Day: June 19, 2018

Regional Group That Backed Failed Nashville Transit Plan Names State Rep. Susan Lynn ‘Legislator of the Year’

Jason M. Reynolds
Susan Lynn

A Middle Tennessee mayors association that pushed for Nashville’s failed $9 billion transit plan has handed out an award to State Rep. Susan Lynn (R-Mt. Juliet) as state legislator of the year. Voters in Nashville/Davidson County resoundingly rejected the transit plan by a 64 percent to 36 percent margin in a May 1 referendum. The Tennessee House Republicans issued a statement on the award Monday. Greater Nashville Regional Council honored as its legislator of the year during its May executive board meeting. This award is given annually to one member from both the House and Senate for their work towards the legislative priorities of area mayors. “As an organization, we are grateful to Rep. Lynn for her tireless efforts and continued leadership on behalf of Middle Tennesseans,” said City of Franklin Mayor Ken Moore, president of the Regional Council. Moore endorsed “Let’s Move Nashville” as “the first major step in constructing a regional transit system,” the Brentwood Homepage website said in March. The endorsement came after years of collaboration among regional leaders who serve on the Regional Council and its Transportation Policy Board (TPB). The TPB convenes mayors from across seven counties with transportation officials and is responsible coordinating regional plans and programs.…

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Off the Record: Switch-Hitter Boyd Donors Now Raising Money For Liberal Democrat Phil Bredesen

Chris Alto
Randy Boyd, Phil Bredesen

“Switch-hitters” are the baseball players who bat both right-handed and left-handed. Political switch-hitters who want liberal representation in the U.S. Senate and a moderate in the governor’s office are rooting for the Boyd-Bredesen team – and they are willing to put their big bucks behind these guys and bring along their moneyed friends. (Anyone willing to bet whether we see Jim Haslam and others with the last name Haslam show up on a Bredesen campaign finance disclosure report?) Boyd’s big dollar donors Sharon Pryse, Raja and Michelle Jubran, and Jim Clayton are co-hosting a fundraiser for Phil Bredesen just like the super-wealthy “Republican” donor Conway-Welch in Nashville whose fundraiser for Bredesen was preceded by the one in Nashville headlined by former Vice-President Joe Biden. Boyd’s Knoxville Cabal needs him to go to his warehouse and get them those special flea collars. And there is plenty of money in them thar hills – Sharon Pryse, Raja Jubran and his wife coughed up $8,000 dineros each to hand over to La Raza Randy. Jim Clayton was only able to come up with a measly $5,000. Pryse, Raja Jubran, and Clayton are members of Boyd’s business coalition but it’s even cozier than that.  Boyd served…

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President Trump Announces Next-Generation ‘Space Force’ as an Independent Service Branch

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Donald Trump Space Force

Vowing to reclaim U.S. leadership in space, President Donald Trump announced Monday he is directing the Pentagon to create a new “Space Force” as an independent service branch aimed at ensuring American supremacy in space. Trump envisioned a bright future for the U.S. space program, pledging to revive the country’s flagging efforts, return to the moon and eventually send a manned mission that would reach Mars. The president framed space as a national security issue, saying he does not want “China and Russia and other countries leading us.” “My administration is reclaiming America’s heritage as the world’s greatest spacefaring nation,” Trump said in the East Room, joined by members of his space council. “The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons and to tame new frontiers.” Today, President Trump delivered remarks as the Space Council gathered to discuss American leadership in space exploration and commerce. pic.twitter.com/0xCE59guNC — The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45) June 18, 2018 Trump had previously suggested the possibility of creating a space unit that would include portions equivalent to parts of the Air Force, Army and Navy. But his directive will task the Defense Department to begin the process of establishing the ‘Space…

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The Truth Behind 4 Wild Claims About Detaining Children at the Border

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Kirstjen Nielsen

by Fred Lucas   The Trump administration is taking heat from Democrats and Republicans for separating parents and children after they illegally crossed the southern border. Over the six weeks from April 19 through May 31, federal officials separated about 2,000 children from their families at the U.S.-Mexican border, the Associated Press reported last week. President Donald Trump blamed the procedure on Democrats in Congress. “They’re obstructing. They’re really obstructionists and they are obstructing,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. It won’t be.” [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more  ] “If you look at what’s happening in Europe, if you look at what’s happening in other places, we can’t allow that to happen to the United States–not on my watch,” he said. During the White House press briefing Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said: “This is a very serious issue that has resulted after years and years of Congress not taking action.” Here’s a look at four of the more questionable claims made…

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Nashville Becoming ‘Chic Urban Playground for the Wealthy,’ Vanderbilt Professor Tells Wall Street Journal

Jason M. Reynolds
Nashville City at night

The Wall Street Journal has taken notice of how Nashville is becoming gentrified and is in danger of becoming a “chic urban playground for the wealthy.” James Fraser, an urban studies professor at Vanderbilt University, told The Wall Street Journal the city needs 30,000 more units of affordable housing and should spend $1 billion to meet the demand. Working people are being pushed to outer suburbs and rely on buses to reach their jobs, while wealthier people are moving into inner neighborhoods, he said. Affordable housing has long been a benefit of living in the South, said Laurel Graefe, deputy regional executive of the Nashville branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. While corporate incentives and low taxation are still attractive, housing demand has outstripped supply, raising prices. From 2008 to 2018, housing values, based on a weighted measure of all transactions in the housing market, rose 75 percent in Nashville, compared with 33 percent in Charlotte, according to the Brookings Institution. The Wall Street Journal story discussed the trend of tearing down older homes and building “tall skinnies”—multistory homes geared toward wealthier home buyers. Much of the issue is from rapid economic growth, the story says. The Nashville…

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Commentary: The IG Report: Obama Knew

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Barack Obama

by CHQ Staff   It’s interesting how quickly the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report vanished from the front pages and lead segments of the establishment media when we have just begun to plumb the depths of its almost 600 pages of findings. Both documents are embedded below. And one of the most important revelations from the report is one that the establishment media has studiously ignored – and that is that President Barack Obama knew all about Hillary Clinton’s off the official government network server. Obama said in a 2015 interview with CBS News that he first learned of Clinton’s use of the private server “at the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.” From our own experience working with the White House we understand how closely the communications of the President and Vice President are monitored, so the notion that Obama heard about Clinton’s unofficial email address from the news media sounded like a lot of baloney, and now the Inspector General’s report has confirmed it. Our friend former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino explained to FOX how the President’s email works. Bongino said the emails coming into the former president’s personal cellphone had to be…

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Scientists Find The Oldest Fossil Of Human Ever Discovered In Western Europe

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early man

by Chris White   Researchers believe the remains of a one million-year-old jawbone found deep in a Spanish cave could be one of the oldest known human fossils ever discovered, the Daily Mail reported Monday. The Homo antecessor skeleton, which has been dated to an estimated 772,000 to 949,000 years old, is the final common ancestor shared between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. The finding also pushes back previous estimates for the split between modern humans and Neanderthals, an extinct species. It also suggests the evolution of modern human species may have taken much longer than estimates from genetic studies. Previous studies, based on genetics, showed that modern humans and Neanderthals split around 516,000 years ago. “We faced many challenges during this study, and without the active participation of all these specialists, it would not have been possible to obtain any meaningful and reliable result,” explained Dr. Mathieu Duval of the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE). Duval worked with fellow ARCHE scientist, Professor Rainer Grün, and a team of researchers to accurately date the Homo antecessor remains using one of its teeth. The age of the jawbone prevented the researchers from using carbon dating to accurately estimate the skeleton’s age. They…

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Will Tennessee’s New Plan To Break The Cycle Of Poverty Only Perpetuate It?

John Bryant
cycle of poverty

Tennessee is increasingly adopting “a two-generation approach” to fighting poverty, which combines the focus on parents and children when it comes to food stamps and other cash assistance programs. The approach may indeed pay off and is being implemented across more and more states, yet, it still appears to be an experiment without much hard  data to back it up as ending in significant success. Meanwhile, many have argued for years that such programs only extend and even expand poverty. From 2013: Since 2007, the number of Americans on SNAP has exploded, going from approximately 22 million people at the start of the recession in 2008 to more than 45 million in 2013. The program provides these families a much-needed safety net as they struggle to get back on their feet, according to Jennifer Brooks, policy director with the progressive Corporation for Enterprise Development based in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, calls to reform the system from the Right, as with this one from the Heritage Foundation, often go ignored. For now, this seems to be the direction Tennessee officials are choosing and only the future will determine if it’s a success. Tennessee’s agency that administers food stamps and cash assistance programs…

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Advocates in Pennsylvania Want More Taxpayer Money to Educate Illegal Immigrant & Refugee Students

Chris Alto
Education Law Center sues Phila

Philadelphia-based Education Law Center told the city’s School Reform Commission that immigrant students and English Language Learner students (EL), need expanded programming, “improved cultural competency” for teachers, more support for the parents of these students and greater access to vocational training programs.  According to the Law Center, test results show that this group of students are failing to progress in their education: Test results indicate that immigrant students and ELs are among the most educationally at-risk of all student groups. For instance, 44 percent of EL students scored below basic in 2015-16 in standardized math and reading tests, while only 19 percent of non-EL students were in that category. The Law Center advocates statewide “fighting for fair school funding” and “equal access” to education services and programs. In 2016, the ELC with help from the ACLU of Pennsylvania and lawyers from a high-priced private law firm, sued the Lancaster School District on behalf of six high school- age refugee students, objecting to their placement at the privately run Phoenix School. Officials with the school district cited Phoenix School’s “special acceleration program”as the reason the refugee students were placed there instead of the district’s regular high school: A special ‘acceleration program’ at…

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State Rep. Gerald McCormick Is Out of the Race to Succeed Harwell as Speaker of the Tennessee House, Will Not Seek Re-Election

John Bryant
Gerald McCormick

  State Rep. Gerald McCormick, (R-Chattanooga) announced “he won’t seek re-election to the House District 26 seat he’s held for nearly 14 years and he will officially withdraw from the contest Monday. He also will resign from the House on Oct. 1 as he takes a full-time job working for a local firm expanding its presence in Nashville.” The surprise announcement removes McCormick from consideration in the race to succeed Tennessee Speaker of the House Beth Harwell (R-Nashville), who is running for the Republican nomination for governor and is not seeking re-election to her seat in the Tennessee House. His departure leaves State Rep. Glenn Casada (R-Franklin) as the clear front runner to succeed Harwell, but also clears the way for a more conservative challenger to enter the Speaker’s race. McCormick made the announcement in remarks to the Times Free Press. “A professional position with Asa Engineering and Consulting, a Chattanooga-based company, requires me to relocate to Nashville to grow the firm’s new office,” the former House majority leader and current Finance Subcommittee chairman stated to the Times Free Press. “My plan was to run for re-election and I believe the voters of the 26th District would return me to Nashville to…

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