Biden Administration to End Omicron Travel Restrictions on African Countries
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Saturday, December 25, 2021
Friday, December 24, 2021
Tennessee House committee unveils state House legislative map
By Jon Styf | The Center Square Dec 17, 2021 – The Tennessee House Select Committee on Redistricting made public Friday its plan for new state House legislative districts.
The committee heard several publicly submitted plans and responses, along with the House Democrats’ plan, during Friday's meeting before committee Vice Chair Rep. Pat Marsh, R-Shelbyville, introduced the committee's plan.
The House must approve the plan during the General Assembly's upcoming legislative session, which begins in January, before sending the plan onto the Tennessee Senate and Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.
“I appreciate members of the first-ever bipartisan Select Committee on Redistricting for their thorough efforts in formulating a fair and constitutional plan, representing the distinctive voice of all Tennesseans,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton tweeted about the process. “Our committee effectively engaged the public as part of a months-long open and inclusive process that resulted in the first House proposal ever released before the start of a new legislative session. I look forward to continued engagement from both the public and our members as this proposal travels through an equally transparent House committee process.”
The committee’s map shows 30 counties would be split between districts, while seven districts would include a pair of incumbents based on current addresses listed for members of the House.
The map also would create eight districts with no incumbents.
Ethics Counsel Doug Himes presented the responses to the district plans, including a response to the Democrats’ plan, which was presented by Rep. Bob Freeman, D-Nashville. Freeman took exception to the analysis Himes presented because several House members have announced they will not be running for reelection while two others have moved from the home listed in the legislative directory.
“House Republicans have adopted an unconstitutional, racially and politically gerrymandered map that minimizes minority voting strength and splits dozens of communities statewide,” Tennessee Senate Democrats tweeted. “Mostly in service of petty personal grievances. And the Senate majority hasn’t released a map.”
One of the proposed districts that includes two incumbents is that of Rep. London Lamar, D-Memphis, and Rep. Torrey Harris, D-Memphis.
“I’m sad to report that [Tennessee Republicans have] proposed a map that will eliminate [Harris'] district and draw him into my district 91. It’s unfortunate that your two youngest representatives are being pitted against each other while it’s possible to maintain all our districts,” Lamar tweeted. “I will continue to advocate to maintain or districts until we vote on the map when session resumes in January. We don’t want to cut out Tennessee’s next generation of leaders.”
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Thursday, December 23, 2021
Councilman Freddie O'Connell to be Garbage Man Freddie.
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Curbside recycling pickup suspended. I would like to know if our recyclables were going to the landfill anyway.
I don't know, but I suspect Nashville's recycling is wishcycling. If I could get answers, I would want to know how much it costs to dispose of a ton of garbage in a landfill. I would want to know how much we have to pay to get someone to take a ton of our recyclables. What is the real net difference? Is landfilling cheaper than recycling? I don't know. Do our recyclables often end up in the landfill anyway? If so, how often? I would like to know. I know we do pay for companies to take our recyclables. At one time, it is my understanding, a company paid us for our recyclables.
The reason I suspect that our recycling program may be a scam and simply wishcycling is because it often is in other places. A report out of Seattle Washington says over 2000 tops of paper collected as recyclables were landfilled. This is not that uncommon. One sees stories like this from all across the nation. The problem is that China has, for the most part, stopped accepting plastics and paper for recycling and China was the world's number one customer for them.
In an article appearing in The Huffington Post, The Dirty Truth Is Your Recycling May Actually Go To Landfills, this situation of recyclable actually not being recycled is reported. Similar stories have appeared in The New York Times and other major publications.
This week, The Tennessean reports, Nashville suspends recycling pickup services as trash collection woes sap Metro resources. The article says that Metro recycling trucks and staff are being reassigned to trash collection due to growing trash collection delays caused by staffing and fleet issues. The article explains how we got in such a mess that the garbage is not being collected. The article says this is a temporary suspension of the curbside pickup but gives no clue as to how long it may be before curbside is resumed.
The article list drop-off recycling locations where one may take their recyclables. I won't be doing so. I need some assurances that when collected as recyclables, they will not be landfilled anyway. And, I need assurances that if they are recycled that it is worth my gas money and time to do it. I am civic-minded and don't mind doing something for the public good, but my time is valuable. If it takes me three gallons of gas a week and three hours of my time to recycle and only saves the city $3 it is not a wise use of my time.
I am not opposed to recycling I just wanted it to be a rational thing to do. A long time ago before Metro had curbside recycling I volunteered many a Saturday morning at a recycling drop-off site, helping people dispose of their recyclables and making sure they were properly sorted and did not contaminate the whole batch. I do recycle now. I also compost and a lot of my paper waste gets composted instead of placed in the recycle bin. I like to garden and am now retired and have this year stepped up my gardening game. With time to do it, I started composting my kitchen waste, and yard waste. Recently, I added paper waste. The worms seem to really like cardboard. (If interested in composting see this video: How to compost.)
I support recycling if it makes sense. I will do it myself if it makes sense to me. I will support the city's recycling program if convinced it makes economic sense for the city and is not all for show and nothing more than an exercise to make people simply feel virtuous.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2021
Student loan forgiveness is the poor subsidizing the wealthy. How is that fair?
by Rod Williams, Dec. 22, 2021 - I am convinced that liberals only pretend to care about poor people. The cynical side of me thinks they want to keep poor people poor so they will keep voting Democrat. One has to look no further than the various welfare programs to see how their affect it to keep poor people poor. And inflation, which hits those with less disposable income the hardest helps keep poor people trapped in poverty. And an overtaxed and overregulated economy is less dynamic and provides less opportunity for people to pull themselves out of poverty.
Maybe, however, Democrats really do love poor people and that is why they favor policies that keep people poor and create more poor people.
When it comes to student loan forgiveness, there is nothing that could be more unfair to poor people.
Median career earnings for a bachelor’s degree holder are $1.28 million in 2018 dollars. ... At the median, career earnings for a bachelor’s degree graduate are more than twice as high as for someone with only a high school diploma or GED, roughly 70 percent higher than for someone with some college but no degree, and more than 45 percent higher than for someone with an associate degree. (link)
With student debt forgiveness the person with only a high school education is taxed to help someone who has a college education. How is that fair? How can any fair-minded person support such a policy?
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House redistricting to eliminate five Democratic incumbents in urban Tennessee. Dems freak out.
by Yue Stella Yu, The Tennessean, Dec. 17,2021 -Tennessee House Redistricting Committee on Friday unveiled — and voted to advance — its own draft state House map that would eliminate five Democratic incumbents who face re-election in 2022.
The plan, if approved by the legislature, would further solidify the Republican supermajority in the General Assembly and diminish Democratic influence.
The map, presented for the first time in public and immediately passed by the committee Friday, would lump nine Democratic incumbents in urban areas such as Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis in four districts.
Six Republicans are paired together under the new district lines, .... House Democratic Caucus Chairman Vincent Dixie, D-Nashville, said the redistricting process reflects Republicans' efforts to "rig" the elections. ... most partisan and racially motivated process that I've been involved in since I have been in the legislature," Dixie said. ...
It preserves 13 majority-minority districts statewide ... In Nashville, Rep. John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, and Rep. Jason Potts, D-Nashville, are drawn into House District 52, represented by Rep. Mike Stewart, D-Nashville. Clemmons represents House District 55, which covers west Davidson County. Potts is not up for re-election in 2022, leaving Clemmons and Stewart potential competitors. (read it all)
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Tennessee's newly drawn congressional district boundaries will be revealed next month
Republican reps keep quiet on Nashville's redistricting future
... U.S. Rep. Mark Green has gone on the record expressing his opposition to dividing Nashville among multiple Republican House members.
.... State Rep. Bob Freeman, D-Nashville, who serves on the House redistricting committee, tells Axios the 5th district is likely to be divided among Republicans.
... Green was quoted in the Nashville Post in September calling the concept of an 8-1 map "greedy" and "a bad idea." He warned splitting Nashville and its liberal voters into suburban districts could backfire in future election cycles.
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Monday, December 20, 2021
Mayor’s Aide Courtney Pogue on Frustrations, Priorities for Nashville Neighborhoods
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| Courtney Pogue |
He says the city does not really have a community development strategy for the city. The city follows the lead of the Chamber and focuses on big deals but there has been no focus on small business development.
I am not so sure, the city should even be steering development. We should avoid overtaxing businesses so they will want to open or expand in Nashville, we should provide good police protection so businesses can safely function and provide quality education so we have a good workforce and the city should do the other things that constitute good governance and then essentially let the market determine who gets the grocery stores.
This is an interesting article. I think it is rare to find someone who serves at the pleasure of the mayor be so blunt in what amounts to criticism of his boss. To read the article follow this link.
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Sunday, December 19, 2021
Tennessee ranked 3rd for election integrity.
From Heritage. Org, Dec. 19, 2021- Every citizen's vote is sacred. The vote is how we guarantee that our government remains of the people, by the people, and for the people. Americans need and deserve elections that they can trust. Legitimate voters should be able to vote in privacy without being harassed, secure in the knowledge that their vote will not be lost, stolen, altered, or negated by a vote cast by an illegitimate voter. Americans need and deserve a transparent system in which fraud can be easily detected and false allegations of fraud can be easily dispelled. Americans need and deserve a system in which it is easy to vote and hard to cheat.
In order to help voters, state legislators, election officials, and all Americans who are interested in ensuring a fair and secure election process, The Heritage Foundation has published this Election Integrity Scorecard, which compares the election laws and regulations of each state and the District of Columbia that affect the security and integrity of the process to the Foundation's best-practices recommendations.
....
In 2012, the Pew Foundation released a report on the voter registration systems maintained by the states. The report found that:
- Approximately 24 million—one in every eight—voter registrations were either no longer valid or significantly inaccurate.
- More than 1.8 million deceased individuals were listed as voters.
- Approximately 2.75 million individuals were registered in more than one state.
In 2020, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) released a similar report, Critical Condition: American Voter Rolls Filled with Errors, Dead Voters, and Duplicate Registrations, using an even bigger database of voter registration and voter history information obtained from 42 states covering the 2016 and 2018 elections. Like GAI, PILF supplemented the state registration information by using other commercial and government databases such as credit agencies and the Social Security Administration’s Master Death Index to obtain unique identifiers and sift out as many “false positives” as possible when comparing the data.
PILF’s comparison of the state data, also using a conservative matching program, revealed that:
- 8,360 individuals registered and voted in two different states during the 2018 election.
- Votes were recorded for 7,890 deceased individuals in the 2016 election and 6,718 deceased individuals in the 2018 election.
- 43,760 individuals who registered more than once at the same address in the same state voted twice in the 2016 election, and 37,889 individuals registered more than once at the same address cast two votes in the 2018 election. Thousands of these duplicate votes were cast using mail-in or absentee ballots.
- 5,500 individuals registered at two different addresses in the same state and voted twice in the 2018 election.
- Votes were recorded in the 2018 election for 34,000 individuals who were registered at nonresidential, commercial addresses such as gas stations, casinos, and restaurants.
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