November 30, 2006

What. He. Said.

I ask, beg, urge, beseech, implore and even demand that you go read Darren Duvall's excellent response to the whole kerfluffle over a quote in yesterday's Tennessean attributed to Lipscomb University professor Dr. Lee Camp. Duvall, a self-styled "simple country radiologist" from Longview, Texas, gets to the heart of the issue of conflict between Christians and Muslims, and the more than a thousand years of history that drives it:

While it's important that we recongnize what Christians have done in the past, having a discussion with a Muslim about which religion has been the most violent or aggressive is patently beside the point. If you want to discuss what some people have done in the name of my God, then we're not discussing my God or his Son, are we? It's a continuation of the anti-rational thread that runs so spectacularly through the more extremist versions of Islam and is still latently present in feelings of inadequacy and failure that run through the Arab world. It's up to me as a Christian to be Jesus to people, real living people that aren't at the Siege of Vienna or the Battle of Tours or the Sack of Jerusalem during the Crusades. In day-to-day interactions, I don't see where the history of either religion comes into play. Either I'm a living example of the love of Christ to people I interact with, or I'm not. I fail to see why wearing a T-shirt that says SORRY FOR THE CRUSADES will make me more credible.

Missing a Big Story

Did you know that the Tennessee Supreme Court is hearing a huge defamation lawsuit against World Net Daily that involves former Vice President Al Gore Jr.? Did you know that other defendants in the case are the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., WSIB-AM in Selmer, Tenn., the Decatur County Chronicle, WTVF Newschannel 5 in Nashville, the Savannah Snitch, the Savannah Journal, and WTVF commentator Larry Brinton?

Did you know that the plaintiff is seeking the highest damage award ever sough in a defamation case? Did you know that the case may well redefine press freedom in Tennessee?

You didn't? Well, now you do. What is still unclear is why the Tennessee and national news media aren't covering the lawsuit as the major news story with huge implications for press and blogger First Amendment free-speech freedoms that it is.

"Brief news stories can seldom do justice to substantive conversations."

The Tennessean newspaper appears to be getting its first live demonstration in how the Internet has empowered its audience and its story subjects and enabled them to undermine the paper's gatekeeper-position in determining how news events are portrayed to the public.

After this story published Wednesday quoted Lipscomb University theology and ethics professor Dr. Lee Camp as saying Christians must "let go" of the idea that that their faith requires the creation of a Christian kingdom on Earth, the reaction was intense. Various bloggers weighed in, and more than 250 readers of the paper's story posted comments below the story on the paper's website, some criticizing Dr. Camp, others, including some who were at the interfaith gathering sponsored by Lipscomb University's Institute of Conflict Management - disputed the paper's description of what Dr. Camp said.

One student of Dr. Camp's wrote:

I am a senior this year at Lipscomb University. Having heard Dr. Camp speak in University Bible on multiple occasions, I can personally attest to the fact that his true beliefs were not represented in the Tennessean. Dr. Camp was misquoted and selectively quoted. ... It is unfortunate and shameful that this honorable man's reputation and the reputation of the University was marred for the sake of a "cover story." The Tennessean owes this man and the University a personal apology and has lost my respect as a credible news service.

I was glad to have attended the conference at which Dr. Camp spoke. Dr. Camp was mis-quoted and ill served by the Tennessean's account of the event.

Let it be known, first of all, that this reporter was not even present at the forum discussion.

Numerous readers believe Dr. Camp's views and words were deliberately misrepresented.

Reader "Barrett" commented:

Dr. Camp's statements were gravely misrepresented in this article. The idea of "letting go" of our Christian beliefs is not his. His words were manipulated to reflect the views of the author of this article.

"This is awful. Anyone else notice the breaks in that quote. Those are there because reporters want a story and don't care who they bring down getting it.

If you had attended the dialogue on campus yesterday you would be aware that whoever wrote this article for the Tennessean took bits and pieces of Dr. Camp's presentation and ripped them out of context to fit whatever agenda he or she was after.

Not only did readers - some of whom attended the event - call into question the paper's account of Dr. Camp's remarks, both Dr. Camp and Lipscomb University also fired back yesterday afternoon with statements posted online disputing the paper's version of what Dr. Camp said. To its credit, The Tennessean republished Dr. Camp's statement in its entirety.

The paper also noted the hundreds of reader-submitted comments in a brief story in which the paper holds to its apparently misleading portrayal of what Dr. Camp said, and quotes just one reader who commented on the initial story - a reader who liked what Dr. Camp was misrepresented as believing. The paper does not quote any of the comments from readers w.

The Lipscomb University statement is signed by university president Randolph Lowry and includes Dr. Camp's statement. In Lowry's portion, he writes:

As is often the case in dealing with difficult questions, misunderstandings or misinterpretations can occur. By now many of you have read the Tennessean article or heard various news reports purporting to summarize comments by Dr. Lee Camp. Having been a participant in that seminar and heard Professor Camp's statements, I can assure you the article printed in the Tennessean did not accurately reflect the substance of Dr. Camp's presentation or his personal beliefs.

Upon learning of the article in the Tennessean, we reviewed Dr. Camp's actual comments and sought perspectives from conference attendees. This e-mail from Charles McGowan, a prominent religious leader, was consistent with other comments we received:

"The Tennessean did Lipscomb and Dr. Lee Camp a great disservice in how they reported his remarks. He absolutely did not say what the paper reported him to have said."

That's right - and that's why the blogosphere is such a healthy addition to the media landscape.

The interfaith gathering at Lipscomb University no doubt lasted for a few hours and involved many speakers talking, and much discussion and dialogue. A 747-word newspaper story simply can not capture the complete truth of what was said and discussed - if the reporter even stayed for the entire event. In my two decades of experience in and around journalism, newspaper reporters rarely stay for all of such an event.

So, why did the paper publish the story it did? Did the reporter simply misunderstand what Dr. Camp was saying? Does the reporter, editor or paper believe that, in general, Christianity is more to blame than Islam for the conflict between Christians and Muslims? We don't know the answer to those questions.

What regular readers of The Tennessean do know is that the paper often when it writes about the relationship between Christians and other faiths tends to put the blame for conflict on Christians, and especially the political "Christian Right." Never mind that worldwide terrorism is fueled almost entirely by radical Islamists.

The weight of the evidence strongly suggests that The Tennessean grossly misrepresented Dr. Camp's remarks. If I were advising Lipscomb University - and, well, I guess I am at this point - I'd urge them to make full audio and/or video of the event available online, or at least the portion including Dr. Camp's remarks.

That's the power that the Internet gives to individuals and organizations to counter misleading, inaccurate reporting from the traditional media.

Memo to any university or organization holding an event that is potentially controversial and that will be covered by the news media: Make sure the entire event is both audio- and video-taped, and prepare a transcript in case the local paper misquotes someone or misrepresents the event. Let the media know in advance that the tape and transcript will be posted online soon after the event is over - and urge them to provide links to it on their website and provide the link URL in the print edition. Nothing encourages a reporter to be scrupulously accurate more than the reporter knowing the source material will be available to readers who wish to fact-check for themselves.

It also wouldn't hurt to invite a bunch of bloggers to live-blog the event as well - the more people covering an event, the more likely that a true and complete account will emerge.

Also, I'd encourage professors like Dr. Camp to blog. Here's why: If Dr. Camp had a blog where he had regulary written about the kinds of issus he discussed at the Lipscomb event, he would have innoculated himself somewhat against the backlash generated by the newspaper's misrepresentation of what he said at the event. Bloggers who took umbrage at his reported remarks could have quickly compared them to his blog - and Dr. Camp also could have rapidly posted a blog entry yesterday morning responding to the newspaper's account. In addition, by regularly blogging, a professor builds up the online public's knowledge of that professor, how that professor thinks, and what that professor believes.

If The Tennessean, for example, in reporting on a university event focused on business issues, that business professor and speaker Dr. Jeff Cornwall endorsed higher taxes and more government involvement in entrepreneurship during some business-oriented news event, it would be immediately obvious that they got it wrong.

"Brief news stories can seldom do justice to substantive conversations," Dr. Camp said, and that's entirely true in this case. The Tennessean provided the brief story, but the substantive conversation - about the paper's version of what Dr. Camp said, and about the issue he was discussing - was held in the blogosphere and online by ordinary people.

Journalism is different when the deer are armed.

[Full disclosure: I attended Lipscomb University from September 1982 through May 1985.]

Postscript: A word to the many politically conservative and/or religiously conservative bloggers who jumped all over Dr. Camp on their blogs yesterday based on the story in The Tennessean: What are you thinking? You don't trust The Tennessean on a regular basis to get the facts right or to represent conservative viewpoints accurately when it comes to a variety of issues, yet you blindly accepted their version of events yesterday. You ought to know better. Like you, I took immediate offense at Dr. Camp's alleged remarks as quoted by The Tennessean yesterday, but it soon occurred to me that he may have been misquoted, or taken out of context, so I held my fire, waiting for the university and Dr. Camp to respond - knowing, as both a Lipscomb alum and a former media relations specialist at another Christian university, that they would have to respond to limit the damage caused by the Tennessean story.

Other bloggers should have done the same - or done actual journalism by querying Lipscomb's media relations office or Dr. Camp's office directly for clarification of what he said and meant.

November 29, 2006

At Least

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Free the Cabbies!

What issue could possibly find me in agreement with Chris Wage, A.C. Kleinheider, Roger Abramson and Brittney Gilbert? Taxicab regulation - or, rather, the senselessness of Nashville's government regulating the number of taxicabs that entrepreneurs and taxi companies may operate in Nashville. ACK's post has links to all the others.

First, the news from The Tennessean:

The Metro Transportation Licensing Commission today denied a series of requests that would have boosted the number of taxicabs buzzing around Nashville by 50 percent.

Most interesting is this article from the January 1997 issue of the Cato Institute's Regulation magazine, titled "Regulation and the Urban Marketplace." The article was written by Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith regarding the work of the "Regulatory Study Commission" he established soon after becoming mayor of that city. A big part of the article focuses on Indy's taxicab regulations, which in key ways were a near carbon copy of Nashville's - complete with an artificial cap on the number of allowed cabs, and a ban on hailing cabs - until Goldsmith and the Indy city council reformed it to let entrepreneurship flourish:

The RSC begins with the premise that regulatory restrictions must be justified, not simply assumed. From that starting point, we search for the least burdensome level of regulation that meets our objective. Not surprisingly, we learned upon assuming office that very little of our regulatory code had ever been subject to such a test.

The taxi industry is a good example of an area where regulations had completely displaced the economic principles of demand and competition. The number of licenses was fixed and so were the fares. At a series of public meetings designed to develop community consensus on the need for dramatic regulatory reform in ground transportation, nearly everyone who testified confirmed our worst fears. Complaints about service were rampant. Because the local industry was protected from competition, the near universal judgment was that service was poor, expensive, and highly selective. If you happened to live in a neighborhood that the dominant providers did not want to serve, namely, low income and high crime areas, you were out of luck.

Drivers who wanted to go into business for themselves argued that local regulations made it virtually impossible for them to own their own taxis. Denying business opportunities is bad enough, but to do it to the very people who need entrepreneurial opportunity most is downright shameful.

Entry into the Indianapolis taxi market was tightly controlled; the city government had set the ceiling on taxi permits at 392. The taxi market was a de facto monopoly controlled by a single large operator who owned or controlled, either directly or indirectly, nearly two-thirds of the 392 taxis. The RSC determined that local taxi service was so poor in large part because the regulations that governed them were so bad.

Taxis and ground transportation became a major test of our administration's credibility to deliver city-wide regulatory reform that could lead to real enterprise creation. If we were to do anything to reform the local regulatory marketplace, ground transportation was the arena in which we had to deliver. But after a nearly two-year battle, the City County Council finally voted 21-7 to adopt Proposal 72 into law in May of 1994. On July 1, the artificial cap on the number of taxi licenses was lifted, offering the first significant prospect of new market entrants into the ground transportation industry since shortly after the end of the Second World War. For the first time in just as long, the new law lifted the prohibition against "cruising," or hailing a cab. This anti-competitive provision was cunningly designed to prevent new market entrants from getting into the business by cruising the streets. Since the only practical way to get a cab was to call one, only those cabs with city-approved radio dispatch systems could compete, and since the only companies that could afford the city-approved dispatch system were the few dominant, well-heeled, and legally protected providers, their position in our market was secure.

The impact of the new Indianapolis ground transportation ordinance, which also abolished the official minimum fare, allowing taxis to charge as little as they like for a ride, even surpassed our own expectations. In the first month, the number of licensed taxi operators rose an amazing 60 percent, from twenty-eight licensed companies to forty-five. In addition, the new competition dropped fares among the new licensees almost 7 percent. But perhaps even more impressive than reduced fares and increased competition is the effect that the new market system has had upon the drivers themselves.

Nearly overnight, the dress code for taxi drivers went from ripped T-shirts to collars and ties. Cabs are noticeably cleaner, cabbies are friendlier and their vehicles are more visible on our streets.

In all, there have been twenty-nine new taxi companies licensed since deregulation, which means that the number has more than doubled since the proposal was adopted. Today there are fifty-nine licensed taxi companies in Indianapolis, and an entirely new industry in jitneys and minivans.

Via the Reason Public Policy Institute's Urban Futures Program I also found a report from the Buckeye Institute, titled Taxicab Regulation in Ohio's Largest Cities, published in 1996. There's a summary and a PDF link here. Summary:

Ohio's largest cities impose numerous regulatory burdens on the start up and operation of taxicab businesses. The regulations often prohibit small, independent operators from starting a taxi business. This limits economic opportunities in Ohio's major cities. Additionally, the regulations severely limit service and price competition among taxi companies.

Meanwhile, other U.S. cities have found success in deregulating their taxi markets, Within the first six months of deregulation, Indianapolis had 32 new companies start up. In Denver, four entrepreneurs sued the State of Colorado in order to start their own company. "Freedom Cabs" became the first cab company in 48 years to open up in Denver and now employs 100 drivers.

Other reading: Bruce Schaller of Schaller Consulting wrote a paper titled "Entry Controls in Taxi Regulation: Regulatory Policy Implications of U.S. and Canadian Experience," which is online here. There's also a PDF version online here, but the link didn't work when I clicked it. Schaller seems to be pro-regulation.

Also worth reading: Econ Journal Watch published an article in January 2006 titled "Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Taxi Deregulation?." The PDF is here.

More links here

My own view is as I wrote it at NashvilleIsTalking.com earlier today:

Lots of industries use government regulatory boards to keep out competition. The economic term for it is rent-seeking.

While keeping out new competitors protects the ability of existing cabbies to make money, it also prevents the rise of competitive pressure that would lead to better services at better prices - which might just attract more people to use cabs more often.

Government ought to get out of the business of protecting cartels. There should be a set of regulations for safety reasons, but anyone who wants to start a cab business ought to be able to do so.

Free the cabbies!

P.S. This ought to be an issue in the upcoming Nashville mayoral race - do the candidates for mayor of Nashville favor adjusting regulations to enable entrepreneurs and benefit customers, or do they favor continuing to protect a cartel?

Running Men

Retiring U.S. Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee announced today that he will not be a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. As there is now an opening on the Republican slate for a candidate named "Bill," I would like to announce that I, too, will not be running for president in 2008. Or any other office.

But Mike Faulk might be running for the state Senate. Read this post and you'll know why Faulk, if he does run, will make a great state Senator.

November 28, 2006

December 16, 1944

There once was a time when America, when faced with tough going in war, did not run away - despite losses that make Iraq look like a Sunday picnic in the park.

The Ongoing Media Revolution

More people are downloading audio feeds, but few do it regularly, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Details in Business Week. The Pew study is online here.

Also in media news, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced that newspapers may now submit a full array of online material - such as databases, interactive graphics, and streaming video - in nearly all of its journalism categories. I learned about it on the blog of former newspaper reporter-turned TV reporter Trent Seibert, who also has a good post comparing newspaper reporting with being a "video journalist."

Tomorrow is Another Day

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen has no plans to raise the state's gas tax "at this time," a spokesperson says.

He couldn't anyway - the legislature isn't in session. But with TDOT proclaiming it needs an extra $2 billion over the next decade to keep up with the state's needs for new roads, some lawmakers are discussing a variety of options including toll roads, or raising the gas tax - currently 21.4 cents per gallon, of which TDOT gets 13 cents.

But they aren't discussing altering the state's policy of paying all cash for roads, even though it is that policy that is preventing TDOT from keeping pace with Tennessee's growing road needs with the existing gas tax.

Tennessee's gasoline tax of 21.4 cents per gallon brings in about $608 million in revenue per year. TDOT gets about 13 cents per gallon of that revenue, or about $365 million. Based on that funding split, Tennessee's gas tax would need to be raised by 12 cents per gallon to give TDOT the extra $200 million a year it is seeking.

There's no sign the Bredesen administration is considering financing new road construction with government bonds, but it should. - bond-financed roads are a sensible alternative to sticking with the state's pay-as-you-go policy for road construction. Here's why:

The roads we build now will be used by us, but also will be driven on years from now by people who haven't yet been born, or yet moved to the state. Financing roads with 30-year government bonds allows the state to spread the cost of paying for the roads to all of the drivers who will use them over the next thirty years - while the state repays the bonds with inflation-devalued dollars. Pay-as-you-use, rather than pay-as-you-build is a more equitable fiscal policy because it shares the costs via debt service payments with both current and future road users.

It also allows the state to keep current with road construction needs - $100 million finances a lot more miles of bond-financed roads than the same $100 million will build when you're paying cash.

Pay-as-we-go is good fiscal policy for road maintenance - a current expense for current needs. But pay-as-we-go is bad fiscal policy for road construction because it puts all of the burden on today's drivers for roads that will be used for decades by many, many drivers who didn't help pay for them. Pay-as-you-go also means that some road projects will be delayed - and when we finally do build them, the cost for construction (labor, materials and right-of-way acquistion) all will be higher.

If the Bredesen administration really doesn't plan to raise the gas tax, and it won't use bonds, then it is condemning Tennessee to ever-increasing road congestion.

November 27, 2006

The Ongoing Battle

Cappucino Soul spotlights a legal victory involving a blogger arrested by cops in Canada. Score this one for the independent journalists. ... Meanwhile, the "study committee" that the Tennessee legislature established for the purpose of delaying any meaningful reform of the state's unimpressive open-meetings and open-records laws has done its job well - it has decided to make no recommendations for two more years. Score this one for the government elites who prefer to do the people's business where the people can't watch.

The Game

YouTube has lots of Vince Young video, including highlights of his amazing college football career with the Texas Longhorns, his personal destruction of USC in last year's national championship game, and even from high school - but nothing yet from yesterday's legendary fourth-quarter performance against the New York Giants.

Meanwhile, someone at the Titans HQ ought to update the website - the downloadble "wallpaper" page still has images featuring players who aren't with the Titans anymore. Steve McNair, for example, but you can almost understand why given all he did as a Titan (though the site really ought to feature VY now, doncha think?) But, um, Tyrone Calico?

Set Up?

With Tennessee Comptroller John Morgan pushing a proposal for the legislature to take over local public schools statewide, and to fund them with a new statewide property tax, tax control activist and blogger Ben Cunningham sent me the text of a Jan 7, 2001, Tennessean article regarding a poll of Tennessean's opinion of various tax reform options, which reported that "when Tennesseans were asked whether they favor a state property tax, 85% said no and just 7% said yes."

"Why would Morgan promote a plan opposed by 85% of Tennesseans?" Cunningham wonders. "Is Morgan setting the stage for an income tax by proposing an alternative which is clearly opposed by a huge majority of Tennesseans?"

Meanwhile, while he's proposing that the state of Tennessee take over control of local public schools statewide, Tennessee Comptroller John Morgan's office also has issued a "Request for Proposals" seeking a contractor to perform an "Assessment of the Effectiveness of Tennessee's Pre-Kindergarten Programs." From the RFP:

The intent of this project is to assess the effectiveness of Tennessee's pre-kindergarten program on student achievement. The assessment shall include analysis of near term effects (kindergarten through second grade) and long term effects (third grade through fifth grade). Effectiveness shall be assessed by analyzing data (including test scores, readiness assessments, curriculum evaluations, or other relevant data sources identified in the applicant's methodology) gathered and maintained by local education agencies and/or the state department of education.

Update: A year ago while I was traveling a lot and had several guest bloggers filling in, Adam Groves posted here about Morgan's proposal for a statewide property tax and state control of local schools.

Update: Kay Brooks predicts that the "Assessment of the Effectiveness of Tennessee's Pre-Kindergarten Programs" will determine that they are effective and worthy of more tax dollars - and notes that the state is partially stacking the deck by excluding private-sector pre-K programs from the assessment. Brooks:

If we're going to spend funds evaluating pre-K for our children shouldn't we be willing to look everything? What's the purpose in looking at only state run classes? Because we don't recognize that public schools are in a race with private options? Because we don't want the state-run programs to look bad compared to the private ones?

Brooks calls the Reason Foundation's May 2006 report on pre-K, titled Assessing Proposals for Preschool And Kindergarten: Essential Information for Parents, Taxpayers And Policymakers, a "must read," and I agree. The authors of that report wrote, "We find strong evidence that widespread adoption of preschool and full-day kindergarten is unlikely to improve student achievement. For nearly 50 years, local, state, and federal governments and diverse private sources have spent billions of dollars funding early education programs. Many early interventions have had meaningful short-term effects on grade-level retention and special education placement. However, the effects of early interventions routinely disappear after children leave the programs."

Don't misunderstand me - I'm all in favor of government assessing the effectiveness of its programs, but this planned "assessment" is flawed from the get-go both for its definition of "long term" effectiveness being through the fifth grade, rather than through 12th grade, and for its failure to compare the effectiveness of government pre-K and private-sector pre-K efforts. The private sector programs may be more effective than the government programs, or less effective. If they are more effective, then the government programs need to be shut down in favor of expanded private sector initiatives. The government, for obvious reasons, has no interest in doing that comparison.

Instead, it will pay for an "independent" study that is rigged from the start to prove the program is "effective" long-term by using a definition of long-term - five years - that sets the bar low enough to virtually guarantee a positive assessment..

Meanwhile, somebody really ought to do a real assessment of pre-K that looks at its impact over not five years of schooling but 12, and compares it to private-sector pre-K. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research is the most obvious candidate in that they - unlike the state bureaucracy and the state public education establishment, have no vested interest in undertaking a biased assessment with a virtually predetermined outcome.

November 26, 2006

Your Tax Dollars at Work Lobbying For More of Your Tax Dollars

The Chattanooga Times Free Press explores the spending of your tax dollars by Tennessee cities and towns and government agencies to lobby the state legislature and Congress for more of your state and federal tax dollars.

There is something unseemly about one level of government spending tax dollars to lobby other levels of government for more tax dollars and it ought to be banned, though I suspect the legislature would be loathe to ban lobbying by city and county governments. The real solution is for government at all levels to tax less and spend less. Local governments only lobby the state legislature and Congress for funds because the state legislature and Congress control billions and trillions of tax dollars, respectively, and have created a myriad of ways to spend it - and are always coming up with more.

The way to get money out of politics is to get money out of government.

November 22, 2006

Wilder Update

East Tennessee blogger and attorney Mike Faulk is getting ready to run for the Tennessee state Senate seat currently held by Mike Williams, a Republican who made the mistake of voting for Democrat John Wilder for Lt. Governor and Speaker of the Senate two years ago and still hasn't apologized for it. Williams's senate district comes up for election in 2008, though rumors are rampant that he's been promised a job in the Bredesen administration if he'll vote for Wilder for Lt. Governor again. The Lt. Governor appoints the committee chairs, and Wilder, after keeping his seat thanks to two Republicans who voted for him rather than their own party's candidate, gave the chairmanships of the two most important committies - Finance and Judiciary - to Democrats, allowing the minority party in the Senate to control the agenda and kill legislation backed by the majority. More from Mark Rose and Kleinheider

Faulk would be an excellent replacement for Williams - who, it appears, may have misused campaign funds.

How To Look Tough On Illegal Immigration Without Really Doing Anything About It

A few days ago I wrote a post reporting that illegal immigration had dropped off Gov. Phil Bredesen's radar after the election. Today, Nashville City Paper reports that Bredesen is one of a handful of governors who have signed a letter to President George W. Bush asking him to authorize the release of some $950 million to states to offset the costs of detaining illegal immigrants. So, Gov Bredesen is doing something about illegal immigration, right? No. The letter is all about the state budget. Gov. Bredesen has found another way to get his name the news in stories about illegal immigration without actually doing anything to crack down on illegal immigration and make Tennessee less of a magnet for illegals.

November 21, 2006

State Comptroller Proposes State Grab Control Of Local Public Schools

If you believe your local public school should remain under the control of your local elected school board rather than a state bureaucracy, you better pay attention to this: Tennessee Comptroller John Morgan is proposing that the state of Tennessee restructure its tax system to put the state - rather than local governments - in charge of funding education. Morgan told the Basic Education Program Review Committee that public education in Tennessee should be under state control rather than local control.

This would be a radical change for Tennessee' public schools and the families with nearly 1 million students currently enrolled in those schools.

Under current state law, the Tennessee Department of Education has some regulatory authority over local education agencies with regard to certain issues, but most issues related to elementary and secondary education are currently under the authority of local school systems. In fact, Tennessee Code Section 49-2-203 gives local boards of education the authority to "manage and control all public schools established or that may be established under its jurisdiction."

Morgan's proposal, called "Total State Funding," is included in the Basic Education Program Review Committee's annual report, released Nov. 1, and was discussed during the committee's Oct. 23 meeting, according to the meeting minutes.

"Total State Funding" would likely lead to "Total State Control" - and the demise of the authority of local elected school boards to manage and control the public schools under their jurisdiction.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports:

The committee considering revisions to the formula the state of Tennessee uses to dispense education dollars now has another option to consider: Restructuring the tax system to put the state in charge of funding education. Tennessee Comptroller John Morgan proposed a third alternative to the current formula at today's meeting of the Basic Education Program Review Committee.

"Education is not a local issue," Mr. Morgan said. "It really is a state problem, so why don't we use the state tax base to fund an adequate education program to give all children in Tennessee the opportunity to succeed in public schools?"

Under Mr. Morgan's proposal, the state would spend an additional $900 million on education. It would capture half of local option sales tax dollars, establish a statewide property tax and distribute the revenue among school systems depending on their needs.

If the state takes control of funding for all public schools across the state, it will in short order take control of education policy, curriculum and personnel decisions for all public schools across the state. Legislators inevitably will attach strings to the money - that simply is how government works. Government dollars always come with government demands. That's true, of course, with dollars from local governments, but your local city council or county commission and local school board are more likely than some state bureaucracy to make policy, curriculum and personnel decisions in accordance with the wishes and goals of the local electorate.

As for Morgan's proposal that the legislature create a statewide property tax, it's worth noting that Tennessee had such a tax until 1947, when it was junked as both inefficient and corrupt. But in 2004 the Tennessee Tax Structure Study Commission, created for the purpose of "studying" Tennessee's tax structure and recommending creation of a state income tax, actually considered an alternative - lowering the state sales tax and the sales tax on food, and replacing the revenue with a statewide property tax of $2.60 per every $100 of assessed value and a tax on all registered vehicles, including cars, boats and planes, averaging $100, a plan that would raise about $3 billion annually.

The Commission, stacked with income tax supporters, was never going to recommend anything other than creation of an income tax, but at least it did its job and analyzed the property tax concept - and found reasons to condemn it, noting that the combination of a lower sales tax and lower sales tax on food plus a statewide property tax would create "an exorbitant tax burden on those earning $29,467 and $44,431" (the incomes of two of the Commission's hypothetical taxpayers it used in analyzing each proposed tax reform. "The big jump in tax burden at $29,467 has to do with the increased likelihood both of home ownership and of the purchase of a car," the Commission said.

Tennessee's average per capita income in 2004: $29,648. In 2005: $30,952.

Clearly a statewide property tax would hammer the average Tennessee taxpayer hard - and it would be doubly insulting if the increased taxes were going to fund a statewide education bureaucracy that was eroding local control of schools.

Update: Kay Brooks takes issue with Morgan's claim that public education "is not a local issue." Writes Brooks, "Not a local issue? Excuse me it doesn't get more local than the corner school bus stop. It doesn't get more local than your property tax rates." She challenges the Metro Nashville Board of Education to speak out against Morgan's proposal for a state takeover of public schools across the state.

And the perceptive Mark Rose notes that Morgan's proposal would mean "bureaucrats in Nashville would be given greater authority over public school districts at the expense of your city and county school boards," and that it would take a new statewide property tax to pay for it. Writes Rose:

Wouldn't it be the height of irony if we spent Governor Bredesen's second term fighting a state property tax instead of the state income tax we fought during Governor Sundquist's second term?

Just within the past two weeks (AFTER the election, oddly), we've had TDOT whining about a $2 billion shortfall over the next ten years, and now the state comptroller is floating a plan that would increase state revenue by $900 million and necessitate a state property tax. The best way to fight liberalism is with conservatism. So I'm still holding out for eliminating the state's 6% sales tax on groceries.

I See Dead People

7,000 Dead Tennesseans Still Registered To Vote

Why do I feel like a voice in the wilderness? I keep pointing out problems with the election commission in Shelby County and nothing happens. Now, I have been given a copy of the state voter database by the Republican Party for analysis. Checking the oldest 200,000 voters, I find over 7,000 people who are deceased. This doesn't include the voters who had birthdates from the 1800s or 01/01/01. Checking for voters who might have two registrations in the state, I find over 5,600. Why doesn't this alarm other people? Why doesn't the state election commission push for a state-wide voter database?

Meanwhile, please note that it is an unpaid blogger, not a paid professional political reporter, who uncovered this story.

Comments Deleted

All reader comments posted after about 10 a.m. Nov. 4 have accidentally been deleted in a purge of more than 3,000 spam comments. My mistake and I apologize. Unfortunately there is no way to retrieve them.

This Is Going to Be Interesting

Interesting comments from new House Majority Leader Gary Odom in today's Nashville City Paper. Odom, a Nashville Democrat, disagrees with Gov. Phil Bredesen and House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh on key tax issues - Odom favors reducing the sales tax on groceries, Bredesen doesn't; Odom opposes a state income tax, Naifeh favors it.

Odom also comments on what I we noticed here the day after the Nov. 7 election - despite his popularity and big statewide re-election win, Bredesen had no coattails in the election.

November 20, 2006

Amnesty Likely for Illegals as Issue Drops Off Bredesen's Radar

The Tennessean reports that the takeover of Congress by Democrats makes it more likely that illegal immigrants living in the United States "are more likely to find paths to citizenship" in any illegal immigration reform passed by Congress. "Paths to citizenship" is a euphemism for amnesty for the estimated 12 million illegals currently in the country.

The story includes an estimate by the Pew Hispanic Center that the illegal population in Tennessee now numbers between 100,000 and 150,000.

With the Democratic Congress and the Bush administration set to reward illegal immigrants with a "path to citizenship," a policy that will, no doubt, merely entice more illegals to cross the border, it increasingly will be up to the individual states to decide whether they will continue to be magnets for illegals, or not.

Tennesseans overwhelmingly believe illegal immigration is bad for their state. But will anything be done about it? Have you heard Gov. Phil Bredesen utter one word about dealing with illegal immigration at the state level now that he's safely re-elected to a second term? No. And I doubt you will. The governor didn't even mention the issue when he was ticking off the list of his second-term priorities during his victory speech on election night.

As I wrote here on September 5: "Bredesen didn't care about illegal immigration two months ago. Two months from now, after the election, he won't either."

November 19, 2006

The Road To Traffic Congestion is Paved With Bad Fiscal Policy

The Tennessee Department of Transportation says it will have $2 billion less than it needs over the next 10 years to build or expand the roads as needed to accomodate the growing population, reports the Sunday Tennessean. $2 billion over 10 years is $200 million per year. Though there's no mention of it in the Tennessean story, at least part of that funding gap can be directly attributed to Gov. Phil Bredesen who, four years ago, in order to "balance" the state's budget in his first year in office, diverted some $60 million in TDOT's gas tax revenue per year to the state's general fund. There's $650 million over the next ten years, or rougly a third of TDOT's funding gap. Until that $60 million in diverted gas tax revenue is restored to TDOT's budget, the public and its lawmakers should reject any calls to increase the gas tax or find/create new sources of revenue for TDOT.

This blog post from 2002 - and the Nashville City Paper column it links to - are worth reading now that TDOT has begun screaming for more money: GARVEEs a route to sensible TDOT budget

November 18, 2006

Sunset

Sunset, photographed Oct. 31 along Highway 31 between Franklin and Spring Hill, Tennessee. See more of my photos at Flickr

November 17, 2006

Use It Wisely

Terry Heaton may have moved to Dallas, but his Nashville connection remains strong. Read today's post, The Blogosphere Belongs to the Blogosphere. Also, Heaton weighed in a few days ago on some rather misguided statements by former New York Times reporter Judith Miller regarding blogs and bloggers. Ms Miller's comments:

While she advocates a federal shield law to protect mainstream journalists from divulging their sources, she doesn't favor extending that to bloggers who don't follow the standards and ethnics of the journalism industry. Still, she wouldn't restrict a blogger's right to publish online. She said some bloggers have been invaluable in uncovering government flaws.

Ms. Miller continues her condescension toward bloggers:

"I'm glad to welcome them as long as they agree to the standards," she said.

Oh, hey, wait. She doesn't have the power to restrict your First Amendment rights. The First Amendment isn't just for journalists. It never was. It's for Americans.

And, thanks to cheap digital tools like blogs, more Americans than ever before - millions of them - are speaking out publicly via a medium through which they can reach the world, unfiltered by elitist media gatekeepers. Housewives and corporate executives are doing it. People who want to rave about their cats, their kids or their favorite sports team - or rant about their neigbors, or politics or the lousy customer service they got yesterday are doing it. Experts in constitutional law, business, economics and medicine are doing it. Millions of Americans are writing and publishing - are doing some form of what is broadly defined as journalism.

Heaton comments:

Who has the right to determine the standards upon which journalists must abide?

Use it wisely.

What's Next For Bryson

The Williamson Herald had a nice post-election story on what's next for Jim Bryson after he came up short in the Tennessee gubernatorial race. Bryson tells the paper he wants to stay involved in politics in some way, though it's too soon to know if he'll run for public office again. "I have a real desire to continue to do something that is going to be giving back to the community. I have got a couple ideas that I would like to do that give back to the community," Bryson said. "I have spent the last four years in public service really trying to better the lives of people in my district and in Tennessee and I still have a desire to do that."

Blogabilities

When I'm not doodling here about politics, I'm generally writing about the media, especially the tectonic plate-shift that's happening right now as blogs and other forms of social media rub up against the not-so-immovable force of the journalism establishment.

Yesterday I stumbled across what looks to be a great new group blog on the very related topic of social media's impact on public relations and media relations. It's called Blogabilities and it is written by three of the top people at anthonyBarnum Public Relations in Austin, Texas. (Photo: Austin skyline photographed from an overlook off the Capital of Texas Highway.)

Blogabilities is going on my blogroll and daily reading list. Also, check out CONnieVersations, the website with blog of Connie Reece at anthonyBarnum.

Wilder Things Have Happened

Knoxville News Sentinel columnist Greg Johnson wrote an excellent column exploring the future of Democrat Lt. Gov. John Wilder and wonders why Republican state Sen. Michael Williams is considering voting for him again, rather than a Republican, to lead the state Senate. Michael Faulk, a Church Hill attorney and possible challenger to Williams in 2008 - and a blogger - emailed me the story. He's quoted in it, saying Williams' betrayal of the Republican voters who put in in office by voting for Wilder two years ago has caused "a groundswell of concern from hardcore Republicans."

Faulk has a very good analysis of Sen. Williams' impending decision here.

Sen. Williams is likely done being the senator from that district in 2008 - most certainly if he votes for Wilder again. But the KNS columnist Johnson says Williams may leave the Senate before then - there's a strong rumor that he's been promised a job in the Bredesen administration if he votes for Wilder, keeping key Senate committees controlled by Democrats - for two more years.

Gov. Bredesen's flack gave Johnson a carefully worded non-denial denial, saying, "I have no knowledge of Sen. Williams taking a job in the administration." Of course she would have "no knowledge" because backroom deals like this aren't the the kind of thing you tell the governor's press secretary to prepare a press release for. But this is the same same administration that sold promotions to Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers in exchange for campaign donations, so I'd bet money Williams has been offered a job in exchange for voting for Wilder.

My prediction: Wilder will be Lt. Governor for two more years - and the voters of Tennessee, who have two elections in a row now voted for a Republican majority to run the Senate will once again have their expressed will denied.

In other legislative leadership fights, I back state Rep. Glen Casada, R-College Grove, for the chairmanship of the House Republican Caucus. Nothing against the current chairman, state Rep. Charles Sargent, R-Franklin, but Casada's my state rep, and a rock-solid conservative, and it's time for new leadership in the House GOP caucus. And, if I may meddle in the other side's legislative leadership races, I'd love to see state Rep. Gary Odom, D-Nashville, win the race for the open House Majority Leader spot against state Rep. Mark Maddox, a West Tennessee lawmaker who does House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's bidding.

Odom's more independent. Besides, the higher he rises in the House, the less likely he'll run for the Senate when state Sen. Doug Henry retires, which I expect will happen sometime next year.

Spending Shelby

John Harvey writes that the Shelby County Commission is getting ready to plunge the fine folks of Memphis deeper into debt. If Harvey gets his way, the people of Shelby County will soon have a way to curb the commission's enthusiasm for out of control spending and taxpayer-funded debt financing - a charter amendment that would prevent property tax rate increases with approval by voters in a referendum. It's a popular idea. Shelby County and Memphis have separate governments, unlike Nashville, so I'm guessing they're going to have to amend both the city and county charters.

November 16, 2006

Riter Wantid, Must Bring Ownn Spellchekker

This made me laugh.

Update: The ad title had read "News Writer with Flare" but they fixed it.

Plucky

I'm just curious...

Is there anyone among my readers who works at ?

Nashville's Tax Revolt Spreads to Memphis

The tax revolt that Nashville voters planted on election day is already sprouting in Memphis. While Memphis' political establishment and media will, no doubt be opposed to amending the city charter to give voters the right to reject or accept property taxes via referendum, I'm going to make an early prediction, before the petition gatherers even start gathering signatures and get the measure on the next city election ballot: It will pass by a landslide.

Marsha! Marsha!

Extreme Mortman thinks Marsha Blackburn can help the GOP solve the gender gap. Also, TownHall.com's Mary Katherine Ham provides a transcript of the conference call Rep. Blackburn had a few days ago with a group of bloggers.

Mumpower-grab

Terry Frank reports that Tennessee Republican House leader Representative Bill Dunn is being challenged by Republican Jason Mumpower. Frank reports that Mumpower "is making calls in an effort to unseat Dunn as the Minority Leader" and that, in his effort to be Minority Leader - and in line to be Speaker of the House if the GOP takes control of the House in 2008, Mumpower has resigned his position as Assistant Minority Leader. Mumpower?

Bill Dunn has been an excellent leader and will make an excellent replacement for Jimmy Naifeh once the GOP gains the majority and Naifeh's office is boxed up and moved to some small and out of the way corner of the old War Memorial Building, where he can't cause much more harm.

I fully share David Oatney's view on the Mumpower-grab.

November 15, 2006

Nashville Property Tax Charter Amendment Impact Grows

Knoxville political commentator Frank Cagle says the city charter amendment passed by Nashville voters giving themselves referendum power over property tax rate increases will have "major repercussions" across the state.

Cagle writes:

Almost unnoticed in the hoopla last week over the mid-term elections was a referendum passed in Nashville that says the local government cannot raise the current property tax rate without a vote of the people. The Metro Council can no longer set a new and higher tax rate to cover increases in its budget unless the new rate goes on the ballot and is approved by the voters.

The referendum got on the ballot due to the efforts of Tennessee Tax Revolt, which used the Internet, email lists and electronic petitions similar to the effort Knox County's Gary Sellers used to force a vote on County Mayor Mike Ragsdale's wheel tax increase. The Nashville referendum passed in every precinct but one. It was approved by Democrats, Republicans and independents; it passed in rich neighborhoods, in middle-class neighborhoods and in poor neighborhoods.

The city's establishment has been horrified at the prospect of this exercise in democracy. There have been scare stories about the effect on the city's bond rating. But given the 77 percent margin of victory, no politician has stepped forward to challenge the measure in court. Metro Council passed a property tax increase last year and is not expected to propose another one right away. It would be when another increase is proposed that the measure might wind up in court.

What is the horrendous property tax rate in Nashville? The urban tax rate is $4.69 cents per $100 valuation. The comparable rate in Knoxville (as a non-metro government, add city and county rates together) is $6.01.

It the Nashville charter amendment stands, expect this trend to have major repercussions all across the state - far beyond a candidate winning a U.S. Senate.

Here's a key early question for anyone running for Mayor of Nashville next year: If you are elected mayor and at some point as mayor you request Metro Council to raise the property tax rate, will you also file or support a lawsuit to overturn the charter amendment that was passed overwhelmingly by the people you were elected to serve?

Marsha's the Man

U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, my congressman, is one of four candidates for House Republican Conference Chairman. She's running against four men. The last time Blackburn ran against a group of Republican men for something, she had a great bumper sticker - Marsha's the Man! - and she crushed them. I hope it works out that way again because Rep. Blackburn, a true conservative and friend of taxpayers coast to coast, is the right pick for House GOP Conference Chair.

Update: From the newest Evans & Novak Political Report:

Representatives Adam Putnam (R-Fla.), Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) are running for Conference chairman. The most likely outcome here is a runoff between Blackburn and Kingston. For many years, the post has been held either by a woman or a black man (J.C. Watts, R-Okla.), because it is mostly a P.R. job. But that angle may be less meaningful than usual, since Kay Granger is considered a lock for Conference vice chairman. Kingston and Blackburn are both strong conservatives, but Blackburn is more of a fiery hundred-percenter who would take a more confrontational stance toward the White House. Kingston is the man with on-the-job experience, since he has been serving as vice chairman.

Putnam's run is odd, because he was just elected House Policy chairman, and is trying to move up after less than a year in that spot. Such naked ambition provokes a negative reaction among some of his colleagues. Putnam's patron, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), has also obviously fallen from grace.

Added plus: Blackburn is a proven leader in insurgent politics.

A few years ago, while Blackburn was a minority-party member of the Tennessee state Senate, she lead the successful effort to defeat a state income tax supported by the Tennessee political establishment, the top leadership of both political parties, and most of the state's major news media. To this day, Tennesse doesn't have an income tax, thanks to Blackburn's leadership and her willingness to buck the governor from her own party because he pursiing wrongheaded fiscal and tax policies. And she took that same approach to DC.

Blackburn can fire up the conservative base and help lead the GOP back to majority status.

Marsha's the man!

He's Wilder Than You

State Rep. Stacey Campfield has some candid and comical comments about Lt. Gov. John Wilder. Read the whole thing.

Welcome to the Future

The Tennessean is looking for a new reporter to cover Nashville's metro government. Meanwhile, the Brunswick News, near St. Simon's Island, Ga., is looking for a broadcast journalist to anchor a news webcast on the newspaper's website. ...Also, the Star Press in Muncie, Indiana, is seeking a "mobile online journalist" to file reports directly to the paper's website, where they'll be published in a format that is "much like a blog."

Statehouse Blogs

The National Conference of State Legislatures' website has a blog, The Thicket, described as "a bipartisan blog by and for legislative junkies, which covers developments at state legislatures around the country. The nine-month-old blog also has a good blogroll of "statehouse blogs" from around the country. It lists just three today - Instapundit (which doesn't really cover Tennessee politics), Adam Groves' Tennessee Politics, and the one you're currently reading. The blogroll is on the left side - scroll down.

The NCSL also maintains a list of links to state legislators' blogs and legislatures with podcasts and RSS feeds.

The Epicenter of The Bredesen Administration's Corruption

One of the first things that Deputy Gov. Dave Cooley did after his boss, Phill Bredesen, became governor of Tennessee four years ago was install his wife as the executive assistant to the commissioner of the Department of Safety. A few years later, after the commissioner resigned amid a scandal involving Mr. Cooley and the awarding of promotions to Highway Patrol troopers who gave campaign donations to Bredesen, the commissioner's computer hard drive was erased. In court depositions for a lawsuit filed by one of the troopers who claims he was hounded out of the Highway Patrol because he was a Republican, former Safety Commissioner Fred Philips said he believes Cooley's wife erased the hard drive. Philips also said he believes Cooley's wife was passing information to the deputy governor about the day-to-day activities in the office.

The Tennessean has details today which peels back more of the administration's cover-up of the true depth of how it deliberately politicized the Highway Patrol and turned it into a campaign cash machine.

November 14, 2006

A Minor Annoyance

If you blog long enough and build a large enough audience and write about controversial things I can guarantee you you'll attract trolls - opponents who aren't content to argue issues and debate ideas in their comments, but who will launch personal attacks and try, relentlessly, to goad you into making an intemperate response that you will later regret. Regular readers of BillHobbs.com know that I allow and even encourage a wide-open discussion in the comments sections of my post, and that I don't ban commenters who disagree with me, nor censor their comments. I have just a few simple rules that boil down to "no personal attack, no foul language, and stay on-topic" - all of which serve to foster discussion, not stifle it.

In the five years I have been blogging I have banned just two commenters because they routinely violated those rules. Today, I add a third - a commenter who posts anonymously under a variety of names and apparently ficticious email addreses, and who mixes personal attack and name-calling and attacks the motives and intelligence of those who he disagrees with, rather than their ideas. This commenter posts here and on other Nashville conservative blogs under a variety of names, including Milton, MiltonFree, Demetrius, Roger T., Hamilton, Patrick Hamilton, Floyd, and Hamilton Lovecraft. His posts come from at least three IP addresses: 207.234.130.25, 207.234.209.125 and 172.20.72.34.

His comments will no longer be published here at BillHobbs.com.

Censorship? Of course not. The Troll is free to start his own blog - literally free, at Blogger.com - and write whatever he wants. I encourage him to do so, though trolls rarely have the guts to post under their real name. But this is my blog, and my bandwidth. I don't have to put up with it here.

Update: I just received - but will not publish - the single most vile and foul-mouthed comment I have ever received at this blog. The kind of comment that speaks volumes about the depth of depravity and shallowness of intellect on the part of the commenter. Judging from the IP address, it was posted by the same commenter who posted as "Jeffrey" to this post, although, of course, he didn't have the guts to sign his real name or use a real email address.

Briley Blogging

Nashville Metro Council member David Briley is reaching out to the local blogosphere as he launches his campaign to become the city's next mayor. In the email inbox this afternoon:

Please find attached the press release announcing my candidacy for Mayor of Nashville. I would appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you individually or as a group. Please let me know what would work best and I will accommodate. I hope to be as accessible to you as I am to the mainstream media during this campaign so please do not hesitate to call.

I would love to have a blog. I just don't know if I can find enough time in the next few months to make it any more than just a symbolic thing but I am thinking about it.

Briley and I likely don't agree on lots of political things, but of the current crop of candidates for mayor of Nashville, he'd get my vote if I lived in Nashville rather than out in the 'burbs. He strikes me as a smart, pragmatic and innovative leader whose liberal views aren't dogma.

The rest of the candidates are rather unimpressive.

Briley really ought to blog. Some time ago, when the constitutionality of a metro wheel-tax increase was being discussed on the Nashville Scene's blog, PithInTheWind.com, Briley posted several comments exploring the issue from a legal perspective and showed he was good at using the blogging medium to discuss issues and debate questions with the citizenry.

Not only would he be good at communicating via a blog, he'd set himself apart from the rest of the candidates by doing it, for sure.

Can you imagine former Congressman and constant Candidate for Everything Bob Clement, who now wants to be Nashville's Mayor because he didn't get to be governor eight years ago or U.S. Senator two years ago, writing a daily blog on issues facing Nashville? Can you imagine it being a good read and a good addition to the public conversation?

Me neither.

Blog, Briley, blog.

November 13, 2006

How the GOP Went Buck Wild - And Lost the Election

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research welcomes Stephen Slivinski, author of Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government, to Nashville on Tuesday (Nov. 14). I'm looking forward to reading my no-doubt-forthcoming review copy...

Slivinski will speak about his book and present his thoughts on what the election outcomes mean to federal spending at a reception and book signing at the Holiday Inn in Brentwood, 5:30pm-7:30pm. The Holiday Inn Brentwood is located at 760 Old Hickory Blvd in Brentwood. The TCPR requests you RSVP if you plan to attend. Details here. I am hoping to work it into my schedule.

Blogs Becoming Advertising Force

This Reuters report says that, in Europe, "blogs are becoming a force to be reckoned with as a means of advertising products" according to a survey by Ipsos MORI . The Ipsos MORI poll "found that the Internet journals are a more trusted source of information than TV advertising or e-mail marketing," reports Reuters.

Ipsos MORI found a direct link between blogs, or user-generated content, and people's intentions to buy goods or services. Any company that fails to come up to standard should beware. The blog is replacing word of mouth for endorsing or condemning a product or service.

About a third of those Europeans questioned said they had been put off making a purchase after reading negative comments on the Internet from customers or other web-users, while 52 percent said they had been persuaded to buy after a positive review on a blog.

Get it right, and blogs could be a boost to companies and even save on their advertising and marketing budgets.

ABC News technology columnist Michael S. Malone explores the ongoing and explosive expansion of the blogosphere in his latest column and predicts the blogosphere will eventually reach 1 billion blogs.

The data are so stunning that even the people at Technorati seem a little dazed. Put simply, the growth of the blogosphere since March 2001 is the upward trajectory of a sine wave, from zero "weblogs" then to 57 million blogs today. And the number continues to grow by 3 million blogs per month, or 100,000 per day.

Think about that: Every single day, 100,000 people out there in the world download the proper software and begin keeping a record of their lives, spouting their opinions, posting photographs of their pets, listing their favorite new movie or book or song, telling their secret dreams and fears, publishing their poetry, writing paeans to their heroes, memorializing lost parents and friends, and on and on.

A total of 1.3 million posts per day.

couple years ago, about the time the big-name bloggers were impacting the presidential elections, everyone was talking about how blogs were about to be the Next Big Thing, and how they, along with online news services and aggregator sites, would spell the death knell for traditional mainstream media.

It sounded good, and the scenario was easy to extrapolate, but it was still almost impossible to imagine that it would be true by the time the next election cycle came around.

And yet, here we are. And it has happened. Basically, every major newspaper in the industrial world is dying, some slowly, but most with shocking alacrity - and many have speeded up their death throes by abandoning all pretenses of objectivity and hanging on to their core readership by reading back to them their own prejudices.

Television news is dying, too. Why else would CBS News throw the Hail Mary Pass of putting Katie Couric in the Walter Cronkite seat? And with no one out there to make the catch, all that the most legendary of network news operations has managed to do is humiliate itself while accelerating its race to oblivion.

The result is that whether we are prepared for it or not, the Web is now our primary medium not just for obtaining, but for creating, news and opinion. ... And its presence literally grows by the day. And you don't have to be a mathematician to appreciate that this presence is going to grow geometrically in the years ahead. Picture 1 billion bloggers by the end of this decade.

Is your company, your church, your non-profit, your university, your business, your elected officials or your government ready for that?

Are you?

Useful Idiots

The Monday edition of The Tennessean reports that the leftwingers still pushing for a state income tax in Tennessee are claiming last week's election results show that an income tax is not political suicide for legislators who back it:

Tennesseans For Fair Taxation released an analysis on Friday that showed 95.5 percent of incumbents who supported the 2002 proposal for an income tax coupled with a lower sales tax were re-elected on Tuesday.

Would it have killed Tennessean reporter Brad Schrade to do a little reporting and tell readers that most of 21 re-elected income tax-lovin' legislators represent very "safe" districts gerrymandered in favor of the Democrats.

Here is the list of legislators who voted for the income tax in 2002 and were reelected again last week:

Democrats
Rep. Harry Tindell, Knoxville; Rep. Joe Armstrong, Knoxville; Rep. Tommie Brown, Chattanooga; Rep. Charles Curtiss, Sparta; Rep. Stratton Bone, Lebanon; Rep. Rob Briley, Nashville; Rep. Randy Rinks, Savannah; Rep. Mark Maddox, Dresden; Rep. Johnny Shaw, Bolivar; House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, Covington; Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, Ripley; Rep. Joe Towns, Memphis; Rep. Larry Turner, Memphis; Rep. Barbara Cooper, Memphis; Rep. Larry Miller, Memphis; Rep. John DeBerry, Memphis; Rep. Lois DeBerry, Memphis; Rep. Henri Brooks, Memphis; Rep. Mike Kernell, Memphis; Rep. Ulysses Jones, Memphis

Republicans
Rep. Steve McDaniel, Parkers Crossroads

Right off the bat, I'm guessing most of the nine legislators from Memphis live in districts that lean so heavily Democratic that the Tennessee Republican Party never makes an serious effort to contest the seat. Any non-idiotic non-boneheaded analysis of the election results would consider them invalid for the statistical analysis.

Also, some of the 21 re-elected legislators who voted for the state income tax in 2002 have since renounced their vote or now claim to be against. In some less-safe districts their new-found opposition to the income tax - real or political pose - may be what's keeping them in office. A good example: state Rep. Randy Rinks, D-Savannah, who four years ago was helping House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh push the income tax proposal, but whose campaign website this year lists him as being opposed to the income tax.

Democrats, by the way, make up the enduring core of support for a state income tax in Tennessee, though in swing districts and hotly contested races they tend to strike an anti-income tax pose. Doing so didn't help the champion of the state income tax, state Sen. Bob Rochelle, the longtime Democrat senator who quit his re-election race in 2002 only to return this year to try to regain his old seat in the 17th district, a swing district that is winnable for Democrats. Rochelle got shellacked by anti-income tax incumbent Sen. Mae Beavers. The Beavers-Rochelle race was the only legislative race in the state this year that truly was a referendum on the income tax - and, in a swing district, the income tax lost.

Here's just how boneheaded and stupid is the election results "analysis" from Tennesseans for unFair Taxation: State Rep. Henri Brooks won re-election. A few years ago, Brooks made news for her refusal to stand and say the pledge of allegiance at the opening of each day's House session. Which means 100 percent of the anti-pledge of allegiance legislators won re-election last week. Does that mean being opposed to saying the pledge is popular with voters in Tennessee? Using TFT's "analysis" skills, the answer is yes - but you won't see anyone running on a pledge to oppose the pledge.

Memo to Tennesseans For A State Income Tax: An analysis of the winners of all 99 House races across the state shows that well more than half of them are on record as being opposed to the state income tax. It seems that, on average, that's the winning message in Tennessee. And your efforts to spin the election results based on boneheaded analysis and leaving out key facts, while highly reminiscent of your "analysis" on behalf of the income tax, won't fly.

November 12, 2006

Illegal Mortgages

The Sunday edition of the Memphis Commercial Appeal reports on some local banks that are making mortgage loans to illegal immigrants, happily undermining U.S. immigration laws. It ought to be illegal federally in this country to sell mortgages to people who are in the country illegally, but it isn't.

Perhaps one of the many newly elected or re-elected members of the state legislature who ran promising to be tough on anti-illegal immigration will propose legislation that would make it illegal in Tennessee. I'd hope the law also provided for government forfeiture of property purchased by illegals, with the lien holder losing all rights to recover their loan. That would put a damper on the purchase of American property by illegal immigrants, and might convince a few of them to return to their home country and begin the process of emigrating to the U.S. legally.

Given that Tennesseans overwhelmingly view illegal immigration as bad for the state, such legislation ought to pass easily, as long as the lobbyists for the banking and real estate industry are ignored. But, then, given that Tennesseans overwhelmingly view illegal immigration as bad for the state, you would think the banks and the real estate companies wouldn't be selling houses to illegals, or financing them...

November 11, 2006

Blogging the Creation

Imagine being there at the creation of the world's newest island. Imagine having a digital camera and an email connection and blogging it for the world to see. These folks did just that, witnessing the volcanic emergence of a new island in the South Pacific.

Early afternoon, somewhere east of the Lau Group in Fiji. We are sailing south of the island group to avoid having to pass through it during night. Yesterday we saw the birth of an island, most likely we were the first humans to see the new creation. We have some pictures, but they will have to wait until we have a chance to upload them. So you might have heard about the sailor superstition that you should "never leave on a Friday". Well, we did and the sea turned to stone, it is hard to get a stronger sign than that. It sounds like a bad joke, but just wait until you see the pictures. Floating stones none the less. When you pick them up, it is easy to see that they are really just volcanic ash that compressed into pumice stone.

The yachting bloggers posted pictures too.

Solidly Back on the Road to Socialism

Jeff Cornwall writes:

Since we got ourselves solidly back on the road to socialism on Tuesday, I thought it somehow appropriate to take a little peak at how entrepreneurship is doing in the People's Republic of China.

November 10, 2006

After the Fall, Comes Winter

This photo I made last winter seems metaphorically appropriate right now. But remember... after winter, always comes spring.

Fear and Loathing in Memphis

Just as I predicted, the passage of a new amendment to Nashville's city charter giving voters the right to approve or reject property tax increases via referendum is already raising interest across the state. Friday's Memphis Commercial Appeal has a rather long and overheated editorial opposing the concept and trying to scare Memphians away from trying to pass a similar amendment to Memphis' city charter.

This week voters in Metro Nashville passed a referendum that will require voters in Metro Nashville to approve any new property tax rate increase from this day forward.

In Metro Nashville, time will tell what the effects will be. The head of the local firefighters' union has expressed some concern about public safety. A national bond rating agency has warned that Nashville's bond rating may fall.

There seems little question that there will be attempts to find a way to prevent the city from running into serious budgetary problems. A move for a local payroll tax may not be far behind.

As I explained in detail here in June 2005, in a response to a Tennessean editorial (no longer online) calling for creation of a 1 percent payroll tax in Nashville, the state constitution expressly prohibits cities and counties from levying income taxes. A payroll tax is an income tax.

Article 11, Section 9 of the state constitution says this:

The General Assembly shall not authorize any municipality to tax incomes, estates, or inheritances, or to impose any other tax not authorized by Sections 28 or 29 of Article 2 of this constitution.

So, do Sections 28 or 29 of Article 2 of the state constitution authorize an income tax?

No. Article 2, Sections 28-29 lists the things the legislature may tax. An income tax is not listed. While some politicians and lawyers - mainly those who believe Tennessee needs a statewide income tax -argue that Article 2, Sections 28-29 does not specifically forbid an income tax, and therefore one is permissible, that is a losing argument.

Article 11, Section 9 makes it clear that if something is not on the list of things the legislature is authorized to tax, then the legislature "is "not authorized" to tax it - and may not authorize cities and counties to tax it.

A payroll tax, therefore, is unconstitutional at the state level and also at the city and county level.

Having mislead readers about the spectre of a payroll tax - odd, since the Commercial-Appeal endorsed a proposed to create a payroll tax in Memphis two years ago - the C-A editorial continues with its editorial:

Could Memphis be next? There is no shortage of people here who are ready to revolt against taxes, too. But experimenting with the city's revenue system, which could hardly be regarded as stable, seems risky.

One thing it would accomplish would be to paint a picture of Memphis - in case anyone out there is thinking about moving a business here - as a community where the local political leadership lacks the authority to respond adequately to emergencies.

Public discourse would primarily center on the topic of what public services to cu