Day: February 10, 2017

EXCLUSIVE Grassroots Pundit Interview With Sponsor of Hawk Plan to Fund Roads by Reallocating Sales Tax

Tennessee Star Staff

In an exclusive interview with The Tennessee Star’s Grassroots Pundit, Laura and Kevin Baigert, on Capitol Hill Wednesday, State Rep. David Hawk (R-Greeneville) explained the details of his increasingly popular Hawk Plan to fund additional road construction by reallocating 0.25 percent of the state’s 7 percent sales tax. “We’ve had substantial over collections over the last two and a half years and looking at a third year in a row where we’re over collecting franchise and excise tax, over collecting sales tax collections. Saying that, there’s more money coming in than we had budgeted. Substantially more,” Hawk noted. Several estimates place the current annual surplus at about $950 million. Hawk explained that the 0.25 percent he wants to allocate comes from the 1 percent of the current 7 percent sales tax that is not specifically dedicated to particular state programs. “I found that the last time the legislature increased the sales tax in Tennessee it went from 6 percent to 7 percent in 2002,” Hawk told the Baigerts. ‘Those dollars [collected with that extra 1 percent added to the sales tax that year] were largely unaffiliated,” Hawk explained. “The 6 percent below had strings attached to them,” he continued. “There…

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Gov. Haslam Defends His Gas Tax Proposal on Nashville’s Morning News With Ralph Bristol

Tennessee Star Staff

Gov. Haslam appeared on 99.7 FM WWTN’s Nashville Morning News with Ralph Bristol on Thursday to defend his controversial proposal to increase the gas tax by 7 cents per gallon (from 21 cents to 28 cents) to fund more road construction. His proposal also increases the diesel tax by 12 cents per gallon (from 18 cents to 30 cents). Haslam specifically took aim at the increasingly popular alternative to his proposal, the Hawk Plan, which would fund road construction by reallocating 0.25 percent of the 7 percent state sales tax from the general fund to road construction. “Your main opposition to the alternative to your plan, the Hawk Plan . . . is that that would shift the burden for paying for our roads and bridges from out-of-state users of the roads to Tennesseans unrelated to their road usage. Do you have any way to quantify that balance now and how much shift this would produce?” Bristol asked. “We’re in the process of doing that. I think it’s safe to say that the increase I’m proposing for fuel that half of that would come from either out of state automobile drivers or trucking companies,” Haslam told Bristol. “That’s actually not…

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Commentary: Refugees and Students of Middle Eastern Descent Fueling Anti-Semitism on Tennessee Campuses

Chris Alto

Shortly after fall 2016 classes started at UT Knoxville, The Algemeiner, an online Jewish newspaper, posted a lengthy article describing a “ring of anti-Israel students” at UTK they claim has “created a ‘cesspool’ of antisemitism and racist behavior” initially discovered by an investigative group called “Canary Mission.” Students were identified mostly through their tweets spreading extreme racist and anti-Jewish messages through two campus groups – Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA). SJP is described by the Anti-Defamation League as the “primary organizer of anti-Israel events on U.S. college campuses.” The SJP chapter at UTK was started by Amira Sakalla born in the U.S. but describes herself as a Palestinian-American. The SJP chapter at Vanderbilt University was started by Arkansas native Hytham Al-Hindi whose father immigrated from Jordan to the U.S. Tweets from current and former students at MTSU, Memphis University and Southwest TN Community College were also discovered with messages like “Israel is a terror state we need a new Hitler”, “May Allah annihilate the Jewish dogs” and “contemplating if we should get another Hitler to put you in concentration camps and wipe you all out.” Some of the students were members of their…

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Critics: Whacky 9th District Court of Appeals Ignore Basic Legal Principals, Side with Open Borders Zealots

Christina Botteri

Thursday evening, America’s dinner hour was interrupted by an unsavory display of jurist malpractice as the 9th District Court of Appeals once again lived up to its reputation as the Most Incompetent Court in the nation. The Court ruled 3-0 to DENY the Trump Administration’s pleading to stay the lower Court’s decision to disallow a pause in the admittance of (un)vetted refugees from 7 countries plagued by out-of-control terrorist activity and utterly failed central governments. Upon a quick review of the rambling, 29-page ruling, Legal Insurrection founder and attorney William Jacobson let loose a withering hot take on Twitter: When do confirmation hearings start to appoint 9th Circuit panel co-Directors of Homeland Security? https://t.co/1opVnWwfCA — Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) February 9, 2017 1/ Here's how insane 9th Circuit Order on Trump Immigration EO is: Because Court refused to draw distinction among permanent residents, — Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) February 10, 2017 2/ lawful visa holders in U.S., visa holders traveling abroad temporarily, and people abroad who never even have applied — Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) February 10, 2017 3/ some guy sitting on mountain in Yemen who has no connection to U.S. and hasn't even applied for visa yet has U.S. constitutional —…

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