Day: July 14, 2017

Paid Family Leave Approved for Metro Nashville Employees, Plan Promoted by Mayor Megan Barry

Wendy Wilson

  Metro employees now have the option of paid family leave, a benefit that has been promoted by Nashville Mayor Megan Barry. The plan was approved unanimously Tuesday by the Civil Service Commission and goes into effect immediately. The benefit allows Metro workers to have around six weeks of paid time off upon the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for a seriously ill spouse, parent or children. It is available to employees who have worked for Metro government for at least six months. There previously was no paid family leave of any kind. “No parent, spouse, son or daughter should have to choose between providing care to their loved ones in their time of need or being forced to go without pay or quit their job,” said Mayor Megan Barry in a news release. “Paid family leave will help to ensure our Metro employees don’t have to make that choice while also helping Metro government recruit and retain great public servants.” Metro Council recommended a study on paid family leave last year, and Barry, a progressive Democrat, promoted it in her State of Metro address in April. Barry’s office worked with her  Council on Gender Equity to research and…

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Report: Chattanooga, Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville Among the Worst-Run Cities in Country

Wendy Wilson

  Tennessee’s four largest cities all ranked in the bottom third of a list compiled by the online website WalletHub.com analyzing how efficiently cities are run. Called “2017’s Best- and Worst-Run Cities,” the list, published Monday, ranked 150 of the largest cities in the nation. The study compared the quality of services residents receive against a city’s total budget. Cities were compared across six categories: financial stability, education, health, safety, economy, and infrastructure and pollution. Nashville ranked 112 on the list in overall rankings, and Knoxville ranked 127. Almost at the bottom were Memphis, at 141, and Chattanooga, falling just below Memphis at 142. No other Tennessee cities were included. All four cities are run by Democrats: Mayor Megan Barry in Nashville, Mayor Madeline Rogero in Knoxville, Mayor Andy Berke in Chattanooga, and Mayor Jim Strickland in Memphis. However, in a breakdown of results, Knoxville got an approving nod for its three-way tie for third for having the highest quality of roads. On the negative side, Memphis had the fourth-highest violent crime rate. The highest-ranking cities, from first through fifth, were Nampa, Idaho; Provo, Utah; Boise, Idaho; Missoula, Montana, and Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky.    

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Tennessee Businessman William F. Hagerty Confirmed As Ambassador To Japan

Wendy Wilson
Tennessee Star

  William F. Hagerty was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Thursday to be President Trump’s ambassador to Japan. Senators voted 86-12 to to approve Hagerty’s nomination, the Associated Press reports. Hagerty is a founder and the managing director of the private-equity firm Hagerty Peterson and Company, which has corporate offices in Nashville and the Chicago area. From 2011-2014, the Tennessee native served as Gov. Bill Haslam’s economic development commissioner. He served as Mitt Romney’s national finance chair in 2008, and earlier in his career, served under former President George H.W. Bush as a White House fellow, reporting to the vice president on matters related to international trade, commerce, treasury, defense and telecommunications. A supporter of Jeb Bush early in the 2016 presidential election cycle, he switched to Trump after he secured the nomination. Hagerty was then instrumental in Trump’s campaign and later became director of presidential appointments for Trump’s transition team. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Hagerty’s nomination last month after he assured Democrats that he had no role in the screening of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. Flynn is a key figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.…

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Broadcasters Obsess Over Trump Jr., Ignore ‘Hillary Clinton’s Russia-Uranium Scandal’ Study Says

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

They were obsessed: ABC, CBS, NBC evening news shows have been dominated by one subject this week: Donald J. Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower – “a meeting in which apparently no favors, money or meaningful information was exchanged,” writes analyst Geoffrey Dickens, in a new study for Newsbusters.org, a conservative…

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Bill Lee Announces Tractor Tour, Policy Initiatives In Campaign For Tennessee Governor

Wendy Wilson

  Bill Lee has been busy traveling around Tennessee to campaign for governor and he has no plans to stop. Only now he plans to get around on a tractor. The Williamson County businessman, who is in the race for the Republican nomination, is winding down his statewide tour in his campaign RV. In a news release Thursday, he announced that the next phase of his campaign will involve a statewide tractor tour starting in August. “A tractor might not be the fastest way to get around, but I will take as much time as I need to bring attention to our rural communities,” said Lee, a cattleman and chairman of Lee Company, a large family-owned construction, facilities and home services company. Lee also announced four major policy initiatives for his campaign: Promote the dignity of work and economic independence. (a) invest early in vocational, technical and agricultural education to increase the number of high school graduates ready to work, (b) strengthen work requirements for social programs to lead Tennesseans out of dependency and (c) reform state licensing laws to eliminate unnecessary government regulations that create a barrier to work for our citizens. Support innovation and technology to improve economic,…

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Commentary: Why Educators Leave the Profession

JC Bowman

Learning Policy Institute identified inadequate preparation, lack of support, challenging working conditions, dissatisfaction with compensation, better career opportunities, and personal reasons for why teachers change careers. From our own internal surveys “high-stakes standardized testing” is the number one issue educators’ mention to us is why they are dissatisfied with the profession.

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Memphis Sheik Joins Islamist Linda Sarsour and CAIR Founder to Oppose Supreme Court Decision on Travel Ban

Chris Alto

Memphis Sheik Yasir Qadhi joined Islamist activist Linda Sarsour and fellow activist and Hamas supporter Nihad Awad to collectively state their opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding key parts of President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) while attending the Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) 54th annual convention in Chicago earlier this month. Their opposition to the ban was captured in this tweet: Government shouldn't be in the business of defining "bona fide relationships" & excluding grandparents, etc. Unacceptable. #NoMuslimBanEver pic.twitter.com/qrndrFwe7x — MPower Change (@MPower_Change) June 29, 2017 The temporary travel ban from Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Iran and Yemen remain in effect except for those refugees “who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States” although they must still satisfy all security vetting. The EO’s limit of 50,000 refugee admissions for the current fiscal year was also upheld by the court. Iraq was dropped from the revised travel ban after it agreed to accept Iraqi deportees from the U.S. Sheik Qadhi is the resident scholar at the Memphis Islamic Center, Dean of Academic Affairs of AlMaghrib Institute and an “expert” with the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA). Linda Sarsour recently gained notoriety…

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