Superintendent Should Report to Nashville’s Mayor, Carol Swain Tells WSMV, But Education Expert Says State Requires School Boards to Oversee Directors

  WSMV polled the four major Nashville mayoral candidates on whether the Metro Nashville Public Schools superintendent should report to the mayor instead of the school board, and only one said “Yes.” That candidate was Dr. Carol Swain. WSMV’s story is here. The Metro Nashville mayoral candidates who were polled were Swain, incumbent Mayor David Briley, State Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D-TN-55) and at-large Metro Council member John Cooper. Swain told WSMV, “I believe the director of schools should report to the mayor because there has to be some accountability. We’ve had problems in the past. The school board has a budget of almost a billion dollars and we know that we have some of the worst performing schools in the state.” Briley, Clemmons and Cooper said “No.” One education expert told The Tennessee Star that requiring a superintendent to report to an authority other than a school board would be unprecedented. JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee, said, “That structure does not exist in Tennessee. Mayors in urban areas around the nation have closely aligned economic development with K-12 education. However, we have elected school boards to exercise oversight in the state of Tennessee of public schools.”…

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Commentary: It’s Bernie’s Party Now

by Christopher Roach   After watching two nights of Democratic primary debates, I felt like I needed more than my regular shower. The party increasingly is far-left, divided between the identity politics’ wokeness of candidates like former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and Senator Cory Booker and the economic leftism of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. While there was a lot of smoke, some jabs, catfights, and some comic relief by New Age guru Marianne Williamson, the most striking thing is how much the entire group agreed on ideas that, only a few years ago, were fringe positions: eliminating fossil fuels, “Medicare for All,” robust government-financed health care for illegal aliens, a weaker border, and more gun control. Sanders the Insurgent The 2016 loser, Bernie Sanders, has a lot to do with this state of affairs. He electrified the Democratic party in 2016 with his insurgent campaign. The Vermont socialist railed against inequality, in favor of debt relief, and against the crony capitalism of Wall Street, which he blamed with some justification for the 2008 economic crisis. He also criticized his opponent for her foreign policy, which started wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, in spite of…

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Memphis Appears Inclined to Pursue Corporate Welfare for Graceland

  Memphis City Council members appear inclined to go forward with a corporate welfare deal for Elvis Presley’s Graceland. According to The Associated Press this week, they have approved part of a plan for a $75 million expansion project at the Memphis tourist hotspot. “The deal doesn’t include soundstages that could act as concert venues. City officials were concerned that the stages would put Graceland in competition with Memphis’ main concert venue, the FedExForum,” according to The AP. As The Tennessee Star reported, Graceland seeks government incentives to help build retail space and a recreational vehicle park, and to expand Graceland’s hotel. Graceland also had been seeking to add soundstages that could act as concert venues. As The Star reported in April, the people who oversee Graceland threatened to disassemble the mansion and relocate it to Nashville or even Asia if they didn’t get their way on corporate welfare. “So why, you might ask, is a city that regularly ranks among the nation’s poorest giving several hundred million dollars in tax breaks to a long-dead rock star’s house museum where the cheapest ticket costs $41?” asked Henry Grabar, writing for Slate.com. “The company and the city came to a preliminary agreement in February that approves…

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The Government Is Still Pursuing a Citizenship Question, But Path Forward Unclear

by Kevin Daley   The Trump administration is still looking for ways to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census form, government lawyers told a federal judge in Maryland Friday. The update comes as President Donald Trump announced that he is contemplating an executive order that would require a citizenship field to appear on census forms. “The Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Commerce have been asked to reevaluate all available options following the Supreme Court’s decision and whether the Supreme Court’s decision would allow for a new decision to include the citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census,” assistant Attorney General Joseph Hunt wrote in a Friday filing. “In the event the Commerce Department adopts a new rationale for including the citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census consistent with the decisions of the Supreme Court, the government will immediately notify this court so that it can determine whether there is any need for further proceedings or relief,” the filing adds. The filing did not include details as to when the administration will make a definitive decision about its next steps, or what specific options the Justice Department is considering. Apart from Friday’s hearing, Trump said the administration is…

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The Roman Republic of 1849: Lessons from a Five-Month Country

by Lawrence W. Reed   The ancient Roman Republic endured for half a millennium before it collapsed into the imperial autocracy we know as the Roman Empire. But did you know there was another Roman Republic only 170 years ago? That second one was much smaller—the city of Rome itself and a portion of the Papal States of central Italy. Its longevity was nowhere near the 500 years of the first. In fact, it lasted only five months, from February 1849 until a French invasion killed it 17 decades ago today—July 3, 1849. Early in the 19th century, the French under Napoleon Bonaparte snuffed out many independent enclaves, including the remarkable Republic of Ragusa and the short-lived Septinsular Republic. The culprit in the demise of the Roman Republic of 1849 was another Napoleon, the nephew of the more famous first one. Here’s the story in a nutshell. The Combination of Church and State The Papal States of the late 1840s constituted a single country united under the Pope’s leadership. It was notorious for corruption, a stunted economy, a huge and politicized police force, and a political apparatus open only to members of the Catholic clergy. With liberal ideas sweeping Europe,…

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Record Number of African Migrants Trek to Mexico

by Audrey Conklin   Migrants traveling from Africa to Mexico in 2019 will break records, data from the Mexican Office for Domestic Affairs suggest. The number of undocumented African migrants Mexican officials registered tripled in the first four months of 2019, reaching 1,900 people, compared to the same time in 2018, Reuters reported Friday. Data from 2018 saw four times as many undocumented Africans compared to five years ago, reaching about 3,000 people. People from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is still recovering after a years-long regional conflict that killed millions, was the third largest group of new refugees globally at about 123,000 people in 2018, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. Cameroon’s internally displaced population grew by 447,000. U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended over 500 African migrants in the Del Rio Sector in Texas between May 30 and June 5, most of whom came from the Congo, Angola and Cameroon, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). “The introduction of this new population places additional burdens on processing stations, to include language and cultural differences,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Raul L. Ortiz said in a June statement. “This large group from Africa further…

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Ilhan Omar Sends Somber Fourth of July Message Days After Celebrating Somali Independence Day

by Molly Prince   Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar urged Americans to celebrate the Fourth of July by reflecting on “how much further we have to go,” standing in contrast to her joyful celebration of Somali Independence Day four days prior. “Today gives us all a chance to reflect on how far we have come as a country and how much further we have to go to achieve full equality for all people,” Omar tweeted July 4. “We are at a tipping point for progress right now.” “Happy 4th of July,” she added. Today gives us all a chance to reflect on how far we have come as a country and how much further we have to go to achieve full equality for all people. We are at a tipping point for progress right now. ✊🏽 Happy 4th of July! 🇺🇸 — Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 4, 2019 Omar’s congressional office also tweeted a Fourth of July message, stating that Independence Day is a time to celebrate American values such as freedom of the press, equal protection of all minorities and America’s role in guaranteeing human rights worldwide. While there was no mention of America’s independence from Britain, the tweet…

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: It’s Been a Year, and What a Year It’s Been

by Anna Mathews   On June 26, 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) beat Joseph Crowley for the Democratic nomination in New York’s 14th congressional district. Though only 28 and with little political experience, she went on to win the general election in November, and has been making waves ever since. Here are seven highlights from her campaign and time in Congress over the past year. 1. Ran a Grassroots Campaign On her campaign website, Ocasio-Cortez emphasized that she ran a successful campaign without taking PAC money. One hundred percent of her donations came from individuals, and she managed to raise over $2 million. Additionally, she noted that her campaign video was self-produced. 2. Was Awarded Four Pinocchios by The Washington Post In December, Ocasio-Cortez was awarded four Pinocchios by The Washington Post for her “$21 trillion mistake” on Twitter. She claimed: “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.” The WaPo wrote that her tweet was “badly flawed,” as the $21 trillion number represents “the sum of all transactions – both…

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The Hard Facts Behind Venezuela’s Oil Crisis

by Kaylee Greenlee   The citizens of Venezuela have gotten used to spending days parked in mile-long lines for state-owned gasoline as shortages worsened for the world’s largest oil producer. In the capital of Caracas, hundreds of motorists waited in lines last month while carrying rocks and pipes to defend themselves as Venezuela’s socialist regime clung to power, The Wall Street Journal and others reported. Violent crime became common at fueling stations, and Reuters reported one instance of a man being killed. A teenage boy lost his eyesight Monday after a policeman fired pellets at him during a protest of fuel shortages in Tariba in northwest Venezuela, The Sun newspaper in the United Kingdom reported. Why the fuel crisis? Sanctions implemented in January by the U.S. banned the sale of diluting agents used for transporting and processing crude oil to Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., the country’s state-run oil and natural gas company. Amid the sanctions, U.S. allies also were “prohibited from doing business” with the state-owned entity, according to a report by Ana Quintana, a senior policy analyst for Latin America and the Western Hemisphere in The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy. The lack of…

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Commentary: Midwestern Values May We Never Lose Them

by Henry I. Miller   I spent nearly a week in June in the flyover part of the country—Topeka, Kansas, to be exact—and found it to be a refreshing change. There’s noticeably less snark, whining, self-entitlement, and virtue signaling there than in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live and work. Several of the friends I visited come from farm families, although none has followed that occupation. One is a highly successful lawyer and the former head of Kansas’s tax agency, another is a financial adviser, while another became a bank president. A fourth became an eminent psychiatrist and then took over his father’s banking business, but all have retained the small-town Midwestern values that were described movingly by Purdue University President Mitch Daniels and former Indiana governor in a recent Washington Post op-ed: During a decade in elected office in Indiana, I made it my practice while traveling the state to stay overnight in Hoosier homes rather than hotels. Because of geography and, candidly, personal choice, probably a third of those 125 overnights were with farm families. There I witnessed virtues that one sees too rarely these days—hard work, practical manual skill, a communitarian ethic—woven tightly into the…

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Keith Ellison Faces Renewed Scrutiny Over Antifa While Promoting Efforts to Tackle ‘Bias-Motivated Crimes’

  Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has been working with local officials to crack down on the rise of “bias-motivated” crimes. The Star Tribune has published a number of articles highlighting the effort, and reports that Ellison’s office is in the process of creating a working group that would improve law enforcement’s ability to prevent hate crimes. In late June, Ellison met with leaders in Fergus Falls to discuss the increase in hate crimes in rural Minnesota. “What’s clear is these people are organizing,” Ellison said of white-supremacist groups, according to The Star Tribune. “They’re here in Minnesota and they are violent and they’re willing to stab and hurt people while hiding behind the First Amendment.” The Star Tribune editorial board published a July 5 article praising Ellison for his outreach efforts. “Ellison is doing listening sessions and collecting ideas for how his office can be more helpful to victims of harassment and other types of race or religion-based hate crimes,” the editorial board said. “Ellison’s outreach efforts wisely reflect the need for statewide involvement in combating racism throughout the state and supporting local officials like Mayor Schierer who are trying to combat it.” Ellison has been promoting the effort…

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Knoxville Airport Gets More Federal Funding

  U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, representing Tennessee’s Second Congressional District, announced on his Twitter page Friday that McGhee Tyson Airport, outside Knoxville, will receive a $10.6 million grant via federal taxpayers. According to Burchett, the funds will go to reconstruct the airport’s runway. “This is great news for our community and local economy, and I appreciate the administration funding this request,” Burchett said. According to the Knoxville-based WATE.com, the U.S. Department of Transportation gave out the taxpayer money. “McGhee Tyson Airport is a first-class facility that continues to break passenger records, and this grant will help the airport continue to be an important economic driver by improving and expanding its existing infrastructure,” the station quoted Burchett as saying. According to the station, the agency awards grants to public agencies and sometimes private owners and entities to plan and develop public-use airports. According to WBIR.com, airport officials announced changes to infrastructure in May. The station also said the last concrete slab for a 10,000-foot runway is poured, but the project is not done. “This grant continues the work with the Airfield Modernization Program including the runway. We appreciate the Congressman’s continued support of the airport,” the station quoted McGhee Tyson Airport…

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