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Jackson Day: It’s Coming

By Kleinheider Posted on at 6:31 pm

Via the Munday Message:

The Tennessee Democratic Party’s annual Jackson Day celebration will take place Saturday, May 31 at 6 p.m. in Nashville. The event will be held at The Wildhorse Saloon and will feature live entertainment, dinner, an address by our Governor Phil Bredesen, along with other special guests.

Matt Kisber’s Pipeline

By Kleinheider Posted on at 5:56 pm

John Rodgers thinks the Bredesen administration may have given up some of the goods on a big new company coming to the area:

In a speech to the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce today, Gov. Phil Bredesen said ECD Commissioner Matt Kisber’s “pipeline” is full of companies looking to move to Tennessee, “including some really, really big ones.”

Hmm. Watch out for the incentives included in the so-called “technical corrections bill” that’s up for debate.

Fred To Accompany McCain At Wake Forrest

By Kleinheider Posted on at 5:21 pm

From the Winston Salem Journal:

Organizers say that McCain will speak about 10 a.m. at Wait Chapel. The doors will open at 8 a.m. for the talk, which is free and open to the public.

With McCain will be Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee. U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson will also be present.

Wake Forest President Nathan O. Hatch extended an invitation in 2007 to all presidential candidates. On April 18, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., spoke at Wait Chapel.

The House Of Davis

By Kleinheider Posted on at 5:17 pm

Congressman Lincoln Davis discusses the Congressional role in the Housing crisis with a Chattanooga television news station.

Bill Frist To Give Blanton State House Run A Bump

By Kleinheider Posted on at 4:31 pm

Republican State Committeewoman Barbara Blanton kicks off her campaign to unseat 62nd District state Rep. Curt Cobb in the pages of the Shelbyville Times-Gazette:

“People I talk to say we need jobs; people want to work,” Blanton said. “Legislators do not create jobs, however, they work to create a business friendly environment. If you have a good education system and good roads you’re going to have jobs.

As to immigration, Blanton said, “Cobb voted against requiring all driver’s license tests to be conducted only in the English language. I will vote for this requirement. When Ted was in the Navy, we lived in Puerto Rico for three years and we had to take the test in Spanish.

“Cobb voted against requiring photo ID’s to register to vote, and he voted against requiring photo ID’s to vote. I believe everyone needs a photo ID to register and to vote.

“There are numerous bills that Cobb and I disagree on, and I will be pointing those out during the campaign.”

A campaign kick-off reception for the candidate will be held Saturday at the home of her daughter and son-in-law, Dianne and Michael Watson. Former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist will be a special guest at the event.

The True Energy Enemy: Our Democracy

By Kleinheider Posted on at 4:22 pm

Joe Powell points the finger at an electorate without a time horizon and blames it for our current energy crisis:

As much as the leadership in Washington is to blame for abandoning real solutions over the last 30 years, we have to blame ourselves too - for letting them slide and for indulging ourselves even more and for increasing our reliance on the commercial structures which have expanded our needs for energy.

Blowing Up An Issue

By Kleinheider Posted on at 4:09 pm

Jeff Woods investigates the unfortunate lapse in the legislature on the subject of mountaintop mining:

With a coal company essentially promising to mine by blowing off the tops of Tennessee mountains, lawmakers inexplicably refused to act and all but guaranteed great swaths of ecologically important woodlands will be laid to waste.

The National Coal Corp. threatened to shut down in Tennessee if mountaintop mining were banned. So to save 234 jobs, the sum total of the company’s workforce, lawmakers decided to sacrifice the natural beauty that underpins a gazillion-dollar tourism industry.

It’s all the more baffling because the legislature, at the urging of Gov. Phil Bredesen, has invested more than $100 million to acquire and protect the land that’s now in the coal company’s crosshairs. It’s mostly in the 74,000-acre Sundquist Wildlife Management Area in the northern Cumberland Plateau. The state bought surface and timber rights, but mineral rights belong to National Coal.

Know Your Enemy

By Kleinheider Posted on at 4:07 pm

Daniel McCarthy sees some promise in a New Republic blogger’s suggestion to young leftists that they study the history of conservatism:

Ironically enough, if liberals take up YoungSmith’s challenge, they might quickly find themselves knowing more about the Right than the typical movement conservative does. And who knows? If they approach the history with an open mind — not what YoungSmith recommends, to be sure — they might come not only to understand the difference between conservatism and the conservative movement but to find something attractive in the former.

The Audacity Of Topography

By Kleinheider Posted on at 4:02 pm

Matt C at Race42008 breaks down the changing electoral map that an Obama versus McCain match up would give us:

Clearly, Obama’s strength lies in his ability to turn flyover and western states bluer and running stronger than Kerry in the South, while at the same time taking the coveted states of MN, WI, OR, and WA further out of reach of the GOP. Obama’s strength in the typically dark red “Republican L” is stark.

Likewise, McCain’s advantage lies in his strength in typically blue Northeastern states and making MI and CA closer, while running stronger in the southwest than did Bush - and moving the trifecta of OH, PA, and FL further out of Dem reach.

By the time the dust settles in this contest, we may not recognize the electoral map.

The Best And The Worst

By Kleinheider Posted on at 3:16 pm

BusinessTN lets you know which state legislators have been naughty and nice to the Tennessee business community.

SEE ALSO: Huddle House

Proud Son Of The Fighting First District

By Kleinheider Posted on at 2:49 pm

Rob Huddleston lets us know who he is:

I’m from the 1st District of the Great State of Tennessee, where people support candidates that believe what they believe. We sat with Jimmy Quillen and Bill Jenkins at church socials and pancake breakfasts, talking about what we could do to make this world a better place through the vehicles of limited government, lower taxes, religious and civil liberties, protection of the right to bear arms, and a strong military to defend our borders.

The bond we felt has to do with belief and ideology, not party loyalty. This is more of an Appalachian trait, it seems, than a Tennessean one or a Southern one. I suppose that one could expand voting for a common ideology instead of with party affiliation to many parts of the South, and Zell Miller of Georgia would be an example of this phenomenon. In fact, those Republicans who cheered Zell’s loyalty to his ideology at the expense of his party and then deride those of us who do the same thing as the party of McCain drifts Left are nothing more than hypocrites and opportunists.

I am not supporting John McCain. I will not vote for John McCain. I have not been shy about those statements.

Justice Janice Holder, First Female Tennessee Supreme Court Chief

By Kleinheider Posted on at 2:46 pm

R. Neal points to the news that before the retirement of Tennessee Chief Justice William Barker made the paper his colleagues on the bench decided that the next Chief would be Justice Janice Holder.

SEE ALSO: Music City Bloggers

Mending The White Pickett Fence

By Kleinheider Posted on at 2:06 pm

Barack Obama will appear along with his wife in an appearance some are comparing to the Clintons’ post-Gennifer Flowers 60 Minutes interview:

Now that Barack Obama has distanced himself publicly, if painfully, from the pastor who married him and his wife and baptized their children, he is getting close to the wife in a national television appearance.

NBC’s Meredith Vieira will sit down with Barack and Michelle Obama today in Indianapolis for an interview that will air on the “Today” show Thursday. A segment of the talk will air on NBC’s “Nightly News” and on MSNBC this evening.

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All That Debt, And Soon, Nothing To Even Show For It

By Kleinheider Posted on at 2:01 pm

At an increasing pace, Americans are selling off their financed consumer goods at internet sites like Ebay and Craigslist in order to make ends meet now that home equity lines have run dry and credit cards are maxed to the max:

Economists say it is difficult to compare the selling trend with other tough times because the Internet, only in wide use since the mid-1990s, has made it much easier to unload goods than, say, at pawn shops.

But clearly, cash-strapped people are selling their belongings at bargain prices, with a flood of listings for secondhand cars, clothing and furniture hitting the market in recent months, particularly since January.

Earlier this decade, people tapped their inflated home equity and credit cards to fuel a buying binge. Now, slumping home values and a credit crisis have sapped sources of cash.

A Question Of Ethics

By Kleinheider Posted on at 1:36 pm

Ken Whitehouse reports on the deep cleavage developing between the Tennessee Ethics Commission and the legislators and lobbyists whose ethical behavior the Commission is tasked with overseeing.

Even if Close, She Will Be Too Far Away

By Kleinheider Posted on at 1:32 pm

Lawrence Alexander reminds that even if Hillary Clinton is able to get herself to place where she can make a plausible case to the superdelegates to choose her, she will still have one man standing in her way:

The Clintons cannot get back to the White House and return to power without first winning the Democratic nomination, and they can no longer do that without the support of the great majority of the super delegates who have yet to commit to either side. No one wants this to go on to the convention; everyone wants to avoid the political equivalent of civil war. The only Democrat with the moral authority to stop it by telling the others how they ought to proceed is Al Gore, which means it is now in his power either to help Hillary Clinton to the nomination or to crush her ambition once and for all. It is not difficult to anticipate what the former vice-president is likely to do, not if we remember that it is not necessary to have studied Machiavelli, or even to have read him, to know how to be Machiavellian.

The Honorable Phil Governor To Explain Himself During Joint Session

By Kleinheider Posted on at 1:28 pm

From the AP:

Gov. Phil Bredesen has asked lawmakers to convene in a joint session to hear his explanation of budget cuts that have become necessary due to lower than expected revenue.

Why Can’t We Keep It?

By Kleinheider Posted on at 12:54 pm

Kay Brooks receipt of her federal stimulus rebate has gotten her thinking about state budget issues:

I’m thankful for this money but I can’t help but wonder about all the stuff Congress and the State Legislature deem more important than leaving our hard earned money in our own pockets. Particularly galling is the Governor’s whining about how revenue’s are down and all his grand plans for our money won’t happen. He’ll have to rewrite his budget because his own number crunchers thought the money well would never run dry–or at least not until the next administration. Gee, who would have ever thought that taxing cigarettes would discourage their purchase? However, because rank has its privileges he won’t suffer much at all. The $13 million party bunker is still moving forward. We might have to do without but he and his legislative comrades still be able to party on.

Vehicle Independence

By Kleinheider Posted on at 12:28 pm

Murfreesboro’s Daily News Journal editorializes in favor of more mass transit — and quickly before gas prices get any higher:

The RTA has proposed Bus Rapid Transit, a high-speed bus service operating separately from road traffic to run between Nashville and Murfreesboro. Let’s make it happen as soon as possible.

The authority also considered a commuter rail similar to the Music City Star, a popular ride between Nashville and Lebanon. CSX, however, has been a sticking point on the use of its railroad tracks to run mass transit between Nashville and Murfreesboro.

That’s a shame because this sort of high-speed track should have been set up years ago.

Instead, Middle Tennessee has put millions into the widening of interstate highways. Conventional thought was that road projects would eventually become obsolete because roads couldn’t be made any wider. Nobody ever considered the idea that gas would become too expensive for commuters to fill up their cars.

A Money Pit Bureaucracy Like Any Other

By Kleinheider Posted on at 12:21 pm

Aunt B. sees some of the conditions the military is subjecting our soldiers to after they leave the war zone and wonders…

And I hate to ask a dumb question but, if we’re spending over six hundred billion dollars a year on the military, where is that money going?

Isn’t That Special

By Kleinheider Posted on at 12:00 pm

Residents in towns across Tennessee only have a few more days to make sure their family is counted in a special census that will mean increased state funds for the municipalities. Unfortunately for some of the town governments, some folks aren’t opening their doors.

Memo To White Liberals

By Kleinheider Posted on at 11:23 am

Mark Mays asserts that, white liberals at least, need to stop talking about Jeremiah Wright unless they want to make bigger the stick which has been given to Republicans to poke them with in the fall:

Liberals, supporters of Obama and Clinton continued hand wringing and demonizing of Wright only serve to give life to an issue that should have been dead weeks ago. The bigger Wright becomes as a villain in this tale, the more effective he becomes as an attack ad in the fall.

If At First You Don’t Succeed

By Kleinheider Posted on at 11:07 am

Steve Gill declares that Barack Obama was lucky that his pastor Jeremiah Wright continued to defend himself and make controversial statement because it gave Obama the opportunity to get his Sister Souljah moment right:

In 1992 hip-hop artist and political activist Sister Souljah was asked during a Washington Post interview about the riots in Los Angeles that occurred in the wake of the acquittal of police officers who had beaten black motorist Rodney King following a high speed chase. Souljah noted that “black people kill black people every day; why not have a week and kill white people.”

A few weeks later, Presidential candidate Bill Clinton was speaking at a Rainbow Coalition conference hosted by Jesse Jackson and used a portion of his speech to attack Souljah’s comments. Although Jackson and other black leaders criticized Clinton for his position, the repudiation of the racist statement by Souljah allowed Clinton to demonstrate to moderate voters, both black and white, that he was not going to pander to Jackson and the extremist elements in the black community.

Obama has essentially accomplished the same thing with his denunciation of Wright. And this time he did not have to throw his grandmother under the bus to do it. Wright is not likely to disappear from the debate over race in the months ahead, but by taking full advantage of his “do-over” Obama will now be able to stop the bleeding and close the deal for the Democratic Party nomination.

Legislative Committee Breaks Bad With Mayor Dean

By Kleinheider Posted on at 10:58 am

The Senate Tax Subcommittee has passed a bill which would allow sales taxes collected at or near a new Sounds stadium to pay the debt on the facility. Mayor Karl Dean strenuously objected to the bill:

“The fact that they are bringing this legislation forward after having been specifically asked not to, the city considers that an act of bad faith on the part of the Sounds,” said Eddie Davidson, Metro Nashville’s lobbyist on Capitol Hill. “As a result of this act of bad faith, the city will not be holding any further negotiations or discussions with the Sounds or any of their representations as a result of this action.”

“The city believes that this bill is a step backward in the move to keep baseball in Nashville, Tennessee,” Davidson said.

The Sounds needed to be focusing on private dollars as opposed to public financing, Davidson said.

24

By Kleinheider Posted on at 10:36 am

Both Democratic presidential candidates have picked up three superdelegates a piece in the last 24 hours and the larger battle is getting increasingly tense.

Tennessee’s Amazing Shrinking Tax Base

By Kleinheider Posted on at 10:19 am

R. Neal comments on the news that Tennessee experienced the worst tax collection month in 47 years:

[T]his is the great thing about a sales tax. You can voluntarily give yourself a tax cut!

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Lt. Governor To Attend Gas Price Protest

By Kleinheider Posted on at 10:16 am

Via Adam Groves:

Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey says he will be on hand for a gas price protest organized in Bristol by Earl Humphreys, a small business owner who says his lawn care business is suffering from the high gas prices. Representatives of more than a dozen other lawn care companies have agreed to join with Humphreys on May 5 along with 20 trucking companies that plan to park their vehicles in protest.

A Comparison Kurita Can’t Really Care For

By Kleinheider Posted on at 8:45 am

Exploratory Gubernatorial candidate Kim McMillan on Senator Rosalind Kurita’s primary race with Tim Barnes:

“It’s very much like the situation between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. We’ve got two good candidates, whoever wins,” McMillan opined.

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Grand Optimism From Jim Sasser

By Kleinheider Posted on at 8:39 am

From a guest editorial:

Following the recent violence in Tibet and the repressive Chinese reaction, Americans are concerned once again about human rights in China. They ask, “What can the United States do to improve the human rights situation in China?”

An honest answer would be, “Not very much.” Here’s why.