Day: August 9, 2018

Vietnam Veteran: ‘Marsha’ Has Always Fought For Our Veterans

Jason M. Reynolds
Marsha Blackburn

A Chattanooga veteran of the Vietnam War said, “No one has fought harder for our active duty military and our veterans than Marsha Blackburn. We need to elect her to the Senate because the issues with the VA are far from solved.” Terry Thomas wrote a column for the Times Free Press supporting Republican Marsha Blackburn in her U.S. Senate campaign against Democrat Phil Bredesen. “I served in combat on the rivers in Vietnam with the U.S. Navy, and now I serve my fellow veterans as the quartermaster of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1289 here in Chattanooga. We have about 400 members, all of whom have served our country faithfully over the past several decades. “Too often, our members find themselves unable to receive the care they need — the same care they have earned and were promised. Your heart will break hearing about what our veterans have to go through to get care from a dysfunctional Veterans Administration. President Trump is working to make the necessary changes that the Obama administration put off for too long, but he cannot do it alone. He needs senators and congressmen who are willing to work with him to get the job…

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Feds Give Memphis Airport $43 Million, Despite Traffic Decrease

Chris Butler
Memphis Airport

Federal taxpayers will shell out $43.3 million to improve the Memphis International Airport, despite reports traffic has fallen dramatically in recent years. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, announced the funding, which came from the Federal Aviation Administration. Exactly $28.5 million of that will reimburse airport officials for reconstructing two taxiways. The remaining $14.7 million, meanwhile, goes to what Cohen called “the rehabilitation of the Memphis International Airport’s Concourse B.” Northwest Airlines was once the airport’s most dominant carrier. Then Delta gobbled it up. Delta decided it only needed one hub in the South, in Atlanta. That decision cost Memphis almost two-thirds of its passengers, according to a recent New York Times story. The result — three concourses are left and most of its gates are unused. Airports officials will spend $219 million to close and renovate Concourse B and mothball concourses A & C. No one at Cohen’s office returned requests for comment Wednesday. Memphis International Airport spokesman Glen Thomas, in an emailed statement, said the airport qualified for the federal funding, even though it might seem like a ghost town. These funds, Thomas said, involved federal Airport Improvement Program money. Under federal law the aviation system generates that money.…

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Prosecutors: Son Of Prominent Brooklyn-based Imam Was Training Children To Commit School Shootings

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terror training

by Chuck Ross   The son of a prominent Brooklyn-based imam was training children at a New Mexico compound to commit schools shootings, prosecutors said in court documents released Wednesday. Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 39, was training 11 children at a compound north of Taos, New Mexico, according to The Associated Press. Authorities raided the compound Friday and arrested Wahhaj, two of his siblings and two other men during a search for Wahhaj’s son, who had been abducted from Georgia late in 2017. A 3-year-old boy was found buried near the compound, but has not been identified. Wahhaj’s son was not among the children rescued. Residents in Amalia, New Mexico, near the Colorado border, had complained for months about the squalid conditions of the makeshift compound before Friday’s raid, according to news reports. Authorities recovered multiple firearms as well as an AR-15. Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said Tuesday that authorities initially did not have enough evidence to search the compound. Wahhaj and his son were not spotted on the property. A breakthrough came last week when authorities received a tip that a starving child might be living at the compound. Wahhaj’s father, also named Siraj, is a controversial cleric with close…

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Court Spikes Environmental Lawsuit Over Trump’s National Monument Cutbacks

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Donald Trump

by Tim Pearce   A district court spiked an environmental lawsuit Monday seeking to force the Trump administration to turn over documents related to cutting back national monuments. U.S. District Judge David Nye told the environmental group Advocates for the West (AW) that a dozen documents the organization argued should be made public are protected as presidential communications, The Associated Press reported. The documents “contain legal advice to the president and his advisers and should remain protected,” Bye wrote, according to the AP. “While public disclosure is an important and necessary part of any free society, so too is candor and privacy when those at the highest levels of government strive to determine the best course of action.” The documents reveal past administrations’ reasons for establishing and expanding national monuments under the Antiquities Act between 2006 and 2016, according to AW. “This decision shows how difficult it is to force sunlight on a government that flourishes in secrecy,” AW attorney Todd Tucci told the AP. “President [Donald] Trump’s abrupt change in interpretation of the Antiquities Act should be subject to the light of day.” Trump signed executive orders on Dec. 4 rolling back the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in…

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Southwest Airlines Begins Nonstop Flights Between Nashville, Atlanta

Jason M. Reynolds
Southwest Air

Southwest Airlines has begun nonstop flights from Atlanta to Nashville. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the airline launched the flights from Atlanta to Nashville, The Associated Press reported. Nashville International Airport celebrated the inaugural flight from BNA to Atlanta Tuesday. The airline will operate five flights a day Monday through Friday between Hartsfield-Jacskon Atlanta International Airport and BNA, as well as three flights a day on Saturdays and Sundays. Southwest Airlines Co. vice president of technical operations Trevor Stedke said in a statement when the airline announced the route in February that it answers business community requests in both cities. Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority CEO Doug Kruelen says business people have long sought more service between Nashville and Atlanta. Kruelen says the route brings more competition and options. Delta Air Lines already flies the route. Nashville International Airport served more than 14.9 million passengers in the fiscal year that ended in June, making it one of the nation’s fastest growing airports, The Tennessee Star previously reported. The record makes Nashville International, or BNA, the fourth fastest growing airport among the top 50 airports in North America, the airport’s website said. BNA serves 450 daily flights to more than 65 nonstop markets.…

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SCIENCE: Religious People Live Longer

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church service

by Joshua Gill   Religious affiliation actually prolong one’s life through positive social effects according to a recent study of obituaries in Iowa and across the nation. Laura E. Wallace of Ohio State University, one of the study’s authors, found that among the social factors that affect one’s physical health and longevity, religion plays a large and observably positive role. Her findings showed that people who had active religious affiliations in life lived an average of 10 years longer than their non-religious counterparts in Des Moines, and an average of five years longer nationally. “Being healthy doesn’t just mean going to the gym and eating well. Our social worlds have such a large influence on our health as well. Religion is clearly one of these factors that makes a big difference,” Wallace said, according to PsyPost. “Religion has a strong relationship with longevity. Our research suggests that, in part, this is due to the opportunities that religion provides to make social connections and give back to the community,” she added. Researchers for the study, which was initially published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, analyzed 505 obituaries from the Des Moines Register and a further 1,096 obituaries from across the country. The parameters of…

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Taxpayer-Funded Program Didn’t End Homelessness in Tennessee

Chris Butler
homelessness

Five years ago, Nashville officials launched an initiative to end homelessness as we know it. The program, part of the “How’s Nashville” campaign, promised homelessness would end before 2017. Seeing as how we’re more than halfway done with 2018 it’s time to assess — did the program do what Nashville officials said it would do? After all, they promised. Unfortunately, city officials did not return requests for comment Wednesday. Back in 2013, the city’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency paired up with the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission and announced 200 housing opportunities for the chronically homeless. They offered an unspecified amount of federal taxpayer money, via Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant money. Apparently, though, city officials didn’t get enough cash the first go-round. Last month, according to Nashville NBC affiliate WSMV, city officials announced yet another initiative to end homelessness, this time among young people, using $3.54 million of federal taxpayer money, again from HUD. “HUD is awarding $43 million to 11 local communities across the country,” the station reported. “The money will fund rapid re-housing, permanent supportive housing, transitional housing and other programs.” There were other times officials in Tennessee used taxpayer money to end homelessness as…

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Commentary: How One Deleted Scene Turns Star Wars into a Struggle Against Socialism

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Star Wars

by Grayson Quay   In the era of Disney, many long-time Star Wars fans have bemoaned the supposed infiltration of their favorite franchise by leftist ideology. At first, I rolled my eyes at these objections, many of which remain patently absurd. But after Solo: A Star Wars Story gave us a shrill SJW droid hooking up with a pansexual Lando Calrissian, I had to admit that some critics might have a point. This wasn’t always the case, though. In fact, one of the deleted scenes included in the 2011 Star Wars Blu-Ray collection explicitly connects the evil Galactic Empire with the socialist economic policies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In Episode IV: A New Hope, George Lucas originally wrote and shot several scenes that would introduce the viewer to Luke Skywalker long before R2-D2 and C-3PO arrived at his family’s moisture farm. The first features Luke using a pair of macrobinoculars to watch Leia’s ship, the Tantive IV, exchange fire with Darth Vader’s Imperial-class Star Destroyer. Excited by the prospect of adventure, Luke rushes to tell his friends at the Tosche Station, where he finds that his friend Biggs Darklighter has returned to Tatooine after graduating from the Imperial Academy. Luke’s friends quickly lose interest in his wild tales of space combat, and he and Biggs head off to grab a few malt brews and catch up. After a bit of…

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Dept. of Homeland Security Agents Conduct Massive Worksite Raid In Two States, Arrest Business Owners For Employing Illegal Aliens

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ICE arrest

by Will Racke   Federal agents conducted a multi-state worksite raid at several Midwestern agricultural businesses on Wednesday, arresting more than 100 people including owners and supervisors who allegedly conspired to employ illegal aliens at the expense of American workers. Homeland Security Investigations — the investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — led the operation against at least 11 companies in Nebraska and Minnesota, the Grand Island Independent reported. Along with more than 130 suspected illegal workers, agents arrested 14 business owners and managers for allegedly using bogus social security numbers to build a workforce of underpaid, exploitable illegal immigrants. Three other people involved in the scheme were also indicted but not taken into custody during the operation. The operation was one of the largest worksite raids in HSI’s 15-year history, according to Tracy Cormier, the special agent-in-charge of the agency’s St. Paul field office, which covers Minnesota and Nebraska. “I would say the amount of criminal warrants that are being executed will be one of the largest for HSI,” Cormier said, according to the Associated Press. “I’m not aware of a bigger one.” Wednesday’s operation is notable because is targeted business ownership and management, not just illegal workers. Two of HSI’s…

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Bill Lee Embraces Gov. Haslam’s Legacy

Julie Carr
Steve Gill

On Tuesday’s Gill Report, broadcast live on WETR 92.3 FM in Knoxville, conservative pundit and Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill contemplated the contradiction of Bill Haslam’s endorsement of Bill Lee – whose base was turned off by Randy Boyd’s campaign because of his ties to Haslam. “As the campaign in the Tennessee Governor’s race turns from the primary to the general election. You’re starting to see the endorsements flow in,” Gill began. He added, “President Trump has endorsed Bill Lee for governor. He’s also endorsed Marsha Blackburn as we’ve pointed out in the last segment. Also, Bill Haslam the current Republican Governor is endorsing Bill Lee as well, putting his support in an ad that’s been produced by the Republican Governor’s Association chaired by Governor Bill Haslam behind Bill Lee.” Gill played the audio of the 30-second spot featuring Governor Haslam: (Audio plays) BILL HASLAM: For eight years I’ve had the privilege of being your Governor. Together, we’ve made a lot of progress. More people have jobs than ever before. Our taxes are lower, our students are improving faster than anywhere in the country, Tennessee is stronger than ever, Bill Lee is the right choice to take Tennessee to…

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Metro Council Member: Nashville Taxes Go Up if Unions Get Their Way

Chris Butler
Steve Glover

A Nashville Metro Council member says if members of various labor unions get their way on the proposed Major League Soccer stadium then Davidson County residents could see a tax increase. Metro Council member Steve Glover said that’s why it’s past time for city officials to tighten their finances and focus only on the essentials. Glover made his remarks to The Tennessee Star one day after several of his colleagues held a press conference with members of the group Stand Up Nashville to demand certain benefits. That happens through what is called a Community Benefits Agreement. A similar agreement in Cincinnati appeared to require only MLS resources. Whether the proposed Nashville agreement involves the taxpayers stepping in or whether it’s all on MLS officials to accommodate their demands with their own resources is unclear. But if taxpayers get involved then the ramifications of that, according to Glover, are a no-brainer. “There is no other way to do it, other than to raise taxes,” Glover said. According to their website, Stand Up Nashville is a coalition of community organizations and labor unions. This groups wants Metro officials to build the proposed new Major League Soccer stadium in the city — but they…

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