June 30, 2007

Value-Added Blogs

I've written some additional thoughts about The City Paper's new blogs and revamped web site over here at Mesh Media Strategies.

Boom!

The first "July 4th" fireworks shot off in our neighborhood were shot off just moments ago, at 9:07 p.m., June 30. If last year is any guide, the last ones will be shot off around 11 p.m. on July 12. Shooting fireworks is illegal in our idyllic Nashville 'burb, but they don't much enforce that ordinance from June 30 to around July 12.

Bredesen Breaks Oath of Office, Violates Constitition By Signing Unconstitutional Budget Into Law

The City Paper reported Friday that Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen has signed the state’s nearly $28 billion budget into law, having done so on Thursday, two days before the beginning of the new fiscal year. The City Paper outlines the basic budget - what money goes where - but what neither The City Paper nor any other mainstream media outlet in Tennessee has yet bothered to tell the people of Tennessee is that, by signing the budget into law, Gov. Bredesen has broken his oath to uphold the state constitution.

That's because the budget he signed into law is blatantly, inarguably and utterly in violation of the state constitution - and the administration knows it. The State Treasurer admitted that the state doesn't adhere to the plain language of the constitution regarding the growth of spending each year (see video). The budget Bredesen signed into law contains almost $670 million in illegal spending - about $110 for every man, woman and child in the state. By signing the budget into law, Gov. Bredesen has, in effect, sanctioned the illegal taking of nearly $450 from each and every typical family of four.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that now that Bredesen has signed the budget into law, as of July 1 when it goes into effect every single taxpayer in Tennessee will the legal standing to sue the government to block implementation of the unconstitutional budget and the illegal spending.

Here's hoping somebody does.

And here's an offer to the Bredesen administration: Have your legal counsel read this, watch the embedded video, review the state constitution and the applicable statutory law, and then write something explaining why the administration believes the budget isn't unconstitutional, and I'll publish it here, verbatim.

A Close Call

Tennessee ranked 11th best among the 50 states for its legal climate in terms of liability risks for business, according to Risky Business, a new guide from Directorship magazine and the American Justice Partnership. The guide profiles the political, legislative and judicial dynamics that create the current and future liability risks in each state. Here's what the guide says about Tennessee:

Despite its high ranking, determining whether Tennessee's liability climate encourages or is neutral to growth and job creation was a close call. Insurance loss ratios in the state are only 22nd best in the country. Although the Legislature abolished joint liability except in limited instances, there are no limits on non-economic or punitive damages in Tennessee. The Supreme Court is regarded as having neither a rule of law nor an activist majority and there are some plaintiff-friendly venues in the state.

"Board directors need to understand which states have created predatory liability laws that will ensnare their companies in costly and protracted litigation," says Jeff Cunningham, Publisher of Directorship magazine. "Directors, on behalf of shareholders, need to make good decisions about in which states to expand operations and increase employment. We asked Steve Hantler to partner with us on the Guide because through AJP he has the best network of in-state Partners who are the experts on their respective state legal climates."

"Our goal for the Guide is to provide board directors and other company decision-makers with a high-level understanding of risks arising because of the legal climate in each state," says lead author Steve Hantler, right, Chairman of the American Justice Partnership. "While directors will need more detailed information before making major decisions about where to site facilities, this Guide provides an expert summary of the environment in all the states."

Digging The Poor's Grave

Phelim McAleer, the director of the excellent documentary Mine Your Own Business, writes that environmentalists are the new threat facing the world's poor.

That's Meshed Up

I have launched a revamped website for Mesh Media Strategies.

Would You Pay $2,200 for the Predators?

Springwise, a blog of "promising new business ideas for entrepreneurial minds," recently reported on a new venture in Great Britain called My Football Club, which aims to organize thousands of members of the general public into a group to purchase a soccer franchise.

MyFootballClub, which launched just two weeks ago, aims to buy a professional league football/soccer club. Football fans can currently register for free, but commit to paying GBP 35 as soon as 50,000 people have registered. This will create a purchase fund of GBP 1,375,000, plus GBP 375,000 for staffing and running MyFootballClub.

When registering, members vote for the team they'd like to buy. As soon as they've paid their membership fee, they can confirm their prior choice or pick another team. After a club has been purchased, a Board will be formed to help run it, containing existing supporters of the club, existing board members, new directors and a member of the MyFootballClub web team. The Board will consult MyFootballClub members on all major decisions. All members will be able to vote, and decisions will be made based on those votes. Which, theoretically, should create steadier management than most clubs have, where personal politics and clashing interests can get in the way of sound decision making. And, as MyFootballClub states: "Without having to rely on the wealth and goodwill of an individual owner, the club will benefit from the pooled resources, knowledge and enthusiasm of thousands of football fans worldwide."

Free Daily Pays Readers to Blog

Have you heard about the free city daily newspaper that has launched a cool new blogging project? Well, yes, you say, The City Paper is launching four new blogs. That's true - and I'm anticipating good things from the Nashville City Blogs project - but that's not who I'm talking about in this post. A free city daily in Sweden is paying non-staffers to blog, with payments based on how many page-views they generate.

June 29, 2007

Thank God?

Mark Daniels has written a thought-provoking piece about the power of prayer and what role prayer may have played in the averted car-bomb terror attack in London today. Daniels mentions author Phillip Yancey's excellent new book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? Well, I'm guessing it is excellent, although I haven't read it yet, based on Yance's track record. His book What's So Amazing About Grace? was the best book I've read on the theology of grace since, well, since the Bible itself. So, just as soon as I hit "publish" on this, I'm off to Amazon to order Yancey's new book.

Extreme Web Makeover: The City Paper

The Nashville City Paper's revamped website is set to go live sometime later tonight, last I heard. The new site has links to four new City Paper blogs. You can see them here. I built them, though I won't be blogging over there. I had a very enjoyable time today talking with The City Paper's reporters and editors about blogs and doing journalism on blogs. I think you're in for a treat as their blogs progress in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Blogging Forecast

I'll be spending most of today at The City Paper talking with the paper's editors and reporters about the art of blogging and how to do it with journalistic integrity but without journalism's blandness. After that, I've got a manuscript to finish for a short book on Fred Thompson, and then I'm traveling for most of next week to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia. I might post a few things from the road but don't count on it. I will still be posting, at least a little, at ElephantBiz.com and Ecotality next week.

June 27, 2007

The New Nashville City Blogs

The Nashville Scene reports on the coming makeover of the online presence of Nashville's The City Paper, a makeover I'm proud to say I have been involved with. My involvement, via my Mesh Media Strategies, has been designing and building The City Paper's new blog platform, NashvilleCityBlogs.com, and the initial four new blogs focusing on politics, sports, fashion and music.

Here's what the Scene had to say today...

Gone will be the static, blue-and-white template that readers have grown accustomed to, and in its place will be a new home page that directs readers to top stories, to four blogs and to an e-paper driven by the software Olive Active Paper, which is used by publications such as The Chattanooga Times Free Press and The Denver Post.

"What you'll see the first week or two in July is the first step, it's not the last step," says City Paper editor Clint Brewer, adding that he's also researching a video project for the website. "Really, we're not relaunching a website. We're really launching, arguably, six websites." The home page, e-paper and each of the four blogs all will have separate URLs.

"We've got a pretty healthy online readership," Brewer says, "particularly when you consider we've never promoted [the website] and it looks five or six years out of date...and we just need to serve them better."

...

Readers can expect to see two "team" blogs when the sites launch in July: a sports blog called "Nashville Ballers" and a political blog called "Political Animals." Writer (and former Rage editor) Libby Callaway will author a fashion blog called "The Style Arbiter," and music writer Ron Wynn will author a pop culture blog called "Giant Steps" (so named for the John Coltrane album).

At least one CP staffer won't be reading."What is it that [Wall Street Journal writer] Walter Mossberg said about citizen journalism?" [City Paper publisher Albie] Del Favero says. "Kind of like citizen surgery. That's how I feel about blogs. But I'm 53 years old..."

My involvement with the Nashville City Blogs project isn't limited to building the sites. I am also to be involved in helping The City Paper's journalists - who are already good at what they do - to also become good at using the blog medium as well.

I've done journalism in Nashville for nearly 20 years, and I've been a successful blogger for more than five. No media outlet in this city has yet maximized blogs and fully leveraged the power of blog-journalism and the blogosphere. I'm hoping to help The City Paper be the first.

Update. Working with The City Paper on the Nashville City Blogs project is coming full-circle for me - I started my first blog at the end of November 2001 as an adjunct to a weekly column I was writing for The City Paper. You can find a list of links to all my City Paper columns here. I'm hoping their archives survive the transition to the new website.

MikeSechrist.com

WKRNGM.com, the blog of former WKRN Channel 2 General Manager Mike Sechrist, who integrated blogs with WKRN's newsroom, now redirects to MikeSechrist.com, and he recently posted his first blog post since leaving WKRN on May 4.

Death of a Nation

Rich Hailey writes eloquently about immigration reform. Read the whole thing.

Moving On

I've been working a lot lately on some interesting projects including one you'll soon be hearing a lot more about. One of the projects involves building a series of blogs for a client, and while most of my experience in building blogs has involved the Movable Type software, this time I decided to dump MT and go with WordPress. I could not be more pleased with the decision - in fact, I am considering rebuilding this blog with WordPress. If you're trying to decide what blogging software to use, I recommend WordPress. And if you're looking for help for your organization to develop an effective blogging program, contact me.

Rep. Blackburn Explains Earmarks

I recently invited U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, to write something explaining her view of the use of "earmarks" in the congressional budgeting process, and I'd publish it here at BillHobbs.com. I received the following today via Matt Lambert, Rep. Blackburn's communications director...

In today's political climate the word "earmark" is a dirty word. It conjures up images of corruption and shady backroom deals, which sends millions of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars to frivolous and unnecessary federal projects.

Unfortunately, that reputation is well deserved. In the past, several years millions in earmark pork projects have attempted to fund the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska and the creation of a tropical rain forest in Iowa.

These projects are a clear abuse of a legislative tool that was supposed to be a great equalizer for the American people.

The earmark was created so smaller states could get their share of federal government money. Without earmarks, many roads in rural Tennessee could not have been built. Certain earmarks helped construct water treatment plants and railroad crossings throughout our state.

Earmarks, if gotten in a clean, transparent, and ethical manner get critical federal dollars to the projects that need them the most. There is nothing wrong with that.

My office works with local and state officials that request help from the federal government that they would not normally get through typical formula funding. Sometimes your local officials ask the government for help and it's my job to help.

I know what the people of Tennessee need better than some pencil-pushing bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. The red tape up here is immense and trying to get funding for a new road can be accomplished a lot quicker and with more efficiency through my office than it can be through the maze at the Department of Transportation.

To shine a light on the earmark process, I lobbied for hours on the House floor two weeks ago after the Democrat Appropriations Chairman David Obey (WI) tried to force through a spending package that included billions of dollars of earmarks in a secret slush fund. He wanted us to vote without ever seeing where this money was going and what project it was to be spent on. As crazy as this sounds, it's true. By tying up the floor and forcing the media to address this issue, we forced the Democrats to make all earmarks public in order to examine what are credible projects and what is pork.

Every project we request has the backing of Tennessee local officials and every time our earmark is presented in a bill it has my name next to it. We won't hide them and never will. On the few occasions that we receive an earmark, we publicize it, because you deserve to know where your money is being spent.

What you will not find coming out of my office is "pork," but rather your fair share of federal spending for worthwhile projects that better the lives of the people of Tennessee.

- U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn

June 26, 2007

"Freedom of the Press" Doesn't Mean the Media

Gene Policinski, vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center, writes in an essay published by the American Press Institute about the impact of bloggers and other grassroots media on the definition of the "free press" discussed in the First Amendment.

For most of the nation's history, much of the public's attention - and much of the legal contention - regarding a free press has been on the "free" part. But of late, figuring out the "press" portion has gotten a bit tougher, often as the result of the work of Internet entrepreneurs.

There's no specific definition of "press" in the 45 words of the First Amendment. So who might be bound by responsibilities that go along with the role of a free press? Are bloggers and other Web users part of a broadly defined "press" even though they certainly could not have been envisioned by the Colonial-era Founders who wrote the First Amendment?

What the First Amendment means when it says "the press" is best understood by reading the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment does not reserve a "freedom of the press" to only those who designate themselves as "professional journalists." The First Amendment was not written to protect "journalists" - it was written to protect the right of the American people to speak, to publish, to gather and to worship.

Today, we hear the phrase "the press" and think it refers to the "news media," i.e., those professional journalists who produce our newspapers and TV news. But there was no such professional journalism industry in the late 1700s when the First Amendment was written.

When the First Amendment refers to "the press" it is referring to the means of publication. The First Amendment simply says that Congress is not allowed to "abridge" the rights of the American people to use the means of publication.

In that era, the main means of publishing was a printing press. Today, it's a printing press, a radio or TV broadcast tower, a cellphone video camera, a satellite uplink, a blog or a YouTube account.

There's an old cliche that "freedom of the press" belongs to the one who owns the press. Back when the First Amendment was written, few people could afford a printing press. Today, thanks to blogs, YouTube, broadband and cheap digital cameras, almost any American can afford to own the modern day equivalent of a printing press.

The debate over whether bloggers and other web-empowered citizens are covered by the First Amendment is silly. The First Amendment covers Americans, not "journalists" and it even covers Americans who blog, no matter whether they are blogging the local school board meetings that their local chain-owned daily stopped covering a long time ago, or they're writing about their cat or they're posting angry rants about their government or anything else on their blog.

Actually, today's bloggers and web publishers are much, much closer to what the Founding Fathers knew as the publishers of their day than are today's corporate mass-media, journalistic industries. The published media of the colonial era was nothing like today's ostensibly "objective" news media - rather it was characterized by partisan pamphleteers and independent political activists, advocates and muckrackers.

Technology aside, the authors of the First Amendment would more likely have envisioned today's bloggers than today's mainstream media.

Big Fred

How big is the Fred Thompson buzz? This 15-minute interview of Sen. Thompson by Peter Robinson, a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has been viewed on Google Video more than 23,500 times in the last two weeks. For comparison, this video of an interview of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has been viewed just 174 times in the last two months.

June 25, 2007

Forecast: Scattered Bloggage

Well, lookie there, it's been six days since I posted anything here. But I've not disappeared entirely from the blogosphere. I've been posting a lot at ElephantBiz.com and at Ecotality. Light posting here will continue for quite awhile - at least through the end of next week - as I'm buried in paying work, and also headed out of town for a few days. I will continue to post at Elephant Biz and Ecotality.

June 19, 2007

Cool News About Gasoline

Here's something I didn't know until I read the newspaper on the web this morning: You get less gasoline in a "gallon" of gas when it is hot outside than when it is cool. Learn why you should pump your gas at night (or whenever it is coolest outside) by clicking here.

June 18, 2007

Trunk Show

It's been more than three weeks since I last published an update here regarding my latest posts at ElephantBiz.com, although I've published around 150 blog entries there over that time period. I'm not going to recap them here, but today I'm publishing a series of thumbnail reviews of the various Republican presidential candidate' websites, focusing primarily on their usage of blogs and other social media.

Also today, you might be interested in this post: Online Strategery: Focus on the Uploaders. And if you're looking for a big dose of Fred Thompson news at ElephantBiz.com, click here, and for all posts related to the 2008 presidential race on the Republican side, click here.

Swallowing the Camel

In the final days of the 2007 session of the Tennessee General Assembly, State Treasurer Dale Sims admitted that, for years, the state has ignored the state constitution and state law regarding the limit on the annual growth of state spending - hiding billions of dollars in illegal, unconstitutional state spending, driving up tax rates for hard-working Tennesseans and Tennessee businesses.

Here is a list of the Tennessee newspapers that have reported this fact so far since it was first revealed last Tuesday:
.
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/end of list

Now, Tennessean columnist Larry Daughtrey could have written about it in his column Sunday in which he focused on the budgetary wheeling and dealing in the closing days of the legislative session.

Instead, he wrote about the $20 million in pork, er, I mean "community enhancement grants," claiming Republicans got "snookered" because the pork is in the budget and yet doling it it will be the state's Secretary of State, a Democrat, so Republicans won't get any PR credit for it. The $20 million in pork is a travesty, but the larger reality is that Tennessee taxpayers over the years have been "snookered" for billions of dollars, of which the $20 million in pork is only a small fraction.

There is, inarguably, almost $670 million in illegal, unconstitutional spending in the new state budget the legislature just passed, and yet Daughtrey is fixated on the politics of $20 million worth of pork

State Treasurer Dale Sims claims the state has violated the law in the way it calculates the annual spending growth cap figure ever since voters added the spending cap to the state constitution in 1978.

If that's true, then state government has been spending billions of dollars illegally and unconstitutionally over the last 29 years. Why it was never reported by the news media? Either they knew it was happening and didn't say anything, or they weren't doing their job very well. Which is the case? The best person to answer that question might be Larry Daughtrey. He's been covering the legislature for a few decades now.

Update: The Tennessean covers the story, sort of, with an online forum asking "Has TN Govt grown faster than the law allows?"

The Media is Watching You

A Scarborough Research study commissioned by the Newspaper National Network has found a high degree of overlap in the use of online and print versions of newspapers, with 81% of respondents saying they regularly consume both kinds of media, reports MediaPost.com today.

The "Integrated Newspaper Footprint Study," a telephone re-contact survey of individuals in Scarborough's syndicated research database, sought respondents who had previously indicated that they had visited a newspaper Web site in the "last seven days"--and focused on the 81% of them who said they also read the newspapers in their print versions.

Within this group, 63% read printed newspapers in the morning (before 10 a.m.), versus just 34% who visit newspapers' Web sites in the same time period. Conversely, 46% of these "crossover" users visit the Web sites in the afternoon or evening, versus a relatively lower 41% who read printed newspapers in those time periods.

Jason Klein, president and chief executive officer of NNN, speculated that this was due to the easy morning availability of newspapers that are either delivered to homes or sold (or given away free) at commuter hubs. It may also reflect a usage pattern in which the print newspaper anchors stories in readers' minds, which they then follow up on the Web.

At the same time, 96% of crossover users said they use newspaper Web sites for breaking news, and 85% to find articles seen previously. Other popular uses were for weather updates (75%), finding things to do (72%) and community events (70%).

The study, titled "Youth Media DNA," found that "the importance of the social network as a disseminator of news and information is on the rise." The survey elaborated: "Many participants in this phase listed 'discussion with friends' as a top source for news and information, sometimes ranking higher than TV or newspapers."

In this context, the study said, the best strategy for newspapers may be inserting themselves into the social networks, where their content will appear alongside--and perhaps become absorbed into--the online discussion and debate.

June 14, 2007

Sen. Cooper Illegally Pockets Campaign Cash

State Sen. Jerry Cooper has taken $95,000 from his campaign account and put it in his personal bank account over the years, according to evidence that surfaced during his recent trial on federal fraud charges. That's illegal. The Tennessee Registry of Election Finance doesn't care.

June 13, 2007

Caught on Video: State Treasurer Admits State Ignores the Law on Spending Limits

As a follow-up to my post yesterday reporting that the state budget may include nearly $1 billion in unconstitutional spending, Ben Cunningham has posted the video of an exchange on the state House floor between state Rep. Susan Lynn and State Treasurer Dale Sims in which Sims admits the Bredesen administration has violated the state constitution and state law in the way it calculates how much it may spend under the constitution's "Copeland Cap," an amendment voters added to the constitution in 1978. Cunningham:

The Copeland amendment says that the growth in appropriations from state may not grow faster than the TN economy as measured by personal income unless the General Assembly votes to override this cap. The law is very explicit and says "appropriations. Bill Hobbs' post yesterday lays out some of the questions. Here is a video of a discussion from the Monday House Floor session where Dale Sims, with the Comptroller's office, says YES the Copeland cap has been computed with revenues and not appropriations. Has this allowed Govt to grow faster than it should have? Research is being done to find the answer.

The state constitution was amended in 1978 with this provision, called the "Copeland Cap" after state Rep. David Copeland, who sponsored it:

In no year shall the rate of growth of appropriations from state tax revenues exceed the estimated rate of growth of the state's economy as determined by law. No appropriation in excess of this limitation shall be made unless the General Assembly shall, by law containing no other subject matter, set forth the dollar amount and the rate by which the limit will be exceeded. (Article 2 Section 24)

The law is clear - crystal clear - that the Copeland Cap formula is to be applied to appropriations, not revenues. In other words, if the state spent $100 in the current fiscal year, and the projected economic growth rate for the next fiscal year is 5 percent, the state may spend $105 in the new fiscal year - even if revenues in the current fiscal year actually came in above $100. By applying the Copeland Cap to revenue, the government has - unconstitutionally - permitted itself to spend above the Copeland Cap without declaring it.

Here's how it works in the real world:
The total 2006-2007 fiscal year budget (appropriations) was just over $12.4 billion (appropriations from state tax dollars). Specifically, it was $12,410,400,661

If the projected economic growth rate for this year is 1 percent, then spending could be increased by $124.1 million.

The official projected economic growth rate for fiscal year 2007-08 is 5.46 percent, so the state budget for FY 2007-08 can be $677 million larger - for a total of $13,087,400,661 from state tax dollars - without breaching the Copeland Cap. But the budget just passed by the legislature, containing virtually everything requested by Gov. Phil Bredesen, increases spending from state revenues by $1.4 billion.

That puts it $723 million over the cap. According to the Tennessee constitution and the related statutory provisions, the state can't spend that extra $723 million unless the legislature passes a law stating that it is exceeding the Copeland Cap by $723 million in fiscal year 2007-08. The General Assembly did not do that before it adjourned.

The legislature on Monday passed legislation declaring that it is exceeding Copeland in fiscal 2007-08 - but only by $53.7 million. How did they get that much lower number? By applying the Copeland growth percentage for the coming fiscal to the current fiscal year's revenue which, as we all know, is in record surplus. The legislation authorizing the breaking of the Copeland Cap was short by almost $670 million.

The bottom line: The state budget, which Gov. Bredesen will soon sign into law, includes almost $670 million in spending that the state, legally, is not permitted to spend. It is an unconstitutional state budget.

The Bredesen administration will spend the extra money, though, because the Bredesen administration doesn't care about following the Copeland law - and they don't think you care either.

This kind of budgetary books-cooking is not just a one-time occurence, either.

The state has enjoyed surplus tax revenues almost every year since 1978 - some years more than others. The state even had surplus revenue during most of the four years of the Great Tennessee Income Tax Battle of the late 1990s, when income tax proponents were claiming the state was facing shortfalls.

In the video from the House floor session, Sims claims the Copeland cap number has always been calculated based on the previous year's revenues, rather than the previous year's spending, a claim that has not been verified. I'm guessing that the state followed the law for at least a few years, and didn't make the switch until Rep. Copeland, a tireless budget hawk, retired from the legislature. But if it is true, that doesn't mean - as Sims claims - that continuing to do it that way protects the state budget from legal challenge. On the contrary, it means that the state has been ignoring the law and the constitution for nearly 30 years, and that possibly every single budget passed after the Copeland Amendment was added to the constitution have included illegal, unconstitutional over-spending.

The state Treasurer is one of the constitutional officers who can be impeached and removed from office "whenever they may, in the opinion of the House of Representatives, commit any crime in their official capacity which may require disqualification."

Meanwhile, a number of people are now collecting the information and reviewing the documents to determine when, exactly, state government stopped following the Copeland law and started violating it by applying the formula to revenue rather than appropriations. And they're doing the very tedious math to calculate just how much the state government has illegally spent since 1978.

And if Sims really believes that continuing to violate the law protects the new state budget from legal action, he's quite delusional.

Stay tuned...

Update: The numbers on the section of the story titled "Here's how it works in the real world" were off just a little and were updated Wednesday afternoon with accurate numbers from state Rep. Susan Lynn.

Update: I emailed Gov. Bredesen's press secretary the text of the Copeland Amendment and a simple question: Does Gov. Bredesen believe the Copeland Cap should be calculated using state appropriations or state revenues? So far, I have not received a response.

15 Minutes of Fred

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University has just posted a 15-minute interview with Republican presidential almost-candidate Fred Thompson by Peter Robinson, a Fellow at the Hoover Institution, on Google Video.

It's a nice serious counterpoint to Thompson's appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night. Robinson speaks with Fred Thompson about his candidacy for President of the Unites States and delves into the key issues facing America today, the politics of running for president, and the source of Thompson's conservative views.

Turns out that Thompson is a movement conservative, inspired to become active in politics by the founder of modern American conservatism.

June 12, 2007

State Budget Nearly $1 Billion Over the Cap

All hell may be about to break loose in Tennessee, politically speaking, regarding the state budget. But, you say, the legislature has already passed the budget, the debate is over, right?

Well, perhaps not. My sources tell me new $28 billion state budget just passed by the legislature is not a mere $53.7 million over the state's constitutionally mandated "Copeland Cap" spending growth limit. Rather, it is almost $1 billion over the cap. The lying Bredesen administration has simply not followed the law in calculating the cap, even though the law and the constitution are clear - crystal clear - about how the cap is to be calculated. And the illegal budgeting and deception may have been going on for years.

The state constitution was amended in 1978 with this provision, called the "Copeland Cap" after state Rep. David Copeland, who sponsored it:

In no year shall the rate of growth of appropriations from state tax revenues exceed the estimated rate of growth of the state's economy as determined by law. No appropriation in excess of this limitation shall be made unless the General Assembly shall, by law containing no other subject matter, set forth the dollar amount and the rate by which the limit will be exceeded. (Article 2 Section 24)

I have been hammering away at the Copeland issue for more than six years now, in columns for Nashville InReview, the Nashville City Paper, and here on this blog. I've talked about it on Teddy Bart's radio show, the Phil Valentine show and other in media. I have known since way back in the heat of the Tennessee Income Tax War of the late 1990s that the bureaucracy was doing its best to ignore the constitution and the will of the people by routinely flouting the Copeland limit. And yet I had no idea just how bad it was.

You, Tennessee taxpayers, have been the marks for one of the biggest financial scams in history. And it all started with one little lie.

You may not hear any more about this for a few weeks, but know this: This is real. Mainstream media reporters know about it and have the facts. And they aren't the only ones. And you will hear more soon. And then you will either lose the last tattered shreds of faith you had in your state government or you will get furiously angry. Probably both.

Developing...

Update: State Rep. Stacey Campfield reveals a little more on his blog:

The busting of the Copeland cap was also done in such a way that it could easily lead to law suit. By breaking it as we did and with audio conformation from the administration previous to doing it (they admitted that what they were doing was not legal or even constitutional but they were going to do it anyway) we are just waiting for the paper work to be filed.

On January 20, 2007, Bredesen was sworn in for a second term with an oath to uphold the state's constitution. If he signs the budget passed by the Legislature, he will be violating that oath.

Bredesen Administration Launches New Assault on the "Copeland Cap"

As I warned back in April, Gov. Phil Bredesen's administration indeed has pushed legislation through the General Assembly to once again break the state constitution's cap on the year-over-year growth of the state budget in order to fund Gov. Phil Bredesen's $28 billion spending plan.

At the same time, the Bredesen administration has launched a new assualt on the Copeland Cap itself that could effectively gut what's left of the 1978 constitutional amendment that was designed to keep the state budget from growing faster than the incomes of the people of Tennessee.

The legislators who carry Gov. Phil Bredesen's legislative agenda in the House and Senate filed legislation in February to authorize spending in excess of the Copeland Cap limit. That legislation was amended and passed by both houses of the legislature Monday night and authorizes the Bredesen administration to spend $46 million in excess of the "Copeland Cap" in the current fiscal year - which ends in 18 days - and to spend another $53.7 million above the cap in the new fiscal year.

This will mark the 14th and 15th times in the last 23 fiscal years in which the Copeland Cap - which limits the annual rate of growth of appropriations from state tax revenues to the rate of growth in the state's economy - has been ignored.

In all, now, a series of legislatures and Democratic and Republican governors have used a loophole in the Copeland Cap to increase the budget by a combined $3.371 billion dollars. (For the history of the Copeland Cap since it was passed by voters in 1978, see Spending Spree: The Bipartisan Assault That is Killing The Constitutional Cap on the Growth of Tennessee's State Budget, a research paper that contains information the mainstream media almost never includes in its reports about the state budget.)

If the Copeland Cap had been strictly adhered to over the years, Bredesen's $28.billion budget would be less than $25 billion - a savings for taxpayers that would allow the elimination of the state sales tax on food and a reduction in the overall sales tax from 7 cents on the dollar to about 4.5 cents.

The Bredesen administration claims the budget does not exceed the Copeland Cap because the excess spending is really money being put into the state's "Rainy Day" fund, rather than being spent. But if the administration's effort to exempt allocations to the "Rainy Day" fund from Copeland succeed, the Bredesen administration will have effectively gutted the Copeland Cap.

Here's why: The Bredesen budget treats the Rainy Day fund as merely a temporary parking place for extra revenue that it fully intends to spend, and spend soon.

As Ben Cunningham wrote a few days ago, based on a WPLN report on the legislature's budget decisions, the Bredesen budget departs from previous budgetary practice regarding the state's reserve fund.

Before this year the rainy day fund was simply a fund for unexpected downturns in revenue

But now, says Cunningham, because the Bredesen budget is based on the high end of official state revenue projections, the money is being banked in the reserve fund to cover "revenue fluctuations" in the coming fiscal year. In other words, the Bredesen administration believes that its revenue projections may be too high and it anticipates needing to dip into the reserve fund in the coming year. Cunningham:

"Bredesen and the General Assembly regard the rainy day fund like a slush fund that will almost certainly be needed for what are clearly inflated revenue estimates for the coming budget year. (and probably deflated spending estimates) This goes way beyond mismanagement. This is intentionally misleading taxpayers about their future liability.

Translation: The State Funding Board is preparing to declare that Rainy Day fund allocations are exempt from the Copeland Cap. And what little protection the taxpayers of Tennessee have against excessive government spending will be obliterated.

Media coverage: The mainstream media almost never mentions the Copeland Cap in its stories about the state budget. The Tennessean's story today on the state budget doesn't mention the Copeland Cap at all, although the City Paper's story does. But neither paper explores the implications of the Bredesen administration's claim - counter to all past budget practices - that allocations to the reserve fund are exempt from Copeland.

A Google News search reveals that the Copeland Cap is rarely mentioned in mainstream media news coverage. Even Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Tom Humphrey fails to mention the Copeland Cap in his story today despite his recent insistence to me that details about the Copeland Cap have been "reported, time and again" by the Tennessee media - all evidence to the contrary - "and will be again, I'm sure, as things go along this session."

Trooper Alleges Bredesen Administration Hasn't Cleaned up the THP

Has the pay-to-play administration of Gov. Phil Bredesen really cleaned up its act in the Tennessee Highway Patrol and ended its corrupt practice of basing promotions on political affiliation and campaign contributions? One state trooper says no, and he's saying it with a federal lawsuit. The discovery process should be interesting.

June 11, 2007

Most States Using Surpluses To Cut Taxes

The New York Times reports that most states are flush with unexpectedly high tax revenue, but fails to point out the cause: The economic boom generated by the Bush tax cuts.

More than 40 states have found themselves with more money than they planned as they wound down their regular sessions. Governors in 23 of those states proposed tax cuts, and a majority of states with surpluses chose to shore up their roads, schools and rainy day funds.

Tax Cuts = Economic Growth.
Economic Growth = Increased tax collections.
Tax Cuts = Increased tax collections.

Unfortunately though,
Increased tax collections = more spending.

Oh, sure, the sales tax on food is being nipped downward by half a cent - saving you 50 cents for every $100 you spend on groceries. But while that minor tax cut will save Tennessee taxpayers less than $50 million a year, Tennessee also is raising other taxes and fees by a total of around $250 million per year.

So, add one line to Glen Dean's formula if you live in Tennessee:

Increased tax collections = tax increases.

Blogging from Romania

Gheorghe Luchian, the Romanian villager who stars in the documentary Mine Your Own Business, which exposes how environmentalist groups fight against economic progress for poor people in impoverished communites from Romania to Chile to Madagascar, now has a blog, Report from Rosia.

Also, Roy Innis, chairman of the civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality, wrote an excellent op-ed for Investor's Business Daily recently regarding MYOB. Here's an excerpt:

The WWF, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network and other multinational activist groups battle mines in Romania, Peru, Chile, Ghana and Indonesia; electricity projects in Uganda, India and Nepal; biotechnology that could improve farm incomes and reduce malnutrition in Kenya, India, Brazil and the Philippines; and DDT that could slash malaria rates in Africa, where the disease kills 3,000 children a day.

They harp on technology's speculative hazards and ignore real, life-or-death dangers that modern mining, development and technology would reduce or prevent. They never mention the jobs, clinics, schools, roads, improved housing and small business opportunities - or the electricity, refrigeration, safe water, better nutrition, reduced disease and fewer dead children.

Immigration "Reform" Killed By A Flash Mob

New York Post writer John Podhoretz says the defeat of the immigration reform bill was a revolutionary moment in American political history.

But there's something else notable here - something that should gladden the hearts of libertarians and all those who are suspicious of big government. The takedown of this bill is a template for future actions against major pieces of legislation. And like so many templates for action these days, it was made possible by the Internet. Here's how.

This was a "comprehensive" bill, designed to thoroughly "take care" of a thorny problem. It sought to address every important issue relating to immigration - border and employer enforcement, guest workers, legalization and the means by which immigrants can become citizens.

The bill runs more than 400 pages. In its many sections are many innovations and many revisions of existing law. For almost any lay person outside of government, it might as well be written in Urdu - so indecipherable is the drafting language.

That is by design. These bills aren't written by the senators who negotiate them, but by the staffers who work for the senators. And since the bill seeks to "reform" existing laws, a lot of it simply makes reference to those laws and says Word A should be changed to Word B. All of this shields the actual meaning of the legislation from the public, which must rely only on the general summaries of the legislation from politicians.

There was almost no way in the pre-Web era to piece together the actual provisions of reform legislation before it became law. Lobbyists were paid millions of dollars to do just that for panicked business clients - and to get their friends to stick in a few words here or there that would tilt the balance of the new law to benefit them and their clients.

... Now consider what happened with the immigration bill. It was released within minutes of its completion - and it was quickly hacked to bits by paid experts, think tankers, lay thinkers, lawyers and logicians.

He doesn't say it, but what happened to the immigration reform bill at the national level can just as easily happen to legislation at the state level - if enough people are paying attention, using the Internet to monitor legislation, and applying their own knowledge to track and decipher legislation, identify its weak spots and objectionably provisions, and then distribute their findings via the Internet.

June 10, 2007

The Latest Daughtrey Debacle

In his latest Sunday column, Tennessean columnist Larry Daughtrey loads up on the misinformation and misdirection again regarding the state legislature's debate over the state budget and taxes.

Daughtrey describes the coming half-cent reduction in Tennessee's sales tax on food as "an initiative from Democratic House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh," even though the facts - even from the Tennessean's own archives - show that Naifeh was opposed to cutting the sales tax on food and that Democrats only begain talking about reducing the food tax after Republicans refused to stop pushing for it as the state's tax revenue surplus topped $1 billion.

Daughtrey claims that reducing the food tax is an issue that Republicans "filched from the Democratic agenda," but reducing the food tax wasn't on the Democratic legislative agenda this year and the Democratic governor spoke out early and often against cutting the food tax.

Daughtrey also accuses state Senate Republicans of "sleaze politics" for voting for Gov. Phil Bredesen's education proposals, but against the cigarette tax increase Democrats and Bredesen said was necessary to pay for it. What Daughtrey fails to tell his readers is that Republicans in the House had proposed a budget that fully funded Bredesen's education proposals without raising any taxes at all.

Revolving Door

Until we the people force our government to enforce the immigration laws and shut down illegal immigration, this is the kind of federal non-action we're going to continue to get. We don't need comprehensive immigration reform. We need a government that does its job.

June 8, 2007

New State Budget Offsets Major Tax Increase With Minor Tax Cut

The Tennessee legislature is close to an agreement on a $28 billion state budget that includes a minor tax cut, a major tax increase, and plenty of pork.

After raising taxes by approximately $250 million per year, via the 42-cent increase in the tax on a pac of smokes, the House and Senate have agreed to reduce the state's 6 percent sales tax on food to just 5.5 cents, plus a sales tax "holiday" weekend next Spring, which will save Tennessee taxpayers approximately $50 million per year.

I'm not going to rehash all of the details of the tax-and-budget package, as Ben Cunningham has the details from Joe White and WPLN. Cunningham notes that the budget "results in a net tax hike of approx $200 million in a year when State Government was awash in taxpayer dollars," and appropriately calls that "a disgrace."

Hysterically misleading quote in the WPLN coverage: Finance Commissioner Dave Goetz saying, "The governor's not against tax relief."

Oh, really? He's not?

The truth is, Gov. Phil Bredesen fought any and all proposals for tax reductions from the start of the session right up to the end. The truth is, Gov. Bredesen never proposed tax relief this year, and became more stridently opposed to tax relief the larger the state's revenue surplus grew. Gov. Bredesen has, to my knowledge, never proposed one thin dime's worth of tax relief in the entire 5 years he's been in office. Tax increases? Yes. And more to come - he's already said the state needs a gas-tax increase. But tax relief? Never.

Gov. Bredesen is a serial tax-raiser, not a tax cutter. Nashville's taxpayers learned when he was mayor, raising property taxes three times in eight years.

Murfreesboro's Daily News Journal has the AP story on the budget agreement.

Also, via Ben C., there's word from the AP and the Knoxville News Sentinel that the $20 million in pork survived, though legislators won't get to dole it out personally.

None of the coverage, though, mentions whether the budget is over the state constitution's "Copeland Cap," which is supposed to limit the year-to-year growth of state spending.

The Bredesen administration has claimed its proposed budget won't break the cap, but they can not possibly be telling the truth unless their "truth" is the result of some very tricky accounting.

The Copeland Cap limits the annual growth of spending from state tax dollars to the estimated growth rate of the state's economy, which is defined by law as personal income growth. The total state budget (that is, not including federal dollars) for the current fiscal year was: $12,410,400,661. That's the baseline upon which the Copeland limit is calculated for fiscal year 2007-08.

For every one percent of estimated economic growth rate for the coming year, the budget can be increased by $124,104,006 without breaking the Copeland Cap. If the economy is estimated to grow at a healthy 4 percent, the state budget could be increased by $496.41 million without breaking Copeland.

Gov. Bredesen's proposed $28 billion budget included a $1.5 billion increase in spending from state revenue - which is only under the Copeland Cap if personal income in Tennessee is projected to grow by 12 percent in the coming fiscal year.

So, does the new budget break the Copeland cap?

Legislation to authorize breaking the Copeland Cap House was filed the House and Senate in February by House Majority Leader Gary Odom, the Nashville Democrat who carries the Bredesen administration's legislative agenda in the House, and by Senate Democratic Leader Jim Kyle, the Memphis Democrat who carries Bredesen's legislative agenda in the Senate. House Bill 2347 and Senate Bill 2333, which would authorize the state to spend $12 million above the cap in fiscal year 2007-98, hadn't moved since early March but today it was placed on the calendar for the Monday, June 11, meetings of both the House and Senate finance committees.

At the same time, similar legislation authorize the state to exceed the Copeland Cap in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, also has started moving again in the House and Senate. House Bill 2348 and Senate Bill 2332, was filed by Odom and Kyle and would authorize the state to spend $11.5 million above the cap. The legislation hadn't moved since early March, but today it also was placed on the calendar for the Monday, June 11, meetings of both the House and Senate finance committees.

The dollar figures in both pieces of legislation are just placeholders for the final amount to be amended into the legislation Monday if necessary.

Tom Humphrey, the Knoxville paper's legislative reporter who insisted to me three weeks ago that the media has covered the Copeland Cap implications of the budget story this year (despite a Google News search proving otherwise), doesn't mention the Copeland cap in his story about the $28 billion budget.

Fence First!

Senate Bill 1348, the compromise immigration reform bill that almost nobody liked, has suffered a major defeat in the U.S. Senate, and Tennessee senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker voted the right way.

Meanwhile, The City Paper has an excellent story today on how things have changed in Tennessee regarding illegal immigration in the year since a Mt. Juliet couple was killed by an illegal immigrant drunk driver. While the deaths of the Wilsons at the hands of Gustavo Garcia Reyes, an illegal immigrant who had been arrested numerous times and whose illegal status was known to the authorities, who did nothing to deport him, created a new political reality in Tennessee.

And in the Tennessee legislature, the House unanimously passed House Bill 0729, which would revoke the business licenses of business in Tennessee that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The bill is still awaiting final action in the state Senate.

It remains to be seen whether Gov. Phil Bredesen will sign the bill if it passes the Senate.

June 7, 2007

Alexander Offers Border Security Amendment

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, has proposed an amendment to the immigration reform bill that would prevent other elements of the legislation from being implemented until three out of four governors on the U.S. - Mexico border certify the border is secure.

"After 20 years of mismanagement, Americans have zero confidence in the federal government's willingness to control the border," Alexander said. "The way to restore that confidence is to first, pass a strong border security bill; second, to fund it; and third, require the federal government to get sign-offs from governors on the border that it is secure before triggering other changes to the immigration system. No one will know better than the governors when their borders are secure."

My readers knew last week that Sen. Alexander was going to propose this amendment. ("Sen. Alexander Wants Border-State Governors to Verify Border Security Progress Before "Path to Citizenship" Begins").

Here's the rest of Alexander's press release...

Alexander said this amendment will help ensure the borders are secured and certified "by someone the American people can trust." As currently written, the bill would require the Department of Homeland Security to certify that it has established and demonstrated operational control of the entire U.S. - Mexico border once certain conditions are met. Those conditions include the hiring and training of 20,000 Border Patrol agents, 300 miles of vehicle barriers, 105 radar and camera towers and 31,500 detention beds. Without that certification that the border is secure, other changes to the immigration system contained in the bill could not go into effect.

Alexander's amendment would build on those border security provisions by also asking the governors of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to weigh in on whether these conditions have been met and that all illegal entries into the United States are being prevented.

"The borders are not secure, and the current system is not working," Alexander said. "Involving the southern border governors is the only way to be sure we have plugged the gaps that today allow a million immigrants to come here illegally each year."

Better Writing Through Blogging

At Pittsburgh's Bethel Park High School, English literature papers "are jumping off the wood pulp and launching into the blogosphere," reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Three teachers at the school "are using blogs to help students write - a sort of an online term paper in shorter bursts - and the group is finding it's improving the caliber of the writing and evoking scholarly thoughts from students." [Hat tip: Ben Cunningham]

Lost in Translation

My lunch yesterday. Okay, it isn't as big a deal as Terry Heaton's $279 empty box from CompUSA, but when you go to a Subway and ask for a "BLT" and they ask you what you want on and it you say "cheese," you don't think you also have to say "lettuce and tomatos" because you figure the sandwich-maker knows that's what the LT in a "BLT" is, right? Apparently not if the clerk is an, uh, recent arrival from somwhere south of Texas...

Exit

WKRN's Brittney Gilbert, the first full-time paid blogger the history of local teevee news has resigned from the station. The City Paper covers it. Let the inevitable speculation about the future of NashvilleIsTalking.com begin. Although, as the City Paper writer mentions, WKRN's foray into the blogosphere with NiT and VolunteerVoters.com has not translated into improved ratings for the third-place news station, I think it would be a shame if WKRN under its new management didn't continue former general manager Mike Sechrist's commitment to being connected to the local blogosphere. The local blogosphere is a treasure trove of potential news stories and sources, and loaded with grassroots media talent, yet no local media outlet - not even WKRN with its two full-time blogger - has yet really begun to mine it correctly.

June 6, 2007

Where's the Fence?

Last year, Congress pass and President Bush signed legislation that promised 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. But they never funded it - the promised 700 miles of fence was nothing but an election-year con to make you think they were serious about border security. Now they're back, with a plan for less fence as part of the plan to grant amnesty to 12 million illegals already here.

The ad at the right is from Grassfire.org, which has developed a media and grassroots campaign around a simple question: "Where's The Fence?"

The initial media buy includes national airings on Fox and CNN, along with regional broadcasts of customized ads targeting the following Republican senators: Jon Kyl and John McCain of Arizona, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Trent Lott of Mississippi, Richard Burr of North Carolina, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas, and John Warner of Virginia. The Where's the Fence? campaign also will target one Democratic senator, Virginia's Jim Webb.

The goal: scuttle the current immigration "reform" proposal. The message: we don't trust you, Washington. You promised more border security with the last amnesty, for 3 million illegals, and instead we got less border security and 12 million more illegals. Fence First!

Bipartisan Tax Cut Fever at the Legislature? Not Really...

The Associated Press reports that a bit of a bidding war has erupted between Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature over how and how much to cut the state's highest-in-the-nation sales tax on food.

Senate Republicans have been championing a plan to temporarily eliminate the state's 6 percent sales tax on food during six to eight weeks at the end of the year. House Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing for a permanent reduction in the sales tax to 5.5 percent.

That isn't what is happening at all...

What is really going on is a battle on three levels. The most obvious battle is a fight for political credit if a tax cut passes.

Republicans control the state senate, nominally, while Democrats control the state House - and each party and each body wants credit for cutting taxes if a tax cut passes. Republicans are the tax-cut party, so they need the credit. But the Democrats, who just rammed a quarter-billion-dollar tax increase through the legislature despite the state's $1.3 billion revenue surplus, can't afford to let the GOP get the credit for cutting taxes if taxes are cut.

On the second level, while the House Democrats want credit for cutting taxes if taxes are cut, they really don't want to pass a big tag cut. That's why the House Democrats' plan cuts taxes by far less than the Senate Republicans are proposing to do.

Reducing the sales tax on food by a half percentage point - the House Democrats' plan - would save taxpayers about $42 million each year.

Eliminating the sales on food for six to eight weeks - the Senate Republicans' plan - would save taxpayers about $130 million.

Republicans are pushing for a bigger tax cut - more than three times as large, though still only a tenth the size of Tennessee state government's $1.3 billion revenue surplus.

I'm actually torn on which proposal is better - or, to be more accurate, I would be torn if I thought the House Democrats really wanted to cut taxes.

I'd be torn because the House Democrats are proposing a permanent half-cent reduction in the sales tax rate on food - not just a one-year reduction, so though it would save taxpayers less money this coming fiscal year then the Senate Republicans' food tax holiday, it would be a multi-year tax reduction rather than a one-time tax "holiday" that would need to be renewed every year.

I prefer permanent tax reductions over temporary reductions.

But that's all moot because the House Democrats - especially the leadership - don't really want to cut taxes at all

They've made that abundantly clear all through the legislative session, as has the Democratic governor to whom they are loyal allies. If they had wanted to cut taxes, they wouldn't have just passed a quarter-billion-dollar tax increase "for education." After all, the House Republicans proposed a budget that would have funded the governor's extra education spending request without raising taxes, and still had money left over for a tax cut. Democrats rejected it in favor of raising taxes.

The House Democrats are only pushing a tax cut proposal because House and Senate Republicans have succeeded in making tax cuts a popular political issue. They want to be viewed as pro-tax cut without actually cutting taxes.

I suspect that the House Democrats' tax cut plan is intended not to actually cut taxes, but to prevent a tax cut from becoming law. If the Senate passes the Republicans' food tax holiday and the House passes the Democrats' half-cent reduction, all House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh has to do is orchestrate House Democrats to refuse to concur with the changes necessary to conform the House tax cut legislation to the Senate tax cut legislation and, bingo, no tax cut.

Under that scenario, Tennesseans would continue to pay the highest sales tax on food in the nation even as a big majority of legislators of both parties would be able to tell their constituents that they "fought for" and "voted for" tax cuts.

Don't think it can't happen that way. Before Operation Tennessee Waltz, that's exactly how Naifeh killed ethics reform legislation. Naifeh doesn't want to cut taxes now any more than he wanted to clean up the legislature's ethics back then.

If you see Naifeh delaying House action on tax cut legislation until the Senate acts, you can mark it down: He's working to kill whatever tax cut emerges from the Senate. His fall-back position, if the Senate Republicans outflank him tactically, is to go for the strategic victory and make the tax cut much smaller than what the Senate Republicans want.

That's the real battle that's going on at Legislative Plaza. There's no bidding war between House Democrats and Senate Republicans to cut your taxes.

Update: Nashville City Paper story on the food tax fight also thinks the Democrats really want to cut taxes on food, but at least reports that the Bredesen administration is opposed to cutting taxes.