Tag: Glen Casada

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Public Money, Private Schools

In May — with help from legally questionable arm-twisting by disgraced and soon-to-be-deposed House Speaker (and general all-around sleazebag) Glen Casada — the Tennessee General Assembly passed an education voucher bill. It was not an easy birth. In fact, the House vote was deadlocked until Casada went into a back room and promised a Knoxville legislator his district would not be affected by the bill. That legislator then conveniently changed his vote.

And that’s how, after much wrangling and behind-the-scenes deal-making, a law was passed that allows 5,000 low-income families in Nashville and Memphis to apply for $7,300 vouchers to use toward purchasing tuition at private schools. “Low-income” is defined as making no more than $65,000 a year for a family of four.

Glen Casada

Does anyone else find it odd that the state’s GOP-controlled legislature thought so little of this bill that they limited its jurisdiction to Memphis and Nashville? I sure do. I mean, if it’s such a great idea, why wouldn’t these lawmakers want the voucher bill to apply to their own districts? The answer is, because they know vouchers would divert funds from their public school systems and tick off their constituents, who would rightly see it as giving public money to private for-profit and religious schools.

But when it comes to those of us living in the state’s largest two cities, the rubes who dominate the legislature are all too eager to bend us to their will, whether it’s outlawing living-wage legislation and minority hiring regulations — or, you know, taking down Confederate statues (which really pissed them off). Most likely, they thought, “Hey, let’s shove this bulls**t voucher thing down Memphis’ and Nashville’s throats and see what happens. That ought to irritate them liberals and uppity black folks.” And, of course, the voucher law has the sweet added benefit of padding the revenues of private schools — and pleasing their lobbyists.

This is a boondoggle. Giving people public taxpayer funds to pay for private schools is nothing more than an incentive to get them to pull their children out of public schools — at a time when weakening public education is the last thing we need to be doing.

And it gets worse. Private schools are under no obligation to accept any voucher student they don’t want. They can be selective. My guess is they’ll be more than happy to welcome $7,300 of our hard-earned money from, say, the family of a star running back and not so eager to welcome a troubled minority kid or a child with family problems or, horrors, a Muslim kid.

This bill is being backed hard by Governor Bill Lee, who’s now pushing to implement the voucher program for the 2020 school year, rather than waiting until 2021, when the law is supposed to take effect.

Chalkbeat.org, a nonprofit news organization that covers education, has reported extensively on Tennessee’s voucher bill. I highly recommend reading their coverage (and supporting their work). In a recent article, Representative Mike Stewart of Nashville was quoted as saying, “In places like Arizona, vouchers have been a rolling disaster marked by outright fraud and theft. We can expect the same thing to happen in Tennessee. … The whole point is to take millions of dollars away from public schools as soon as possible and then to dole them out to Governor Lee’s cronies, who have been pressing for vouchers since he got in office.”

If Lee’s proposed expedited schedule goes into effect, families in Memphis and Nashville would start getting the “education savings accounts” next summer. All this will engender lawsuits, of course. Attorneys for the affected school districts are expected to challenge the bill, primarily on the grounds that it unfairly singles out the Nashville and Memphis school systems. Immigrant rights groups are considering legal action because the law denies vouchers to children whose parents entered the country illegally, even if the children are citizens.

The state is also required by the voucher bill to “vet” private schools. What will that look like? Will the vetting involve looking into religious schools’ curriculums? Will our tax dollars go to support church-affiliated schools? Of course they will. Separation of church and state is so … old school.

And here’s my favorite part: If the state can’t find enough impoverished families to fill the 5,000 designated spots, higher-income families can apply, even if their kids were already set to go to private school.

Bottom line: The Republicans are running an experiment with the Memphis and Nashville school districts and using our money to do it. Our kids are the lab rats.

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Politics Politics Feature

Doing It Again: The People’s Convention; Casada Goes National

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As petitions for city offices continue to be pulled at the offices of the Shelby County Election Commission, attention this week focuses on the forthcoming People’s Convention, scheduled for Saturday at the Paradise Entertainment Center. The affair is intended as a redo of sorts of the 1991 People’s Convention that endorsed Willie Herenton as a consensus black candidate for that year’s Memphis mayoral race.

While this convention, scheduled for an 11 a.m. kickoff, is also rooted to a large degree in concerns of black Memphians, it may be both wider and more constricted in its scope than the original — wider, in that it may also draw white Midtown supporters of mayoral candidate Tami Sawyer, narrower in that backers of Sawyer would seem to be more involved in the affair than those of the two other prominent candidates, current Mayor Jim Strickland and Herenton, who retired from the office of mayor in 2009 after serving 17-plus years and is making another bid for the office.

Jackson Baker

Host David Pool (l) welcomes former Judge Robert L. “Butch” Childers to his weekend event.

Whatever the case, the Rev. Earle Fisher, a prominent ally of Sawyer, has been a major figure in organizing the convention, though numerous community organizations, including the AFSCME union and Black Lives Matter, are taking part, and the stated agenda includes such overriding issues as education, economic justice, and public safety.

• An annual event to which political candidates and pol-watchers are invited was held on Sunday at the site of a burned-out former residence on a high bluff in North Memphis overlooking the Mississippi River.

The residence was that of the late Charlie Pool, an eminent lawyer and longtime eminent member of the local Democratic Party establishment. More accurately, the house was to have been Pool’s residence. Moved plank by plank from Downtown, where it had once belonged to former Congressman Frederick Stanton, it was destroyed in 1981 by a fire, presumably set by an arsonist, before it could be inhabited in its new location.

But the concrete base of the house remains, and it serves today as a stage for the annual summer crawfish feed and jamboree put on for all and sundry by the former owner’s son David Pool, a guitarist and singer who has turned to the law as a career. The younger Pool is now serving as a Judicial Commissioner for Shelby County and is running this year for the Position 3 Memphis city judgeship now held by incumbent Jayne Chandler.

Chandler didn’t make it to the crawfish feed, though she was invited to the event by Pool, who described her to attendees as a “wonderful lady.” He added, “Of course, I’m wonderfuller.”

Several other members of the county’s judicial community were on hand, along with a smattering of candidates for the city election, for the opportunity on a fine summer day to schmooze, enjoy food and drink, and hear music performed by Pool and his informal band, the Risky Whiskey Boys.

• If Glen Casada, the presumably soon-to-be ex-speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, has kept to the schedule he announced in the wake of the scandal that forced his announced intention to resign, he is back in the state as of Monday after completing a long-planned post-session trip to Europe.

Before Casada left the country, he had announced his intent to get together on June 3rd and thereafter with members of the House Republican caucus, a majority of whom had given him a no-confidence vote, so as to map out plans for his resignation and replacement. The reasons for Casada’s downfall were many — including public exposure of  an exchange of racist and misogynist emails between Casada and his youthful aide, Cade Cothren, suspicions that Casada and his aide had conducted electronic spying on members, and evidence that they may have forged the date of an email so as to make it appear that an anti-Casada protestor had defaulted on a court order.

So who is to succeed Casada as speaker? There are several candidates among House Republicans, including Speaker Pro Tem Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville), who is next in the line of succession.

But state Representative Dwayne Thompson (D-Memphis) has an unorthodox proposal. Noting that all the hopefuls mentioned so far are members of the Republican supermajority that voted to make Casada speaker, either in a preliminary GOP caucus last November or on the floor of the House in January, Thompson suggests that, to ensure a genuine break with that now-tarnished outcome, the new speaker should be someone who did not participate in such voting.

Thompson further points out that nothing in the state Constitution mandates that the House speaker be an actual member of that body, only that the members of the House have the power to choose a qualified Tennessean to preside over their business as speaker. Conceding that the Republicans are now the majority party and should ideally have first dibs on the speakership, Thompson has a candidate in mind.

That would be Gerald McCormick, who was the GOP’s House Majority Leader for several terms while a member representing a Chattanooga district, but who moved his residence to Nashville before the 2018 election and consequently did not run for reelection.

In the process, argues Thompson, McCormick became the ideal successor to represent Tennesseans as speaker of the House. As a native of Shelby County, where he attended Germantown High School, McCormick has familiarity with all three of Tennessee’s grand districts — West Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and East Tennessee. And his reputation, while serving in the House, was that of a fair-minded arbiter who, while representing the Republican majority, maintained good relations with the Democratic minority.

Thompson said on Monday that he has not yet discussed his proposal with McCormick himself but intends to.

Meanwhile, Casada’s ignominy, which has dominated so much of the state’s political news in the month since the legislative session ended, has now been broadcast, literally, from a national platform. The speaker’s foibles became the subject this week of a segment of Last Week Tonight, the HBO satirical review of the news hosted by British-born comedian John Oliver. Focusing on such aspects of the scandal as the sexual peccadilloes of Cothren and that aide’s admitted use of cocaine in a state office, Oliver said of the scandal, “While it may not be the most important thing in the world, every detail is spectacular.”

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Politics Politics Feature

They’re Off! Warren Files; Casada to Resign

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jeff Warren, who may have been the first person, several months ago, to float a City Council candidacy for the 2019 Memphis general election, on Monday became the first candidate to pull a petition for office from the Election Commission. As he had indicated he would do, Warren, a primary care physician, is running for Position 3 in the Council’s Super District 9.

And Warren, who had previously served as a member of the Memphis School Board from 2005 to 2013, has what would seem to be a blue-chip organization to steer his campaign. He has named three campaign co-chairs — 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, Desi Franklin, and Kelly Fish, with Fish serving as campaign manager. Warren has a campaign treasury of more than $100,000 already, and a campaign treasurer in Milner Stanton. In a press release, the candidate also announced that he has a 31-member steering committee and listed the following names of supporters: Ron Belz, Joey Beckford, Andrea Bicks, Steve Cohen, Kathy Fish, Scott Fleming, George Flinn, Desi Franklin, Tom Gettlefinger, Joe Getz, Kate Gooch, Mitch Graves, Althea Greene, Shawn Hayden, Dorsey Hopson, Kashif Latif, Sara Lewis, Tom Marshall, Reginald Milton, Herman Morris, Billy Orgel, Autry Parker, Chooch Pickard, Jack Sammons, Frank Smith, Diane Thornton, Henry Turley, Jefferson Warren, Nicole Warren, A C Wharton, and Dynisha Woods.

Jackson Baker

Cody and Steven Fletcher

The list is, as Warren indicates, highly diverse — “a great slice of Memphis,” as he puts it. “On my steering committee, I count Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, straights and LGBTs, young and old; they all have one thing in common — a love for Memphis. I look forward to all of us working together toward a healthy Memphis.”

Warren, who would seem to be prepared in-depth, may well have the Position 3 race to himself, though another early-bird candidate, developer Chase Carlisle, is also expected to file for one of the Super District 9 positions, as is University of Memphis development officer Cody Fletcher, who has indicated he will run for the Position 1 seat in District 9.

The Position 1 and Position 3 seats are open, inasmuch as they are now occupied by two-term incumbents — Council Chair Kemp Conrad and Reid Hedgepeth, respectively, both of whom are term-limited and cannot run again. The incumbent in Super District 9, Position 3, is Ford Canale, who won appointment to his seat last year and later won a special election. He is expected to run again.

Jackson Baker

Election Commission

Now that petitions for office in the forthcoming election are available (as of Monday), a flood of new candidacies is expected over the next several weeks. Filing deadline is noon on Thursday, June 20th, for all positions in the October 3rd Memphis municipal election. Withdrawal deadline for candidates is June 27th at noon.

• Though his initial instinct on Monday was to respond in the negative to the latest call for his resignation as speaker of the Tennessee House — this time from members of the House Republican caucus — Glen Casada (R-Franklin), has finally capitulated. He first indicated in a statement on Monday that he intended to remain in office, despite a lopsided 45-24 vote against him by his fellow House Republicans.

The last straw for Casada was Monday’s caucus vote, which was followed almost immediately by a statement from Republican Governor Bill Lee that the governor would call a special session of the legislature to consider the matter of Casada’s tenure if the beleaguered speaker resisted resignation. “Today, House Republicans sent a clear message,” Lee said.

The vote, the governor’s statement, and calls for Casada’s withdrawal from other members of the Republicans’ legislative leadership — including House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland) and Senate Speaker/Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) — finally made that message clear.

As indicated, Casada’s first response to the caucus vote had been one of continued resistance. “I’m disappointed in the results of today’s caucus vote,” the speaker said on Monday. “However, I will work the next few months to regain the confidence of my colleagues so we can continue to build on the historic conservative accomplishments of this legislative session.”

That statement was supplanted on Tuesday by this one: “When I return to town on June 3rd, I will meet with caucus leadership to determine the best date for me to resign as speaker so that I can facilitate a smooth transition.”

GOP House members have indicated they intend at some early point to conduct a new internal election to pick a new speaker.

Though the pressure on Casada to resign as speaker (he will presumably remain as a House member) had mounted steadily over the weeks, his ordeal is only a month old. It arose from revelations that his main aide, Cade Cothren, was guilty of multiple sexual harassments, some against interns, and of expressing racist and misogynistic attitudes in emails that came to light. Cothren also admitted having snorted cocaine on state premises and was suspected of altering a date on an email to Casada from a protester so as to make it appear that the protestor had violated a no-contact judicial order.

Though he quickly jettisoned his aide, Casada himself had become implicated in some of these issues, including a suspicion that he and Cothren had electronically spied on House members. Emails between himself and Cothren also surfaced, rife with sexist jesting and misogynistic attitudes. Casada, who had just concluded his first session as speaker, had also run afoul of criticism for having appointed state Representative David Byrd (R-Waynesboro), an accused pedophile, to an education subcommittee chairmanship.

Prior to the negative vote by his own House caucus, Casada was the subject of formal repudiations from the House Democratic Caucus and from the Legislative Black Caucus.

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Politics Politics Feature

Lammey, Casada, Michael Harris Face Potential Threats to Their Jobs

It was a 12-0 vote on the Shelby County Commission on Monday to support the pending possible censure by the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct of Criminal Court Judge Jim Lammey for social media posts that consistently contained links to racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic themes.

The potential 13th vote, which would have made things unanimous, was that of Democratic Commissioner Reginald Milton, who had to miss the meeting for personal reasons but who had made his approval of a censure resolution known.

Even two Republican commissioners who had demurred at endorsing censure for Lammey when a preliminary vote was taken in committee last Wednesday — Amber Mills, who wanted Lammey to be given a chance to present “his side” and Brandon Morrison, who argued that the commission had no judgmental authority over the judiciary —  voted with the others on Monday.

Commissioner Tami Sawyer

Lammey, who was invited to appear before the commission on Monday, did not do so, pleading a “heavy trial docket” for the date, but the beleaguered jurist did submit a letter to the commissioners that Lammey suggested would “set the record straight against those who so maliciously mischaracterize me as an anti-Semite hater of all immigrants.”

The accusations against Lammey stem from a series of articles by Commercial Appeal writer Daniel Connolly documenting, first, a Facebook post by Lammey linking to an article by one David Cole, identified by several sources as a Holocaust denier. That article stated, among other things, that Jews should “get the f**k over the Holocaust” and referred to Muslim immigrants as “foreign mud.” Lammey’s post called the story “interesting.”

Subsequent Lammey posts and links unearthed by Connolly dealt with a variety of right-wing nativist themes in which disdain for immigrants loomed large. The judge also received negative publicity for his insistence on ordering immigrants with cases before his court to register with immigration authorities.

Ultimately, Lammey’s actions were condemned by a variety of civic organizations and religious groups — Christian, Jewish, and Islamic. Spokespersons for the groups — some demanding the judge’s outright resignation — appeared before the commission both on committee day last Wednesday and on Monday.

Speaking on behalf of the pro-censure resolution on Monday were Rev. Lucy Waechter-Webb of MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope); Imam Nabil Bayakly, chairman of Muslims in Memphis; Rabbi Katie Bauman of Jewish Community Partners and MICAH; Marti Murphy of Facing History and Ourselves; and Duane Stewart of the Messianic Jewish Movement, a Christian group.

In his letter to the commission, Lammey protested that both he and his social media posts had been mischaracterized. Cole, he said, was “Jewish and not a Holocaust denier,” and he appended a note from Cole himself in which that author contended that the term “foreign mud” used in the article posted by Lammey was a reference to the Golem figure in Jewish legend, not immigrants. As for his courtroom behavior toward immigrants, Lammey said, “I believe all immigrants should come here legally. That’s my constitutional right under the first amendment.”

Several of the speakers on Monday disputed Lammey’s claims as equivocations, with Rev. Webb contending they “confirmed his lack of judgment.”  Stressing the need for a formal judgment, Rabbi Bauman said, “Silence helps the oppressor, never the victim.”

Republican Commissioner Mick Wright, who noted that he and Lammey were Facebook friends and that the judge was his constituent, observed that “some of my constituents believe Judge Lammey has been singled out for political reasons” and continued, “Because of that, I feel it’s important to point out that it’s entirely possible to hold conservative views on immigration, to believe our borders should be protected, and our immigration laws should be enforced, and to also love immigrants and to have compassion and mercy on those who are unlawfully present. Because I believe all our laws should be respected and enforced, I hold those who share my viewpoint to the highest possible standard of conduct.”

Commissioner Van Turner, the body’s chairman, worried aloud that Lammey’s attitude over the years may have “infected” others in the legal community.

Summing up before the vote, Democratic Commissioner Tami Sawyer, author of the pro-censure resolution, thanked “all those who have spoken out in support of this resolution,” characterized action on the issue as the kind of thing “we are here to do,” and called for a unanimous vote. She got it.

• Memphis got a visit last Thursday from members of the campaign of California Senator Kamala Harris, who seeks the Democratic nomination for president. The group included Harris’ campaign manager, Juan Rodriguez, senior advisors Averell “Ace” Smith and David Huynh, Southern regional finance director Stephanie Sass, and political director Missayr Boker.

Daphne Rankin, a local representative of the campaign, said that response from Memphis activists to Harris indicated that the city was one of the most receptive areas in the nation to her candidacy. The senator, a former California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, has attracted considerable attention for her piercing interrogations of witnesses before the Senate Judiciary Committee, including, most recently, William Barr, attorney general in the administration of President Donald Trump.

Harris is considered to be in the first tier of the heavily populated field of declared Democratic presidential contenders. While in Memphis, the Harris representatives were the guests of honor at a reception held at Mahogany Restaurant, hosted by owners Veronica Yates and Colleen McCullough. They also met privately with Gale Jones Carson, Democratic National Committeewoman from Tennessee, and had a late dinner at the Rendezvous with influential local party activist David Upton.

• The 2019 session of the Tennessee General Assembly may have ended week before last, but fallout on Capitol Hill from recent revelations concerning Republican House Speaker Glen Casada continues unabated, threatening Casada’s tenure as speaker and possibly even as a member of the House.

Most recently, the legislative Black Caucus, headed by state Representative G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis), met with Casada on Monday and afterward formally asked for him to step down as speaker. The caucus had earlier sought an investigation of charges that Casada’s then aide Cade Cothren forged the date on an email to Casada from protestor Justin Jones, making it appear that Jones had violated a judicial no-contact order.

That was one of several matters that have the speaker in hot water. He was also recently exposed for having exchanged sexist emails with Cothren and tolerating racist attitudes from his aide, who has since resigned. Casada and Cothren are also suspected by some of illegal electronic eavesdropping on legislators.

The Democratic Caucus as such has also sought Casada’s resignation, as have several Republican legislators, singly.

• Michael Harris, the controversial recently elected chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party, conducted his first meeting of his executive committee last Thursday at the IBEW Union Hall. Harris, whom some members seek to unseat because of misconduct allegations that caused the suspension of his law license by the Board of Professional Responsibility, agreed to schedule a meeting in the near future to consider the issue in response to a motion from member Sanjeev Memula.

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Politics Politics Feature

The Casada Controversy

Having just spent the better part of four months in the company of the ever-diligent press corps covering the state Capitol in Nashville, I am unsurprised at their effectiveness in turning up truly sensational news about some of the principal figures in state government.

Most recent have been revelations, in the immediate wake of the late 2019 legislative session, concerning Cade Cothren, chief of staff to the Republican Speaker of the House, Glen Casada of Franklin, an elite suburb of Nashville. Actually, Cothren is now the former chief of staff, having been forced to resign after successively (1) being accused of altering an email date with the aim of putting a civil rights activist in jeopardy of the law for violating a judicial ban on contact with the Speaker; (2) having to admit that he used cocaine in an office of the legislature; (3) being exposed as a horndog and serial sexual harasser of interns and other young women.

Glen Casada

Casada himself — and we’re talking about the most powerful single individual on Capitol Hill these days — may well be in jeopardy, since the news regarding Cothren’s sexual marauding included samples of emails in which the Speaker and his young assistant exchanged sexist remarks and predatory speculation about specific women.

Casada had only just come out from under a barrage of unfavorable scrutiny for his having appointed an accused statutory rapist, Congressman David Byrd of Waynesboro, to chair a major education subcommittee, and of offering spirited defense of Byrd for months before finally and reluctantly removing him as chairman. Byrd remains in the legislature, however.

For further background, I’ll take the liberty of reposting an article I wrote for the Nashville Scene back in February (before the forced ending of Byrd’s chairmanship):

“If there is one fundamental difference between the current Speaker of the state House, Glen Casada of Franklin, and his predecessor, Beth Harwell of Nashville, it surely is in the fact that Harwell could be discreet in the extreme — to the point that she had difficulty gaining visibility in her race last year for Governor — whereas Casada is a veritable lightning rod for notoriety.

“This past week alone, Speaker Casada has pulled off a two-fer on the gaffe scale:

“(1) He managed to provide cover for Rep. David Byrd, accused of multiple vintage incidents of sexual misbehavior and freshly under fire for violating the First Amendment rights of students from his district visiting the Capitol.

“(2) On top of that, Casada was involved in a shoving incident with a protester of the continued presence in the Capitol of a bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, pre-Civil War slave-trader, accused architect of a battlefield massacre, and supposed Ku Klux Klan founder.

“Actually, you could probably make that a three-fer, in that Casada was, at the very least complicit, after the second incident, in the shielding by state troopers of his getaway from media members seeking him for comment following an intervening event in the Old Supreme Court Chambers.

“Apropos this latter point, it should be remembered that Casada was an official representative of state government at the recent convention of the Tennessee Press Association at the DoubleTree Hotel, where he welcomed the assembled journalists with an expression of gratitude and encouragement for their commitment to an ‘open and free’ press.

“The degree of Casada’s devotion to free inquiry by the media was further clarified in a portion of his odd, Trump-like response in a front-page comment to The Tennessean regarding the Byrd affair, wherein he said, ‘Unfortunately, the media has irresponsibly taken it upon itself to reinforce the self-inflicted designation of “fake news” while displaying a complete lack of journalistic integrity when needed most.’

“That comment would surely apply as well to the presence of a CNN crew conspicuously situated for hours outside a House hearing room on the second floor of the Cordell Hull Building on Wednesday — lying in wait, as it were, for an elusive Casada.

“As it happens, Casada had already indirectly — perhaps unwittingly — made himself available on a cell-phone video recorded by one Justin Kanew, a former Democratic candidate for Congress in the 7th District. Kanew pressed Casada on his resistance to ‘allegations’ of sexual misconduct against Byrd from several women, who were juveniles at the time, during his service as a teacher and coach in Waynesboro.

“Though as Kanew noted, other Republican office-holders had called for Byrd’s resignation, Casada defended the District 71 legislator (whom he called ‘David’) against the women’s charges, which he described as ‘fake news,’ and expressed his continued confidence in his own appointment of Byrd as chairman of the House Higher Education subcommittee.

“Most controversially, Casada said, in a double non sequitur which would become notorious, that ‘if I was raped, I would move. And hell would have no fury.’

“Casada had all the fury he could ask for this past week. And it ain’t over yet. The David Byrd affair has been re-ignited big-time, and the shoving incident with the Forrest protester is still reverberating, to the point that Capitol observers are openly speculating as to what the next chapter in the Casada saga could be.”

The next chapter for Casada, as it turned out, was having a cup of coffee thrown at him as he was boarding a Capitol elevator by the aforementioned Forrest protestor. That was the origin of the aforementioned judicial ban on further contact with the Speaker by Justin Jones, the protestor.

Just last Thursday, on the last day of this year’s legislative session, a fracas broke out in the House of Representatives when Speaker Casada ordered that the doors of the House chamber be locked to prevent the body’s 26 Democrats from walking out en masse in protest of the Speaker’s refusal to appoint at least one of them to a joint House-Senate conference committee on the last unresolved issue of the session, a bill in favor of block grant control of Medicaid funding in Tennessee. Representative G.A. Hardaway of Memphis was roughed up in the process.

Still later that evening, minutes before final adjournment, one of the women from Waynesboro who had kept a constant vigil on the David Byrd situation stood up in the balcony of the House gallery and began shouting at Casada, demanding that he resign. Cowbells began ringing elsewhere in the balcony in defense of her demand, and, as troopers moved to carry the woman out, Casada began pounding his gavel on the dais as if he could thereby silence the general cacophony and the criticism in the same way that he was used to demanding order in the House itself.

The session shortly ended, but then came the Cothren matter, and the Casada matter itself may well have further resolution.

Several GOP lawmakers have begun, either privately or publicly, to align themselves with efforts to oust Casada from his leadership position. Among them are current Speaker Pro Tem Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville), who said on Wednesday about Casada, “He and I had a talk yesterday. I shared with him my feelings about how I thought it would be better for him to step down. The truth eventually comes out.”

UPDATE: The Tennessee Firearms Association, a pro-gun group with close ties to many Republican legislators, urged Speaker Casada’s ouster in a blistering statement released on Thursday.

The TFA statement follows:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tennessee Firearms Association calls for House Members to remove Glen Casada as Speaker

Nashville, Tennessee – May 9, 2019. Tennessee Firearms Association is calling for members of the Tennessee House of Representatives to vote to remove Glen Casada as Speaker of the Tennessee House based on investigations surrounding the lewd text messaging, the attempted coverup, intentionally false statements to reporters, and related concerns.

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John Harris, Executive Director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, states “The Speaker of the House is the third most powerful position in state government. That office holds unilateral control over most of the significant affairs of the House, such as appointments and removals of committee chairs. It would be an unquestioned breach of the public’s interest and trust to have a person in that office who is now proven to be willfully false in his dealings with news reporters and in responding to matters of significant public interest.” Harris continued, “since the Speaker is selected by the House members, it is ultimately the duty of all House members under their oaths of office and as public stewards to make sure that their selected leader is a person of unquestioned truthfulness, integrity and character.”

News reports from Nashville over the last 48 hours document without dispute that Speaker Glen Casada has been willfully dishonest when he attempted to cover up his involvement in the lewd text messaging and misconduct scandal, some of which involved the use of illegal drugs by the Chief of Staff while in government offices, involving himself and his former Chief of Staff. These reports reveal that Glen Casada knew who released the text messages to Channel 5’s Phil Williams as early as Tuesday of last week but that Casada intentionally questioned the existence and source of the text messages in a subsequent interview with Phil Williams and in a radio spot with Phil Valentine of WWTN 99.7 FM (” Now we know that @GlenCasada lied to me when he made up this vast left-wing conspiracy theory (à la Hillary Clinton) just to cover for this idiot Cothren whom Casada had the bad judgement to make his chief of staff. Time to go.” – Twitter post on May 8, 2019).

Elected members of the Tennessee General Assembly take an oath that is set forth in Article X, Section 2, of the state’s Constitution which contains this sworn declaration: “… I will, in all appointments, vote without favor, affection, partiality, or prejudice; and that I will not propose or assent to any bill, vote or resolution, which shall appear to me injurious to the people, or consent to any act or thing, whatever, that shall have a tendency to lessen or abridge their rights and privileges, as declared by the Constitution of this State.” As such, the members of the General Assembly are sworn to protect the interests of the public and to do so with the highest fiduciary and stewardship principles.

Harris commented “the members of the Tennessee Legislature have an affirmative and fiduciary duty to the people of Tennessee to protect the office of Speaker from being held by people who lack the integrity, truthfulness or trust that must be unquestionably present to serve in that office. Speaker Casada, by his conduct and willful dishonesty in a matter of public interest, has unquestionably shown to the other members and the public that he is unqualified to serve in of the highest offices of public trust in the State.”

The members of the Tennessee Legislature individually and collectively owe a duty to the people of the state of Tennessee to set aside personal friendships, loyalties and partisan partialities that they may have and act now to remove Glen Casada from the office of Speaker and to carefully select a replacement who can be fully and unquestionably trusted by the people of this state in this high office. The public has a right, set forth in Article I, Section 23, of the state’s Constitution to demand of their elected officials that they take action now to restore the office of Speaker by purging its current holder from power and the public should be exercising that right to demand accountability and integrity in all branches of public service.

About the Tennessee Firearms Association. The TFA is a nonprofit Tennessee corporation that is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(4) issue advocacy group. TFA’s focus is on issues that relate the rights and interests of Tennesseans under the 2nd Amendment as well as related interests in hunting, sport shooting, collecting and state sovereignty. TFA has been repeatedly recognized by the Tennessee Legislature for its dedication to protecting the rights and interests of Tennesseans.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Tennessee House Speaker’s Free-Trip Offer to Israel

Does the Tennessee House of Representatives conduct a foreign policy — or have a budget on hand for that purpose?

Alternatively, is the House the beneficiary of hitherto unrevealed funding from a foreign nation and/or its supporters?

Is the state legislature mixing church and state in a manner that would be questionable, according to the Constitution?

A fourth, even more remote, possibility: Is Speaker of the House Glen Casada (R-Franklin) able to spend upwards of a quarter-million dollars of his own money to send a legislative delegation to the state of Israel this coming September, in order to present a resolution of support for that nation?

All these and other questions are relevant to an offer Casada dispatched to each member of the House in legislative mail this past week. The kernel of the offer is expressed in the following printed invitation:

[pdf-1]
And the resolution of support, passed earlier this month is as follows:

[pdf-2]
So, to summarize: If you’re a Tennessee state legislator and want to take a week-long trip to Israel next fall, Speaker Casada has got you covered, to the tune of $2,500. Source of the funding? Unknown at this point.

Late on Friday, Cade Cothern, Casada’s chief of staff, called to say his boss was not the organizer of the trip, that a third party was, and that the trip itself was being offered to legislators as a “state trip,” the one such discounted annual trip that was customary for House members,especially, to take during a given year. Cothern said Casada himself had limited information on the Israel trip and wss probably not going himself.

More information as it is received..

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Small Steps Toward Progress in Nashville

What is it they say? Two steps forward and one step backward? That’s sometimes cited as a formula for the pace of social and governmental advance in this country.

And in this state, for that matter. Those who followed the moves of the Tennessee state government in the wake of last year’s election can certainly see the formula at work. Multiple bills to legalize medical marijuana in the state, one way or the other, have been introduced in the General Assembly, and, while opposition remains and none of the bills are guaranteed to pass, all of them have received serious consideration on the front end.

Governor Bill Lee

Count that as a plus, maybe one of two whole steps. On Capitol Hill in Nashville, the air has cleared to the point, for that matter, that the subject of recreational marijuana can be joked about by members of the legislative leadership, as happened in a recent session of the Senate brass with the press when a caucus chair had to endure teasing by his peers when he claimed that he knew no pot-smokers in his county.

But while legislative attitudes have relaxed on that issue, they have firmed up on another one that seemed to have been given a decent funeral only last year. This is the matter of private school vouchers — or, as newly configured, “education savings accounts.” State Senator Brian Kelsey introduced voucher legislation for something like 16 straight years before opting not to do so last year, perhaps because of feedback from his East Shelby County constituents, many of whom now see vouchers as a threat to the municipal school districts they are paying tax money to maintain. But new Governor Bill Lee likes the idea of what he calls school “choice,” and so does Speaker of the House Glen Casada, who, like Lee, hails from Williamson County, a posh Nashville suburb where the idea of privatizing things traditionally part of the governmental sphere is regarded with equanimity.

So maybe at least one step back. (That could turn into multiple steps if any of the education bills dealing with “choice” gets some traction.) The real advance in this year’s session of the legislature is happening in the domain of civil justice, where — as was noted in a recent Flyer cover story — there have been a plethora of bills with bipartisan support seeking to minimize or ameliorate criminal incarceration and to ease the re-entry of convicted felons into society once they have completed their sentences in a satisfactory manner. Criminal justice reform has always been a concern of the political left. That politicians of the right are now also aboard the reform bandwagon is a genuine step forward. Speculations as to their motivations range from the idea that cost-effectiveness comes with reform, to the fact that welcome additions to the labor force are thereby made possible.

In any case, the partisan nature of support for criminal justice reform is one gift horse that should not be looked in the mouth. This is progress, pure and simple, and only the most flagrant kinds of failure could set it back.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Shelby Legislators in the Thick of It in Nashville

NASHVILLE — As the 2019 session of the Tennessee General Assembly concluded its first full week of activity last Friday, it became obvious that several Shelby County legislators are in the eye of the tiger. District 83 state Representative Mark White, a Republican, is chairman of the House Education Committee and, as such, is already riding that tiger.

During an introductory session of his committee last Wednesday, White scheduled two groups of presenters to testify before the committee. One group was a duo from SCORE (State Collaborative on Reforming Education), the organization founded by former U.S. Senator Bill Frist. The SCORE representatives talked about the group’s efforts to collaborate with the state’s professed educational goals and were able to cite several successes in the state’s educational achievement.

The second group, composed of two representatives from the state Department of Education, got a stormier response from committee members. The subject that dominated discussion was the “debacle” (that has been the operational term) of the state’s failure so far to implement a completely workable testing apparatus for teacher and student assessment under the TNReady formula. TNReady is the state-devised system that replaced the testing system existing beforehand under Common Core, the nationwide eductional initiative whose uniform standards became controversial for a variety of reasons, some of them frankly political.

Questar, the vendor that has the contract under TNReady — one worth $150 million over a projected five-year period — suffered a number of system breakdowns last year that made reliable testing impossible under the online methods adopted and caused the legislature to pass measures late in the 2018 session that, in effect, nullified the validity of the results.

In the course of an intense questioning by Education Committee members, the Department of Education representatives acknowledged that Questar was still due to be paid $26 million of the $30 million pro-rated annual payment called for under the state’s contract with the company and, further, was eligible to make a submission under a re-bidding process undertaken by the department. Moreover, until that process is completed, Questar remains the vendor of record.

That was too much for District 90 state Representative John DeBerry of Memphis, a Democrat. “I want to know why that company wasn’t fired on the spot,” he demanded. “The fact of the matter is that that system failed our children, failed our mission, failed the state of Tennessee. … I watched our teachers, our administrators, our students, including my own grandchild, in tears.”

The fact, explained the Department of Education representatives, was that federal regulations required that a contract be in place and that the testing debacle occurred too late to arrange a replacement company. Hence the new RFP (request for proposal) process.

In any case, chairman White will have his hands full dealing with the issue, as will the Senate Education Committee, chaired by Republican Dolores Gresham of Somerville, with two Shelby Countians, Republican Brian Kelsey and Democrat Raumesh Akbari, serving as co-chairs.

And so will Penny Schwinn, the Texan appointed by Governor Bill Lee to replace the departed Candace McQueen as commissioner of education. Schwinn was deputy education commissioner of education in Texas and — ironically (or appropriately) — experienced first-hand there the job of amending a failed assessment program that paralleled Tennessee’s experience.

• State Representative Antonio Parkinson has figured importantly both in the debates about marijuana legislation of the 2018 session and (so far, indirectly) in the general outcry over House Speaker Glen Casada‘s advice to committee chairs that they have the power to prevent broadcasting committee sessions online over social media. Parkinson was prominent in live-streaming such activities last year and his actions are regarded as one of the catalysts for Casada’s advisory.

The future effect of Casada’s edict is uncertain for several reasons, including the fact that questions have been raised as to whether the policy could be applied to citizen attendees or media members.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1396

Neverending Elvis

“Elvis did not leave the building,” according to Lehigh Valley Live reporter Rudy Miller. “And that’s what got Herbert Stewart into trouble.” Stewart, an Elvis fan from Bethlehem Township, Pennsylvania, filed an insurance claim stating that he’d been burglarized. According to Stewart’s report, the thief took $6,900 worth of Elvis-related memorabilia, including photographs and records. When all of the allegedly missing items were later discovered in Stewart’s home, his attorney issued a report explaining that his client had multiple personalities. In this unfortunate case, the “thief personality” robbed the “victim personality” and stuffed Elvis in the closet.

Cameo Appearance

Memphis made a cameo in this week’s installment of the comic strip Sally Forth. In the strip, Sally and her husband Ted are visiting Ted’s family and sleeping in his childhood bedroom. A poster on the wall advertises an R.E.M. concert in Memphis Sept. 13th, 1986 on “Mudd Island.”

That’s no typo. Mud Island is spelled with two D’s in the original poster.

Believe it!

The URL for The Tennessean‘s story about GOP lawmaker Glen Casada, who wants to round up Syrian refugees in Tennessee and remove them from the state, says almost as much as the story. For much of last week, the content could be accessed at http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2015/11/17/can-you-believe-this-asshole/75936660/.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Cold Comfort

CREDIT: Casada from capitol.tn.gov; Malone by Jackson Baker

By all reports, it was as frosty and weather-worn in Nashville on Monday as it was here in Memphis, but there was enough of a quorum in both the Senate and the House to finish up some pending legislation.

What got the most attention statewide was the final Senate passage of a compromise wine-in-grocery-stores bill, SB 837, which — local referenda permitting — allows wine sales by grocery retailers and whichever convenience stores meet the 1,200-square-foot area requirement, in most cases as early as July 1, 2016. Liquor stores, meanwhile, will be allowed to sell beer and other sundries as early as July 1st of this year.

As Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, a prime mover of the bill, noted, it “allows for the expansion of consumer choice while protecting small businesses that took risks and invested capital under the old system.” In other words, a lot of trade-offs entered into the bill, which now goes to Governor Bill Haslam for signing.

Over in the House on Monday, there was a curious dialogue between state Representative G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis) and state Representative Glen Casada (R-Franklin) over the meaning of an innocuous bill (HB 394 by Hardaway) that allows community gardens in Memphis to flourish independently of sales-tax levies and control by the state Department of Agriculture.

Casada, a well-known advocate and author of bills imposing state authority over local matters, as in his notorious legislation two years ago striking down local anti-discrimination ordinances, went disingenuous on Hardaway.

“Are we in any way telling local government what they can and cannot do? … Are we in any way dictating actions to local government at our state level?” Casada asked, all innocence.

Realizing he was about to be fenced with semantically, Hardaway responded just as disingenuously: “You and I share that concern, that we not dictate to local government, and I’m proud that you’re joining me on this bill, where we are making it clear that local government has the options to proceed on these community gardening efforts, sir.”

A few back-and-forths later, Casada said, “I just want to be clear. So we are, in a few instances, telling these local governments how they will handle these parcels for their gardening projects. Am I correct?”

Hardaway would have none of it. “Quite the opposite. We are telling state government that we want local government to conduct the business of local gardening instead of the state Department of Agriculture.”

Casada insisted on drawing the moral of the story another way, defining Hardaway’s bill not as the sponsor himself saw it — as a measure freeing local vegetable gardens from state control — but as yet another case in which the state can tell localities “how they will or will not” do things. “From time to time we do dictate to local government … and this is a good bill,” he concluded.

That prompted Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner of Nashville to confer mock praise on Casada for his consistency in wanting to “bring big government to press down on local government.”

In any case, the bill passed with near unanimity, something of a unique instance in which, depending on who’s describing it, a bill is said to be both a defense of local autonomy and the very opposite of that concept, a reinforcement of overriding state control.

That’s Nashville for you.   

   

• When Shelby County Commission Chairman James Harvey dropped out of the race for county mayor at last week’s withdrawal deadline, saving his marbles (and his long-shot candidacy) for a run at city mayor in 2015, he left behind what is going to be a seriously contested three-way Democratic primary for the leadership of county government:

County Commissioner/U of M Law Professor Steve Mulroy, aided by experienced and connected campaign adviser David Upton, will be everywhere at once with a carefully articulated message for rank-and-file Democrats. The Rev. Kenneth Whalum may not be as ubiquitous, but he has a potentially potent fan base developed during years of a highly visible ministry and an outspoken school board presence.

Both will have to make their case against a seasoned candidate who has earned a large and loyal cadre of supporters from her years in public life and from campaigns in years past. This is Deidre Malone, a well-known public relations consultant and former two-term county commissioner who ran hard in the Democratic primary for county mayor four years ago, losing out to Joe Ford, a former commission colleague who had the advantage of running from a position as interim mayor.

Appearing on Wednesday of last week before a packed meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club at Coletta’s on Stage Road, Malone cited a detailed list of mainstream Democratic positions on issues and looked past her Democratic rivals to voice a resounding challenge to incumbent Republican Mayor Mark Luttrell, challenging his bona fides as a crossover politician and as a leader.

Making an effort to debunk the incumbent mayor’s mainstream status, Malone disparaged Luttrell’s claims to have been a regular participant in meetings of the post-school-merger Transition Planning Commission (“Leadership is not sitting in a meeting”) and to have supported pre-K efforts (“When he had an opportunity for the first county pre-K initiative … he came out against it.”).

Leadership, said Malone, means, among other things, having an opinion: “Sometimes it’s comfortable, sometimes it’s not, but leadership is making that opinion known, so people will know where you stand. So I’m going to ask you today, Democrats here in Germantown and across Shelby County, for your vote. … I’m excited about the primary, but more excited about the opportunity to represent the Democratic Party in general, because he [Luttrell] knows that I’m coming, and he knows that I’m going to be nothing nice.”

Before she spoke, her campaign manager, Randa Spears, took a straw vote of the attendees, an exercise Spears repeated after Malone’s speech. The results in both cases showed Malone hovering around the number 20, with her opponents in single digits — the chief difference between the two votes being that significant numbers of votes for Mulroy (whom Malone seemingly regards as her chief opponent) had — according to the tabulation, at least — shifted over to “undecided.”

Granted, Malone’s cadres were out for the event, and those of Mulroy and Whalum, for the most part, were not, and the ad hoc poll could by no means be regarded as scientific. The fact remains that Malone, a well-known African-American public figure going into her second run for county mayor, was able to demonstrate some core support among a group of predominantly white Democrats meeting out east, and that fact should tell some kind of tale to her opponents.

• Another change in the May 6th primary picture for countywide offices was the Shelby County Election Commission’s decision last week to overrule the previous disqualification of Martavius Jones, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the new District 10 county commission seat, because of a disallowed signature on his filing petition.

That creates a legitimate two-way race between Reginald Milton and Jones, with political newcomer Jake Brown likely to function as a spoiler (though Brown may have a rosier outlook, seeing a split between Milton and Jones as giving him a real chance).