Nashville Tea Party founder Ben Cunningham warned that the half-cent sales tax increase being considered to fund Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit reform plan will be “just a small down payment” from Nashvillians.
Cunningham posted to X, formerly Twitter, in response to a piece by Tennessean reporter Cassandra Stephenson.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Nashville Tea Party founder Ben Cunnigham to the studio to discuss how he was recently blocked by LinkedIn.
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A Staten Island artist is making national headlines for his “huuuge” commissioned work honoring a muscular President Donald Trump. Scott Lobaido installed a 20-foot tall installation in a client’s yard showing a beefy, muscular bust of Trump atop a red-white-and-blue “2020” that lights up at night, ABC 7 NY reported. The president, as envisioned by Lobaido, has “huuuge” arms like a bodybuilder and wears a T-shirt proclaiming “POTUS 45” and is surrounded by American flags. The client installed security cameras around his house to protect the work. “I’m an artist … and this is my work,” Lobaido told ABC 7 NY. A previous pro-Trump creation of his was burned by a vandal or vandals. It was a 12-foot-high “T” with a flag motif. The new client will have his neighbors’ help in protecting the installation. The Harris Avenue home in Staten Island is a pro-Trump enclave of the bright blue New York City. ABC 7 NY interviewed some of the client’s neighbors who voiced their support for the artwork. One said the installation should be even larger. You can see the ABC 7 NY report here: Lobaido’s website describes himself as a patriotic artist. “Throughout my 50 years, people have…
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The Nashville Tea Party is calling on Nashville Mayor Megan Barry to release detailed plans for a tentative $6 billion regional mass transit project. Barry has said she will put a referendum on the ballot next year to raise taxes for the project, designed to be phased in over 25 years. The proposal she’s backing makes heavy use of light rail, as well as rapid buses. The Nashville Business Journal has reported that Barry is also considering underground transit downtown. “If approved, these new taxes will burden Middle Tennessee taxpayers for decades,” the Nashville Tea Party said in a press release Monday. “The mayor’s current petition campaign simply asks taxpayers to pledge they will ‘pay for it’”. “This amounts to the mayor asking taxpayers to sign a blank check,” Ben Cunningham, president of the Nashville Tea Party, said in the press release. The press release says that the Nashville Tea Party wants the public to have the complete details now and not “in bits and pieces over the coming months.” It notes that the IMPROVE Act passed by the state legislature earlier this year requires that the public be well informed before a referendum vote. The IMPROVE Act raised the gas tax…
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The Nashville Tea Party and a Vanderbilt University economics professor are raising concerns about the $6 billion regional mass transit plan for Middle Tennessee. Much of the plan is still tentative and designed to be phased in over 25 years. However, in her State of Metro address in April, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry committed to starting work on light rail along Gallatin Pike immediately. She also said she would have a referendum on the ballot in 2018 to raise taxes to help fund transit projects. The Gallatin Pike plan calls for putting train tracks in the middle of Gallatin Pike from Briley Parkway south to the downtown bus station. The Nashville Tea Party sees problems with that. “This will mean many years of construction noise, choking dust and major traffic disruption,” the tea party chapter said on its Facebook page last week. The regional transit plan also calls for light rail along Charlotte Pike, Nolensville Pike and Murfreesboro Pike and for light rail connecting Nashville and Clarksville. The Nashville Tea Party posted a study by Malcolm Getz, a Vanderbilt University economics professor who is critical of the regional transit plan primarily because of its heavy reliance on trains, though the plan…
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FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE (Tuesday, May 23) — Today The Tennessee Star announced its online news site has had ONE MILLION visits since its launch February 6. “The Tennessee Star is the only consistently conservative media outlet in the state of Tennessee. This is a conservative state, and Tennesseans have wanted a fact-based news site with a conservative perspective for many years. That’s what we offer, and that’s why we’ve seen such tremendous traffic,” said Managing Editor Christina Botteri. “People are smart and they want to be informed and not preached at or dictated to, and I believe that is a big part of why we are growing at such a substantial rate – especially compared to other area news outlets,” she said. Judson Phillips, a long-time conservative activist and Tea Party Nation founder agreed. “I am not shocked at the excellent performance of The Tennessee Star. While the Gannett-owned papers read like newsletters for the Tennessee Democrat Party, The Star goes after important stories that the liberal media will not touch,” Phillips said. While the raw viewership of The Tennessee Star is remarkable, media experts also recognize the impact and influence the upstart news outlet is already having at Legislative Plaza. “Attracting one…
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Fifty leading Tennessee conservatives have sent an open letter to the Tennessee General Assembly opposing Gov. Haslam’s proposed IMPROVE Act, which includes a 7 cents per gallon gas tax increase and a 12 cents per gallon diesel tax increase. The letter was released Tuesday morning, on the same day the House Transportation Committee is scheduled to vote on the IMPROVE Act. Conservative political strategist Steve Gill noted: “The names on this letter should raise concerns among Republican legislators. These are the exact types of conservative political activists who run in Republican primaries, recruit others to run in Republican primaries, and help those who run in Republican primaries.” Gill said that a gas tax increase, if passed, will likely be THE issue in 2018 Republican primary races. “Voters will essentially have a referendum to repeal the tax by replacing those who voted for it with those who will vote to repeal the tax increase,” Gill noted. “The mail pieces and radio adds against the tax increasers almost write themselves.” Another Republican political consultant pointed out the ideological impact of the current internal policy battles in the Republican Party at the state and national level. “The Ryan Obamacare-lite plan may expand the…
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