in the nation to live. He reminds me of the Mexican Officals that I met in my travels that pilfer the coffers of their cities and think nothing of it because they are "el jeffe" with conections to the narco trafficos. People say that there is nothing certain in life but death and taxes. Well that is an absolute guarantee in this city, not just a statement!
And speaking of taxes, I would like to know where all the money is going. There is a proposal to stop home building because the city and county can't afford to complete the infrastructure which will futher devastate the city coffers all the while financing things like the Fed Ex Forum and the Autozone Park. I guess we can slash education for that. Everyone here knows that sports are more important. Where else but on a ball team can you get a million dollar job when you can't even spell million. We have the lottery now which is supposed to fund education all going to give high school grads a chance at college but how are you supposed to get into college if the education you got growing up is substandard at best.
Which brings me to another gripe. We have a lottery in Tennessee but you can't even buy a raffle ticket to benefit St. Jude Hospital. What is the logic in that? You can gamble for the state but not for some worthy cause to help the sick and needy. We can let millions of dollars go to Tunica casinos and to the dog track in West Memphis but we can't build a casino in the Pyramid downtown which is the only thing that is going to get the city out of hock on that one. Another Spruce Goose! You build all these things to draw tourism but who wants to come to a place where you are going to get robbed and killed. But I digress here.
I wrote this to get a handle on what happened to this city. Is there an answer? I think the answer lies in the fact that the education system is a complete failure here. And the lack of a good educational system will be the weed that will spread to kill this city!