Day: September 7, 2018

Blackburn Receives Taxpayers’ Friend Award and an A Rating from National Taxpayers Union

Jason M. Reynolds
Marsha Blackburn

U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) has received a Taxpayer’s Friend award and an A rating of 87 percent from the National Taxpayers Union (NTU). Blackburn is running for the seat of retiring U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN). Democratic former Governor Phil Bredesen is running against her. NTU released the Congressional scorecard for the first session of the 115th Congress, and it’s good news for taxpayers: more pro-taxpayer votes were taken and passed in 2017 than in other recent years, and the number of “Taxpayers’ Friend” awards has jumped over the 2016 totals. The results are available here. The Tennessee House delegation’s state average is 70. “While far too many members of Congress are still failing to consistently stand up for the best interests of taxpayers, 2017 was still an important year of progress on many fiscal policy issues,” the organization said in a press release. NTU will be awarding 66 representatives and 15 senators with the “Taxpayers’ Friend” awards this year, up from only 15 House members and 3 senators from previous ratings. “This reflects the number of important, pro-taxpayer bills that were voted on and passed by Congress in 2017 – including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and important regulatory reforms. At the…

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Did Steve Cohen Block You on Twitter? Sue Him, Expert Says

Chris Butler
Steve Cohen

If U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-9) blocks you on Twitter or any other social media then you can take him to court. This is the opinion of a top official with the New York City-based Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. This is the same organization that sued the Trump Administration and forced the president to stop blocking people on his Twitter page. As reported, Cohen also blocks certain of his critics on social media. “I do think that people who have been blocked by a member of Congress can take action,” said Katie Fallow, Knight’s senior staff attorney. “I do think it will depend on the facts of how that person is using their social media accounts, but, yes, I think they would have a plausible claim.” Courts, of course, have already ruled on this issue as it pertains to executive-level offices in government, including governors and the U.S. president. They have yet to rule on members of Congress. Fallow told The Tennessee Star she’s gotten complaints about members of Congress blocking critics on social media. No one in Cohen’s office has returned repeated requests for comment this week. To have a plausible claim for legal action, first…

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Phil Bredesen Benefitted from Program That Forced Others to Pay Higher Taxes

Chris Butler
Phil Bredesen

Tennessee Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen spent years taking advantage of a state program that’s trimmed his property taxes by hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Tennessean reported the story this week. Bredesen got $520,600 in tax breaks on four of his Nashville-based properties since 2011, the paper reported. Bredesen’s spokeswoman Alyssa Hansen told the paper her boss has nothing to apologize for. Regardless, Bredesen has previously criticized this tax break program, commonly known as Greenbelt. Also, regardless, Bredesen reportedly tried to withdraw from Greenbelt once he learned the paper was about to publish a story about his enrollment in it. No one at Bredesen’s campaign returned The Tennessee Star’s repeated requests for comment Thursday. State officials created Greenbelt tax breaks in the 1970s to slow the spread of urban sprawl in Tennessee. Taxes are based on the property’s use value rather than its fair market value. Aimed at helping Tennesseans hold on to their farms, the Greenbelt tax breakkicks in for property owners who maintain at least 15 acres of farmland, forests or open spaces. In an emailed statement, Tennessee Republican Party Chair Scott Golden said one of Bredesen’s supposed farms for bailing hay is, in fact, a mansion —…

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Scholars Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt Expose Universities and Their ‘Coddling’ of the American Mind

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California liberalism

by George Leef   In 2015, Greg Lukianoff (president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and Jonathan Haidt (professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business) wrote an article for The Atlantic entitled “The Coddling of the American Mind.” In that article, the authors argued that students (college but also pre-college) increasingly react to words, books, images, and speakers with fear and anger because they’ve been taught to exaggerate danger, to let their emotions rule, and to engage in binary thinking. It proved to be one of the most read and discussed articles ever published by the magazine. Now Lukianoff and Haidt have expanded on that article with a book entitled The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure. Their book has a lot to say about the way our colleges and universities are making a bad situation – the bad mental habits noted above combined with the belief that kids must be kept absolutely safe – much worse. The root of the problem, argue Lukianoff and Haidt, is that parents, teachers, professors and college administrators have been leading young people to believe…

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Integration of Foreigners in Sweden Has ‘Failed,’ and It Could Sway the Country’s Political System

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Riksdag

by Hanna Bogorowski    – Voters in Sweden will hit the polls Sunday to elect a new Parliament.   – The right-leaning Sweden Democrats, an unusual pick for the progressive nation, are rising in the polls, and experts say immigration is the driving force.  – Recently, even foreign-born Swedes are questioning the state’s immigration policies. Voters in Sweden will hit the polls Sunday to elect a new Parliament, and following a similar trend present in other European countries, immigration is driving the political agenda and is the force behind the rising popularity of the right-leaning Sweden Democrats (SD) party. While nationalistic governments have been making waves in the political sphere as anti-immigrant sentiment rises in governments such as Italy, Hungary and even Australia, it’s notable that these views are taking hold in such a progressive government as Sweden’s. SD’s popularity has been climbing over the years, but recent polls show the party is in first or second place ahead of Sunday’s elections, according to The Wall Street Journal. The SD party entered the country’s Parliament in 2010 and holds 42 of the 349 seats in Parliament, but its emphasis on immigration policy struck a chord with voters this time around. Sweden has taken in more…

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All Talk and No Action: Democrats Dream of Statewide Seats with Nothing to Show For It

Julie Carr
Phil Bredesen, Karl Dean

On Thursday’s Gill Report – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 1510 WLAC weekdays at 7:30 am – Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill talked about Florida’s governor’s race and the trending phenomenon of Democrat leaders and the denial of their failing cities.  He was curious as to why voters would think to elect such officials again into a state-wide office when they were unsuccessful leaders in their own cities. “Hopefully folks will look at the records of these individuals rather than the rhetoric as we head closer to November and casting votes,” Gill quipped; adding: In Florida you’ve got the Tallahassee Mayor, mayor Gilliam running for governor in Florida the Democrat nominee.  He’s a guy that is facing federal investigation for potential corruption charges.  He’s a guy who’s been playing the race card against Ron DeSantis the Republican congressman for using the same wording that Democrats have used with reckless abandon about ‘we shouldn’t monkey with the economy’.  They tried to turn that into a racial issue while again people from Barak Obama and whole host of other Democrats have used the exact terminology but of course (sarcastic tone) ‘it’s racist’ if a Republican says it (sarcastic tone) ‘it’s ok’…

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Commentary: The White House Is No Place for Resistance

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by Robert Romano   White House Chief of Staff John Kelly needs to serve up whoever wrote the Sept. 5 anonymous New York Times oped, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” or he needs to go and President Donald Trump needs to find a new chief of staff who will get control of those men and women who have the privilege of serving in the White House. The oped contends, dramatically, that “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda” and “I would know. I am one of them.” The oped offers very few specifics over which policy disagreements led to the drafting of the oped. But what it alleges is that there is a conspiracy in the White House to undermine the constitutionally elected, sitting President of the United States and the agenda he ran on. This goes to the heart of the President’s sole authority in executing the laws of the United States under Article II of the Constitution. The White House is a place where robust deliberations should be had, but, at the end of the day, the President decides the direction the administration…

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Twenty-Five Straight Minutes Of People Illegally Crossing The US Border Through Arizona Ranch

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illegal border crossing

by Will Racke   Arizona rancher John Chilton’s 50,000-acre spread along the U.S.-Mexico border is allegedly ground zero for human smugglers, drug cartel members and illegal immigrants, and he has videos showing trespassers sneaking through his property. A fifth-generation cattleman, the 79-year-old Chilton has long warned the government about the dangers of leaving lengthy stretches of the southwest border secured by nothing more than a barbed wire fence. To prove his point, he set up surveillance cameras throughout his property to document the comings and goings of trespassers from south of the border. Chilton shared hours of video footage with Daily Caller News Foundation reporters, who are in Arizona to document life and crime in the southwest borderlands. Tim Foley, the founder of Arizona Border Recon, also shared his group’s surveillance footage with TheDCNF. The surveillance videos, which are mostly from 2018 but also date back to 2016, show an unrelenting stream of alleged cartel scouts, drug mules and human smugglers — known as coyotes — using secret trails to work their way into the interior of the state. Many of the trespassers tote long guns and sport military-style camouflage, posing a threat Chilton knows from firsthand experience. A U.S.…

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A New Report Shows Paris Climate Accord Backers Are Just ‘Outsourcing’ CO2 Emissions To China

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China

by Michael Bastach   When President Donald Trump unveiled plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord last year, he voiced his concern the Obama-era deal would amount to an international wealth transfer. Trump pointed out the Paris accord “doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America, and ships them to other countries,” he said in a Rose Garden speech last year. A new report shows Trump’s broader argument that emissions-intensive activities would not be eliminated, but moved overseas was probably correct. Industries have been moving operations overseas to poorer countries with fewer regulations. The report, funded by the ClimateWorks Foundation, found that countries are increasingly “outsourcing” their emissions to other countries, like China and India. Indeed, it’s a problem conservatives have warned about for years when it comes to climate policies — regulations emissions in, say, the U.S. will only encourage carbon dioxide-heavy industries to relocate overseas. That’s exactly what’s been happening, according to the new report. If those outsourced emissions were included “many promising climate trends would be negated or reversed,” reads the report by researchers with KGM & Associates and Global Eciency Intelligence LLC. “It is estimated that 20-30% of global CO2 emissions are part…

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New NBC/Marist Poll of Likely Tennessee Voters Shows Bredesen and Blackburn Neck-and-Neck While Lee Leads Dean by Double-Digits

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Bredesen, Blackburn, Lee, Dean

A new survey of Tennessee voters indicates that the race for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) is essentially a dead heat between Democrat Phil Bredesen and Republican Marsha Blackburn, with Bredesen ahead among likely voters by a 48-46% margin with 5% undecided. Republican Bill Lee has a large lead over Democrat Karl Dean in the race for Governor, 53-40%, with 7% undecided. The NBC/Marist poll of Tennessee was conducted August 25-28 of 940 adults (which has a margin of error of plus-minus 4.0 percentage points), 730 registered voters (plus-minus 4.5 percentage points) and 538 likely voters (plus-minus 5.1 percentage points). Respondents were contacted both by landline and cell phone. While the poll data indicates that the respondents were sampled across regions in Tennessee based on population, there is no indication of the percentages of Republicans, Democrats and Independents who were surveyed. Among likely voters, Bredesen leads among Democrats (97 percent to 0 percent), African Americans (86 percent to 8 percent), women (55 percent to 40 percent) and independents (49 percent to 45 per-cent), while Blackburn leads among Republicans (86 percent to 9 percent), men (54 percent to 40 percent) and whites (53 percent to 42…

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