Tag: Tennessee General Assembly

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (March 5, 2015)

Representative Butt. I love saying that out loud in my best Cartman voice from South Park. It would be a great name for a band. Unfortunately, it’s the name of one Sheila Butt, a Republican Tennessee lawmaker who recently posted on Facebook that she thinks there should be an “NAAWP.” This was in response to an open letter from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil liberties organization in the United States, urging 2016 GOP candidates to engage Muslim voters and reject Islamophobia. Now, you might automatically assume that the W in her imaginary dream organization stands for “white,” just like it did years ago when former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke actually founded a group named NAAWP. But Butt, who at first wouldn’t even offer an explanation of the post, eventually stated publicly that that was not the case. She said it stood for “National Association for the Advancement of Western Peoples.”

Sheila Butt

Is she talking about Californians? Cowboys? Or is she trying to say we need to advance Western people, like real Americans versus Asian and Middle Eastern people? She obviously thinks the latter is acceptable. That has been her “go to” response as she explains her remarks while basically running down hallways from reporters and pretending to be talking on her cell phone. She shoos them away by acting like she’s too busy to talk with them and too in demand and too important to comment on this issue that she thinks liberals have jumped on because Christians don’t get a fair shake in the good ol’ U.S. of A. and that the liberal media is just making a story out of nothing.

But she pretty swiftly took down the Facebook post. It wasn’t even on her own page, but on the page of a Muslim-hating organization called dailyrollcall.com, which, if you’ve never seen, you simply must. A Tennessee woman named Cathy Hinners writes it, and it is really, really something. She’s like a dog with rabies and a computer. I had never heard of it, so I took a look when the issue of us needing an NAAWP came up. I don’t know where this woman came from (by that I mean, which planet), but she is apparently so obsessed with being anti-Muslim that she has dedicated her entire life to it. But I digress.

Once Butt got the Facebook post down, she replaced it with, “We need groups that will stand for Christians and our Western culture. We don’t have groups dedicated to speaking on our behalf.”

Really? Have you looked around at your own political party and its Tea Party offshoot? And what makes you think all people living in “Western culture” are Christians? Do you also have something against Jews?

One of the things I’m fascinated with regarding this entire issue is the school of thought that if there is a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, why would it be racist for there to be a National Association for the Advancement of White People?

The last time I checked, not all that many white people were captured on a different continents, packed into ships like animals, separated from their families, paraded around naked in front of crowds, bought, sold, traded, beaten, forced to drink from separate water fountains, denied the right to vote, denied education, and other basic human rights. Of course, there needed to be, and still needs to be, an NAACP. And there is no need for an NAAWP — whether the “W” stands for white or western. There’s no way Representative Butt or anyone else can make that notion make sense.

There are still cities in this country where high schools have separate proms for white students and black students. To this day, there are country clubs right here in Memphis, Tennessee, that do not allow any members other than white people. They hide behind that mask of it being a “private club,” and, yes, in the year 2015, will not allow an African American, Asian, or Jewish person to have a membership. Representative Butt, I think they may just be standing up for your Christian/Western values, so you might have a little less to worry about than you think.

When are people going to learn a) that if you are an elected official, you are under a microscope and anything you say publicly is fair game for the kind of controversy you’ve stirred up? This is not the liberal media trying to make a story out of nothing; and b) that you don’t need to be posting this kind of crap on social media.

Social media posts never go away. You can remove your heinous comments once you get caught, but that doesn’t matter. There’s a little thing called copy and paste and those comments are out there forever. If you have any spine at all, just own up to the blunder and apologize — unless, that is, you still don’t think you did anything wrong, which I suspect is the case. And it looks like you have plenty of Butt fans in your party enough, at least, that they are going to, er, back you.

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Opinion Viewpoint

The 75 Percent Rule

Remember that time when state representative and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) board member Curry Todd submitted a bill to aid farmers and school children by creating an extra hour of sunlight? How about that time when he was living rent free in a lobbyist’s home? Or when he killed the Influence Disclosure Act, a measure that would have required lawmakers to acknowledge the influence of outside groups on public policy?

Let’s face it, this West Tennessee representative isn’t the sharpest nor is he the most ethical knife in the drawer. Even if his most recent proposal doesn’t overturn any natural laws, like inertia or gravity, HB241 displays Todd’s usual lack of seriousness. If passed, Todd’s bill will kill good legislation that helps fund our public defender system and has served Tennesseans well for 23 years. The proposed legislation, in the long run, benefits nobody but Todd’s fellow ALEC member, the Corrections Corporation of America, a private company that operates three of Tennessee’s 14 prisons.

I’m not suggesting that ALEC was involved in crafting this bill, but it wasn’t Todd. And no matter who’s responsible for drafting the language, who do you think wins when the state decides to abandon even the pretense of parity and stacks the deck in favor of the prosecution? Here’s a hint: not the citizens of Tennessee.

If passed, HB241 would undo T.C.A. 16-2-518, a regulatory measure that controls disparity in the funding of prosecutors and public defenders. Sometimes called the “75 percent rule,” T.C.A. 16-2-518 ensures that whatever money is budgeted for prosecutors must be matched at a 75 percent level for public defenders. In simple terms, if the county gives District Attorney Amy Weirich’s office $100, they must give the public defender’s office $75.

Thirty years ago, a mere decade before the creation of T.C.A. 16-2-518, fewer than 350,000 Americans were in prison. By the turn of the 21st century, that number ballooned to more than 2.3 million. That breaks down to about one of every 100 Americans being in jail. If you extend the figure to include people on probation or parole, the number drops to a shocking one in 31 Americans. More than 80 percent of the people accused of committing a crime qualify for court-appointed defense. Study after study has documented how excessive caseloads have compromised the constitutional right to counsel and clogged the judicial system. To quote former FBI Director William Sessions, America’s public defense systems “should be a source of great embarrassment for all of us.”

Mass-incarceration is expensive and that condition will only be exacerbated by eliminating the 75 percent rule. Tennessee spends more than $1 million a day to house the state’s prisoners. A recent study from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU shows that, in addition to being expensive, the United States has now imprisoned so many people that we’ve entered into a period of diminishing returns. Can there be any doubt that a deliberate weakening of Tennessee’s public defender systems will result in more convictions and longer sentences?

Eliminating the 75 percent rule will also disproportionately impact the state’s larger, urban defender systems, such as the one in Shelby County, which is among the nation’s oldest. The local defender’s office has a reputation for developing services that are more effective and less expensive than incarceration, such as the award-winning Jericho program, a model prison-diversion program that targets inmates with severe and persistent mental illness. The mentally ill are likely to be incarcerated two to five times longer than the average inmate, and have an average recidivism rate of 80 percent. The Jericho program has cut the repeat offender rate for the mentally ill in half.

Tennessee could reduce its incarceration and recidivism rate even further if, instead of embracing only the most retrograde policies, it looked to effective and cost-saving reforms enacted by neighboring states like Kentucky and Georgia. But that doesn’t seem likely.

The legislature already sent a powerful — and pointless — message to poor people in Tennessee when it passed a law requiring citizens who need public assistance to undergo drug testing, a program that has now been proven to be a major waste of time and resources. Over the past six months, 16,000 Tennesseans have been drug-tested. The total number of those testing positive: 37.

And speaking of pointless, expensive legislation: Todd’s bill revoking the 75 percent rule may well result in increased taxes, as financial responsibilities are shifted to meet needs that will not go away. This measure will end up costing Tennesseans more money without the perceived benefit of making anybody more secure.

Remember that time when Todd championed a good piece of legislation that helps to move Tennessee forward? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Shelby GOP Legislators Express Doubts About “Insure Tennessee”

CREDIT: JB

JB

State Reps. Ron Lollar and Jim Coley meet with members of the Republican Women of Purpose.

For what it’s worth, Governor Bill Haslam’s “Insure Tennessee” plan for Medicaid (TennCare) expansion may not go down that well with Republican legislators from Shelby County. Speaking at a luncheon meeting of the Republican Women of Purpose on Wednesday at the ballroom of Southwind TPC, several of them weighed in on the matter.

Predictably, perhaps, state Senator Brian Kelsey, an opponent of Medicaid expansion per se,  insisted Republicans needed to “shrink the size of government., not…expand the size of government” and cast doubt as to whether the federal government would or the state Hospital Association could pay its pledged share in two years’ time.

State Rep. Jim Coley lamented the plan’s “dependence on the federal government” and said he “hope[d] to persuade the Governor this is not the most appropriate plan.”

State Rep. Steve McManus said it might not be so easy to opt out of the plan after two years as Haslam suggests. He contends that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services might withhold Medicaid funds entirely as retribution. “It’s like Hotel California,” he said, meaning that once you check into the plan, you can never leave.

State Rep. Curry Todd prophesied “a lot of bloodletting” in the special session regarding the plan, scheduled to begin February 2.

Coley and Todd were alarmed about the prospect of both a state and a federal gasoline tax and implied criticism of Senator Bob Corker for proposing the latter.

*On other matters, state Rep. Ron Lollar said he was “concerned about our leadership welcoming President Obama to Knoxville on Friday” and further concerned “about what we’re buying into” as a result. While most of the legislators expressed reservations about Common Core, state Rep. Mark White made a point of saying he was open-minded on the subject, that it was important to assert educational standards.

*Another issue brought up by the legislators — especially Kelsey and White – was the possibility of de-annexation legislation. Southwind has just been annexed by Memphis. (On Thursday, incidentally, a Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that Chancellor Jim Kyle, who recently denied a restraining order on the annexation, should not have heard the case because of leftover litigation he was still handling on behalf of the City of Memphis.)

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News News Blog

New Bill Would Get Wine In Grocery Stores By Summer

Wine could be on grocery store shelves as soon as this summer, if one Tennessee representative has his way. On Monday, Representative Bo Mitchell (D-Nashville) filed a bill to shorten the timeframe by one year for the implementation of wine sales in grocery stores.

HB2011 would move the sale date up from the previously approved date of summer 2016. When the “wine in grocery stores” bill was passed by the Tennessee General Assembly last year, it allowed liquor stores, which have lobbied against wine sales in retail shops, to begin selling non-alcohol and low-alcohol products immediately. But the bill pushed wine sales in grocery stores to 2016, contingent on the measure passing individual referendums in Tennessee cities. That referendum passed in Memphis in November.

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News News Blog

Federal Highway Trust Fund Shortfall Slows Local Road Projects

Southbound traffic on I-55 near Crump Boulevard

  • TDOT
  • Southbound traffic on I-55 near Crump Boulevard

Two Shelby County highway projects — improvements to the Crump interchange on I-55 and improvements to State Route-4 from the Mississippi state line to south of Shelby Drive — have been delayed to fiscal year 2016. Both Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) projects were originally scheduled for delivery in fiscal year 2015.

Revenues in the federal highway trust fund have fallen short of the expenditures authorized by the U.S. Congress. And that has caused the TDOT to have to delay highway projects across the state. TDOT has been transferring some general funds to support projects, but a letter from TDOT Commissioner John C. Schroer to the Tennessee General Assembly calls that practice “not sustainable.”

Twelve state projects ready for construction totaling $177 million and 21 projects ready for right-of-way acquisition totaling $217 million have been shifted to fiscal year 2016.

“While these projects are only delayed and not cancelled, they represent almost $400 million in transportation investments and could be helping to modernize our transportation network and reducing congestion and making Tennessee a more attractive destination for economic expansion,” reads Schroer’s letter.

TDOT has said the Crump interchange on I-55 is “structurally deficient, out of date, and creates multiple safety and efficiency problems.”

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Behind the Curve

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States basically threw in its chips on the issue of gay marriage. By choosing not to hear arguments from plaintiffs contesting Appeals Courts’ rulings that threw out several state gay-marriage bans, it effectively legalized gay marriage in 30 states. Tennessee’s gay-marriage case, now before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, has not yet been officially decided, but the writing is on the wall, and it’s easy to read. Eventually, Tennessee will be dragged, kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Get the rice ready, Gary.

Similarly, 23 states have now moved to allow the sale of medical marijuana, and several more are considering it. Those states that have legalized pot and are regulating its sale and distribution are now reaping large tax and tourism revenues, a financial boon for cash-strapped state budgets. Tennessee is still just saying no, dudes.

And as of August 2014, 23 states have instituted a minimum-wage higher than the $7.25-an-hour rate mandated by federal law. Almost without exception, the economies of those states have benefitted, as their working-class citizens spend more on goods and services. The price of a fast-food cheeseburger has not gone through the roof. People are not getting laid off. The sky hasn’t fallen. In Tennessee? Well, apparently, we’re just going to keep raising sales taxes, the most-regressive possible approach to “fixing” the economy.

In fact, Tennessee is going backward as fast as our in-bred legislators can take us. The state constitutional amendments on the November ballot are a perfect example. Amendment 1 basically gives carte blanche to the General Assembly to craft any anti-abortion measures it wants to, even extending to cases where the mother’s life is being endangered. If passed, Amendment 1 will put a medical and moral decision that should be made by a woman and her doctor under the purview of the backwoods hillbillies in Nashville. Dr. Bubba, will see you now, ma’am.

Amendment 2 gives that same bunch of loons the power to approve the appointment of our state’s judges. Another great idea.

Amendment 3 permanently bans any state income or payroll tax. Which means continued higher sales taxes — and more folks driving to Mississippi and Arkansas to shop. More smart thinking.

It’s clear that our intrepid legislators are working hard to ensure that as the rest of the country passes progressive economic and social legislation that benefits the working class and appeals to young people — and the businesses that want to employ them — Tennessee stays firmly in the closet — and in the dark.

We’re not just behind the curve. We’re behind the eight ball.

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Editorial Opinion

Keeping Hospitals Alive

The pending shut-down of Crittenden Regional Hospital in West Memphis, which followed several months of highly publicized financial crisis, should sound the alert for medical authorities in Memphis — especially at Regional One Health (formerly known as The Med), which will inherit much of the now stranded patient load at the expired hospital.

The loss of Crittenden Regional and the resultant further shift of the medical burden to Regional One highlights once again still unresolved questions of the degree to which both Arkansas and Mississippi should compensate the Memphis facility for taking care of underprivileged patients from those states who seek medical assistance on our side of the state line.

And the closing of the facility in Tennesssee’s neighboring state should stand as both a warning and a reproach to Governor Bill Haslam and the Tennessee General Assembly — the latter for its callous indifference to the needs of our state’s stressed and financially challenged hospitals, as evidenced in the Republican-dominated legislature’s persistent refusal to consider Medicaid expansion funds available through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and the former for letting himself be cowed into acquiescing in that refusal.

As Tennessee law now stands, the General Assembly having passed legislation in last year’s session giving itself de facto veto power over any future decisions Haslam might make on the issue, the governor’s hands are more or less tied. But he had ample opportunity before that point, when hospital administrators all over the state were begging him for financial relief, to avail himself of Medicaid expansion funds. He should have accepted the funds, even at the potential cost of inviting threats to his reelection. No profile in courage there, Gov.

It is true, of course, that Crittenden, like other public hospitals in Arkansas, had the benefit of Medicaid expansion funds, thanks to the fact that the state’s governor, Mike Beebe, is a Democrat, like the president, and therefore is not bound to an ideology of refusal that too many Republicans, for purely political reasons, are bound to. That fact alone kept the hospital alive for a season or two. But a pair of serious fires at the facility, one as recently as this year, pushed the hospital over the fiscal cliff.

There are numerous hospitals in Tennessee that are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and, failing the kind of unforeseen accident that happened in Crittenden, could easily survive with a fair share of the $2 billion that our state officials have opted to deny them.

Back to Arkansas: Another Democrat, U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, is running for reelection with a campaign that features public speeches on behalf of Obamacare/Medicaid expansion (both of which, however, he, rather too cautiously, calls by euphemistic names), pointing out that he himself was able to survive a bout with cancer in the 1990s, despite the fact that his insurance company back then declined to pay for the expensive treatment he required, which he then had to pay for out of pocket.

Obamacare, Pryor notes, prevents insurors from doing that to others. It can help keep hospitals alive, too.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

“Open Carry” Gun Bill Killed

Governor Haslam

  • Governor Haslam

The state House of Representatives — supported, it would seem, by the Haslam administration — acted decisively on Monday of this last week of the 2014 legislative session to reverse the action of the state Senate, week before last, in passing an open-carry gun bill.

The bill, which the Senate had approved by a 25-2 vote, was negated by an equally lopsided vote of 10-1 by the House Finance Subcommittee, which had the duty of screening it for the full Finance Committee, where approval was necessary to secure a floor vote for the bill.

That the bill’s defeat in the Finance subcommittee was fore-ordained was first reported last week in a Flyer article quoting Deputy House Speaker Steve McDaniel (R-Parker’s Crossroads).

McDaniel, a subcommittee member, confided the prevalent attitude on the subcommittee that, with action on the state budget already complete, there was no room to wedge in a new bill with a “fiscal note” (i.e., price tag) of $100,000.

That fiscal note had been stripped from the Senate version of the bill by Senate sponsor Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet), but had been re-attached to the House version on the advice of Commissioner Bill Gibbons of the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security, who adjudged the sum to be necessary to pay for revising the language of state carry permits to accommodate the changed gun-carry picture.

While the open-carry bill would let anyone carry anywhere, so long as their weapon was visible, permits would still be necessary for anyone wishing to carry a concealed weapon.

The open-carry bill’s House sponsor, Micha Van Hass (R-Jonesborough) fumed that the relatively modest fiscal note was unnecessary, little more than a symbolic fig leaf.

And indeed it was, essentially a cover for the administration’s apparent determination to abort the bill in the House, a chamber whose Speaker, Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) and membership are far more responsive to Haslam’s wishes than the Senate, where Speaker Ron Ramsey, the state’s Lieutenant Governor, holds sway in his own right.

As one instance among many, Ramsey, memorably, had imposed the abolition of teachers’ collective bargaining on a reluctant governor and House speaker in 2011.

In this case, Ramsey had merely shifted from his own previously expressed philosophical doubts on open-carry to a position of laissez-faire, and he himself, along with most of his membership, went along with the Senate bill more or less spontaneously, whether motivated by a militant campaign on its behalf by the Tennessee Firearms Association or not.

In the House, things were otherwise. Van Hass was able to reprise Senator Beavers’ prior action in stripping away the fiscal note, but the bill, even with that shield discarded, went down to the aforesaid lopsided defeat in the House subcommittee. So overwhelming was the vote that Van Hass, a Tea Party conservative with numerous concerns about government restrictions, had to admit that the bill’s rejection had been “fair and square.”

The outcome was regarded as a demonstration that Governor Haslam, a temperamental moderate who operates with a relatively loose rein, can impose a brake on what he regards as legislative excess — as he did late in the session of 2013 when he caused the relatively modest school-voucher bill he had approved to be withdrawn, rather than open it up to significant expansions sought by state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and others.

The Governor also acted decisively in the 2013 session by bringing himself to make a rare veto of the so-called “Ag Gag” bill, widely regarded as a measure to suppress media investigation of cruelty to animals. A modestly revised version of that bill has been passed by both chambers of the legislature, however, and Haslam is expected to sign the new version into law.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Key GOP Leader Prophesies Gun-Carry Bill Will Be Deep-Sixed

Deputy House Speaker Steve McDaniel

  • Deputy House Speaker Steve McDaniel

NASHVILLE — The state Department of Safety and Homeland Security has advised that a “fiscal note” in the amount of at least $100,000 — to cover the costs of re-writing existing concealed-carry permits — must be included in the open-carry gun bill (SB2424;HB2409) that passed the state Senate on Tuesday by an overwhelming vote of 25-2.

And, even though the Senate version’s sponsor, Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet) managed to secure an amendment striking the fiscal-note requirement before the vote in that chamber, the House version still contains the provision, and indications are that it will remain on the bill.

That means, according to a key Republican member of the House Finance, Ways and Means Committee, which will take up the bill on Monday, that the bill, which would allow all Tennesseans to carry weapons on their persons so long as they aren’t concealed, is probably doomed.

“The budget we’re working with makes no allowance for sums like that,” said veteran state Rep. Steve McDaniel (R- Parker’s Crossroads), who doubles as Deputy Speaker of the House.

McDaniel said he doubted that the bill would ever reach the floor for a House vote as the legislature steams toward a conclusion early next week. “It’ll never get out of House Finance,” predicted McDaniel, who said emphatically that he was personally disinclined to vote for the measure.

“Hell, no!” said McDaniel, who — clearly relating his statement to the home base of his questioner — said that, if the measure passed, “Every gang-banger in Memphis will end up packing. Can you imagine?”

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Memphis Gaydar News

Brian Kelsey Sponsors Anti-Gay Bill

Brian Kelsey

  • Brian Kelsey

Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown is sponsoring a bill in the Tennessee General Assembly aimed at protecting religious organizations that choose to deny services in conjunction with a civil union, domestic partnership, or gay marriage.

Kelsey’s SB2566 “permits persons and religious or denominational organizations, based on sincere religious belief, to refuse to provide services or goods in furtherance of a civil union, domestic partnership, or marriage not recognized by the Tennessee Constitution.” It’s being co-sponsored in the House by Representative Bill Dunn of Knoxville.

It’s not clear how far religious organizations could take this, if passed. But a post on the Tennessee Equality Project’s website poses the question of whether or not medical institutions run by religious organizations could refuse medical services to someone in a same-sex relationship.

The bill was filed on February 5th, and so far, there has been no further movement with the bill.