Day: December 30, 2018

Don’t Rely on Cell Phones When the Next Big Earthquake Pummels Tennessee

Chris Butler

Currently, there are no machines to tell us when the next big earthquake will rattle Tennessee. Also, in the immediate aftermath of such a quake we likely won’t have the capacity to make cell phone calls. All this, according to a Memphis geologist who studies earthquakes for a living. Emergency responders would have to rely on radio frequencies, including Ham radio, said Gary Patterson with the Memphis-based Center for Earthquake Research and Information. And it’s likely not because an earthquake will knock down a cell phone tower, he added. “Following any disaster, cell phones go down because they are overused, but we can still send texts,” Patterson told The Tennessee Star. Members of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency and other law enforcement officials already coordinate with one another concerning how they’ll handle the immediate aftermath of a large earthquake, Patterson said. “In the worst-case scenario, there is the use of ham radio, which works no matter what the conditions on the ground are,” Patterson said. Members of CERI are working on new technology that will alert Tennesseans about a pending earthquake so they can shut down critical facilities in time, Patterson said. “This is already in process on the West…

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Commentary: Question the Ruling Class and Embrace Common Sense Again

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by Ned Ryun   At what point do the American people wake up and realize that many of their elected officials, both Democratic and Republican, aren’t actually serving their interests? It’s staggering to watch the debate over our immigration system and the building of a southern U.S. border wall play out. But it also highlights how deeply immoral many of our leaders are and the alternate reality of Washington, D.C. In the real world of common sense, any sovereign nation would, and should, assert its right to secure its borders. It would assert that it had the right to understand who wants into the country and to ask why those people are coming. It would then make a judgment as to whether it was in the nation’s best interests, economically or otherwise, to accept any of those seeking entrance, or whether it was, in fact, detrimental. Would the new immigrants make the country better? Would they strengthen the social fabric of the country or help to tear it apart? Ultimately, every decision regarding immigration would be made to further the interests of the actual and current citizens of that nation—the ones who fund every last penny of the government and…

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Nancy Pelosi Announces Plans for a House ‘Climate Crisis’ Committee After Flying Thousands of Miles to a Hawaiian Resort

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by Michael Bastasch   House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced Friday that Democrats would create a Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in 2019, which will be headed by Florida Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor. However, Pelosi’s announcement isn’t placating the progressive wing of her party, including New York Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, supporting “Green New Deal” legislation. “This committee, if it turns out that the rumors about it are true, sound about as useful as a screen door on a submarine,” Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent, told The Hill. “As it’s portrayed it’s going to be completely incapable of solving the greatest threat to human kind,” Trent said. Pelosi, who’s expected to be elected House speaker in 2019, said there’s “tremendous pressure” for Democrats to make fighting global warming a central part of their agenda in the new year. Pelosi made her announcement amid a government shutdown after she flew thousands of miles to a luxurious Hawaiian hotel where she was spotted Thursday, according to reports. The creation of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis is one way Pelosi plans on satisfying progressives without angering incoming committee chairs, like New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, who want to advance their…

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The Booming Job Market Is Leading Teachers to Quit at Record Levels

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by Tim Pearce   Public education employees such as teachers and janitors are quitting jobs in record numbers, an uncommon trend in a profession that often rewards longevity, The Wall Street Journal reported. Many industries in the past year have seen a historically high rate of workers quitting. A tight labor market and sluggish wage growth are making job transfers less risky and long-term unemployment less likely for most Americans. People working in the public education sector are still less likely to quit their jobs than the average worker across all industries. Roughly 0.8 percent of public educators quit in the first 10 months of 2018 versus a rate of 2.4 percent across the American workforce in 2018, WSJ reported Friday. The rate of people quitting public education positions has nearly doubled since 2009, however, when jobs in the steady field were prized in the unsteady labor market rocked by a recession. The current rate of quitting is also at its highest since the Department of Labor began tracking the stat in 2001. A December EdChoice survey indicated public educators may be growing more unsatisfied with their jobs and careers. “During the recession, education was a safe place to be,”…

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Commentary: The Legal Gymnastics Behind Obamacare

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by Gary Galles   On December 14, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Obamacare unconstitutional because its individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance “can no longer be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s tax power,” since the tax that enforced it is now gone. Progressive leaning critics quickly called it bad jurisprudence and assured people that Obamacare remained constitutional. However, Judge O’Connor’s ruling just saw through the hocus pocus by which Obamacare was first found constitutional. Remember how the penalties for not having insurance under the ACA plan arose? It was repeatedly and emphatically asserted to not be a tax, but a regulation (so that its costs would not be counted in ACA’s fiscal scoring). But Chief Justice Roberts’ 5-4 majority decision found the ACA constitutional only because it really was a tax, which Congress has the power to impose, when a regulation mandating that Americans purchase health insurance would have been unconstitutional. Beyond that convenient but mutually inconsistent weasel-wording, two months ago, Democrats showed no concern about violating the Constitution when it suited their policy agenda. President Trump issued an executive order stopping ACA subsidy payments to 6 million people. 18 states quickly sued to reverse the…

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New Mexico IT Professional Files a Class Action Lawsuit Against Public Sector Union After Allegedly Forcing Him to Pay Dues

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by Tim Pearce   A New Mexico state employee filed a class action lawsuit against a branch of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) over “forced” nonmember union dues, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW). IT technician David McCutcheon filed a lawsuit against CWA Local 7076 on Dec. 20. McCutcheon and the NRTW, which is representing McCutcheon, allege that the union violated federal law by restricting non-union members’ chance to opt out of paying “agency fees,” dues paid by non-members, according to NRTW. In its June 27 decision in the case Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court banned government employers from requiring workers to pay union agency fees as a condition of employment. The decision impacted roughly 5 million government workers across 22 states. The case could potentially cost unions millions of dollars’ worth of revenue from nonunion members opting out of paying mandatory dues and union members taking advantage of their recently-secured right and quitting the union altogether. Following the Supreme Court decision, CWA gave nonunion members that paid agency fees and benefit from union representation a “window period” to opt out of paying the union. McCutcheon’s suit alleges that by limiting nonunion members’…

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Transgender Inmate Transferred to Female Prison After Year-Long Court Battle

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by Grace Carr   A biologically male transgender inmate was moved to an all-female prison in Illinois after a judge determined the inmate could be housed according to his gender identity. Authorities transferred Deon “Strawberry” Hampton, 27, from a male prison in Dixon to Logan Correctional Center women’s prison, ABC News reported Thursday. It costs nearly $26,500 annually to house an inmate at the Center, according to estimates from fiscal year 2016. The transfer marks the first instance that a transgender prisoner is housed in an Illinois prison according to gender identity rather than biological sex, according to Hampton’s lawyer, Vanessa del Valle, ABC reported. There were 28 biologically male transgender prisoners in Illinois’ 24 all-male prisons as of 2016, according to federal data, ABC reported. Following a near year-long court battle between Hampton and the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), a federal judge determined that refusing to grant Hampton’s request to be transferred violated his equal protection rights, according to ABC. Hampton sued the IDOC in July after it refused to transfer him to an all-female prison. Hampton claims he felt like a “sex slave” during his time at the Dixon prison, The Chicago Tribune reported. Hampton is serving…

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Once a Stable and High-Paying Career, Workers at Nuclear Plants Now Fear for Their Jobs

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by Jason Hopkins   Nuclear plant engineers are highly trained professionals with high-paying salaries, but the beleaguered nuclear industry is putting their jobs at risk all across the country. The country’s nuclear fleet is suffering under a grim market. Competing against cheap natural gas and subsidy-backed renewables, many nuclear facilities — weighed down by archaic regulations — have been rendered unprofitable. Six nuclear plants have closed since 2013. The future does not look much brighter, with nine other plants expected to shut down by 2025. “The thought of it really stresses me out,” Christine DeSantis said to The Wall Street Journal in a report published Friday. “Who knows what’s going to happen to nuclear power in the next couple of years.” DeSantis is a mechanical engineer working at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station located in southern Pennsylvania. A nuclear mechanical engineer’s average salary is over $85,000, according to PayScale, with the top 90 percent of earners raking in over $130,000. The plant — which has been in operation since the 1970s — is slated to close in 2019, taking with it hundreds of well-paying jobs and $1 million in annual taxes. “The value of these jobs is that…

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Haslam Family Buys Columbus Soccer Club to Keep Them in Ohio

Andrew Shirley

Friday, Ohio soccer fans were relieved to hear that the Columbus Crew Soccer Club would remain in Ohio following the decision to transfer ownership to the Haslam and Edwards families. This decision comes after a year of uncertainty, fan outrage, and statewide protests. On October 17, 2017,  Precourt Sports Ventures, a group that has owned the Columbus Soccer Club since 2013, announced they were considering “remaining in Columbus at a new stadium or potentially relocating the Club to the city of Austin, Texas.” Major League Soccer (MLS) Commissioner Don Garber supported the decision, noting that “the Club’s stadium is no longer competitive with other venues across MLS.” This announcement left many Columbus Crew fans stunned and infuriated. Many felt Precourt was attempting to extort a free, or heavily subsidized, stadium from the city with the threat of relocation. The hashtag “#SaveTheCrew” quickly went viral on social media platforms. Multiple public protests were held throughout Ohio. The backlash from fans was so extensive that Precourt Sports Ventures CEO Anthony Precourt made a public apology via Twitter: I really do feel for you Crew fans. Its an uncertain time I recognize, and I take full responsibility for the situation I have put us in.…

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Ellison Names Outspoken Anti-Trump Immigration Lawyer As Second in Command

Anthony Gockowski

Attorney General-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN) announced Friday that he has named John Keller to serve as his chief deputy attorney general. Keller currently oversees the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, a vehemently anti-Trump non-profit that provides legal services to illegal aliens and refugees. According to a press release from Ellison’s transition team, Keller began working at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM) in 1998 as a staff attorney, and has served as its executive director since 2005. “In that time, he has transformed ILCM from a small, regional legal-services organization with five staff to Minnesota’s leading provider of free, high-quality, and comprehensive legal, policy, and education services with five offices statewide, 32 employees—a majority of whom are from immigrant, refugee, or mixed-family backgrounds—more than 350 trained pro bono attorneys, and a statewide and national reputation,” the press release explains. Keller and the ILCM have become outspoken critics of the Trump administration and its immigration polices, and have repeatedly taken actions to thwart Trump’s agenda in Minnesota. Last December, for instance, Keller helped secure $250,000 in taxpayer funds from Hennepin County to launch a legal defense fund for county residents facing deportation. The fund was criticized by Republican gubernatorial candidate…

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Court Panel Eliminates Tennessee Limit on Punitive Damages

Jason M. Reynolds

A Tennessee statute capping punitive damages is unconstitutional, a panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit has ruled. The Sixth Circuit panel ruled 2-1 on Dec. 21 that state case law shows an award of punitive damages is a “finding of fact” that is allowed by jurors, Courthouse News Service reported. The case involved a dispute between Tamarin Lindenberg, individually and as guardian for her minor children, and Jackson National Life Insurance Co., which had a $350,000 life insurance policy on Lindenberg’s ex-husband. The panel’s ruling is available here. The panel cited the Tennessee Constitution of 1796 and its relation to the constitution and common laws of North Carolina when Tennessee adopted the document. The panel found that a right to jury trials and punitive damages existed at the time. The panel’s ruling states: Defendant Jackson National Life Insurance Company (“Defendant”) appeals from the district court’s judgment enforcing a jury trial verdict of $350,000 in actual damages, $87,500 in bad faith damages, and $3,000,000 in punitive damages in favor of Plaintiff Tamarin Lindenberg (“Plaintiff”), individually and in her capacity as natural guardian of her minor children, ZTL and SML. Plaintiff cross-appeals, challenging a statutory cap that the district…

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