Day: April 18, 2018

Lee Beaman Joins Carol Swain’s Campaign for Mayor of Nashville as Finance Chairman

Tennessee Star Staff
Carol Swain runs for Nashville Mayor'

Nashville businessman Lee Beaman has agreed to serve as the finance chairman of Carol Swain’s mayoral campaign, according to the former Vanderbilt professor’s campaign. “Yesterday, Lee Beaman joined Dr. Carol M. Swain’s campaign for Mayor of Nashville as Finance Chairman,” the campaign said in a statement released on Tuesday, adding: In the two weeks since her announcement, she has received endorsements from author Eric Metaxas and radio legend Dick Bott. Additionally, the campaign has raised over $40,000 from Nashvillians and supporters across the country. There is clearly a groundswell of support for a leader that can rebuild the public’s trust and faith in the metropolitan government. Dr. Carol M. Swain is running for Mayor because she is the only candidate that can bring common sense leadership and transparency to City Hall. Dr. Swain’s “Blueprint for Nashville” lays out the policies that she will advocate for during her term as Mayor. As a political outsider, Dr. Swain is not beholden to special interests, and will fight for fairness in government. Beaman is the owner of Beaman Automotive Group and is one of the most well known auto dealers in Middle Tennessee. He serves as a member of the board at conservative…

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Dale Walker of Tennessee Pastors Network Leads Prayer in Murfreesboro To Protest Senator Bill Ketron’s Liquor on Sundays Bill

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Pastor Dale Walker, president of the the Tennessee Pastors Network (TNPN), held a prayer rally at the Murfreesboro Courthouse Square to pray for the families suffering the effects of horrible addictions to drugs and alcohol and to protest legislation recently passed that allows for Sunday liquor sales. About a dozen people joined Walker, and a protester clad in a “liquor bottle” costume for the rally. Some protesters held signs noting that “Our Families Can’t Afford Bill Ketron’s Big Liquor Bill.” “Pastors have to deal with the effects of alcohol after the bottle is empty,” Walker said, as he held a public prayer for those affected directly and indirectly drugs and alcohol. “We are praying for not only those who are impacted by drug and alcohol addiction, and but also our elected officials like Senator Bill Ketron who have their own addiction to special-interest money that produces so much harm for our families.” Walker expressed particular concern over Senator Bill Ketron citing Bible verses to support passage of his “liquor on Sundays bill.” There will be hell to pay for Bill Ketron misrepresenting the Word of God in order to serve his liquor lobbyist masters,” Walker told the crowd. During debate…

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Democrat Phil Bredesen Fundraises to Within Two Hundred Thousand Dollars of Republican Marsha Blackburn – But There’s a Catch

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Marsha Blackburn, Phil Bredesen

On Monday’s installment of The Gill Report – broadcast live on WETR 92.3 FM in Knoxville – conservative political talker and Tennessee Star contributor Steve Gill discussed the latest fundraising numbers and sources of contributions in what many political watchers predict will be a hotly contested race to replace retiring junior Senator Bob Corker (TN-R): The Senate fundraising numbers are in for the first quarter of this year – January, February, March. We now know that Marsha Blackburn raised $2 million in donations just in the first quarter of this year. Phil Bredesen, her likely – almost certain – candidate opposing her in the Fall elections in November as the Democrat nominee for the US Senate has raised $1.8 million. So, about 1.8 to 2 million for Marsha – within two hundred thousand dollars. What’s interesting, though, is $1.4 million of Phil Bredesen’s $1.8 million is his money. He loaned it to his campaign. So Phil Bredesen has only raised $400,000 compared to Marsha Blackburn raising $2,000,000. Now again we’ve seen all these hyperventilating articles that “Marsha’s in trouble,” the “the Republicans are in trouble,” and that “there’s this ‘Blue Wave’ building.” Well, apparently the Blue Wave, at least for Phil Bredesen in terms of…

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Beloved by Millions for Her No-Nonsense Can-Do Spirit, Barbara Bush Has Died

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Former First Lady Barbara Bush has died at 92 years old at her home in Texas. In recent years Mrs. Bush was unwell with frequent visits to the hospital in as she battled Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and congestive heart failure. On Sunday, the office of former President George H. W. Bush released a statement confirming after a “recent series of hospitalizations,” she has decided against seeking additional medical help and was being cared for at her home. Embed from Getty Images Barbara Pierce married George Herbert Walker Bush at age 19 while he was a young naval aviator. After World War II, the couple moved to Texas where he went into the oil business. From there, George H. W. Bush entered politics, holding a myriad of offices from congressman, to CIA Director, Vice President, and then President. During her time at the White House as the Second Lady, Mrs. Bush’s signature cause was early childhood education and adult literacy which she called, family literacy. Later on as First Lady, she launched the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. Eight years after she and her husband left the White House, Mrs. Bush stood with her husband as their son George W. was sworn in…

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New National Test Scores Show Betsy DeVos Was Right About Public Schools

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by Mary Clare Amselem   Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ recent interview with Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” caused quite a bit of backlash from critics. As my colleague Jonathan Butcher has written, “60 Minutes” ignored many of the facts about the state of education in America. Response to the interview drew quite a bit of criticism of DeVos and her policy solutions. Perhaps one of the most pivotal moments came when she suggested that the United States’ heavy federal investment in education has not yielded any results. Stahl hit back, asserting that school performance has been on the rise. But the latest government data show otherwise. According to the recently released 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s “report card,” we now have more evidence that DeVos was correct. Transform “Tax Day” into “Freedom Day.” Support the campaign to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent >> In fact, recent scores show virtually no improvement over 2015 scores. Eighth-grade reading saw a single point improvement over 2015 scores (10 points is considered equivalent to a grade level), while all other categories saw no improvement. These lackluster results come on the heels of declines on the 2015 assessment, suggesting the beginning of…

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JC Bowman Commentary: The Trouble with Testing

JC Bowman

Testing has taken a wrong turn in public education. I have always tried to keep it simple: testing is like your school picture; it is what you look like on that particular day. Kids go in to take a test. Teachers show up to make sure kids are taking their own test. Parents encourage their children to do their best. However, like Ozzie & Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, and the Lone Ranger, those days are gone. With an infusion of $501 million federal dollars of Race to the Top money we hurried to increase standards by adopting Common Core, which we corrected by moving back to state standards. We also increased testing, changing both format and frequency. Tennessee also adopted new evaluation methods. The teacher union supported the incorporation of TVAAS data into the state’s teacher evaluations, which landed Tennessee $501 million from the federal Race to the Top grant in 2010. Professional Educators of Tennessee did not support the use of that data on teacher evaluations, nor did they sign a support letter on the original grant submission. Not everything Tennessee tried was damaging, but it is not debatable that thus far the Age of Accountability has failed…

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Outrageous: A New 2019 History Textbook Suggests President Trump Is A Racist

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The well-known textbook publisher Pearson Education, which is British-owned, is planning a new U.S. history textbook entitled “By the People” for 2019 — and here’s what’s so galling. The strikingly leftist tome goes so far as to suggest that President Donald Trump and his supporters are racist, and that they long for a bygone America in which those in power are almost exclusively white.

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Tennessee Stops Sending Tax Dollars to Abortion Providers

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by Rachel del Guidice   The governor of Tennessee has signed a bill that ends state taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers in the state. “The governor … deferred to the will of the legislature on this bill as amended, and after reviewing the bill in its final form decided to sign the bill into law,” Jennifer Donnals, Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s press secretary, said in a statement published by CBN News. The bill will direct TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program, money to health care facilities instead of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. “This money is a form of supporting abortions,” state Rep. Jimmy Matlock said last month, reported The Tennessean. He fought to remove state funding from Planned Parenthood, saying that in the last six years, nearly $1 million has been paid to abortion clinics in Tennessee out of TennCare reimbursements. [ Transform “Tax Day” into “Freedom Day.” Support the campaign to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent ] Thank you, Gov. @BillHaslam for signing my bill to #DefundPlannedParenthood in Tennessee once and for all! We did it! Now it’s time to do the same in Washington! @AUL @SBAList @nrlc @tnrighttolife @LiveAction @LifeSite @lifesite @LifeNewsHQ @FRCAction @HouseGOP @ACUConservative pic.twitter.com/dd3OsrHF3O — Jimmy Matlock (@JimmyMatlockTN) April…

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Commentary: If Republicans Really Control The Senate…

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by CHQ Staff   If Republicans really control the Senate, then why are they making confirming Republican President Donald Trump’s department heads and subcabinet posts so difficult? As our friend James Wallner pointed out a couple of weeks ago, in a column for The Washington Examiner, technically, Senate minorities are no longer able to single-handedly block a confirmation vote for a presidential nomination, thanks to Democrats triggering the nuclear option in 2013 to lower the threshold for invoking cloture on all nominations (other than for the Supreme Court) from three-fifths of senators to a “majority-vote.” The 2013 nuclear option eliminated the supermajority filibuster for most nominations. Republicans followed suit in 2017, using the maneuver to eliminate the minority’s ability to filibuster Supreme Court nominees. Yet despite these changes, observed Wallner, Senate rules still allow senators to delay the process after cloture has been invoked – by dragging out the time permitted under the rules before the final confirmation vote. And it is especially peculiar that nominees with establishment Republican – or worse yet Democratic backgrounds – seem to fly right through, while solid movement conservatives seem to take forever. Capitol Hill Republicans have been trying to blame Democrats, and President…

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Tennessee Licensing Agency Blocks Groundbreaking Facial Recognition with Criminal Database Cross-Check Technology

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Adam Jackson

Former soldier and inventor Adam Jackson developed a new facial recognition software called Edge AI that can instantly cross-check a camera’s video feed containing a person’s face with criminal databases, but an obscure government agency called the Tennessee Alarm Systems Contractors Board declared that because Jackson does not hold an “Alarm Contractors License” – a process, in this case, that takes five-years – he is not allowed sell or even donate his product in the Volunteer State. Braden Boucek, Director of Litigation for the Beacon Center, who has taken the lead in fighting the Board’s decision in court said, “This cutting-edge facial recognition software could make a huge difference in the lives of vulnerable Tennesseans.” He added: “Technological solutions like Adam’s hold far more promise as an effective response to mass shootings than any restrictions on firearms ever could. This is a novel and effective response to gun violence, especially in schools, where his software has the capacity to screen out potential shooters before they enter the building. The state of Tennessee should be rolling out the red carpet for Adam. Unfortunately, we have a regulatory board more interested in protecting entrenched industries from emergent technology using archaic and poorly fitting regulations…

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