August 31, 2007

Hitchens on the War: "This must be supported whether it's going well or not."

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University has published a highly interesting video interview with author Christopher Hitchens in which he discusses the Iraq war. Regarding the American "surge" in Iraq, Hitchens - rightly, I think - calls it "a huge mistake" to say that we should support the surge only if it is working.

"This must be supported whether it's going well or not," Hitchens says. He's not saying, of course, that we should continue ineffective military strategy, only that the war must be supported despite military setbacks because the cost of losing to al Qaeda is too high.

Big Fred, Big News

My new book, Who Is Fred Thompson?, a compilation of Tennessee bloggers' perspectives on Fred, goes on sale Sept. 5, the day before Fred Thompson makes his presidential candidacy official. What timing. I'll have information soon on where you can purchase the book - it will be sold online.

Oh, and I'll have another big announcement next week. That, folks, is what we folks in the media business call a teaser...

Majority of Americans Still Believe Victory Possible in Iraq

From Zogby: A majority of Americans - 54% - believe the United States has not lost the war in Iraq, but there is dramatic disagreement on the question between Democrats and Republicans, a new UPI/Zogby Interactive poll shows...

The national media is all over it, right? Not so much.

But UPI news analyst Martin Sieff notes that President Bush "still enjoys far more credibility than the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress over the war in Iraq," according to the UPI/Zogby poll's findings.

The poll, which was conducted Aug. 17-20, found that twice as many Americans thought the current 110th Congress's performance on Iraq was worse than the three previous Republican controlled Congresses. In all, only 20.2 percent of those polled believed that the current Congress had been better than those of the previous Republican ones. Some 42.8 percent said it was worse.

These results appear to be a devastating repudiation of the political strategy followed by Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill.

More Americans want President Bush to manage the war than want the Democratic Congress to do it, the poll found.

August 30, 2007

Car Talk

Peugeot has unveiled a diesel-electric hybrid that gets 69mpg. Unfortunately, it won't be sold in the U.S. Because Peugeot doesn't sell cars in the U.S. and hasn't since 1992. But you can get a 2008 Jetta "Clean Diesel" model, and a year's free carbon offsets, which will go to help reforest a stretch of former wetlands in northern Louisiana. I'm writing about those stories and other things at Ecotality...

Is Bredesen Administration Double-Counting Revenue to Set Higher Spending Baseline?

Goetz: Using Revenues as Baseline OK Even Though Constitution Says Otherwise
NASHVILLE - Tennessee state Finance Commissioner David Goetz claims in a Nashville City Paper article that it doesn't really matter if the state follows the clear language of the state constitution regarding calculating the amount of money the state can increase spending by each year. The paper's story, available here in its e-paper edition, looks at the recent opinion from Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper Jr. that the constitution clearly requires the state to base its annual spending-growth limit on the baseline of the previous year's budgetary appropriations.

State Treasurer Dale Sims admitted recently that the Bredesen administration has been using state tax revenues as the baseline, a move that just this year allowed the administration to claim it is only breaking the spending cap by $53 million, although using the proper calculation shows it is actually breaking the spending cap by $723 million.

From the City Paper story.

The constitutional spending limit, called the Copeland Cap, says that state spending cannot exceed the growth of the economy - measured by personal income growth - within a fiscal year. If it does, the Legislature has to cast a majority vote to break the cap. It did so this year when the state busted the cap by just more than $50 million.

Now the pertinent question relating to the opinion is: how should the state be calculating how much its spending could grow by - through revenues or appropriations? Some state budget hawks have asserted that the state has repeatedly violated how the Copeland Cap on spending is calculated by using revenues. In an opinion released Wednesday, Attorney General Robert E. Cooper Jr. opined that in both the state's constitution and its law, officials should use the percentage increase in "appropriations from state tax revenues," as they both state.

But Goetz said that's what the state has been doing all along. And since the state traditionally spends all of the revenues it takes in, Goetz said revenues and appropriations are essentially one in the same from a budgetary standpoint. "We might say it appropriations one time, we might say revenues, but there's no difference because we are appropriating the same basic dollar amount," Goetz said in an interview. Goetz said appropriations vs. revenues is a "distinction without a difference."

What Goetz appears to be claiming is that because the administration is spending last year's surplus revenue this year, it allows the administration to use a higher number for last year's baseline to calculate the cap. But that's not how the constitution says to do it.

Double Counting?
Consider this hypothetical budget scenario: The state has a $100 million surplus in hypothetical fiscal year 1. Goetz is saying that the state may use that extra $100 million figure to increase the baseline upon which the state may calculate the spending limit for fiscal year 2. But what Goetz thinks you don't know is this: typically, surplus revenue in fiscal year 1 is not spent ("approrpriated") in fiscal year 1, but rather is spent in fiscal year 2.

Adding the $100 million to the baseline creates a fictional number if the money is not actually appropriated for spending in year 1.

And then, because the surplus money is appropriated (spent) in fiscal year 2, it also adds $100 million to the fiscal year 2 baseline upon which fiscal year 3's cap number is calculated. In effect, Goetz may have unintentionally revealed that the Bredesen administration double-counts surplus revenue, allowing it to hide the fact that it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the state constitution's spending limit.

Hiding $670 Million
Here's how the math worked in the real world this year:

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 passed legislation in June declaring that it is exceeding the Copeland cap limit in fiscal 2007-08 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.

David Goetz has a calculator. He knows these numbers. His comments to the City Paper may indicate the Bredesen administration has decided to lie, spin and mislead rather than follow the law.

Previous Stories
TN Attorney General: State Budget Violates Constitution

Bredesen's spokesman on illegal budget: "We feel comfortable with what we've done."

August 29, 2007

Bredesen's spokesman on illegal budget: "We feel comfortable with what we've done."

NASHVILLE - Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen's press secretary says the governor "has not seen" the state attorney general's legal opinion that says, in effect, the budget the governor signed into law is unconstitutional, but, says press secretary Lydia Lenker, "We feel comfortable with what we've done."

As first reported here Wednesday morning, Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper Jr. has issued a legal opinion regarding the budget process, saying the constitution and relevant state law requires the governor to calculate how much the budget exceeds the state constitution's growth cap using the previous budget year's appropriations. The Bredesen administration has been calculating the cap number based on the previous year's revenue - allowing the administration to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in over-the-cap spending.

Here is the full response from Lenker to questions about the AG's opinion:

"The Governor has not seen the legal opinion, but he will certainly review it. We feel comfortable with what we've done. The state of Tennessee has followed the most prudent and conservative budgeting practices, most recently noted in the upgraded bond rating from Moody's."

Moody's is a credit-rating agency. It doesn't care about how the state gets its money, only that it has enough money - the same way Mastercard doesn't care if you earn your money legally or illegally, it only cares that you pay your bills on time.

Lenker says the administration "has followed the most prudent and conservative budgeting practices." The question is, did they follow the law? The answer increasingly appears to be "no."

"We feel comfortable with what we've done." - I'm guessing that tune will change once Bredesen reviews the AG's opinion and the law. I find it hard to believe that the Bredesen administration actually would defend its unconstitutional budgeting practices by saying, "Well, it got us a good bond rating."

That's not going to fly in court against the legal challenge that's now virtually assured...

Um... No

My post at Newsbusters today: FEC Slaps Soros Group for Campaign Finance Abuses; Will Media Care?

A Taxing Debate

The ongoing "debate" between mayoral candidates Karl Dean and Bob Clement on property taxes is laughable for the extent to which the Clement is trying to convince voters that he is the only candidate who stands firm against property taxes increases.

Clement repeatedly voices promises to not raise property taxes in the next four years - although he hasn't promised to not try to raise the city's sales tax, business tax or utility tax.

As for the property tax promise, Clement might as well pledge not to fly to the moon on the gossamer wings of a pig. The truth is the next mayor isn't going to raise property taxes because no mayor of Nashville has the authority to do so. The people of Nashville voted overwhelmingly last year to vest the final authority over property tax increases with themselves.

Clement is right - he's not going to raise Nashville's property taxes.

Then again neither is Dean.

TN Attorney General: State Budget Violates Constitution

(Editor's note: This post updated Wednesday afternoon with response from governor's office at end.)

NASHVILLE - Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper Jr. has issued his legal opinion and, although he doesn't come right out and say it, the implication of the legalese is clear: the fiscal 2007-08 budget adopted by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Phil Bredesen violates a key provision of the state Constitution.

Specifically, the Bredesen administration has failed to follow the law known as the Copeland Cap, which is designed to limit the growth of the state budget to a rate taxpayers can afford. This year's budget illegally overspends the cap by nearly $670 million.

Writes Cooper in the opinion, published Monday:

By their terms, both the Tennessee Constitution and Tenn. Code Ann. 9-4-5203 require officials to determine the percentage increase in "appropriations from state tax revenues" from the previous fiscal year in preparing the budget for each fiscal year.

The Copeland Cap is a provision in the state constitution which limits the year-over-year growth in state spending to the rate of growth of the state's economy. The legislature can exceed the cap but must specify in the budget the dollar amount and percentage by which it is breaking the cap. According to both the state constitution and relevant state law the Copeland Cap number is based on state appropriations. But Sims admitted that the Bredesen administration has always based its Copeland Cap calculation on revenues.

The difference is not insignificant. The current state budget claims to be only $53.7 million over the Copeland Cap, but if one calculates the cap number this year based on the fiscal 2006-07 budget's appropriations, this year's budget actually is $723 million over the cap.

That means that the current state budget contains nearly $670 million in spending that violates the state constitution.

Update: The Governor's office has not responded to a request for a statement regarding the AG's opinion.

Update: Bredesen press secretary Lydia Lenker responds:

"The Governor has not seen the legal opinion, but he will certainly review it. We feel comfortable with what we've done. The state of Tennessee has followed the most prudent and conservative budgeting practices, most recently noted in the upgraded bond rating from Moody's."

Moody's is a credit-rating agency. It doesn't care about how the state gets its money, only that it has enough money - the same way Mastercard doesn't care if you earn your money legally or illegally, it only cares that you pay your bills on time.

"We feel comfortable with what we've done." - I'm guessing that tune will change once Bredesen reviews the AG's opinion and the law.

I find it hard to believe that the Bredesen administration actually would defend its unconstitutional budgeting practices by saying, "Well, it got us a good bond rating."

That's not going to fly in court against the legal challenge that's now virtually assured...

August 28, 2007

Dead Newspapers

Located the other day in my attic storage: about a dozen copies of the final-day edition of the Nashville Banner, which published its final edition almost 20 years a decade ago, on Feb. 20, 1998. I bought them that afternoon at a little coffee shop in the Arcade in downtown Nashville. I'm thinking of putting a few of them up for sale, either as-is or framed.

Want one?

I've also got a final-day edition of a newspaper in Anchorage, Alaska, that closed in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Not sure if I want to let that one go as I've only got one.

Need a Blogging Job?

My current workload makes it very difficult for me to post at ElephantBiz.com with any consistent pace, and I've offered to help the publishers find a new blogger to carry the load. ElephantBiz.com is a blog about the business of Republican and conservative politics. With consistent posting a few months ago it was doing better traffic than it is now, and with the right writer could become a key hub in the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Interested bloggers please contact me. Oh, it's a paying gig. If you're willing to post 5 times a day and you complete KMM's excellent online tutorial series, you can cover a decent monthly car payment. Higher traffic = more money but you're not going to retire on it.

Global Warming Got the Rest of 'Em, I Guess

It started out as a group blog but right now, for the time being, I'm the only regular contributor to the Ecotality blog. Which is rather ironic,if you ask me.

The Road to Disaster is Paved With Bad Fiscal Policy

A reader emailed a story suggestion for this blog that, unfortunately, I lack the time to dig into. But it's a good story idea.

In the aftermath of the bridge collapse in MN, The Tennessean did a story titled "More drivers, less money take toll on Tenn. bridges."

The story lamented the fact that Tenn. has seen a reduction in federal money for bridge repair and about 22 percent of state bridges are in need of repair or replacement.

Yesterday, the state closed one of the bridges over the[Mississippi River] due to observed structural problems.

Awhile back I heard from an alternative news source that Bredesen has been dipping into the state's highway money. If this is in fact true, how does that play into our "lack of funds for bridge repair/replacement?"

Mainstream press is not covering this question. With your extensive resources and incredible nose for sniffing out the stuff our politicians don't want us to know, I'm wondering if you would do a blog on this topic.

Given that the state often uses its money to "draw down" federal money - highways often are funded 80 percent or more by the feds - diverting even $10 million in "highway money" to something else could cost, conceivably, an additional $40 million in federal matching funds. Taking $60 million away from the highway funds, then, could have cost Tennessee as uch as $240 million in federal matching funds, though the actual loss is probably less than that because not all road projects get federal funding.

The math doesn't matter as much as this: there is no doubt that Gov. Bredesen reduced the amount of money available for building, maintaining and repairing the state's roads and bridges, an appalling decision given that more than one in five bridges in the state needs repair or replacement.

August 27, 2007

In The Mail

In today's mail: House to House: An Epic Memoir of War, by SSG. David Bellavia, an account of the Battle of Fallujah.

Although I had too much to do today, I made the mistake of opening it to read the first couple of pages and pretty soon I was on page 70. It's gripping.

Thank you, Simon & Schuster, for offering the review copy.

Update: Finished the book. Gripping from start to finish. The book tells the story of Third Platoon, Alpha Company, as it fights house-to-house, sustaining heavy losses, in the Second Battle of Fallujah, some of the hardest urban combat of the War on Terror and yet a battle too few Americans really know much about. I finished the book and prayed a prayer of thanks to God that He provides America with fighting men like David Bellavia and his men, so that a few hundred million Americans can work and play and sleep and raise children in uninterrupted comfort.

Without soldiers like David Bellavia and the men of Third Platoon, Alpha Company, you and I and the rest of our fellow countrymen would soon be living - or, more likely, dying - under sharia law.

Bellavia is retired from the Army now, and has a new civilian-side mission, Vets for Freedom.

Here's a video of Bellavia discussing his experience in Iraq.

Round and Round

A reader of The Tennessean is asking if cyclists should be banned from riding on the road through Percy Warner Park, one of the greatest natural parks in any city in the world, after a few collisions between cyclists and walkers. To which a commenter on the paper's website responds...

I do not think that a public road should be closed to cyclists. Maybe the roads should be closed to walkers and runners. As mentioned in the article there are many miles of trails that are off limits to cyclists. Walkers and runners hog the road, many times 4 or 5 people wide, creating very dangerous situations for everyone on the roads. If anything, there should be a walking lane. We live in an absolutely illogical, two year old pouting in the candy isle society that apparently is incapable of thinking straight on the most basic issues. Ms. Sands and other walkers are not thinking clearly when they complain that a vehicle on a road, designed for vehicles, hits them or nearly hits them. Roads are for vehicles with wheels! Trails and sidewalks, notice the word 'walk' is found in the word, sidewalk, are for, you guessed it, walking. I can't believe that I have to waste time answering such a foolish argument. Maybe I should complain that every time I ride my bike of the sidewalk rude walkers keep bumping in to me.

3:10 to Yuma

I've been waiting a long time for the next great Hollywood western.

Looks like my wait might be almost over.

August 26, 2007

Clement, Dean, Pointlessly Debate Tax Issue

If you live in Nashville and can't decide which mayoral candidate to vote on based on the issue of taxes, here's my best thinking on the matter: It doesn't matter. Find some other reason upon which to base your choice.

Bob Clement, in attempting to put some daylight between himself and Karl Dean on the tax issue, has repeatedly mentioned the Metro charter amendment voters passed overwhelmingly in November 2006 that requires most property tax rate increases be approved by voters. charter referendum. But there's no significant daylight between the two on the issue. Clement has pledged not to seek a tax increase; Dean has indicated he doesn't want to raise taxes and pledged to abide by the charter amendment.

Today's Tennessean reports on the issue:

Dean, while insisting he wouldn't propose an increase, called Clement's pledge "a gimmick." He asked if the former congressman would veto any vote by the council to put a tax-increase proposal on the ballot. "What does your pledge mean?" asked Dean, a former Metro law director.

Clement didn't answer directly, but he said he was the one being straightforward about his intentions. "That's the difference between being a lawyer and being a leader," he said during the hourlong debate broadcast by NewsChannel 5. "That's what the people want."

Dean then said, "I'll be a leader, and I'm not going to raise taxes - period."

Neither Clement nor Dean is going to raise taxes - if taxes go up in the next four years it will because the people vote for it.

If you live in Nashville, there's no reason now to make property taxes the number one issue upon which you base your mayoral vote.

I don't live in Nashville, but if I did I'd be asking myself which candidate - the former congressman or the former Metro law director - is more likely to be a "change agent" who is truly capable of providing both leadership and break-the-mold proposals to improve Nashville's schools, lead its economic development, and make the right decisions on crime and other key issues.

I wouldn't be worried about the tax issue - that was settled by voters last year.

August 24, 2007

I Want At Least the Bronze

I'm currently in fourth place in A.C. Kleinheider's poll asking who is the best political writer in Nashville, behind The City Paper's John Rodgers, NashvillePost.com's Ken Whitehouse, and NewsChannel 5 commentator Pat Nolan. We're all dusting The Tennessean's Larry Daughtrey big-time, but that's no surprise. Vote here. Polls close at 6 p.m.

Update: Gold.

A Gatekeeper Who Doesn't Realize the Fence is Gone

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Managing Editor David McCumber says of his paper, "We get to decide what is news, and what isn't." But he's wrong about that.

Same Leopard, New Spots

The Institute for Legal Reform has issued a press release regarding the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association's recent name-change. The ILR also is running an ad on some Tennessee blogs, R. Neal at KnoxViews.com - the blogger formerly known as "South Knox Bubba" - reports that he rejected the ILR's ad. Not me. I'm a capitalist. You can see the add over there on the right sidebar and will be running through late September. Here is a snippet from the ILR's press release...

The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) has launched a new public awareness campaign highlighting the recent name change by Tennessee's trial lawyer organization and the motives behind the coordinated effort now happening in at least 13 states. The SameLeopardNewSpots.com Web site criticizes the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association, which has voted to call itself the Tennessee Association for Justice, for trying to conceal its identity from the public by changing its name.

"Tennessee's trial lawyers have apparently signed onto a national campaign of concealment conducted by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, who renamed themselves the American Association for Justice last year," said ILR President Lisa A. Rickard. "Because decades of abusing the civil justice system has driven their popularity into the ground, they are resorting to the oldest PR trick in the book: when your brand is tarnished, change your name."

To highlight the name change, ILR is running a public awareness campaign in Tennessee, as well as in other states where the state trial lawyer associations have recently voted to change their names. As more states follow suit, ILR is expected to expand its public awareness campaign.

"We doubt the people of Tennessee will be fooled by a misleading name change – a leopard with new spots is still a leopard, and trial lawyers' reputations will remain tarnished until they stop abusing the system," said Rickard.

August 23, 2007

Honored to be Nominated

A.C. Kleinheider is taking a poll on the question "Who is the best political writer in Nashville?" You vote here.

All the News that Fits a Haiku

I was a guest on the Dori Monson show on Seattle's KIRO 710 Wednesday afternoon, discussing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's decision to refuse the FBI's request to publish a photo of two men seen acting suspiciously on a number of Seattle-area ferries in recent weeks. I explore the Seattle P-I's refusal - and its related haiku-writing contest - in a series of posts at Newsbusters on Tuesday and Wednesday.

You can hear my appearance on Seattle radio here. Listen online or download the mp3 file. The segment is more than 23 minutes long, and includes listener calls after I left the air. I did the show via cell phone while driving from Green Hills to Franklin in heavy traffic - not a great way to do a live interview as the attention demands of driving in heavy traffic caused a few "uhs" and pauses, but unavoidable given my Wednesday schedule.

August 22, 2007

Tennessee Does Not Currently Tax Home-Brewed Biofuels

Yesterday on the blog I asked if Tennessee taxed home-brewed biofuels, after reading a story from North Carolina about a man there hit with big fines for not paying the state's motor fuels tax on some bio-diesel he made at home from soybean oil, for use in his own car.

I received this answer today from Sophie Moery, communications director for the Tennessee Department of Revenue:

Tennessee statutes do not specifically address how to tax "home-brewed" biodiesel. The department's position is that it is not taxable as long as it is produced for self-consumption. However, it will become taxable if it is sold to others.

Nutroots Takes Aim At Cooper

U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, is targeted for defeat - or reeducation - the left wing of his own party.

Message in a Bottle

On Newsbusters today: Romanian Villager Sends PBS Message in Bottle to Debunk Anti-Mining Documentary.

Solving Illegal Immigration

If I was a business executive selecting which staffing company to use, I'd certainly lean hard in the direction of using Staffmark, a Nashville company that verifies the legal status of its workers with the government's new E-Verify system, so that it doesn't hire or send out illegal immigrants to work at its clients' job sites. Good for them. All businesses should do this.

Staffmark operates more than 250 staffing services offices in 30 states, if you're looking for a staffing company that's on the right side of the illegal immigration battle.

The story in today's Nashville City Paper reminds me of a concept that I have considered before regarding how to solve the problem of illegal immigration. The federal government can't do it - or won't. Congress, at least the current Congress, has no interest in securing the border and reducing the number of illegals in the county except by granting all of them amnesty and giving them a fast-lane to citizenship.

However, the market may be able to solve the problem - it's just a matter of aligning the incentives right.

"When we send people out to work, the last thing we want our clients to be worried about is whether they're illegal or not," [Staffmark CEO David] Bartholomew said. "I love telling our clients we're doing this. We can tell them unequivocally that [employees] are who they say they are, because it's been verified by Homeland Security.”

And therein lies the seed of my idea: an independent organization that accredits businesses as being "illegal-free," by verifying the immigration status of their non-citizen employees - granting businesses that don't employ illegals a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval-like designation that they are, indeed, illegal free.

Then, customers could chose to do business with stores and businesses that are certified "illegal-free," rather than businesses that continue to flout American law and hire illegals. If enough customers refuse to patronize businesses that aren't certified illegal-free, businesses would stop hiring illegals and get certified. Fewer job opportunities for illegals would mean fewer coming across the border.

The independent organization would charge businesses an annual fee for the certification process.

Of course, it may not be necessary - some states have already passed laws requiring businesses to use E-Verify. Tennessee's legislature should do the same.

How irrelevant. The Post-Intelligencer. Goodbye Dinosaur

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is continuing to refuse to publish the photos of two men the FBI says it needs to talk to in connection to a probe of possible terrorism-related activity on the Seattle ferry system. I've got the latest on it at Newsbusters. Plus: the best entries in the paper's haiku contest (really!) about the controversy.

August 21, 2007

Seattle Paper Offers Haiku Contest - But No Help - in FBI Terror Probe

Is political correctness causing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to refuse to assist the FBI in its probe of a possible terror plot? The answer appears to be yes - though the paper is running a haiku-writing contest about the incident. Really. A haiku contest.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is refusing to run the photos of two men the FBI is seeking to question in connection with suspicious behavior aboard a Puget Sound ferry - behavior that could be a precursor to a terror plot, or could be nothing nefarious at all.

The Seattle P-I reports the story here and explains its rationalization for not publishing the photos here. And - in a steller example of complete touchy-feely uselessness - the paper is holding a haiku-writing contest for readers to write about how they feel about the FBI alert and the way the paper handled it.

Update: A commenter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's website notes how out of touch with reality the editors of that paper are about the new media world in which they now operate.

It's amazing to me to think that, in this internet era, the [paper] is arrogant enough to think that they can 'hide' something from the public. By not publishing the pictures, they are making themselves less relevant - additionally, through the controversy, they are making the story bigger than it would be otherwise. This is a perfect example of why newspapers, and big media in general, is losing readers by the thousands.

Thus, their decision to not publish the photos does not in any way accomplish the goal that drove that decision, while simultaneously showing the people of Seattle that the paper will put political correctness ahead of the security of thousands of Seattle-area ferry commuters - and demonstrating its increasing irrelevance in the broad and varied new-media landscape.

A dumb and dangerous decision all around.

Does Tennessee Tax Home-Brewed Biodiesel?

The Charlotte Observer has the story of a man who ran afoul of the North Carolina tax authorities when he converted his 1981 diesel Mercedes to run on biodiesel made from soybean oil.

Bob Teixeira decided it was time to take a stand against U.S. dependence on foreign oil. So last fall the Charlotte musician and guitar instructor spent $1,200 to convert his 1981 diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. He bought soybean oil in 5-gallon jugs at Costco, spending about 30 percent more than diesel would cost.

His reward, from a state that heavily promotes alternative fuels: a $1,000 fine last month for not paying motor fuel taxes. He has been told to expect another $1,000 fine from the federal government. To legally use veggie oil, state officials told him, he would have to first post a $2,500 bond.

Teixeira is one of a growing number of fuel-it-yourselfers - backyard brewers who recycle restaurant grease or make moonshine for their car tanks. They do it to save money, reduce pollution or thumb their noses at oil sheiks. They're also caught in a web of little-known state laws that can stifle energy independence.

I have inquired of the Tennessee Department of Revenue whether it, too, would levy the state's existing motor fuels tax on home-brewed biodiesel. The department's website says Tennessee's diesel fuel tax "is imposed on diesel fuel when it crosses the terminal rack or upon import from a facility below the terminal bulk system." Obviously, home-brewed biodiesel does not fit that description, thought the one-line description on the website may not reflect some intricacy of state law that I don't know about.

I'll let you know what the Tennessee Department of Revenue says. If they say users of home-brewed diesel should pay the state's 17-cents-per-gallon fuel tax, I'd urge some lawmakers to draft legislation to exempt home-brewed fuels from state motor fuels taxes.

The Soros Connection

I mentioned yesterday the decision by PBS to air a biased documentary regarding a proposed gold mine in Romania. Today's Wall Street Journal exposes more facts about that "documentary," including its connection to famed investor and funder of liberal causes George Soros. I have that - and more - at NewsBusters. The biased documentary is set to air locally (Nashville) on WNPT tonight at 8 pm.

Update: Journalist Kirk Leech at GoldenMyths.com rips apart the "Gold Futures" documentary, identifying 10 specific lies within it. I've got a second post on it at Newsbusters.

War Update

We're winning in Iraq.

Update: Link fixed.

August 20, 2007

Ethanol is Bad For You

At the Ecotality blog today: Ethanol is Bad for You. Also, The Oil Iditarod, and Not-So-Green Nashville.

August 19, 2007

Unbalance at WNPT, PBS

PBS is scheduled to broadcast nationally Tuesday night a biased documentary about a gold-mining project in Romania. The PBS series Wide Angle, titled "Gold Futures," in which the ongoing controversy over the proposed gold mine in the village of Rosia Montana will follow the anti-mine perspective promoted by a variety of European environmentalists who don't live in the village, an effort now backed by leftwing American financier George Soros.

(Wide Angle airs nationwide on PBS at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, August 21. In Nashville, it airs at 8 p.m. on the PBS affiliate WNPT.)

The documentary portrays the controversy as a David and Goliath battle with the poor residents of Rosia Montana trying to defend themselves against a giant mining corporation. The truth, however, is much different. The majority of villagers actually support the project, which would involve a Canadian mining company cleaning up the environmental damage left behind after decades of mining by old and now-closed mine that had been run by the former communist government of Romania.

Their story is told in the moving and entertaining documentary Mine Your Own Business I have written more than a dozen posts about or referencing MYOB, which you can see here.

PBS - and, locally, WNPT ought to show MYOB in addition to "Gold Futures" in order to give viewers a balanced look at the issue.

Gheorghe Lucian, a Rosia Montana resident, has some more discussion of the PBS documentary on his blog, Report from Rosia.

For a more detailed look at this story, see my post Monday at NewsBusters.org.

August 17, 2007

Could Newspapers Adopt "Total Quality Management"?

In a post yesterday headlined Rarely Regretting the Errors, I discussed new research showing that the newspaper industry only corrects about 2 percent of the actual errors that make it into print, and wondered why newspapers don't implement one of the many "quality management" methods other industries use to reduce errors and improve quality, such as management guru W. Edwards Deming's Total Quality Management.

Craig Silverman, editor of RegretTheError.com and a Montreal-based columnist for Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, emails:

I saw your post about applying quality control to newsrooms and wanted to follow up because I looked into the possibility of this for my upcoming book. The short answer, after talking with a few quality experts in the US, is that it can be done. There are already quality control practices used for technical documentation, and the process-oriented nature of print newsrooms (copy is written, then passed form editor to editor and then to production) is well-suited to applying quality principles. I'm not aware of any news organization that has worked to apply quality control principles to its operations, but I agree wholeheartedly that it can should be done. I think it could have a demonstrable effect on accuracy and the overall quality of reporting. So I'm really glad to see you raise the idea.

Also, if you're looking for an example of the errors and corrections blog you mention, I suggest you take a look at what Reuters has done with its Good, Bad & Ugly blog: http://blogs.reuters.com/gbu

They don't post every error, but I think it's a great project.

This post also cross-posted at NewsBusters.

August 16, 2007

Busting Bias

I have a new article at NewsBusters.org today on media bias in its coverage of a complex securities law case pending before the Supreme Court.

Rarely Regretting the Errors

A misleading headline in today's paper: Skipping Sunday School costs jobs at religious publisher. The headline makes it appear that a religious publisher fired employees who skipped Sunday school. The story, though, is much different.

On a related note, new research indicates that fewer than 2 percent of factually flawed articles are corrected in the nation's daily newspapers. Slate reports:

The average newspaper should expand by a factor of 50 the amount of space given to corrections if Scott R. Maier's research is any guide. Maier, an associate professor at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication, describes in a forthcoming research paper his findings that fewer than 2 percent of factually flawed articles are corrected at dailies.

The results might shock even the most jaded of newspaper readers. About 69 percent of the 3,600 news sources completed the survey, and they spotted 2,615 factual errors in 1,220 stories. That means that about half of the stories for which a survey was completed contained one or more errors. Just 23 of the flawed stories - less than 2 percent - newspaper corrections. No paper corrected more than 4.2 percent of its flawed articles.

Obviously, a newspaper can't publish a correction until it learns of its error. But the studied dailies performed poorly when informed of their goofs. Maier found that 130 of the news sources reported having asked for corrections, but their complaints elicited only four corrections.

1. Slate says most of the errors detected were relatively minor, such as an incorrect title or a wrong age or a misspelled name. I recall my journalism professors drilling into us that misspelling a person's name in a news story was potentially even more damaging to a paper's credibility than a major error because readers would find it difficult to trust a newspaper that couldn't even be bothered to spell people's names right.

2. If the news media had found a major American such as, say, auto production or health care, making errors at the same rate that Maier found in the newspaper industry - and correcting almost none of them - it would be howling for a Congressional investigation and new regulations to address the issue.

3. Many newspaper's business sections have done stories over the years on business quality control management tools like W. Edwards Deming's "Total Quality Management." Have any newspapers actually implemented such a program? The newspaper industry likes to claim it has layers of fact-checking - but the standard newspaper "editorial process" of stories moving from the reporter through a variety of editors before reaching print clearly isn't working well anymore, if it ever did. Perhaps the news media ought to bring in some quality-management expertise from outside the industry and see if they can't modernize and improve the editorial process.

What does this have to do with that headline I mentioned above from today's Tennessean? The headline is not, technically, false. But it is misleading. It does give the reader an initial impression of the story that isn't accurate. And while the headline writer may have thought it was a clever way to hook readers into the story, what it really does is give readers a sense that they have been tricked - and it tells them to be less trusting of the next headline they read in the same paper.

A few days ago over at Mesh Media Strategies I wrote the following in a long piece about journalistic quality control:

If I ran a media outlet, one of its regularly published blogs would be an "Errors and Corrections" blog in which every alleged error brought to my paper's attention by internal or external sources would be aired and examined.

Update: RegretTheError.com has more on the Maier study.

Entrepreneurial Blogging

I've written a post today at Mesh Media Strategies about the use of blogs as a bootstrap marketing tool for academic programs.

August 15, 2007

Democrats to Help Williams

I mentioned yesterday that Mike Faulk is running to replace former Republican Micheal Williams in the state Senate. Now comes a report that prominent Democrats are angling to help Williams stave off the challenge. I think this actually helps Faulk - it will remind Republican voters in the district, which leans Republican, that Williams really is no longer a Republican. Still, while Faulk's the favorite in this race, it is going to take money to mount a successful campaign. That's where you come in. Click here and click the "donate" button.

Abortion: It's For the Children

Clair Celsi: Abortion protects children.

That's right. Not content to just claim that every tax increase and new government program is "for the children," now the Left wants to claim that abortion is "for the children."

Well, the non-dead ones, anyway.

Reminds me of "We had to destroy the village to save it."

The claim that the pro-choice movement saves children's lives is absurd and odious. The pro-choice movement in America has killed more than 48 million babies since 1973.

To put that in perspective: California, the most populous state, has 36.4 million people. The pro-choice movement has slaughtered the equivalent of the entire population of the state of California, plus another 12 million or so babies.

Update: Omar Hamada's blog has a disturbing post on how some abortionists are getting around the federal ban on partial-birth abortion.

August 14, 2007

Huckabee Rising

At ElephantBiz.com today: How The Fair Tax - and Homeschoolers - Helped Huckabee Win the Ames Straw Poll. Also, Huckabee's Main Street populism, Barack Obama's latest gaffe, and Fred Thompson tackles illegal immigration and the "sanctuary city" movement. See it all at ElephantBiz.com.

Faulk Runs

East Tennessee lawyer and erstwhile blogger Mike Faulk is running for the state senate, aiming to replace the turncoat ex-Republican Sen. Micheal "I don't even spell my name right" Williams, who stabbed his East Tennessee Republican constituents in the back earlier this year by switching his party affiliation to "independent" and voting for a West Tennessee Democrat for Senate Majority Leader. Here's Faulk's campaign website. This seat is ripe for the re-taking. Donate by mail or online here.

War Update

Here's a must-read war update, courtesy of Der Spiegel. It's another "the surge is working" story that's guaranteed to give Democratic National Committee the jitters.

Fake But Accurate

John Leo has a must-read column on various incidents in which the mainstream press has stubbornly used "a preferred story line" even when "facts are shaky or nonexistent." And Eric Scheie has blog post about a story where it appears some in the media are omitting facts they find at odds with their preferred narrative. They're not getting the facts wrong, mind you, they're just not focusing on the important facts.

August 13, 2007

Thompson and Huckabee

Sixteen years after Bill Clinton defied conventional wisdom and won the White House with a ticket that paired an Arkansas governor and a Tennessee senator, might history be about to repeat itself with a slight twist? Could the GOP be headed for a Thompson/Huckabee ticket?

August 11, 2007

Truth Too Hot To Handle?

Not only has the major mainstream news media ignored the story of the Y2K error that caused NASA to Climate Models Predict Hot Decade, USA Today said this:

"At least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be warmer than 1998, the warmest year currently on record," the researchers say in their report.

Each year from 2010 through 2014 has at least a 50 percent chance of being warmer than 1998, the hottest on record, researchers led by Doug Smith of the Met Office, a government weather-forecasting agency based in Exeter, said today in the journal Science.

But the blogosphere has been buzzing with news of the error in NASA's data for a couple days now. The mainstream media has been alerted that 1998 was not the hottest year on record. Instead of just repeating the error from the journal Science, the mainstream media ought to point out that NASA has updated its information and no longer claims 1998 was the hottest year on record. Instead, they have become complicit in perpetuating false information.

So far, the mainstream media neither acknowledges nor regrets the error.

Which helps explain this.

Take the Survey, Please

Please take my Blog Reader Project survey.

August 10, 2007

TCPR Files Complaint Over Cooper Taking Nearly $100,000 in Campaign Funds for Personal Use

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research plans today to file a sworn complaint against state Sen. Jerry Cooper, D-Morrison, with the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance, asking the TREF to investigate whether Sen. Cooper illegally diverted nearly $100,000 in campaign funds to his personal account. During Sen. Cooper's recent bank fraud trial in Chattanooga Federal Court, an IRS agent testified that Cooper withdrew nearly $100,000 from his campaign fund between December 1999 and November 2001 and deposited it into his personal account. According to the TREF press release...

The exhibit shows Senator Cooper dipping into his campaign account and funneling money to his own account – slowly at first, but then ravenously. Indeed, in September and October of 2001 alone he moved $48,000 from his reelection account to the account he shares with his wife at Union Planters Bank.

In total, court records show, he deposited $95,004 of his campaign money into his own account. It appears there is no disclosure of this transfer in the records he filed with the Registry of Election Finance.

TCPR President Drew Johnson says the redirection of funds from a campaign account to a personal account "seems to be a flagrant violation of state campaign finance laws," and is asking the TREF to investigate Sen. Cooper’s use of his campaign funds between the years 1999 and 2007.

Don't Vote For Me!

My blog ElephantBiz.com has been nominated for a Bloggers Choice Award in the "Best Political Blog" category, though I think it's a little like being nominated for the Nobel Prize - anybody can nominate anybody.

Don't vote for me. I've only got eight votes right now, and the vote leader, a blog I've never heard of, has more than 500. DailyKos, the leftwing hate-America fest, has nearly 400 votes. The top right-leaning vote-getter: Michelle Malkin's awesome blog MichelleMalkin.com, with 223 votes, putting her in fourth place but only a few votes behind the liberal blog that's in third-place. I suggest voting for her blog. You can vote here.

August 9, 2007

U.S. Public Sees News Media as Biased, Inaccurate

From Breitbart.com:

More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed. And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news -- roughly one quarter of all Americans -- were even harsher with their criticism, the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center said.

Oops!

NASA admits the data showing 1998 was "the warmest year on record" is wrong. Oh, and the accuracy of the network of temperature sensors upon which such calculations are based can not be validated. Details at the Ecotality blog.

Bloggers Unite!

Jeff Jarvis giggles at left-wing bloggers who want to form a union. I dunno. I still think the idea of liberal bloggers going on strike has a certain appeal. Especially if it's a long-term work stoppage.

Comments on Comments on Google News

Yesterday I mentioned some big news from Google regarding its Google News service and how Google will be allowing people mentioned in news stories linked on Google News to send in comments regarding those stories, which Google will then publish in a link connected to those news stories. Economist and author David S. Evans (The Catalyst Code) took a look at the announcement and at Google News itself and wonders how Google might try to monetize the service.

Trial Lawyers Update

I mentioned yesterday in the post "Same Leopard. New Spots." that the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association had not yet followed nearly a dozen other states in emulating the decision of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America to change its name to the "American Association for Justice," a name changed designed to help the nation's trial lawyers escape the low opinion the American public has of trial lawyers.

Turns out I may have been wrong. A Google search for the phrase "Tennessee Association for Justice" finds that a number of Tennessee law firm websites use that name for the organization in bio sketches of various members of the firms. Here's just one example from the Google search.

Regret the Error

The website of Media Ethics magazine has a long and very in-depth look at the newspaper industry's record on correcting errors, based on a review of all of the many newspaper corrections collected in 2005 at RegretTheError.com - a fantastic blog that catalogs newspaper corrections.

Says Media Ethics: To evaluate the current state of newspaper corrections, we compiled criteria that indicated completeness, indirectly based on a watershed newspaper study done in 1986 for the Gannett Center for Media Studies by D. Charles Whitney. ... As our analysis documents, newspapers neither have become more vigilant nor transparent since Whitney's study in the mid-1980s."

Read the whole thing.

Lies

Raising the specter of the infamous "Winter Soldier" fraud committed by now-Sen. John Kerry and the anti-war Left during the Vietnam War, left-wing anti-war magazine The New Republic is now being exposed for running a series of false stories alleging various episodes of military misconduct in Iraq, written by a soldier. The Associated Press has the basic details. Instapundit also has been following it and has a lot more links.

August 8, 2007

Big News from Google

Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion comments on some very big news from Google News, in a post today titled Google News Now Has Feedback, Editing and More Risk. Read on for details...

Google News in the US has added a new feature that, while promising, is sure to be controversial. Google plans to roll it out globally once they iron out the kinks.

Any person mentioned in a news story that Google News indexes can email in their comments to news-comments@google.com. Those who do so will be asked to verify their identity and organizational affiliation. There's more in the Google FAQ here and here.

Once Google approves the comments, they are posted and are attached to the story as an addendum, as you can see from the image above or live on the web here. It's unclear if these comments will also roll up into Google Universal Search results.

This is certainly a boon for PR professionals who have longed for a way to respond to what is largely an automated system. Wikipedia needs a similar mechanism. Google is also fairly liberal in the sources it aggregates. It includes lots of homegrown sites and blogs. This approach, while managed manually, certainly gives companies and subjects a voice on a critical site that is increasingly a big gateway for lots of news/blog content.

Still, there are some big outstanding questions...

Same Leopard, New Spots

The Institute for Legal Reform has a separate website out - Same Leopard. New Spots - making note of the fact that the Association of Trial Lawyers of America has changed its name to try to escape its bad reputation. It will forthwith be called the American Association for Justice. A growing number of state trial lawyers groups are also changing their names, though the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association has, so far, not done so.

The Incredible Shrinking Blogosphere

Blogger Steve Rubel ("Micropersuasion") looks at The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Blogosphere - and why the rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" formats indicate a cultural shift - in a piece published at AdAge.com. David Evans at Catalyst Code has some additional related thoughts.

Update: Entrepreneur.com has an interview with the authors of Catalyst Code.

Learning Machines

A Nashville-area tech company has received a patent on software that learns as it works. Digital Reasoning Systems, based in Brentwood, TN, received patent #7,249,117 for its "Knowledge Discovery Agent System and Method," which the company touts as offering "a fundamentally new generation of machine-based natural human language applications." The technology has potential applications in intelligence, web search and much more.

This breakthrough patent grants broad protection for how artificial intelligence, including neural networks, genetic algorithms, and vector space models can be used to learn the meanings of symbols - such as words, categories, or numerical values. Understanding the subtle meaning of terms in context has been one of the "Holy Grails" of artificial intelligence. Not only is Digital Reasoning fully able to accomplish this feat, it is now patented.

"In the landscape of information processing, this patent is very valuable real estate," said Tim Estes, CEO of Digital Reasoning Systems, Inc. "Pretty much every conceivable approach to the area of 'symbol grounding' - the basic building block of determining what words mean - using unsupervised learning from measurements of contextual invariance of usage is covered under this patent."

"The applications that will arise as a result of our patented technologies will allow machines to learn language much the way that children do and revolutionize the knowledge engineering process that is at the root of the most complicated systems," Estes said. "The implications for search engines, machine translation, and most knowledge-centric applications are immense. Finally, we can have broad machine understanding of what humans mean simply by reading what we say."

August 7, 2007

Journalistic Quality Control

The Washington Post has either redefined the meaning of the words "war veteran," or failed to do some basic fact-checking about DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas, who likes to link his military service to the Persian Gulf War even though his boots never touched the sands of Kuwait or Iraq. As Ace aptly puts it, if Kos is a veteran of the Persian Gulf War, then President Bush is a veteran of the Vietnam War.

I'm reminded of a recent and rather over-caffeinated assertion by Liz Garrigan, editor of the Nashville Scene, that "most bloggers wouldn't last an hour under the journalistic quality control that a newspaper demands." The biggest source of journalistic quality control in America today is bloggers watchdogging the press. A swarm of blogging readers simply provides more opportunities to spot errors than does the short newsroom production line in which a reporter's copy is read and edited by one, perhaps two, at the most three editors.

That production line approach to journalism is one reason errors get through. And yet the biggest failure of journalistic quality control in America today isn't that, but is that many mainstream reporters and editors won't do basic fact-checking even though it is beyond easy with tools like Google, and when errors are brought to their attention by outsiders like bloggers, won't correct important errors like the one Ace spotlights at the link above.

Smart media outlets - newspapers, television stations and even alt-weeklies - would engage the interested blogosphere and welcome its criticism, its fact-checking, error-finding and spin-spotting, not to mention the blogosphere's more-than-infrequent finding of news stories that the media outlets missed, and would find a way to aggregate that information and share it with the media outlet's readers and viewers.

If I ran a media outlet, one of its regularly published blogs would be an "Errors and Corrections" blog in which every alleged error brought to my paper's attention by internal or external sources would be aired and examined.

Of course, smart bloggers also would welcome criticism and fact-checking from the media when it is warranted - and it often is warranted, on both directions, because nobody is perfect.

No newspaper gets it right all the time - they spell words wrong, get quotes out of context, misunderstand what really happened, get spun, or unconsciously allow personal biases to skew coverage because newspapers are produced by humans and humans fail.

Bloggers are human too, and they fail, too, in the exact same ways.

And, like newspapers, bloggers sometimes produce excellent work.

Journalistic and blogging ethics really boil down to one rule - or should. And it is a simple rule.

Be honest. And when you mess up, 'fess up.

The Economics of Blogging

"Hundreds of millions of people globally either operate blogs or contribute to them over the course of the year. With 1.5 million new postings a day, blogging likely consumes billions of hours of effort globally," writes David S. Evans, co-author of the book The Catalyst Code, in a blog post today about the economics of the blogosphere Few bloggers make money doing it, of course. Evans (full disclosure: client) tackles the non-dollar economics of blogging:

In many cases people operate a blog because it helps them achieve something they value directly such as influence, information, or interactions with other people. In other cases people operate a blog because it helps them make money directly through advertising or indirectly by building up their professional reputations or cross-selling another business. Fame is a mixed bag - people may blog for fame for fame's sake or they may blog to capitalize on their fame or a bit of both. But in the end, the benefits they get from these various avenues must be enough to compensate for the hours they spend on blogging

TN GOP Goal: Majority by 2010

From today's Nashville City Paper:

As her No. 1 goal, new state Republican Party Chairman Robin Smith has her sights trained ultimately on 2010 so Republicans can redraw legislative districts to the GOP's liking. In order to get there, Smith has to lead the state GOP to a majority in the House and to expand its nominal majority in the Senate. "What the Republican Party's goal is in 2010 to have the majority so that the lines can at least be drawn fairly," Smith said Monday.

After the 2010 census, the legislature will redraw the districts for the state House, Senate and the Congressional seats.

August 6, 2007

Book It

As a newspaper writer, journalist and blogger I have always had respect for people who author books, but never more so than I do now, having recently completed a manuscript for a forthcoming short book on Fred Thompson. The publisher plans to publish the book roughly at the same time Fred officially announces his presidential candidacy. I'll let you know when, and where you can purchase it.

Drug Pushers at the Legislature

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has a bombshell report today - emails indicating some employees of the Tennessee state legislature are selling or distributing prescription drugs, possibly even "black market" drugs, which would be a violation of all kinds of laws. It doesn't appear to be widespread, unless TCPR has a lot more emails that they haven't shared with the public, but the people involved should be fired immediately.

The 77 Percent Rule

I haven't blogged about the Nashville mayoral race for a number of reasons - I don't live in Nashville, don't vote in the mayor's race, didn't like any of the candidates much, and, most importantly, was busy with income-generating activities.

But one small facet of the race, now down to a runoff between former Congressman Bob Clement and former Metro Law Director Karl Dean, interests me. That's the divergent views of Clement and Dean on the Metro charter amendment passed last year that gives voters the right to reject property tax increases.

The issue makes me glad I'm not a Nashville voter. Here's why:

Clement, whom I consider only marginally competent to run a major city, issued a press release on election night last week slamming Dean for a legal opinion Dean issued last year calling the charter amendment unconstitutional.

Dean, who, though he is more liberal, strikes me as much more competent than Clement, in fact did issue that legal opinion. It's non-binding - the charter amendment is law until successfully challenged in court. And that's why the legal opinion is potential political dynamite in the mayoral race.

You see, Dean has, to my knowledge, never issued his political position on the charter amendment. He has never said how he voted on it, nor has he said that, as mayor, he would live by it or try to overturn it.

Absent that information, Clement can portray Dean as being against the will of the people when it comes to property tax inceases.

Voters approved the charter amendment, sponsored by Ben Cunningham's Tennessee Tax Revolt, in a landslide - 77 percent of voters voted for it, and it passed in virtually every precinct in the city. That means it was backed by a majority of Republicans and by a majority of Democrats. That means it was backed by a majority of wealthy voters, middle class voters and poor voters. That means it was backed by a majority of voters at all levels of education. That means it was backed by a majority of blue collar voters and white collar voters. That means it was backed by a majority of whites and by a majority of minorities.

In short, the charter amendment giving Nashvillians the right to vote on property tax increases may be the single most popular tax law on the books in Nashville, as voters overwhelmingly expressed a desire for more participatory democracy and more control over tax rates.

With his election-night press release Clement has, in effect, promised to live by the expressed will of the people as expressed in their overwhelming support for that charter amendment if he is elected mayor, and put a hard question in front of Karl Dean, whose failure to state allegiance to the will of the people on the issue, combined with that legal opinion issued in his name, leaves open the serious possibility that he would try to overturn the charter amendment rather than submit a property tax increase to a referendum.

As I wrote on Nov. 8, 2006, a mayor or city council that challenges the property tax referendum law in court is on shaky political ground.

There is conflicting legal opinion as to whether the state constitution permits such referenda, and the city's political establishment will no doubt take the amendment to court to try to overturn it - but that can only happen after the Metro Council passes a property tax hike and sends it to a referendum. But in trying to overturn the charter amendment, the city's political establishment will also be seeking to overturn the expressed will of the people of Nashville, the will of the people they are supposed to serve - and they'll be doing it for the express purpose of ramming through a tax increase after voters have rejected it in a referendum.

Legally, they may have a leg to stand on. Politically I'd hate to have to play that hand, for by doing so they will forever mark themselves as favoring higher taxes over the objections of the people they are supposed to serve.

Ben Cunningham hasn't just changed the Metro charter - he's changed the political playing field in Nashville.

If Karl Dean cares what the people of Nashville think about property tax rates and participatory democracy, he'll soon declare that, if elected mayor, he will abide by the referendum requirement and direct his legal department not to challenge it in court.

I'm thrilled that I don't have to go into a voting booth next month and choose between them.

Update: Buried deep in a Rex in the City roundup in today's Nashville City Paper:

About the property tax opinion, Dean said the Law Department, which he then headed, was required to provide the opinion when the Metro Council requested it and said he has no intention of challenging the amendment if he wins the election.

August 5, 2007

"The legacy of excellence and a majority will be our goals. "

The Tennessee Republican Party has a new chairman, former Hamilton County Republican Party chairman Robin Smith, who replaces Bob Davis, who left the state party job to work for Fred Thompson's presidential campaign.

August 4, 2007

Greener Gore

Criticism of Al Gore's energy-hogging mansion and carbon-spewing lifestyle that seemed so at odds with Mr. Inconvenient Truth's anti-global warming crusade seems to have spurred the former Vice President into some serious greening of his Nashville estate. And we're not talking landscaping. He's having a geothermal heating and cooling system installed.

August 2, 2007

Congress Aims to Extend Shield Law to Bloggers

Here's some good news for bloggers - and for the First Amendment: A House panel voted Wednesday to shield journalists from having to reveal their confidential sources in many situations - and extended the protection to bloggers who derive "financial gain or livelihood" from their blogs.

By a voice vote only after politicians spent nearly two hours airing various misgivings, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved an amended version of the Free Flow of Information Act. Chiefly sponsored by Reps. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.), it proposes protection for a wider set of people than previous years' versions.

"Today, we are reclaiming one of the most fundamental principles enshrined by the founding fathers in the First Amendment of the Constitution," Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said before the vote.

In response to concerns raised by the Bush administration and other politicians, the revised bill attempts to exclude the "casual blogger" from reaping those benefits by stipulating the protections apply only to those who derive "financial gain or livelihood" from the journalistic activity, Boucher said Wednesday. That broad rule could, however, include part-time writers who receive even a trickle of revenue from Google Ads or Blogads.com.

The bill defines the practice of journalism as "gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public."

"To extend the shield beyond (those who gain financial benefit) would create an avenue for virtually anyone to avoid compelled testimony by simply creating a blog that contains the information in question," which is not the bill's intent, Boucher said.

But in an age in which it's relatively easy and inexpensive to slap advertisements on blogs and meet the "financial gain" standard, several politicians questioned on Wednesday whether that language will make much of a difference. Anyone "could start a blog and request advertising on that blog, and whether they get it or not, would be considered a journalist under this bill," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said.

Such a definition "would potentially encompass millions of people who blog or change the manner in which they blog (to gain the privilege)," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), adding that the shield is "far too broad and far too easily gained for me to support that language."

Both Boucher and Pence said they sympathized with those complaints and planned to work on changing the definition further before the bill goes to a vote in the full House. Conyers proposed assembling a "working group" to work out the differences. The bill's supporters had previously resolved to leave it up to the courts to refine the journalist definiti