Day: December 8, 2018

Gannett Offers Buyouts to Staff, Including Tennessean, Other Tennessee Papers

Jason M. Reynolds

Gannett is examining the possibility of making cuts across its company — and that includes possible layoffs at The Tennessean and several other papers around Tennessee. The Nashville Scene reported on the pending cuts. Maribel Wadsworth, president of USA TODAY Network and publisher of USA TODAY, told employees during a company-wide conference call Tuesday that digital revenue is not replacing decreasing print revenues, and some budget tightening will be coming in the new year. “Going forward, we will be a smaller company,” she said, noting that monetization has not been strong on mobile devices and that Gannett properties need to “deepen engagement” with mobile readers. The Memphis Flyer said it is hard to determine whether The Commercial Appeal in Memphis can stand more reductions in force. In November, a company-wide buyout offer targeted employees over 55 with more than 15-years experience. The deadline to take Gannett’s offer of 30-35-weeks pay, and a possible bonus of up to $5,520 is Dec. 10, the Flyer said. Wadsworth told employees that the company cannot continue many of the products it produces, putting focus on non-daily print publications, according to the Scene. In Middle Tennessee, Gannett publishes weekly or twice-weekly content in Dickson, Robertson,…

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President Trump: John Kelly Will Be Leaving at the End of the Year

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Saturday, President Trump told reporters Chief of Staff John Kelly and he would be parting ways at the end of the year. President Trump added the White House would be making an announcement “in the next day or two” with who would replace the retired Marine general – but added that replacement may be temporary. The staff announcement comes on the heels of other high-profile personnel changes as the president faces a new Democrat majority in the House of Representatives in January, while also gearing up for what political experts promise will be an all-out politial war for the Senate and the Presidency in 2020. News broke last week that Army General Mark Milley will replace Marine General Joseph Dunford as President Trump’s top military advisor. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert is set to replace outgoing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, while former Bush 41 Attorney General William Barr will be nominated to serve as the nation’s ‘top cop’ once again. President Trump’s remarks were made on the White House lawn at an informal press gaggle as he was leaving to attend the annual Army-Navy football game being held in Philadelphia. A short time later Trump – an avid sports…

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Inspector General Report Says Metro Nashville Should Repay FEMA $413K From 2010 Flood Grant Funds

Jason M. Reynolds

A report from the Office of Inspector General says Nashville-Davidson County owes the Federal Emergency Management Agency $413,074 in grant money from the May 1, 2010 flood, NewsChannel 5 said. The Inspector General report is available here. The city estimated that it cost the city and its residents $1.5 billion. Nashville was declared a federal state of emergency three days after the rivers began rising, WVLT said. According to the Inspector General’s report, “We determined the County was not fully aware of Federal grant administration requirements and FEMA Public Assistance Program guidelines. Specifically, for the projects we reviewed in the second phase of our two-phase audit, the County mostly accounted for FEMA funds project by project, as required.” The report continued, “However, the County did not always follow regulations and guidelines when spending the funds. As a result, we identified $413,074 in project costs that FEMA should disallow. These costs consist of $402,552 in contract charges not supported by adequate documentation and $10,522 in duplicate costs. Additionally, FEMA has not finished reviewing insurance proceeds and allocating them to the County’s projects although doing so could reduce FEMA’s project costs under this grant.” “We reviewed $365,684 of contract costs the County…

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Controversial Bedford County Rodeo Supposedly Dissolved Last Year

Chris Butler

The Mexican rodeo in Bedford County where several illegal activities are alleged to take place supposedly dissolved as a business more than a year ago, according to the Tennessee Secretary of State’s website. Yet that establishment, Rancho La Herradura in Bell Buckle, continues to operate, according to its Facebook page, and has another event planned for Dec. 22. As reported, a few county commissioners suspect its management allows drug deals, prostitution, gambling, and human trafficking, among other things. Also, as reported, Edgar Torres-Rangel, an alleged illegal immigrant, was drinking there before he allegedly drove drunk and killed Bedford County resident Keri King in an Oct. 21 automobile wreck. According to the Tennessee Secretary of State’s website, Rancho La Herradura dissolved in August of last year. Secretary of State spokesman Keith Boring said Wednesday by phone that if his department’s website list a certain business as dissolved then that means the business owner or owners filed paperwork to make that happen. In a follow-up Thursday, he said Secretary of State officials don’t determine whether such entities violate state law based on registration status with that office. “Our function is more ministerial in nature – business entities file formation documents and subsequent…

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Commentary: Paul Ryan’s Legacy is the Destruction Of American Sovereignty

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According to our friend Rep. Jim Jordan (OH-4), Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and his leadership team, including Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Whip Steve Scalise, refused to lobby for the Trump-supported Goodlatte immigration bill, which would have built a border wall, enacted E-Verify procedures, and offered DREAMERS a path to citizenship. It failed to pass the House after nearly 20 Ryan loyalists voted against it. Now, many of the 20 Republicans who voted “NO” on Goodlatte are gone, defeated or retired in the 2018 midterm election, and Rep. Goodlatte has been clear on why his bill did not pass, when Republicans had the majority in the House. Our friend Neil Munro reports Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the retiring Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, says the GOP leadership let the House immigration reform die in June by allowing a critical bloc of GOP legislators to split their votes between two rival reform bills. “The strategy of having two options really let people have an off-ramp — they could vote for the more conservative bill and against the other, or vote for the second bill and not the first,” Goodlatte said, adding according to Munro’s reporting: That…

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Boston’s Broadcast King, Howie Carr Tells The Tennessee Star Report Why Even the NY Times Thinks Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Test Proves She’s a Fauxcahontas Phony

Julie Carr

On Friday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Leahy chatted with Howie Carr, legendary king of Boston broadcast radio and author of Kennedy Babylon Volume II, to speak on Elizabeth Warren’s past, DNA tests, and subsequential ‘ethnic fraud’ by simply “checking the box”. Leahy: Welcome Howie. Carr: Hey thank you Mike, thanks for having me on. Leahy: It’s always great to have you on.  So, Howie, first, congratulations, twenty-five years on the air in Boston, fantastic! Carr: I know I’ve dodged a lot of bullets over the years. Leahy: Literally. Carr: And I’m still dodging, yeah. Leahy: Literally dodged a bullet for those of you that listened to us last time Howie was on. The Boston Mafia Hood, Whitey Bulger put a contract out on Howie years ago.  And now let’s say Whitey Bulger was murdered in prison… Carr: Thats right. He sleeps with the fishes. Leahy:  He sleeps with the fishes. So Howie and I first became really good friends when we started identifying the problems associated with Senator Elizabeth Warren, also known and “Pocahontas” and other various…

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Commentary: Don’t Listen to Conservative Quitters

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by Brandon J. Weichert   Ann Coulter thinks Donald J. Trump will be the last Republican president ever. She might be right. In fact, in my darkest moments, I have feared as much. After all, there hasn’t been a Republican like Trump in more than a generation—and there aren’t any like him on the horizon. Who will replace Trump when his second term ends? Will it be Mike Pence? I like the vice-president. I’ve even prayed with him. But he simply isn’t a replacement—he struggles to connect with audiences outside of the Evangelical community and he sounds too much like George W. Bush. Marco Rubio? Nice guy and a good man—but he doesn’t pass the smell test. Nikki Haley? Don’t make me cringe. Ted Cruz? He’s not a closer. Go down the list of potential successors and try not to get too depressed. Of course, there’s a chance a person is just waiting in the wings, as Trump was, to swoop in and fundamentally transform the 2024 Republican primaries. Although judging from the types of people running the show in the GOP, and given that all of the top-tier “talent” in the party (whether on the campaign side or on…

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DOI Discovers Largest US Oil and Gas Reserve Ever Found in New Mexico

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by Chris White   New Mexico and West Texas are sitting on a bonanza of potentially recoverable oil and gas reserves in the Delaware Basin that lies between the two Western states, the Department of the Interior announced Thursday. Two underground layers in the Delaware known as the Wolfcamp Shale and Bone Spring Formation contain 46.3 billion barrels of unrecovered oil and 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the DOI announced. That’s the largest oil and gas reserve the U.S. Geological Survey has ever discovered. “Even for someone who understands the resources and potential of the Permian Basin, I can’t help but be surprised by the sheer enormity of what the USGS has reported,” New Mexico Oil and Gas Association Executive Director Ryan Flynn told reporters. He added: “The Permian resources shared by New Mexico and Texas make this area one of the most important places in the world in terms of oil production.” Total reserves in the Delaware Basin could be far larger than reported. The USGS only looked at the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring formations, or just two of the many layers of hydrocarbon-filled shale rock zones in the Permian Basin. Hydraulic fracturing is a hot-button issue…

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Illegal Border Crossings are Down Because Migrants are Applying for Asylum Instead

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by Jason Hopkins   While the number of apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have gone down, applications for asylum are reaching all-time highs. Around 304,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the southwest border during the 2017 fiscal year, a dramatic plunge from the 1.6 million apprehensions recorded in 2000. At the same time, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recored 78,564 requests for asylum in 2017, a major increase from the 13,880 requests made in 2012. These numbers have only increased. During this fiscal year, the USCIS recorded a record-setting 99,035 asylum requests — 62,609 of which included Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans. “We’ve never seen this many people coming to the border to seek asylum,” Faye Hipsman, a former analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, told The Wall Street Journal. The rise in asylum applications come at a time when the White House is working to reform the process. “My administration is finalizing a plan to end the rampant abuse of our asylum system to halt the dangerous influx and to establish control over America’s sovereign borders,” President Donald Trump announced in early November, around the same time a caravan of Central Americans was heading toward the U.S. border.…

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Boeing Cancels Controversial Satellite Order Funded by China

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by Hanna Bogorowski   Boeing decided to cancel an order for a satellite that uses sensitive technology used by the U.S. military and was reportedly being funded by a state-owned Chinese financial firm. A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed Tuesday the troubling web of financial transactions that skirted around U.S. export laws, which would ban Boeing from selling satellites to China, and resulted in the Chinese government funneling nearly $200 million to the project and obtaining a large stake of the company responsible for the satellite. Boeing told WSJ Thursday it cancelled the project, which was near completion at a Boeing facility in Los Angeles, citing default for nonpayment. A source familiar with the project said the cancellation was a business decision, and the company may attempt to resell the satellite. Emil Youssefzadeh and Umar Javed, two Americans who founded the startup Global IP in 2008 with the goal of improving internet accessibility in Africa, were Boeing’s original customers of the satellite. A few foreign financial transactions made in an attempt to sidestep U.S. export laws almost potentially resulted in the Chinese government repurposing the satellite’s sensitive technology for its own use. Youssefzadeh and Javed were contacted in 2015 by executives at China…

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Harlan Hill Commentary: The American Worker is Back In Charge

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by Harlan Hill   The Trump economic boom is still in full swing, with both hiring and wages continuing to grow robustly, according to the latest jobs report. The U.S. economy added 155,000 jobs in November, keeping unemployment at a historic low of 3.7 percent — a figure not seen since the 1960s. These 155,000 new jobs follow revised an October total of 237,000. The numbers are even more impressive because they come from such a solid starting point — we’re well past the point of merely replacing jobs lost during the recession. These numbers reflect solid expansion within the American economy, as new and growing enterprises scramble to fill job openings with American workers. This is something historic — the return to full employment in America. Even the manufacturing sector, which conventional wisdom long presumed to be in permanent decline due to globalization, added 27,000 jobs last month, pushing the total number of new manufacturing jobs created since the President took office above 400,000. Meanwhile, only one sector had a noticeable drop in employment: government workers. Full employment isn’t just about people getting off the breadline by taking any job they can get; it means people are finding jobs they actually…

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Irish Lecturer Slaughtered in France for ‘Insulting Muhammad’

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by Joshua Gill   A Pakistani national stabbed an Irish lecturer to death Wednesday in Paris, telling responding police he attacked because the lecturer “insulted the Prophet Muhammad.” The attacker, identified by authorities only as 37-year-old Ali R., was seen talking with lecturer John Dowling, 66, outside Pôle Universitaire Léonard de Vinci where Dowling taught English before he brandished a steak knife and stabbed the lecturer in the throat and chest, the Daily Mail reported. Police arrested Ali, a former student of the university, on the scene, where he confessed to stabbing Dowling 13 times because he believed that the lecturer spoke ill of Muhammad. Ali also confessed to harboring a grudge against Dowling ever since he failed his exams and was kicked out of the university in September 2017. “He came to France two years ago to join the management school, but did not pass his first year,” said prosecutor Catherine Denis, according to the Daily Mail. “Since then he had been returning to the college, and had become unwanted to the point that he was not allowed in any more.” Ali claimed that Dowling disrespected Muhammad by showing a drawing of Muhammad to his English class, though students interviewed by authorities said…

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FAKE NEWS: Google and Facebook’s Official Fact Checker ‘Snopes’ Botches Republican-Bashing Fact Check

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by Peter Hasson   Snopes, a left-leaning fact-checking website given preferential treatment by Facebook and Google, botched its fact-check of a viral meme that was mocked within political circles for spreading false information. The meme showed a picture of President Donald Trump with Republican lawmakers and members of his administration following the House’s vote to repeal Obamacare in 2017. Thirty-three people in the photo Snopes used had a red X over their face, though it cropped out a 34th person included in others. The caption accurately claimed the photo was taken at the White House following the House’s Obamacare vote, then falsely claimed that “Everyone with an X has since been voted out of Congress.” https://twitter.com/JoePerticone/status/1063927192822915072 DeSantis ran for gov. Tom Price went into the Cabinet. Steve Pearce didnt run for the House This is quite literally insane fake news. — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 18, 2018 Amazing. This photo illustration — posted by @nicholaskitchel — is actually more incorrect than correct. — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 18, 2018 Or to be clear, it’s just flat out inaccurate. https://t.co/NH7xiCbbHq — Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) November 17, 2018 Politico reporter Jake Sherman observed that the meme “is actually more incorrect than correct.”…

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