Day: June 4, 2019

Dr. Manny Sethi Announces Bid to Replace Retiring U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander

Jason M. Reynolds

  Dr. Manish “Manny” Sethi on Monday announced he would seek to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). According to a story by The Chattanoogan, Sethi said he was running as an outsider. “Tennesseans want a conservative outsider who will take on the Establishment, support President Trump, fight illegal immigration and work to repeal ObamaCare,” said Dr. Sethi. “That’s why I’m running for Senate.” Many political experts were surprised by the timing because they were waiting to hear what former Gov. Bill Haslam would decide, according to a story by The Tennessee Journal: On the Hill. But Sethi and his team apparently ran out of patience and decided to pull the trigger, using “outsider” themes echoing those made by similarly little-known Bill Lee when the latter was making surprise march toward the governor’s office last year. Sethi called upon Lee consultant Jordan Gehrke, as well as Chris Devaney, a former state Republican Party chairman who served as Lee’s campaign manager, to handle campaign operations, TNJ: On the Hill said. In December, The Tennessee Star reported on Sethi’s interest in running for the Senate seat. Sethi is an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Sethi and wife Maya…

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BREAKING: Speaker Glen Casada Announces Resignation Effective August 2, 2019 at 8 AM

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  Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada indicated a few weeks ago that he would be resigning from his position as Speaker and would determine a timetable for the effective date of his resignation when he returned from a long-planned overseas vacation on June 3. Casada initiated discussions about a specific resignation date with Republican leaders on June 3. Casada then met with Legislative leaders again on June 4th before issuing a resignation letter effective August 2 at 8 am. In his letter he requests that Governor Bill Lee call a Special Session on that date to conduct “legislative business,” and that while the Legislature is assembled the House “may take up the procedural matter of electing a new Speaker to lead the chamber.” Based on the timeline that Casada has recommended in his letter, Speaker Pro Tem Bill Dunn (R – Knoxville) would only serve as Speaker for a few hours unless he is elected as Speaker during the Special Session after Casada’s resignation becomes effective. However, the Governor and Legislature could choose to avoid a Special Session and simply allow Dunn to succeed Casada pending an election of a new Speaker at a later date. Or, the Governor could…

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Commentary: The Entitled Uninvited

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by Pedro Gonzalez   On a Sunday afternoon in May, Etta Nugent found Marco Cobos, a Mexican national, at her doorstep in Houston after his truck had broken down nearby. Cobos knocked and Nugent, described by friends as “gentle soul” and a “good Christian woman,” answered. When Cobos asked her to help him fix his truck, the septuagenarian politely declined, citing her age. Feeling entitled to a different answer, Cobos forced his way into Nugent’s home and stabbed her in the chest. He proceeded to show himself to kitchen to look for “more knives,” he told prosecutors, while his victim lay grievously wounded. As Nugent attempted to flee, Cobos killed her in her home of 50 years, across the street from St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church where she had worshiped for most of her life. With cash stolen from the house, Cobos drove Nugent’s car to an auto parts store to buy a new battery for his truck. He stopped for food before returning to Nugent’s home, where he ate and lounged for hours, helping himself to Nugent’s credit cards, even paying his phone bill with one of them. Nugent’s horrific fate has become all too common in an America…

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Experts: Tariffs in the Offing for India as President Trump Wages War on ‘Unfair Trade’

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by Michael Bastach   The Trump administration’s decision to rescind trade preferences with India could be a sign that more tariffs are on the horizon, experts say. U.S. trade officials announced Friday the end of special trade treatment on $6 billion worth of goods from India because the country has “not assured the United States that India will provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets.” Those Indian goods were exempted from tariffs under what’s called the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). Special trade treatment will end Wednesday, suggesting to trade experts President Donald Trump is expanding war against the U.S. trade deficit. “This could potentially presage a new trade investigation and, possibly, tariffs,” analysts ClearView Energy Partners wrote in a report released Monday morning. ClearView analysts said the Trump administration may be weighing a Section 301 investigation, which could lead to retaliatory tariffs if trade officials find India’s trade policies hurt U.S. commerce. Trump has criticized India’s “unfair” trade practices, which he says hurts U.S. companies and workers. “As we discussed in March, the termination of India’s duty exemptions – and especially the imposition of new tariffs – could potentially draw retaliation against U.S. coal exports, a nontrivial risk for U.S. producers,”…

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Supreme Court Turns Down Trump Administration Bid to Accelerate DACA Appeal

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United States Supreme Court

by Kevin Daley   The Supreme Court rejected a request Monday to expedite its consideration of the Trump administration’s bid to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA is an Obama-era amnesty initiative that extends temporary legal status to 700,000 non-citizens who arrived in the U.S. as children. There were no noted dissents from Monday’s decision. As is typical of orders of this nature, the Court did not give reasons for rejecting the government’s request. The Department of Homeland Security first took steps to terminate DACA in September 2017. Federal trial judges subsequently entered injunctions requiring that Trump maintain the program while litigation continued. Beginning in November 2018, the administration challenged three of those injunctions in the Supreme Court. The justices were poised to decide whether to hear those cases in January, but no action came. The Court’s continued inaction on those petitions is perhaps the greatest mystery of the current Supreme Court term. The administration filed a fourth DACA petition at the high court in May, after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld one of the injunctions against DACA repeal. This time, the Department of Justice asked the Court to put the petition on the fast track…

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Bluff City Law to Film on Location in Memphis, Likely to Get Corporate Welfare

Chris Butler

  The NBC drama Bluff City Law will reportedly film on location in Memphis, and it’s also presumed Tennessee officials will hand out corporate welfare in exchange. This, according to Monday’s Memphis Commercial Appeal. The show stars Jimmy Smits. But Tennessee taxpayers may lose out, said Ron Shultis, policy coordinator for the Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee, in an analysis on the group’s website. Beacon is a free-market think tank. “The reason Tennessee should continue to give little—or, even better, outright eliminate these programs—is because film incentives have been shown to be a terrible value. State film incentives became popular in the mid and late 2000s. By 2009, 44 states offered some kind of film incentive. What those in the industry won’t tell you is that since then, thirteen states have completely eliminated their programs and several more have reduced theirs because these programs have been shown to be a bad value for taxpayers,” Shultis wrote. “In fact, a recent study by Tennessee’s Dept. of Economic and Community Development (ECD) found that the $69.1 million given over the life of Tennessee’s program has resulted in $14.7 million in state tax collections, or a 21-cent return on the dollar. This estimate…

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Some Tennessee Emergency Management Agency Coordinators Skip Vital Training, Audit Reveals

Chris Butler

  Tennessee Emergency Management Agency officials did not make sure all coordinators completed all required training courses, according to a performance audit state Comptrollers released late last week. Specifically, TEMA officials did not make sure between 26 to 60 Emergency Services Coordinators completed training courses, as required by the agency’s Training Policies and Procedures, auditors wrote. State officials task TEMA with coordinating, preparing, responding to and offering recovery from man-made, natural, and technological hazards. According to the report, various state employees and volunteers did not complete courses pertaining to Incident Command Training, Intra-State Mutual Aid, Emergency Management Software Training, and Emergency Worker Training, among various other required courses. According to the report, TEMA management told auditors they remind ESCs about monthly training requirements and provide them with annual reports detailing their completion or incompletion of required training courses. Some of the ESCs tell TEMA “they do not attend all of the required trainings due to other requirements such as their own jobs or busy working emergencies.” Also, they “might not attend training because they are volunteers and are not reimbursed for being an ESC.” “Furthermore, based on our discussions, TEMA seems to place emphasis on its required training courses; however, TEMA…

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Commentary: The Great Chicago Parking Fiasco – Another Cautionary Tale for Nashville

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by Marshall Towe   Mayor Briley has pulled the plug on his ill-advised parking privatization program, at least for now.   Most likely his temporary pause is due to the combination of a complete lack of public support and the upcoming mayoral election.  The public must demand any project that leads to the privatization of the most public of spaces, city streets, be permanently abandoned and not accept a political head fake until the election is over. One need only look 500 miles north to see the disastrous results of a city selling off the public’s assets in an attempt to correct financial incompetence and budget mismanagement.  In 2008, Chicago’s Mayor Daley pushed through the lease of Chicago’s parking meters to the private company, Chicago Parking Meters LCC, led by group of investors including Morgan Stanley and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.  In exchange for $1.15B, Chicago gave total management control of its 36,000 meters for 75 years, along with all associated revenue.  The Inspector General of Illinois determined in 2010 that the public lost well over $1 Billion on the deal and as more time goes by the more that estimated loss to the public increases. The next Mayor of…

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China, Tariffs, Trade, Cost and Prices: An Explainer

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by Rick Manning   Stock markets go up and down based upon the latest trade rumors. Predictions of price hikes make headlines, yet the inflation rate remains at the levels, 2.0 percent at last count, desired by the Federal Reserve. What is going on?  And is this even really a trade war with China at all, or is it part of something much bigger?  These are questions that should be asked but are often lost to click-bait headlines.  So, here are a few thumbnail answers that will hopefully help you understand what is going on. Question: Are President Trump’s use of tariffs against China part of a trade war? Those who try to put tariffs on goods made in China into this context are deliberately narrowing the real challenge in the economic relations between the U.S. and China. The tariffs are designed to restructure America’s trade relations with China, but when you examine the key demands from the recent attempts to create a new economic partnership with China, they are mostly focused upon protecting patents, ending forced technology transfers to the Chinese government and stopping Chinese currency manipulation which always puts U.S. goods at a competitive disadvantage with Chinese goods. Traditional trade deals…

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Immigration Talks Already Underway as Mexico Rushes to Stave Off Tariff Threat

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by Jason Hopkins   Top Mexican government officials are in the United States as they attempt to dissuade the Trump administration from following though on tariff threats. A high-level delegation of Mexican officials, including Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and Economy Minister Graciela Marquez, held a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Speaking from the Mexican embassy, the two leaders publicly called on the U.S. to reach a deal with their government instead of resorting to a tariff war. The press conference and meeting come before the two countries are set to kick off official negotiations Wednesday. Mexican and U.S. delegations will try to reach a deal on the immigration crisis before a White House-imposed deadline quickly approaches. The rush to reach a compromise comes after President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a 5% tax on all goods coming from Mexico beginning June 10, unless their government can prove that it is doing more to stop the record-flow of illegal migration running through its borders. Tariffs on Mexican goods, he added, would increase by 5% every month, with the rate reaching as high as 25% by October if Mexico fails to satisfy U.S. demands. Trump on Sunday continued to hammer the country for its perceived inaction…

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Hamilton County Schools May Keep 350 Extra Employees, Regardless of What Results They Bring

Chris Butler

  If 350 additional employees don’t help raise the Hamilton County School System’s test scores then those new employees will get to keep their jobs, regardless of results, said School Board member Rhonda Thurman. As The Tennessee Star reported, school system officials have proposed adding that many new employees because they believe it is the path to improving their academics. County commissioners may have to raise property taxes to fund these new positions, several of which are administrators and social workers. “We never get rid of a program. All we do is keep adding on to them,” said Thurman, who said these positions are unneeded. “No one ever loses their job or is held accountable. There is all this great and wonderful stuff that is supposed to happen, and the people in charge tell us how these positions will improve everything — and then they don’t (improve everything). No one ever loses a job.” School Board member Kathy Lennon, though, said she’s confident in Superintendent Bryan Johnson’s plan for additional school employees, and she believes it will impact school systems academics in a positive way. School Board member Joe Wingate, meanwhile, said this plan “is just a proposal for how…

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Populist Electoral Wins Hit the Globalist Establishment Worldwide

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by Ben Whelon   A string of populist electoral wins in Australia, India and the U.K. are beginning to transform the global political landscape as nations revolt against mass migration, climate change legislation and traditional party establishments. In recent weeks, several nations have placed anti-establishment groups in power, many of which advocate strict immigration policies and hold nationalist sympathies. As discontent with the establishment continues to fester across the globe, here are some of the highlights from the biggest developments in the past month. Australia returns Scott Morrison’s conservative Liberal party in election upset  Polling pointed to a disaster for Australia’s right-leaning Liberal-National Coalition in the federal election held May 18. But what was supposed to be Australia’s “climate change election,” with leading parties supporting sweeping climate legislation, turned to a stunning upset, according to The New York Times. Not only did the Liberal-National Coalition retain power; it gained seats in Parliament and earned an outright majority, with 77 seats, the Guardian reported. The party leader, incumbent Prime Minister Scott Morrison (pictured, center), came to power when the nation’s previous leader, Malcolm Turnbull, resigned in 2018. Morrison campaigned against greater immigration and cut the nation’s net intake, per the Sydney Morning Herald. He also moved against…

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Court Orders Portion of Line 3 Pipeline Environmental Impact Statement to Return to Minnesota Public Utility Commission for Reconsideration

Jason M. Reynolds

  The Minnesota Court of Appeals on Monday overturned a portion of the environmental impact study of Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project. The court’s ruling is available here. The ruling says: Although we reject most of realtors’ assertions of error, we agree that the FEIS is inadequate because it does not address the potential impact of an oil spill into the Lake Superior watershed. Accordingly, we reverse the commission’s adequacy determination and remand for further proceedings consistent with this decision. FEIS refers to the final Environmental Impact Statement. Enbridge in April 2015 applied for a certificate of need and routing permit to install of 337 miles of pipe and facilities from the North Dakota-Minnesota border to the Minnesota-Wisconsin border to replace the already existing Line 3, part of Enbridge’s Mainline System, the court said. Environmental organizations and tribal bands had challenged a decision made last year by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission  (PUC) which found the FEIS was adequate, the court said. However, the court also upheld most of the environmental impact statement and dismissed most of the opponents’ arguments, Minnesota Public Radio said. The rejected arguments included claims that the study didn’t take into account the…

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Bill Would Change Ohio Workers’ Compensation for First Responders with PTSD

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by Todd DeFeo   Emergency personnel in Ohio who suffer work-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) could soon be eligible to file a workers’ compensation claim even if they do not experience an accompanying physical injury. Current law prohibits workers’ compensation claims for psychological conditions without an underlying physical condition. However, state lawmakers are considering the change as part of House Bill 80, which creates the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) budget. The state is looking to fund the BWC to the tune of $319.8 million for Fiscal Year 2020 and $324.8 million Fiscal Year 2021. That represents a significant increase from the estimated $304 million BWC will receive in the 2019 fiscal year and the nearly $264 million it saw in 2018. The County Commissioners Association of Ohio and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce expressed concern about the PTSD provision. “Ohio has always required that an employee have a physical harm or injury in order to participate in workers’ compensation,” Kevin Shimp, director of labor and legal affairs for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, told members of the House Finance Committee. “The so-called ‘mental-mental’ claim – a psychological condition that arises solely from the stress – has never been compensated in Ohio. This exclusion was originally a…

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Emmanuel Aranda, Who Threw 5-Year-Old Boy Over Mall of America Balcony, Receives 19-Year Prison Sentence

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by Neetu Chandak   The man who threw a 5-year-old boy over the Mall of America’s third-floor balcony in April was given a 19-year prison sentence Monday. Emmanuel Aranda, 24, pleaded guilty in May for attempted murder. The 40-foot fall left the boy, known publicly as Landen, with head trauma and broken bones. Landen and his parents did not appear in court Monday, but offered statements read in court by prosecutor Cheri Townsend, NBC News reported. “Your act was evil and selfish,” the boy’s father said in his statement. “You chose to listen to the worst parts of yourself that day. That is where your impact on us stops. You will take nothing more from us.” Aranda told investigators he was “looking for somebody to kill” on April 12 and was looking to kill another person at the mall, according to The Associated Press. He chose Landen when the previous plan did not “work out.” “God will judge you someday and I have peace with that,” his mother’s statement said, NBC reported. Prosecutors let go of an aggravated-circumstances component to the charge that could have made Aranda’s prison sentence 20 years instead of 19. Aranda could be on parole in 12 years if his behavior is good along…

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House Speaker Glen Casada Starts Discussions With Republicans on Date He Will Resign

Jason M. Reynolds

  Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada is holding discussions with Republican lawmakers on when he will resign, now that he has returned from a vacation in Europe, WKRN reported. The station quoted Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden as saying Monday that Casada would “meet with the leadership team and those discussions are going to start today.” However, some Republicans are voicing frustration that his talks are going through the end of this week and he has refused to set an actual date to step down, NewsChannel 5 said. State Rep. Casada (R-Franklin) said in late May he would resign as speaker after House Republicans voted “no confidence” by a margin of 45-24, The Tennessee Star reported. Another question looming before the House is who will fill Casada’s shoes. Steve Gill, Political Editor of The Star, said, “Once speaker Casada announces the timetable for his departure, the fight to replace him will begin in earnest. So far, there has been some positioning and preparation but it will be full on Game of Thrones soon.” “Some potential candidates may ultimately decide to wait for another shot, not because they don’t want to be Speaker but because they make the calculation that…

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