Questioning Juneteenth
With tons of Juneteenth celebrations on the horizon for Memphis this weekend, a national group of Black conservative leaders want a halt to make the day a national holiday.
Project 21, “the leading voice of Black conservatives for over 25 years” and sponsored by the D.C.-based National Center for Public Policy Research, said making Juneteenth a national holiday could further divide Americans.
”I constantly hear everyone taking about unity, but would a federal holiday end up being a unifier?” Project 21 member Marie Fischer asked in a news release. “Or, would it give fuel to those who support critical race theory by pointing out a day that marks one group as an oppressor and another as the oppressed?
“Such a holiday could be easily hijacked by those who insist that Blacks only advance when it benefits white elites. Nothing seems to get pushed these days unless it fits a specific narrative.”
A birthday poster
Tennessee is readying to celebrate 225 years of statehood, and posters for each of the state’s three Grand Divisions were unveiled Thursday.
Posters for each Grand Division feature music and a musical instrument. Middle Tennessee (home of Nashville) got an acoustic guitar. East Tennessee (birthplace of country music) got a fiddle. West Tennessee got an electric guitar that looks much like Lucille, B.B. King’s famous six-string.
The West Tennessee poster also features a Stax album bursting with sun rays, looking like those from Sun Studios in an interesting mash-up. West Tennessee also got a big river, river boats, a plow, and some grain, noting the region’s rich agricultural history, and a bald cypress tree.
Not too bad for state leaders. If you believe the standard Tennessee license plate, you’d think it’s completely covered by the Smokey Mountains.
Tax coffers runneth over (by $432M)
Tennessee tax coffers were fuller than expected for the month of May.
May tax revenues were $1.6 billion, according to Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration Commissioner Butch Eley. That figure is $432 million more than estimates. State tax revenues were $587.3 million more than May 2020 and the overall growth rate was 59.8 percent.
“Just as April tax revenue receipts revealed substantial growth, May state tax revenues continue to reflect extraordinary increases compared to this same time last year when most economic activity was weakened because of the pandemic,” Eley said. “When comparing May 2021 tax growth to May 2019, the monthly growth is 34.5 percent rather than the 59.8 percent growth over May 2020.”
Sales tax revenue grew across all industries, except for groceries and food stores, which saw slight reductions.
Tourism/hospitality jobs: we got ’em
State leaders are hoping to help attract workers to the state’s tourism sector, the second-largest industry in Tennessee.
The “Come Work, Come Play” campaign launched this week by the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development and HospitalityTN. It “urges prospective employees to consider hospitality jobs for their flexible hours, career advancement opportunities, and strong sense of community.”
“Tens of thousands of Tennesseans lost their jobs during the pandemic and the leisure and hospitality industry was hit the hardest, accounting for 72.3 percent of net jobs lost in the state over 2019,” according to the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Tennessee’s leisure and hospitality industry added 9,100 jobs in April 2021.
