Day: October 22, 2018

FOX News’ Brian Kilmeade Tells What Makes Tennessee Great During Nashville Stop

Chris Butler

NASHVILLE, Tennessee— The state of Texas, at least Texas we know it today, likely wouldn’t exist were it not for the state of Tennessee and some of the people it produced. The two states are inextricably linked to one another thanks to Tennessee resident Sam Houston, among others, FOX News host Brian Kilmeade told The Tennessee Star in an exclusive interview Sunday. History matters, and Tennessee has had a huge impact. “I don’t know what’s in the water over here, but America doesn’t look the same without Tennessee,” Kilmeade said, referring not just to Houston but also to former U.S. President Andrew Jackson. Kilmeade was at Nashville’s City Winery Sunday for two reasons. The first was to promote the paperback edition of his most recent book, Andrew Jackson & The Miracle of New Orleans, scheduled for release Tuesday. He also spoke to a crowd as part of his America: Great From The Start speaking tour. “I think Tennessee offers everything, and I think one of the most unique, underappreciated things from people on the outside is the great history that is on every block and every corner, not only in structures, but in the people,” Kilmeade said. Kilmeade wrote a…

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Dr. Carol Swain Commentary: The War Against Conservative Supreme Court Justices

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by Dr. Carol M. Swain   Supreme Court justices need secret service protection now more than ever. The Left would like to remove Justices Kavanaugh and Thomas.  Their goal is to gain control of the Court using any means necessary. On October 6, the day of the Senate vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, Charlie Savage, writing for The New York Times, discussed liberal strategies for gaining control of the Court. Acknowledging that the Supreme Court would be controlled by a conservative majority for the foreseeable future, Savage reported, “Liberals have already started to attack the legitimacy of the majority bloc and discussed ways to eventually undo its power without waiting for one of its members to retire or die.” One idea is to regain control of the of the government in 2020 and have a liberal president increase the number of Supreme Court justices to create a liberal majority.  Another scheme is to find a means to “impeach, remove and replace Justice Kavanaugh,” as well as Justice Thomas.    Currently, there is a petition with over 47,000 signatures to impeach Thomas.  In the past, opportunities to fill Supreme Court seats depended on the death…

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Trump Is Cutting Regulations Between the West And its Water Supply

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by Tim Pearce   President Donald Trump signed a memorandum Friday ordering Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to cut regulations slowing water supply and hydroelectric projects. The Trump administration’s memo is aimed at speeding up environmental reviews and simplifying the approval process for building permits in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. “This will move things along at a record clip. And you’ll have a lot of water. I hope you’ll enjoy the water you’ll have,” Trump told lawmakers and others assembled at the signing ceremony in Arizona, Politico reports. The timing of Trump’s order might partly be aimed at helping Republicans in California and Washington compete in close races leading up to Nov. 6 midterms. Trump criticized California’s state water policies earlier in 2018 in a broader attack on California environmental laws. Trump and Zinke blamed California environmental policies for exacerbating wildfires that scorched the state at record levels during the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons. “For many years, westerners have expressed their need for certainty and access to water and affordable, renewable hydropower,” Utah GOP Rep. Rob Bishop, chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, said in a statement. “This action will increase the availability of innovative technology, improve access to…

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Tax Increment Financing for Blighted Areas in Nashville on Temporary Hold

Chris Butler

Metro Nashville officials have imposed a moratorium on its Tax Increment Financing practices, which occur when government officials award special tax incentives to real estate developers to spruce up supposedly blighted parts of town. This practice goes on nationwide, as The Tennessee Star reported. Critics say TIF continues to benefit areas that no longer suffer from blight — with Nashville’s Gulch area as one example. For six months, and while the moratorium is in effect, a seven-member panel will study how Metro officials can use and implement TIF. Specifically, they will evaluate how to use TIF “in a more transparent, equitable, effective and understandable manner,” said Metro Council Member Bob Mendes, in an email to The Star. Two members of Nashville’s Metro Housing and Development Agency will appoint two of the panel’s seven members. Mayor David Briley will appoint two more. Members of the Metro Council, meanwhile, will appoint the remaining three, Mendes said. Members of the MDHA oversee TIF and select who gets it. “My intention was to have a mix of perspectives,” Mendes said. “So, for example, I would expect that the MDHA appointees would be involved in Tax Increment Financing decisions. The goal is to achieve balance…

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Expanding Medicaid Perilous for Tennessee, Think Tank Warns

Chris Butler

In a new op-ed, the Beacon Center of Tennessee, a Nashville-based free-market think tank, warned all Tennessee officials to resist temptations to expand Medicaid. Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, for instance, is one of many politicians who want to make it happen. Beacon Executive Vice President Stephanie Whitt, writing for KnoxNews.com, said there are several important matters to consider, not the least of which is the notion Tennessee gets free money. “This is not free money,” Whitt said. “Expansion would be paid for with new federal taxpayer dollars, borrowed from our children and grandchildren, that are not guaranteed in the future. This could potentially put our state at risk to either shell out additional state taxpayer dollars to cover the expanded population or go through the painful process of kicking hundreds of thousands of people off the program.” Medicaid is expensive, Whitt said. TennCare costs Tennesseans $12 billion, eating up nearly a third of the state’s $37.5 billion total budget, she said. “To put that in perspective, Tennessee is spending approximately $32.8 million per day on TennCare,” Whitt said. “It is simply unrealistic to think we can expand our TennCare population by a minimum of 250,000…

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Tickets Selling ‘Very, Very Quickly’ for $1.6 Billion Mega Millions

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The Mega Millions lottery may see a streak of jackpot rollovers end as it heads toward a record $1.6 billion drawing Tuesday. As more tickets sell, chances grow that at least one buyer will pick all six winning numbers. That would stop the streak of 25 rollovers, the most recent one Friday night. Based on sales projections, 75 percent of the 302 million possible combinations will be chosen for Tuesday’s drawing, up from 59.1 percent in Friday’s, said Carole Gentry, spokeswoman for Maryland Lottery and Gaming. “It’s possible that nobody wins again. But it’s hard to fathom,” Gentry said. No winner Friday About 280 million tickets sold in Friday’s drawing, none matching the winning mix of 7, 15, 23, 53, 65 and 70 to claim an estimated prize of $1 billion. Fifteen tickets matched five numbers for second-tier prizes of at least $1 million. The $1.6 billion estimated jackpot would be the largest prize in U.S. history. The second-largest jackpot was a $1.586 billion Powerball drawing on Jan. 13, 2016. Russ Lopez, a spokesman for the California Lottery, said tickets were going “very, very quickly” Saturday. First-time players Tonya Jimenez, assistant manager at Beavers Market in Fort Collins, Colorado, said…

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Alaska Governor Drops Re-Election Bid, Backs Democrat

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Alaska Governor Bill Walker, a political independent, halted his re-election campaign Friday and endorsed his Democratic challenger, ending a three-way race in which the Republican candidate had appeared to possess an insurmountable lead. With 18 days remaining before the Nov. 6 election, Walker, 67, said he concluded that he could not win a second term in a race against former U.S. Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat, and former state legislator Mike Dunleavy, a Republican. Walker’s withdrawal came three days after his former running mate, Byron Mallott, abruptly resigned as lieutenant governor over admitted but unspecified “inappropriate comments” in a scandal that threw the governor’s campaign into disarray. Republican well ahead in polls But public opinion surveys were already showing Dunleavy well ahead of the two other men and indicated Begich had greater support than the incumbent governor. Consulting for days on whether Walker or Begich had a better shot at running a competitive race against Dunleavy, the “determination was made that, at this point, Begich has the better odds,” the governor said in a statement posted on his campaign’s website. Walker also said Begich’s positions on various key issues “more closely align with my priorities for Alaska,” including their support…

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‘The Man in the High Castle’ and the History That Never Was… Yet

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by Luis Pablo De La Horra   The United States, 1962. It’s been 15 years since the Nazis dropped an atomic bomb on Washington D.C., forcing the US government to surrender to the Axis powers. The United States is now divided into two vast provinces, each of which is controlled by the two world-ruling empires: the Greater Nazi Reich and the Japanese Empire. This is the starting point of The Man in the High Castle, a TV series that just released its new season on Amazon Prime. Based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle places the viewer in a dystopian world where totalitarianism has replaced freedom and democracy all over the world. The story revolves around Juliana Crain, an American living in the Japanese Pacific States. Juliana gets involved with the Resistance (an underground movement that fights the Japanese and the Nazis alike) after the secret police kill Trudy, her only sister. Before dying, Trudy gives Juliana a mysterious film that contains a newsreel of the Allies winning the war, something that never happened in Juliana’s reality. After that, Juliana is dragged into a war that she didn’t want to fight; a war that leads her…

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The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality)

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by Jon Henschen   Throughout grade school and high school, I was fortunate to participate in quality music programs. Our high school had a top Illinois state jazz band; I also participated in symphonic band, which gave me a greater appreciation for classical music. It wasn’t enough to just read music. You would need to sight read, meaning you are given a difficult composition to play cold, without any prior practice. Sight reading would quickly reveal how fine-tuned playing “chops” really were. In college, I continued in a jazz band and also took a music theory class. The experience gave me the ability to visualize music (If you play by ear only, you will never have that same depth of understanding music construct.) Both jazz and classical art forms require not only music literacy, but for the musician to be at the top of their game in technical proficiency, tonal quality, and creativity in the case of the jazz idiom. Jazz masters like John Coltrane would practice six to nine hours a day, often cutting his practice only because his inner lower lip would be bleeding from the friction caused by his mouthpiece against his gums and teeth. His ability to compose…

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March for Life Theme in 2019 is ‘Pro-Life is Pro-Science’

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by Troy Worden   The organization which holds “the largest pro-life event in the world” has formally announced the theme for its next march in 2019: “Unique from day one: Pro-life is pro-science.” This Thursday the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, a pro-life organization which aims to “end abortion by uniting, educating, and mobilizing pro-life people in the public square,” unveiled a new pro-science theme for its 46th annual March for Life. Join us at the #MarchforLife on January 18th 2019! The 2019 theme is: #UniqueFromDayOne: pro-life is pro-science. #whywemarch Full video: https://t.co/jdqw3P6Wnv pic.twitter.com/mq214YLDyc — March for Life (@March_for_Life) October 18, 2018 “Science is behind the pro-life movement,” Jeanne Mancini, president of the organization, said at the opening of the event, which was held at the Rayburn House Building on Capitol Hill. One hundred years ago, our understanding of embryonic development and fetal development was very different that what it is now. We owe so many advances to medicine and science and technology, and they all continue to reaffirm the scientific fact and the truth that life begins at fertilization/conception. “‘No good scientist worth their salt says that life doesn’t begin at conception,’ Mancini added, quoting what an…

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Taxpayers Spend $1.2 Million on Nashville Connector

Chris Butler

Metro Nashville officials want fewer automobiles clogging up the roads every morning and every evening, and they especially want fewer people driving to work solo. They will spend at least $1.2 million in taxpayer money to try to make that happen. Members of the Metro Planning Department this month launched what they call the Nashville Connector. They say the program will inform city residents about other transportation options — including carpooling, among other things. “Our initial focus is large employers in downtown Nashville,” said Nashville Connector spokesman Sean Braisted in an email to The Tennessee Star. Braisted did not say how many, if any, employers have already contacted Nashville Connector. He did say the project is in its launch phase and will have a commuter challenge Oct. 22-28. According to a press release, the challenge encourages people who work downtown to try at least one new type of commute option at least once that week. A $1.2 million Tennessee Department of Transportation grant funds the program, with the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority providing an additional $293,560, according to the resolution calling for this Transportation Demand Management program. One alternative means of getting to work, according to a News Channel 5…

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