Day: April 27, 2019

Tennessee May Reportedly Give FedEx More than $21 Million in Corporate Welfare

Chris Butler

Members of the Tennessee House reportedly voted this week to give FedEx $21.3 million in corporate welfare over the next seven years for a new hub expansion in Memphis, according to various news outlets. Specifically, this type of corporate welfare is in the form of tax breaks. House members voted to make this happen on a 96-2 vote. State senators still must approve a bill of their own, according to the Memphis-based TV station WREG. “The bill initially dealt with lease or rental price reporting to the commissioner of revenue. But the legislation by Republican House Speaker Glen Casada was overhauled to include $16.1 million in state and $5.2 million in local sales and use tax exemption directed at building materials for the FedEx project,” WREG reported. “Republican Rep. Mark White of Memphis says the project is expected to be completed by the end of 2026.” According to The Memphis Commercial Appeal, if the legislation is enacted into law then Tennessee would lose $16 million in tax revenue. The local government would lose $5.1 million. “FedEx paid more than $110 million in state taxes in 2018 and will still pay $30 in sales tax for its hub modernization improvements,” The…

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Letter to the Editor: An Open Letter to Senator Gardenhire

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  Dear Senator Gardenhire, My name is Alexander Ioannidis and I am a rising senior studying Economics at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. I am a lifelong resident of Chattanooga and currently reside in East Brainerd. I have been following the debate over the proposed school-choice legislation very closely, and my emotions have been continuously fluctuating. There are times when it looks like this bill is bound to pass, and there are times when it looks certain to fail. I know that people from both sides of the aisle are trying to lobby for your vote, I know that you had several concerns about the bill, and I would be a fool to think that you were not conflicted about it. With this being said, I cannot tell you how grateful I was when I saw that you voted along with your fellow Hamilton County colleague Senator Watson to send it out of the finance committee and advance it to the Senate floor. I was even more grateful today when I saw that after the urging of President Trump, the Senate coalesced around it and passed the bill. While I could not be more thrilled that it passed, I hope and…

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Commentary: Inclusive Nationalism Is Not White Nationalism

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by Edward Ring   In response to the latest hysteria from the Left—the suppression of anything that in their blinkered judgment even remotely smacks of “white nationalism”—it is appropriate to again define and defend the benign, colorblind, patriotic, inspiring, and inclusive nationalism that is the foundation of American greatness. While the phrase “inclusive nationalism” might be criticized as an oxymoron, that is an overstatement of the tension between the two terms. Nationalism by definition is exclusive, insofar as you are either a citizen of a nation, or you are not. But by qualifying American nationalism as inclusive, and carefully explaining what “inclusive” means, you can rule out the malign forms of nationalism that emphasize race and ethnicity over more transcendent sources of unity. It would be inaccurate to consider inclusive nationalism as just another code word for globalism. If by “inclusive” one means that a person can become an American regardless of their ancestry, this doesn’t mean other criteria can’t be applied. Leftists, and globalists (often one and the same) use discussions of race and accusations of racism to shut down the long overdue conversation over what it means to be an American. Prefacing “nationalism” with the word “inclusive” reopens…

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New Jersey Parents to Rally Against LGBT Education Law

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by Rachel del Guidice   A rally this weekend will give New Jersey parents an opportunity to oppose a new state law requiring public schools to teach children about the “political, economic, and social contributions” of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. The new law also requires schools to stress such contributions made by disabled persons, but it’s the LGBT education component that prompted organizers to plan the rally. “When you teach about George Washington, you don’t teach that George Washington had sex with his wife and what he did; we teach what George Washington did as a president,” Victoria Jakelsky, a political consultant and parental rights activist in New Jersey, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “But they are twisting it around to say that anyone who is LGBT, they’re going to explain what they did, who their relationships were [with], and incorporate it as gay and lesbian and bisexual people are the history-makers,” Jakelsky, a paralegal by training, said. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed the legislation into law Jan. 31, and it is set to go into effect for the 2020-2021 school year. Jakelsky is among those organizing the rally Saturday from 11…

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The Green New Deal Would Cause ‘Significant Environmental Damage,’ Report Finds

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by Michael Bastasch   The Green New Deal would cost trillions of dollars a year and cause “significant environmental damage,” according to a new report. The report, by American Enterprise Institute scholar Benjamin Zycher, claims the Green New Deal championed by many 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would come with its own set of environmental issues from rapidly expanding renewable energy. “There is the heavy-metal pollution created by the production process for wind turbines,” Zycher wrote in his report, which was released Wednesday. “There are the noise and flicker effects of wind turbines. There are the large problems of solar panel waste and toxic metals. There is the wildlife destruction caused by the production of renewable power,” Zycher wrote. Zycher’s conservative estimate of the Green New Deal’s total cost is about $9 trillion a year. The conservative American Action Forum reported in February the Green New Deal could cost $93 trillion over ten years. However, there are a lot of uncertainties when estimating the Green New Deal’s costs, and the $93 trillion figure has come under scrutiny in recent weeks. For starters, the Green New Deal more a list of broad goals than a detailed policy plan. Introduced by New York…

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Commentary: The Democrats’ Mean Girls Problem

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by George Rasley   The official entry into the Democratic Party’s presidential sweepstakes of former Vice President Joe Biden means the two leading presidential candidates of the party of “woke” are two old white males, and the number three candidate is, wait for it, a young white male. So, what happened to the party of breaking the glass ceiling and empowering women? This year’s Democratic presidential primary field is full of female candidates, but most of them barely register as a blip in the polls and, except for California’s Far-Left Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, none of them are raising the kind of money necessary to be competitive with Biden, Sanders, O’Rourke and Buttigieg. Adherents of gender politics will no doubt claim that the main reason none of the female candidates is breaking out is because they have an embarrassment of riches – there are too many good female candidates in the Democratic primary field, and they are splitting up the feminist vote. They can go with that if they want to, but we have a more reality-based analysis: It turns out that claiming to be inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt, but sounding and voting like Margaret Sanger, is not a formula…

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Gavin Newsom Under Pressure to End Drilling as California’s Reliance on Saudi Oil Soars

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by Michael Bastasch   Environmentalists are optimistic Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom will further restrict, or even end, oil and gas drilling, despite his state’s increasing reliance on oil shipped from abroad. So-called “keep it in the ground” activists want to see Newsom ban new oil and gas leases, but anti-fossil fuel groups would also favor larger buffer zones between oil and gas production and buildings, like homes, schools and hospitals. Sierra Club and other activists have met informally with Newsom’s administration to discuss curbing oil production, The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The governor made no promises, but “expectations remain high,” The Times reported. “I’m taking a very pragmatic look at it, in scoping this,” Newsom told The Times in a recent interview. “It’s also an inclusive scoping because it includes people in the industry, that have jobs; communities that are impacted from an environmental justice prism but also from an economic justice prism.” California has 72,000 oil wells and consumes more gasoline than any other state. The oil industry also supports 368,000 jobs in the state, according to the Western States Petroleum Association. Newsom, however, does support moving California to 100 percent renewable energy, which means oil and…

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Young Americans Are Still Flocking to College Despite a Ton of Open Jobs

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by Tim Pearce   The rate of high school graduates enrolling in higher education increased from 2017 to 2018 despite record levels of open jobs in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported. Roughly 69 percent of all high school graduates enrolled in some form of higher education by October 2018, according to Labor Department data TheWSJ analyzed. The rate is about a 2-percent increase over 2017 levels. College enrollment has increased steadily over recent decades as the U.S. economy transitions away from blue-collar work toward more technical and knowledge-based industries. College enrollment also picked up when the Great Recession hit in 2007 and the labor market was flooded with college-educated workers. “We did see employers increase requirements for having a college degree when we were in the depths of the recession and there were lots of unemployed college-educated workers,” Northeastern University professor Alicia Modestino told TheWSJ. “Since then, they have decreased those requirements as the labor market has recovered.” Job openings in the U.S. hit a record high of 7.3 million in February. The U.S. labor market has continued to grow for more than 100 straight months and the unemployment rate is holding steady at 3.8 percent, which economists…

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Kansas Supreme Court Rules Bill of Rights Protects Access to Abortion for Women

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by Grace Carr   The Kansas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state constitution affords women “fundamental” access to abortion. “[T]he Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights affords protection of the right of personal autonomy, which includes the ability to control one’s own body, to assert bodily integrity, and to exercise self-determination,” reads the court’s decision. “This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life — decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.” The decision prevents the blocking of the most commonly used method for second-trimester abortions. “Although not absolute, this right is fundamental,” the ruling said. “Accordingly, the State is prohibited from restricting this right unless it is doing so to further a compelling government interest and in a way that is narrowly tailored to that interest.” A 2015 challenge to a ban on “dilation and evacuation” abortions spurred the Kansas Supreme Court to its Friday decision. Dilation and evacuation is a procedure used for second-trimester abortions when women are around 13-24 weeks pregnant. The method involves pulling apart the limbs of the fetus so they can be extracted from the womb. Only one of the state’s seven…

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Trump Tells NRA He’ll Fight for Gun Rights

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  President Donald Trump vowed to fight for gun rights as he addressed the National Rifle Association on Friday and implored members of the group — struggling to maintain its influence — to rally behind his re-election bid. Speaking to the group for his third straight year, Trump declared himself a “champion for the Second Amendment.” “It’s under assault,” he said of the constitutional right to bear arms. “But not while we’re here.” And he told the thousands in the crowd: “You better get out there and vote,” saying of the 2020 election, “It seems like it’s a long ways away. It’s not.” The nation’s largest gun rights organization was pivotal to Trump’s victory in 2016. But three years later, the group is limping toward the next election divided and diminished. It’s a reversal that has stunned longtime observers and gun control advocates and raises questions about the one-time kingmaker’s clout heading into 2020 as Trump and Vice President Mike Pence headline the group’s annual convention in Indianapolis on Friday. “I’ve never seen the NRA this vulnerable” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun control measures. In the months after Trump’s election,…

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US Economic Growth Hits 3.2 Percent in 2019

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by Tim Pearce   The U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2019, smashing experts’ expectations, according to the Department of Commerce (DOC) data released Friday. Economists predicted that the federal government shutdown and cold weather that slowed economic activity in parts of the country early in the year would drag down growth. Experts’ predicted that the economy would grow at a much slower rate of 2.3 percent from January to March, according to Bloomberg. The U.S. economy grew at 2.2 percent growth in the final quarter of 2018, according to Commerce Department data. The 2019 growth is being driven largely by companies restocking inventories and a shrinking trade deficit with foreign countries. State and local governments’ spending also stimulated some growth, according to The Washington Post. Typically, the first quarter of the year is the one with the weakest growth, though experts are predicting that to change in 2019, WaPo reports. President Donald Trump has pledged to bring the U.S. economy to 3 percent growth rates or better. Over the course of 2018, the economy grew at an average pace of 2.9 percent, tying the highest growth rate of the Obama…

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Spring Business License Applications Set New Record in Ohio

Mitch Shirley

Spring fever has citizens eager to start new businesses all over the state. In March, Ohio citizens set a state record for new business license application filings. Last month, Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office received 13,747 new business filings, beating the previous record by 873. “It’s a significant milestone, and one that wouldn’t happen without a business environment that encourages entrepreneurs to take chances – to innovate and grow,” said LaRose. “We’re going to continue doing everything we can to empower Ohioans to succeed.” In 2015, State Sen. Larry Obhof (R-Medina) proposed a bill that would cut business filing fees by 21 percent. The bill also implemented easier online government filing systems. It passed both houses with 100 percent of the vote. There have been five records set since March 2017. Each record has surpassed the previous one by 30 to 600 filings. This past March’s filings were a 6.7 percent uptick from the previous record leaving Obhof ecstatic about the results. There are many reasons for this sudden growth. Sen. Obhof attributed much of it to “across the board income tax cuts.” “We eliminated the death tax, we had targeted tax cuts that benefited small businesses and really…

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Ohio Republican Elite Lean Left and Act Vindictively, Tea Party Members Say

Chris Butler

  Ohio Tea Party members say an elite political class of Republicans-In-Name-Only controls the state’s GOP. Any conservatives not among the establishment class Republicans are kept at a distance. Once in office, these powerful RINOs use their power and influence to penalize people who speak up against them — and this includes even the relatives of the people who don’t conform, Tea Party members said. John McAvoy, a Tea Party official in northwest Ohio, told The Ohio Star this week that this was especially true when former Republican Gov. John Kasich held office. Kasich, of course, does not hold U.S. President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican, in high esteem. “If you were going to benefit from Kasich then you had to be a Never Trumper. I have had phone conversations with people when we were running state central committee candidates who told me ‘If you ever say I said this I will deny it, but I must support Kasich. The reason I must support him is because I have a brother-in-law who works for the Turnpike Commission and if I don’t support Kasich then my brother-in-law loses his job,” McAvoy said. “There were things like that. That is how the…

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Governor DeWine Announces Ohio Air Force Lab Will Be Site of Groundbreaking New Tech

Andrew Shirley

Gov. Mike DeWine, along with several other senior Ohio and military officials, announced Friday that Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport would be the test site for a new and revolutionary aviation system. DeWine was joined in his announcement by Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, and Major General William Cooley, Commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The new system will be run and overseen by the Ohio Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Center and AFRL. A press release from DeWine’s office described the new technology as follows: This month, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that new technology developed in collaboration between AFRL and the State of Ohio – called SkyVision – safely, accurately, and effectively allows unmanned aircraft systems (UAS or “drones”) to detect and avoid other aircraft while in flight. Simply put, SkyVision can be described as an air traffic control system for drones. The main point of concern is that, per FAA rules, no individual or organization can operate a drone in the U.S. outside of the line of sight of the user. This study will test drones well outside of the line of sight of the user, but still within a 200-mile radius. “As…

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Ilhan Omar Speaks to Elementary and Middle School Students Behind Closed Doors

Anthony Gockowski

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) was back in her home district Friday visiting students at elementary and middle schools throughout the area, but parents and press were allegedly not allowed to attend. On Thursday evening, ahead of Omar’s visit to St. Anthony Middle School in Minneapolis, conservative activist Alley Waterbury altered her followers on Facebook to a protest that would be occurring. “We must protect our children,” Waterbury said. “The school is asking for permission for their children to attend this event, but the parents are not allowed to attend themselves. This is a problem and no cameras.” “Lecturing our kids behind closed doors with no parents is a no go,” she later added. Waterbury and her fellow protesters contacted the school to express their concerns after Waterbury’s initial alert quickly spread on social media. “Thank you for your feedback. Congresswoman Omar serves as the U.S. Representative for the 5th Congressional District, which includes St. Anthony. We understand some members of our community did not vote for Congresswoman Omar. When our local, elected representatives reach out to learn about our schools and school district, we always open our doors,” Principal Amy Kujawski wrote to Waterbury in response. “Congresswoman Omar’s visit will…

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Ambulances Called Twice This Month Alone for Hemorrhaging Abortion Patients at Cleveland’s Preterm Clinic

Anthony Gockowski

Cleveland’s Preterm abortion clinic has had to place two 911 calls in the month of April alone after patients were bleeding “heavy” in response to abortion procedures. The incidents were exposed by Operation Rescue, who obtained the 911 recordings from both events. The first medical emergency occurred on April 5, when an ambulance, a fire unit, and five police cars responded to a 911 call from the clinic. Inside, a 31-year-old woman was hemorrhaging after her procedure and was brought out on a gurney with a sheet covering her head. One onlooker told Operation Rescue that an elevator repair service was at Preterm during the incident. Operation Rescue says that the clinic has had “chronic reliability” issues with its one elevator—the only way a gurney can access the surgical floor. Emergency records show that 37 minutes elapsed between the time of the ambulance’s arrival at Preterm and when the patient arrived at University Hospital. “We have warned of the dangers posed by this abortion facility and its unreliable elevator until we are blue in the face,” Operation Rescue President Troy Newman said in a press release. “We have urged the Ohio Department of Health to close preterm due to its…

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Sen. Young Will Serve as Keynote Speaker of Tennessee Republican Party’s Statesmen’s Dinner on June 15

Jason M. Reynolds

U.S. Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Tennessee Republican Party’s Statesmen’s Dinner. The dinner will be held Saturday, June 15 at Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville. The dinner chairman is attorney and businessman Andy Puzder. Young is chairman of the NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee), which bills itself as “the only national organization solely devoted to strengthening the Republican Senate Majority and electing Republicans to the United States Senate.” Young, in a press release from the Tennessee Republican Party, said, “I’m looking forward to joining Tennessee Republicans at the 2019 Statesmen’s Dinner. As Democrats continue to push a radical, far-left agenda, it’s critical that we elect candidates who will safeguard our cherished freedoms and support the policies that have our economy booming. As Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, I’m looking forward to working with Tennesseans to strengthen our Republican Senate majority and protect our conservative values.” Young serves on the U.S. Senate Committees on Finance; Foreign Relations; Commerce, Science & Transportation; and Small Business and Entrepreneurship, according to his biography. He is a graduate of Annapolis and served in the U.S. Marine Corps. His private sector experience includes a former stint at…

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