It might be a case of the rich getting richer. When the Nashville Predators host the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday night, they might put 18-year old Eeli Tolvanen in the lineup for his NHL debut, adding potentially more scoring punch to one of the league’s most explosive teams.
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Gubernatorial candidate Diane Black, along with Reagan-era economic policy advisor and author Dr. Arthur B. Laffer, wrote an op-ed appearing in The Tennessean Friday critical of the $9 billion Transit plan set for a vote by public referendum on May 1. “New jobs in manufacturing are soaring and businesses are moving to Tennessee on a daily basis,” the quick-reading, six hundred word piece begins. It continues: This stands in stark contrast to states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, Connecticut, Ohio and West Virginia. Those states have suffered from job losses in steel, coal and automobiles, resulting in politicians pointing their fingers at the “predatory” trade practices of China, Vietnam and Japan. But the reason we’re doing so well and those other states are languishing is not because of foreigners dumping products in the U.S. Our incredible success is, in part, due to the fact that Tennessee doesn’t have an income tax or a death tax. Our property taxes are low and our overall tax burden is third lowest in the nation. We have excellent public services, such as highways, and improvements in our school system are close to the highest in the United States. Tennessee also has budget…
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President Donald Trump touted his $1.5 trillion investment plan to rebuild America’s “crumbling infrastructure” during a speech Thursday in Ohio, saying that his administration is “launching the next phase of America’s economic comeback.” Speaking to a crowd in richfield, Ohio, the chief executive said “Americans have watched as Washington spent trillions and trillions of dollars building up foreign countries while allowing our own country’s infrastructure to fall into a state of total disrepair.
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by Matthew Hindman The researcher whose work is at the center of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data analysis and political advertising uproar has revealed that his method worked much like the one Netflix uses to recommend movies. In an email to me, Cambridge University scholar Aleksandr Kogan explained how his statistical model processed Facebook data for Cambridge Analytica. The accuracy he claims suggests it works about as well as established voter-targeting methods based on demographics like race, age and gender. If confirmed, Kogan’s account would mean the digital modeling Cambridge Analytica used was hardly the virtual crystal ball a few have claimed. Yet the numbers Kogan provides also show what is – and isn’t – actually possible by combining personal data with machine learning for political ends. Regarding one key public concern, though, Kogan’s numbers suggest that information on users’ personalities or “psychographics” was just a modest part of how the model targeted citizens. It was not a personality model strictly speaking, but rather one that boiled down demographics, social influences, personality and everything else into a big correlated lump. This soak-up-all-the-correlation-and-call-it-personality approach seems to have created a valuable campaign tool, even if the product being sold wasn’t quite as it was billed. The promise of personality targeting In the wake of the revelations that Trump…
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“This was a tough one for us,” filmmaker David A.R. White (shown above left) told LifeZette in an exclusive interview about his latest feature, “God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness,” a film he produced and in which he plays a lead role.
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Russia on Friday expelled Dutch diplomats and told Britain it had one month to reduce its diplomatic presence in the country, hitting back at EU countries after a coordinated campaign by the UK and its allies over a nerve agent attack on a former spy. Earlier in the day Russia had summoned the ambassadors of a number of nations including Britain, France, Germany and Canada to inform them of retaliatory measures.
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Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) lashed out Thursday against the leadership of his own state. “This is an amazing day to be in California, a ‘sanctuary’ state suing the federal government for everything, including actually meeting the constitutional requirement of counting people,” he said on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
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by Hannah Christensen Modern weather forecasts rely on complex computer simulators. These simulators use all the physics equations that describe the atmosphere, including the movement of air, the sun’s warmth, and the formation of clouds and rain. Incremental improvements in forecasts over time mean that modern five-day weather forecasts are as skillful as three-day forecasts were 20 years ago. But you don’t need a supercomputer to predict how the weather above your head is likely to change over the next few hours – this has been known across cultures for millennia. By keeping an eye on the skies above you, and knowing a little about how clouds form, you can predict whether rain is on the way. And moreover, a little understanding of the physics behind cloud formation highlights the complexity of the atmosphere, and sheds some light on why predicting the weather beyond a few days is such a challenging problem. So here are six clouds to keep an eye out for, and how they can help you understand the weather. 1) Cumulus Clouds form when air cools to the dew point, the temperature at which the air can no longer hold all its water vapour. At this temperature, water vapour condenses to…
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Amazon terminated several lobbying contracts related to the issue of an online sales tax, Politico reported on Friday. The company was working with Squire Patton Boggs and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld on the issue of a national online sales tax to be included in the latest spending bill.
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by Bob Corlew I wish to write in response to former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ recent Op-ed in The New York Times calling on the repeal of the Second Amendment. In an effort to uphold the law, as a citizen myself, but as a student of the law and former law professor and state court judge, I find it troubling that a core part of Justice Stevens’ argument, and the argument of many gun control advocates that the Second Amendment should be repealed is that private gun ownership and the Second Amendment protecting it is antiquated. The role of a Judge in America still today is that of interpreting the law that has been written. Too many judges today seek to cross the bridge from the role of interpretation of the law to that of becoming an activist in making or enforcing the law, which roles, of course, constitutionally are assigned to legislative and executive branches respectively. I understand that Mr. Stevens is now a private citizen, as I am, and in that role, he is free as a citizen to exercise his First Amendment right to speak on the issues of the Second Amendment, but I…
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A Los Angeles judge Thursday ordered coffee companies to abide by California state law and put cancer warning labels on their products. A nonprofit group called the Council for Education and Research on Toxics is suing such popular coffee roasters and retailers as Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s.
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Nearly a week after President Donald Trump issued an order banning some transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, the Pentagon is refusing to provide clarity, citing ongoing legal challenges. Last Friday, the White House released a memo from Trump to Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, stating the administration concurred with a policy for transgender service members privately recommended by Mattis in late February.
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President Donald Trump will host the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for a Baltic Summit at the White House on April 3. According to Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah, Trump and the three heads of state will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania’s independence.
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It has puzzled scientists for over 100 years but now they appear to have cracked it: what, exactly, is it that causes that wince-inducing sound when you pop your knuckles? Love it or loathe it, knuckle-cracking is very common. Earlier studies have established that not all joints can be cracked, and that – for that those that can – the act can’t be repeated for another 20 minutes.
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Financial disclosures filed Friday afternoon show that Democrat Phil Bredesen – were he to be elected to the U.S. Senate over Republican front-runner Marsha Blackburn – would likely oust fellow Democrat Mark Warner (D-VA) to become the nation’s wealthiest sitting Senator. Bredesen, who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary and is wooing Independents and moderate Republicans with rhetoric of ‘being the adult in the room,’ reports his total worth – including investments, assets, and income – at somewhere between $92 and $378 million. The large 300% swing in the total value of his net worth goes to the nature of the reporting being largely expressed in ranges. For example, the thirty-page report lists six bank accounts with cash values of as small as “$50,000 – $100,000” and as large as “$5,000,000 t0 $25,000,000.” In all, the former Nashville Mayor and ex-governor disclosed investments totalling between $88.9 and $358 million. In addition to those holdings, Bredesen says is income for this reporting period (January 2017 to February 2018) from $3.3 million to $20.1 million, which includes $8,517 from his City of Nashville pension and $110,900 from his State of Tennessee pension. The Associated Press reported that if he’s elected, he’ll resign as chairman of his solar energy company,…
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Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger is in a stable condition after undergoing emergency open-heart surgery, celebrity news website TMZ reported Friday. The 70-year-old actor turned activist was in a Los Angeles hospital Thursday to have a catheter valve replaced and developed complications, the gossip portal said, citing unnamed Schwarzenegger sources.
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In a statement posted on Facebook Thursday, businessman David Fox announced he has decided not to run for Nashville Mayor in the upcoming special election to replace Megan Barry, to whom he lost in a runoff in 2015. “While I would like to run and would love to be mayor of Nashville because it’s an extraordinary platform from which to help people and to ensure that our city is in good shape, I have decided not to enter the race,” Fox said. The area businessman explained that a number of factors, including the personal financial cost of a campaign, the long odds of winning a short campaign, and the stress that a campaign puts on the family persuaded him to stand down this special election cycle. Fox was complimentary of acting Mayor Briley, saying, “I know David Briley to be a good person with a great family. We became friends 14 years ago when his son and our oldest son were born hours apart and a room apart at Baptist Hospital. Any differences I have with David are only on policy issues.” He continued: Still, I think it’s important that we have a mayor who recognizes we are over-spending our way into…
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My memory of Toys ‘R’ Us now consists mostly of big empty boxes. While I don’t remember many of the toys I got at Christmas as a child, the image of clumps of wrapping paper and piles of discarded cardboard is forever imprinted in my brain. Now, Toys ‘R’ Us is leaving us with much bigger empty boxes—but these won’t be as easy to throw away. On March 15, the company announced that, without a Hail Mary influx of cash, the beloved chain will be closing, leaving its 800-odd American storefronts vacant.
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Famed Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz disputed a Democratic senator’s contention Thursday that a reported pardon discussion involving President Donald Trump’s lawyer amounts to “textbook” obstruction of justice. The New York Times reported Wednesday that John Dowd, who then was representing the president in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, floated the idea of a presidential pardon for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign boss Paul Manafort in conversations with their attorneys.
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President Trump said Thursday that he’s had concerns with Amazon’s business model long before running for president. “I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” Mr. Trump tweeted.
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Though much has been said concerning the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, analysts have not trained enough attention yet on another tax-exempt organization the Clintons control, The Clinton Family Foundation. Unlike the better known charity started almost 21 years ago as an archive and research center for presidential records created during Bill Clinton’s eight-year- White House tenure, the second entity — a grant-making charity whose Employer Identification Number is 30-0048438 — was formed in December 2001 and can only make donations to validly organized and operated public charities.
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When “March For Our Lives” student protesters won a get-out-of-class free card from school administrators and teachers who thought the calling to curb gun rights was more important than math and science and history, the right wondered: Hmm, how come these kids can’t protest on their own free time? Good question.
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When men were men and sodas were cocaine-laced nerve tonics. Mmm medicine. PxHere Before they were staples in your fridge or household supply cabinet, many ordinary products were used in extraordinary (and often totally absurd) medical contexts. The most popular example is Coca-Cola, which was first brewed on March 29, 1886 by Georgia-based pharmacist John Stith Pemberton. The sugary soda was originally marketed as a “nerve tonic.” Ads from the 19th century promote the drink, which contained a few milligrams of cocaine per glass, as a way to increase intelligence, relieve exhaustion, and cope with emotions like hysteria and melancholy. Pemberton himself became interested in brewing the drink as a way to manage his morphine addiction, from which many Civil War veterans suffered.
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Jeb Bush, the man who was supposed to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016 until his birth-right was stolen from him by the crass, vulgar and despicable Donald Trump, has taken his psychological obsession with his own failure to a new low… he has attacked Trump’s 12-year-old son, Barron.
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Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” It is beginning to look like Nashvillians will have no real choice when they cast their August 2 ballots for the city’s next mayor. The closing date for candidates to file their papers is noon April 5, and, so far, no strong candidates have risen to challenge interim Mayor David Briley. Consequently, there is no different vision for the city. Briley is about continuity and carrying forward the vision Megan Barry and the business leaders and developers cast for the city. No one seems to question if Megan Barry’s vision for the city was what native Nashvillians needed or wanted. This is unfortunate because it deprives voters of an opportunity to hear competing ideas about what kind of city Nashville should be, how fast it should grow, and what, if any, responsibilities we owe to native Nashvillians who find the city they love unaffordable. In 2017, a financial and planning website, GoBankingRates, applied a cost-of-living index comparing cities and found Nashville had the greatest increase in cost and that it would take an income of $70,150 to live comfortably in the city. Meanwhile, U.S. Census data from 2016 placed…
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by Kevin Mooney Allegations that a member of the National Labor Relations Board improperly disclosed internal deliberations should be investigated, a Washington labor policy analyst says in a letter to the board’s inspector general. Board member Mark Gaston Pearce “allegedly discussed information from documents involving internal Board deliberations” at a meeting of the American Bar Association last month, Competitive Enterprise Institute analyst Trey Kovacs tells the inspector general in the letter. Pearce “reportedly provided advance notice of an NLRB decision to issue an order to vacate the Board’s decision in Hy-Brand Industrial Contractors Ltd. and Brandt Construction Co.,” Kovacs writes in the letter to Inspector General David Berry, dated Wednesday. The board’s pro-union actions demonstrate how it operates as though Barack Obama were still president, and not Donald Trump, the Competitive Enterprise Institute analyst says. The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >> “There appears to be a troublesome double standard at the NLRB,” Kovacs told The Daily Signal in an email. “The NLRB Inspector General Office has shown zeal for investigating Republican NLRB members, but not Democratic members.” Just after noon Wednesday, a spokesman for the NLRB said…
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Outgoing Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin said Thursday that he was fired because of his stance against privatizing the department. “I think that it’s essential for national security and for the country that we honor our commitment by having a strong VA. I was not against reforming VA, but I was against privatization,” Mr. Shulkin said on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”
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by Jeff Hartline Most Americans bristle when the U.S. Congress passes laws for us, but exempt themselves from those same laws. Case in point: In 2009, under the leadership of Barack Obama, Democrats passed Obamacare, saddling Americans with massive increases in health insurance premiums or just loss of their coverage. In a move that defied description, Congress exempted itself from the ACA requirements they foisted on everyone else. If that makes you mad, you’ve got bigger problems closer to home. Between 1993 and 2010, Tennesseans began regaining their long-lost-to-Jim Crow-era 2nd Amendment rights. With the influx of a Republican supermajority in recent years, the hope was that these rights would be fully restored under the leadership of supposed 2nd Amendment “supporters.” But those supporters never counted on Beth Harwell. Since she was elected Speaker of the Tennessee House, she has methodically opposed 2nd Amendment legislation, set up committees that would block 2nd Amendment legislation, work with lobbyists and activist groups to intimidate 2nd Amendment supporters, intimidate and punish lawmakers pushing for 2nd Amendment legislation and protected those who stood with her in these schemes. And now, the coup de grace – the demand that State Representative David Byrd (R…
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By Robert Romano In “The Art of the Deal,” President Donald Trump wrote: “Leverage: don’t make deals without it.” Three developments in the past week prove that President Trump’s approach to foreign affairs where he utilizes all the tools in his arsenal including tariffs, sanctions, and overall pressure — are yielding dividends in the Asia Pacific region because they exerted significant leverage by the U.S. South Korea and the U.S. have agreed to new amendments to the U.S.-South Korean trade agreement, where South Korea agreed to reduce its steel export quota by 30 percent and to double the amount of American-made cars that are imported. In exchange, the U.S. will grant South Korea an exemption to President Trump’s 25 percent tariff on steel imports. Senior administration officials have also hinted that a new currency agreement is in the works that would address exchange rate and Treasury markets manipulation. These were all things Trump had spoken of last June when South Korean President Moon Jae-In visited the White House. Now they’re actually being delivered. All because of Trump’s tough stance on trade, including the tariffs but also his call for trade to be fair and reciprocal. The discussions were ongoing, South Korea was…
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by Antony Mueller A ghastly phantom has descended upon America: the specter of anti-capitalism. Young people march behind the socialist bandwagon and some activists block free speech as members of a group called “Antifa”. This “anti-fascist” movement engages in militant protests and does not shrink from using violence. As a part of the extreme left, the members of the “antifa-movement” are self-proclaimed “anti-capitalists” and declared “enemies of the right”. They call themselves “anti-fascist”, when, in fact, more than any other ideology, fascism characterizes their own movement. Yet what is fascism and what is the content of this ideology? The “Fascist Manifesto” The Fascist Manifesto was proclaimed in 1919 by Alceste De Ambris and Filippo Tommaso Marienetti. In their pamphlet, the authors called for an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage; it demanded worker representation in industrial management and equal standing of trade unions, industrial executives, and public servants. The Manifesto demanded the confiscation of the property of all religious institutions. The authors of the Fascist Manifesto demanded progressive taxation, invalidity insurance, and other types of social benefits, along with reducing the retirement age. The Manifesto demanded the confiscation of the property of all religious institutions and to nationalize the armament industry. The authors…
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Tennessee Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd appeared on WNWS Radio in Jackson, TN Thursday to talk about a variety of issues, including the need for more focus on West Tennessee economic development. Boyd is former Tennessee Commissioner of Economic Development and noted that he is a 7th generation Tennessean with 6th of those generations living in West Tennessee. After pointing out several of the economic development projects he successfully helped bring to the area Boyd noted that the region is very important to him. “West Tennessee has been left behind the last twenty years,” Boyd said. “We need a Governor who will focus on it and I will be that Governor.” “We are going to finish the Megasite,” Boyd promised, “land a big major manufacturer and several smaller manufacturers, and generate 34,000 forty jobs that will transform West Tennessee just like Middle Tennessee was transformed when Nissan landed there 34 years ago.” Host Dan Reaves asked Boyd for his thoughts about Congresswoman Diane Black (who is also running for Governor) endorsing Marsha Blackburn in her Senate primary earlier this week. “I’m not really thinking too much about what Diane Black is or isn’t doing,” Boyd said. “I think Marsha’s been…
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Thursday night is about chasing history for the Nashville Predators. When it hosts the San Jose Sharks in Bridgestone Arena, Nashville can break the franchise’s single-season record for points with a victory. Currently sitting at 109 points with a 49-16-11 mark, the Predators can also move a step closer to home-ice advantage for the Stanley Cup playoffs by picking up two points.
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Gubernatorial candidate and Republican Congress member Diane Black (R-TN-06) announced Wednesday her endorsement of fellow Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) in her bid to replace retiring junior Senator Bob Corker (TN-R) in the U.S. Senate. “I’ve served alongside Marsha in the state legislature and in Congress and have always known her to be a fighter and a passionate champion for conservative causes and I support her 100%,” said Black in a statement, adding, “We need Marsha Blackburn in the U.S. Senate to protect our majority, support President Trump’s agenda, and make sure that we can confirm new conservative Supreme Court justices to the bench.” Black’s endorsement extended to Twitter, where she tweeted: I’ve served alongside @VoteMarsha in the state legislature and in Congress and have always known her to be a fighter and a passionate champion for conservative causes. I support her 100 percent in her race for U.S. Senate! https://t.co/CRRny00tfK — Diane Black (@DianeBlackTN) March 28, 2018 Looking beyond the primary to what political watchers say will be a bare-knuckles brawl of a general election in the Fall, Black called on all the GOP candidates running statewide to support Blackburn’s candidacy: It’s time for Republicans in Tennessee to unite and stand with…
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Remember Ed Schaefer? You should – you paid $30,500 for his hand-painted portrait. How about Steve Preston? His official government portrait cost you $19,500. But the days of taxpayers paying for oil paintings of government officials, obscure or memorable, are gone.
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California’s latest contribution to the resistance is “laughable,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Wednesday. Appearing on “The Laura Ingraham Show,” Kobach reacted to a filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, arguing that the plan to ask a question about citizenship on the next census is unconstitutional and illegal.
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SpaceX’s founder and CEO published an academic paper earlier this month outlining his vision for a future where the Red Planet is permanently inhabited. Illustration of Musk’s vision for a Mars colony. “The base starts with one ship, then multiple ships, then we start building out the city and making the city bigger, and even bigger.
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The first Van Gogh painting to go under the hammer in France in more than two decades was unveiled Wednesday. “Women Mending Nets in the Dunes”, which the Dutch artist painted early in his career at Scheveningen near The Hague, is expected to go for around five million euros ($6 million) when it is auctioned in June.
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by Chrissy Clark Brown University plans to offer “tuition-free” master’s degree programs to beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals if the federal government ends the Obama administration protections. DACA, an executive action implemented by then-President Barack Obama, authorized renewable two-year deferrals of deportation along with eligibility for work permits for illegal immigrants brought to this country as children. President Donald Trump sought to phase out the program and asked Congress to decide by law what to do about the roughly 800,000 DACA recipients and others like them. “Should DACA be eliminated, we will create in-school and postgraduate opportunities for students unable to work legally to engage in stipend-supported research and education that is not citizenship-dependent,” Richard Locke, Brown University’s provost, said in a statement published on Today@Brown. The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >> In the same post, Locke announced that the private Ivy League university in Providence, Rhode Island, will offer tuition-free, fifth-year master’s programs for eligible 2018 graduates. “Admitted students would receive a stipend and health insurance,” he said. Brown also offers to cover the $495 DACA renewal fee, “if renewal is an option,” as…
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Facebook said Wednesday it will overhaul its privacy settings tools to put users “more in control” of their information on the social media website. The updates include improved access to Facebook’s user settings and tools to easily search for, download and delete personal data stored by Facebook.
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California’s Orange County is preparing to follow in the city of Los Alamitos’ footsteps by defying the state’s sanctuary policies and supporting the Trump administration’s emphasis on immigration enforcement. Los Alamitos, located in Orange County, angered illegal immigrant activists when its city council voted last week to exempt itself from the state’s sanctuary policies that went into effect January 1 under SB-54.
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By Robert Romano Finally, an honest liberal stands up and tells us all what he really thinks. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in the New York Times has called for the Second Amendment to be repealed, presumably so that Congress and the states can start banning guns. Therein, Stevens acknowledged that under current Supreme Court precedent, although he disagreed with the D.C. v. Heller decision in 2008, owning firearms is still an individual right secured by the Constitution. Here, Stevens, who is dead wrong in calling for the Second Amendment’s repeal, is underscoring the real challenge facing activists pushing for decisive action in the wake of the Parkland massacre pushing for more gun “control” measures. Stevens too advocates for more aggressive gun control laws, which he defines in calling for lawmakers “to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons.” So, there is a big ol’ ban in there. Of which, there are more than 300 million guns nationwide owned by about 80 million people. About 85 million of those are estimated to be semi-automatic guns, which would be banned under Stevens’ plan. In meantime, there are about 132,000 schools public and private nationwide. Which do we suppose will be easier to secure: The 80…
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A federal judge in Washington who had been a thorn in the side of the Trump administration reversed course Tuesday and ruled she could not force the State Department to grant visa lottery approvals to would-be immigrants from Iran and Yemen. The complicated case doesn’t directly challenge President Trump’s travel ban, but it does deliver a rare lower-court legal victory on one aspect of the ban, which has restricted visits and immigration from a number of majority-Muslim nations.
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How do you know something very much disturbs the left and their narrative? When it is big news, but if you relied on the Google news lineup, or The New York Times front page, you would have no idea it happened. Case in point: The extraordinary revelation by prosecutors in the trial of the Pulse nightclub shooter’s widow, Noor Salman, that the father of her now-dead terrorist husband was an FBI informant for 11 years.
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Saint John Paul once said that, in the providence of God, there are “no such thing as coincidences.” Presumably, then, it was providential that on the Friday before this most Holy Week in the Christian calendar, a French police officer and devout Catholic gave his life — like Christ — to save a young mother during an Islamic attack in southwest France.
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By Dan Mitchell One of the key principles of a free society is that governmental power should be limited by national borders. Here’s an easy-to-understand example. Gambling is basically illegal (other than government-run lottery scams, of course) in my home state of Virginia. So they can arrest me (or maybe even shoot me) if I gamble in the Old Dominion. I think that’s bad policy, but it would be far worse if Virginia politicians also asserted extraterritorial powers and said they could arrest me because I put a dollar in a slot machine during my last trip to Las Vegas. And if Virginia politicians tried to impose such an absurd policy, I certainly would hope and expect that Nevada authorities wouldn’t provide any assistance. This same principle applies (or should apply) to taxation policy, both globally and nationally. On a global level, I’m a big supporter of so-called tax havens. I’m glad when places with pro-growth tax policy attract jobs and capital from high-tax nations. This process of tax competition rewards good policy and punishes bad policy. Moreover, I don’t think those low-tax jurisdictions should be under any obligation to enforce the bad tax laws of uncompetitive countries. There’s a very similar debate inside America. Some…
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For the fourth year in a row, Chattanooga-area State Senator Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga), a Republican, has tried and failed to pass a bill that would grant in-state tuition discounts to illegal alien students in Tennessee. Calling his defeat a “victim of election-year politics,” he told the Times Free Press, “It’s my understanding that the House leadership doesn’t want to schedule it for a vote in the House Education Committee,” adding that the Senate leadership wanted to wait until the bill passed in the House before taking it up. Gardenhire spoke bitterly of his fellow Republican lawmakers, telling the Times, “The House for a third year in a row has killed it under the leadership of Beth Harwell.” Turning his ire to the gubernatorial candidates who publicly opposed his proposal, the said this year’s failure was “very disappointing when you’ve got all four [Republican] gubernatorial candidates against it and one of them in particular, Diane Black, being personal about it.” Upon hearing the news of the bill’s demise for this year’s legislative session, Black tweeted: Good to see conservatives stand up and say “no.” Read my statement from a few weeks ago on in-state tuition for illegal immigrants: https://t.co/6BpDJKW7Fk https://t.co/SSAdekVmAl — Diane Black (@DianeBlackTN) March 28, 2018 The Times…
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Williamson County Schools Superintendent Mike Looney was granted a delay in his court date, originally scheduled to be held Tuesday, for a period of one month until Wednesday, April 25, by a Williamson County judge. At issue is a single charge of simple assault following a bizarre series of events culminating in Looney allegedly accosting a student and forcing her into his personal vehicle – a Class A Misdemeanor. As reported by The Tennessee Star, Looney said in an open letter to WCS staff earlier this month that he was recently diagnosed with a tumor on his pancreas, and that he would “be taking several weeks off” as he undergoes treatment: I need to share a little bit of news so that you can learn it from me rather than another source. I would much rather not share things of a personal nature, but given my role in the district, it really can’t be avoided. I very recently learned that I have a tumor in my pancreas. At this point, I am planning on having surgery toward the end of this month and unfortunately will need to take several weeks off for recovery. (emphasis added) The central office staff is wholly prepared to support…
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee – On Tuesday State Rep. “Fast Eddie” Smith (R-Knoxville), House sponsor of the Transit Improvement District Act, which is an amendment under “caption bill” HB2361, declined The Tennessee Star’s offer to discuss his bill as previously reported. With multiple unanswered questions and several proposed amendments, the bill was rolled one week in the House Transportation Committee later that day. One hour prior to the House Transportation Committee meeting Tuesday, Chairman State Rep. Barry Doss (R-Leoma) held a bill review, which is relatively standard practice for all committees in order to address members’ issues or concerns with the bills that are on that day’s committee calendar. During Tuesday’s bill review, State Rep. Smith, who also sits on the House Transportation Committee, gave a brief description of the project not previously made public, saying the rail to be used is a spur that goes about 15 miles between the airport and what is being developed as the new downtown Alcoa and World’s Fair Park near UT. Where a transit station is located, those joining the District “will willingly self-assess themselves to help pay for this, because they are going to reap the benefit from the train stops and it would…
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Rep. Marsha Blackburn said Tuesday that she wants to ask Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about universal privacy standards. “I would ask him if he would agree to privacy standards that are in statute, in federal statute, that he would agree to one set of privacy standards for the entire ecosystem – both your internet service provider and your edge providers,” Ms. Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, said on Fox News.
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Gubernatorial candidate Diane Black released what she says is a “comprehensive plan to lift up rural communities in Tennessee and make sure every Tennessean has the opportunity to live their version of the American Dream.” “Tennessee’s economy is on the move, but not every part of our state is experiencing the economic boom,” Black said in a statement, adding: Our rural communities, which make up 60% of our state, are the lifeblood of our state, but aren’t seeing the same success as areas like Nashville. We need policies coming out of Nashville that help lift up those rural communities, rather than further their economic decline. I will fight from day one to make sure that we leave no town behind and every person in our state has the opportunity to live their version of the American Dream. Diane Black’s plan – an outline of which was provided by the campaign and is published in full below – is aimed at strengthening Tennessee’s economy and to “Leave No Town Behind” Promote Rural Infrastructure and Educational Opportunity: I will prioritize the infrastructure needs of rural communities. But it’s not a one-size-fits-all problem. Where the need is broadband, I will support solutions that allow…
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