Day: May 13, 2018

Less Than 6,000 Early Votes Cast Over Eight Days in Nashville Special Mayoral Election

Tennessee Star Staff

NASHVILLE, Tennessee–Only 5,810 votes have been cast after eight days of early voting in the May 24 Nashville special mayoral election. With just six more days of early voting, the total early vote count is on a trajectory to come in at less than 25,000. If early voting for the final six days of the early voting period, which ends May 19, averages 3,000 per day–a single day total that has yet to be reached in this election– the number of ballots cast in Nashville/Davidson County during the early voting period will be about 23,800.  If that daily average is 2,300–the average for the most recent two days–the number of total ballots cast during the early voting period will be about 19,600. In most recent Nashville/Davidson County elections, voting on election day has been just slightly higher than during the early voting period. This suggests that total votes cast in the May 24 Nashville special mayoral election will be about 55,000, which is less than half of the 123,000 cast in the May 1 transit plan referendum in which Nashvillians rejected the $9 billion plan introduced by disgraced former Mayor Megan Barry and supported by Acting Mayor David Briley by…

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President Trump to Headline Marsha Blackburn Fundraiser in Nashville May 29

Jason M. Reynolds
Marsha Blackburn, President Donald Trump

President Donald Trump will headline a fundraiser for Rep. Marsha Blackburn in her Senate bid, WSMV reported. A Blackburn Victory Fund invitation says Trump will be in Nashville for the May 29 event. Admission options include a private round-table with Trump for $44,300 a couple; a private photo reception with Trump for $10,800 per couple; or just the general reception, at $2,700 per couple. The president endorsed Blackburn in April, Politico reported at the time. He tweeted, “@MarshaBlackburn is a wonderful woman who has always been there when we have needed her.” Trump praised Blackburn after retiring U.S. Sen. Bob Corker suggested she could lose the Senate race to replace him in Tennessee and that her Democrat opponent former Gov. Phil Bredesen had “real appeal” in the race, Breitbart reported. Corker has repeatedly bashed Trump in the past. Though he did not use the formal term “endorsement,” Corker announced his support for Blackburn’s bid to replace him in the United States Senate, the Tennessee Star reported in April. Republicans hold a 51-49 majority in the Senate going into the 2018 midterm elections. Blackburn, who is unopposed in the August 2 GOP primary, will be running against former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen,…

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Metro Council Candidate Judy Cummings: District 1 ‘Is the Most Overlooked, Under Developed, Under Resourced District in Davidson County’

Tennessee Star Staff

  NASHVILLE, Tennessee–Judy Cummings was out in the 90 degree heat Saturday afternoon to ask early voters outside the Bordeaux Library to elect her as the new Metro Council Member from District 1, the only Council Member election on the May 24 special mayoral election ballot. The Tennessee Star visited with Cummings as she sat under the protection of a tent and asked her to explain why she was running and why voters of District 1 should elect her. Cummings told The Star she wants to represent the district in which she and her husband have lived for 40 years to be an advocate for her neighbors in District 1, which she said “is the most overlooked, under developed, under resourced district of all of the districts in Davidson County.” You can watch the full interview here : Cummings is running against Gwen Brown-Felder, Jonathan Hall, Ruby Baker, and Sylvestor Armor. The Star interviewed two volunteers who advocated for Brown-Felder’s candidacy here. The Star also saw a volunteer working for Jonathan Hall, whose signs were plentiful. A volunteer tent was also set up for Sylvestor Armor, but it was unoccupied when The Star was there around 3:20 pm on Saturday.…

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How a 1934 New York Graduation Exam Shows How Far Academic Standards Have Fallen

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by Annie Holmquist   Today’s education system has a myriad of advantages that earlier generations never would have dreamed about. Smartboards. Tablets. Advanced science labs. Massive libraries. These perks are wonderful and suggest that our schools are giving children a much better education than they would have had at an earlier time. But what if all these advancements are just smoke and mirrors? Is it possible that the parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents of today’s students had a better education? Understandably, such a question might be met with skepticism, particularly since these points are framed around I-remember-when anecdotes rather than hard evidence. But once in a while some of that evidence surfaces, causing thinking individuals to ponder the possibility that today’s education system is perhaps not all it’s cracked up to be. Such was the case when I came across a collection of Regents Exams – the exams required to graduate from high school in New York – in the New York State Library. The archives provide a variety of exam subjects and range in date from the 1930s to the present. Curious, I pulled up one of the oldest, a 1934 American history exam, and did some quick, first page comparisons with the one…

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Relocation of AllianceBernstein to Nashville is ‘Rebuke’ of Wall Street

Jason M. Reynolds

AllianceBernstein Holding LP is moving its corporate headquarters and about 1,050 jobs to Nashville, in a move MSN/Bloomberg calls a “rebuke” of Wall Street. Some of AllianceBernstein’s functions like portfolio management will stay in New York, workers from legal, sales and marketing, and finance will begin moving to Music City this year. Chief Executive Officer Seth Bernstein will join them in Nashville in 2020. The company will invest more than $70 million to set up its Nashville headquarters, the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development said. AllianceBernstein considered 30 cities on factors like cost of living and weather, Bloomberg said. AllianceBernstein has a rating of 3.5 out of 5 on employee rating website glassdoor.com. Bloomberg reports that AllianceBernstein is not the only finance giant to sour on the Big Apple. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has built up operations in Salt Lake City, while Deutsche Bank AG has expanded in Jacksonville, Florida. The Wall Street Journal said the rush to leave New York started after the last financial crisis as finance companies looked to cut expenses and find lower tax rates. The tax plan Congress passed earlier this year is also a factor as many of these companies relied on…

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Rockefeller Treasures Set Record at Auction

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Peggy and David Rockefeller’s lavish artworks and other treasures set a new world record this week at a Christie’s auction, topping $800 million as the priciest single-owner collection. That’s about twice the previous record of $484 million from a 2009 Paris sale of designer Yves Saint Laurent’s estate. The three-day live sale of the late couple’s belongings ended Thursday with a $115 million star lot — a Picasso painting called “Fillette a la corbeille fleurie” of a naked girl holding a basket of flowers that once belonged to the writer Gertrude Stein, estimated to be worth $100 million. The runner-up, at $84 million, was a Monet canvas with his famed water lilies, “Nimpheas en fleur,” which surpassed its $50 million estimate and set a record for his art at auction against a previous high of $81 million. Matisse’s “Odalisque Couchee aux Magnolias,” depicting a woman in a Turkish harem, sold for $80.8 million, topping the $70 million estimate and setting a new record for a Matisse, whose highest price at auction had been $48.8 million. Rockefeller Mania In what one art publication dubbed “Rockefeller Mania,” Christie’s said 100 percent of the 893 Rockefeller lots offered live had sold, for a…

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Grassley Flags ‘Apparent Contradictions’ In Comey’s Testimony About Michael Flynn

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by Chuck Ross   The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is trying to get to the bottom of “apparent contradictions” in former FBI Director James Comey’s claims about former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Comey told a Senate Judiciary panel in a March 15, 2017 interview that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe he intentionally lied about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016, according to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley. Comey also “led us to believe” that the Justice Department “was unlikely to prosecute [Flynn] for false statements” made during his Jan. 24, 2017 interview with FBI agents, Grassley wrote Friday in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Comey’s remarks conflict with what he has claimed in recent interviews for his book tour, said Grassley. To get to the bottom of the matter, the Republican is asking Wray and Rosenstein to provide FBI notes taken during both the Comey and Flynn interviews. Comey denied, in an April 26 interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, telling lawmakers that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn was intentionally lying. “Did you tell lawmakers that FBI agents didn’t believe former…

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Commentary: The Obama Legacy Deserves to Be Destroyed

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Tennessee Star

by David Harsanyi   It’s strange that a president who had such a transformative effect on our national discourse will leave such a negligible policy legacy. But Barack Obama, whose imperial term changed the way Americans interact and in some ways paved the way for the Trump presidency, is now watching his much-celebrated and mythologized two-term legacy be systematically demolished. This, in many ways, tells us that American governance still works. When President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, he was able to do so without much difficulty because the agreement hinged on presidential fiat rather than national consensus. Obama’s appeasement of Iran was only one in a string of unilateral norm-busting projects that deserve to be dismantled. You’ll remember the panic-stricken coverage we endured when the United States withdrew from the faux international Paris climate agreement last year. It’s true that the deal was oversold as a matter of policy (by both parties for political reasons), but it was symbolic of how the Obama administration concerned itself more with international consensus than domestic compromise. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there…

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Randy Boyd’s Quarter-Million Dollar Beneficiary Wants Criminal Illegal Aliens to Stay in Tennessee

Chris Alto
Randy and Mrs Bord, Gov Haslam, Renata Soto

Nashville-based National Council of La Raza affiliate partner, Conexion Americas, the beneficiary of a $250,000 donation from Randy Boyd and his wife Jenny, wants Governor Haslam to veto the anti-sanctuary city bill so that criminal illegal aliens can return to Tennessee communities instead of being handed off to federal immigration authorities. The founder and director of Boyd’s quarter-million dollar beneficiary, has put out a call to ask the Governor to veto the legislation. In 2015, the year before Boyd made his $250,000 donation, Renata Soto, co- founder and executive director of Conexion Americas, who had served for three years as vice-president of the National Council of La Raza Board, was elected to president of La Raza’s board, a position she still occupies. In July 2017, the George Soros-funded National Council of LaRaza changed its name to UnidosUS. Boyd’s support for Soto’s organization which serves legal immigrants and illegal aliens and Soto’s leadership with La Raza, has earned Boyd the nickname “La Raza Randy.” During an early radio interview, Boyd inferred that he is okay with illegal aliens using the Conexion Americas culinary incubator renamed “Conexion Americas Mesa Komal Kitchen & The Randy and Jenny Boyd Culinary Incubator” after his donation, to…

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