April 30, 2008

Hybrid Airplanes?

A solar-hydrogen fuel cell hybrid airplane? I'll believe it when I see it. Details at the blog of the Fuel Cell Store.

Check Under the Hood This Time

City Paper reporter John Rodgers makes a smart suggestion:

In a speech to the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce today, Gov. Phil Bredesen said ECD Commissioner Matt Kisber's "pipeline" is full of companies looking to move to Tennessee, "including some really, really big ones."

Hmm. Watch out for the incentives included in the so-called "technical corrections bill" that's up for debate.

Reconsidering That Prius

Is your hybrid or all-electric car killing you slowly? The New York Times investigates...

Strings

Wonder why gas prices are so high, and likely to go higher in the future? It's partly because of the stupidity of the Democrat-controlled Congress that all too often does the bidding of its left-wing enviromentalist wacko puppeteers.

What Does Naifeh Know That You Don't?

Should Tennessee taxpayers continue to pick up the tab for health insurance and benefits for lawmakers convicted of felony crimes in connection with their official elected-office duties? Most taxpayers probably would say no, but Democrat House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh on Tuesday made sure that all those Democrat ex lawmakers currently sitting in prison doing time for accepting bribes during the Operation Tennessee Waltz investigation will continue to get their taxpayer-funded health care.

Legislation that would have stripped state-funded health benefits from convicted felon ex-lawmakers sailed through the Senate, passing 32-0 but was killed Tuesday by a Naifeh-controlled House committee.

Frankly, I'm less concerned about whether corrupt-and-already-convicted Democrat legislators like Ward Crutchfield, Kathryn Bowers and John Ford get their taxpayer-funded health coverage and more interested in finding out for whom Naifeh and too many Democrats in the Democrat-controlled state House think the benefit should be continued in the future.

iPhone iPrice Cut?

I have been wondering when to buy an iPhone for my wife and myself, wanting to avoid being one of those unlucky folks who buy too soon only to see Apple either greatly discount the phone or release a new version of the phone with some great new features I wish mine had. Well, I think I've finally figured it out: This summer.

That's when, according to Fortune magazine, AT&T will release the new 3G iPhone and sell the 8-gig version for $199 for customers who sign a new 2-year wireless contract. When that happens' we'll be joining the iPhone revolution.

I'm looking forward to blogging from Legislative Plaza and the campaign trail on my iPhone.

By the way, iPhone owners, Fortune reports that the new 3G iPhone "will be 2.5 mm thinner than the 11.7 mm original" and "will also have a GPS chip for navigation and other location-based services."

April 29, 2008

Is Barack Bigger Than Wright's Bite?

Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, says criticism of Wright for his fiery rhetoric is an attack on "the black church." It's rather presumptious of Rev. Wright to claim to speak for the entire African-American Christian community in America, but I wonder if Wright thinks that Obama - now that he's denounced Wright's recent racist, bigoted rhetoric today during a press conference in Winston-Salem, N.C. - has attacked "the black church" in America.

I'm guessing he does - which means you can expect an inevitably over-the-top shrill response coming any day now from Rev. Wright. I'm guessing the Obama campaign isn't looking forward to that with much glee.

Update: Much of the discussion of Wright has mentioned something called "black liberation theology." It is somewhat similar to the liberation theology that has become somewhat common in Catholic churches, especially in South America, in recent years. Eyeblast.tv takes a look at the Marxist roots of liberation theology and its offshoot, black liberation theology. Some of the mini-documentary is a bit over the top, but the section on liberation theology is eye-opening.

Wright and Wrong

Glenn Reynolds has all the good links on the still-unfolding disaster for Barack Obama that is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

April 28, 2008

Democrat Math

The image above is a scan of a letter-to-the-editor published in today's Tennessean, questioning why Gov. Bredesen would rather cut spending on Pre-K education than cut the millions going to build a fancy underground ballroom at the governor's mansion.

Defenders of the administration will claim that the letter writer is wrong, that no state dollars are building the underground ballroom at the governor's mansion. Indeed, Public Disinformation Officer Lola Potter at the state Department of Finance & Administration made that claim in a recent news article last week. And, thanks to clever financing shell game, it's a claim she and the administration can make with a straight face, even though it is highly misleading.

Here's the truth: The Bredesen administration can claim the ballroom is privately funded only because it engaged in a well-documented shell game in which private dollars given for the renovation of the existing mansion - and already spent on the mansion renovation, which is nearly complete - were, on paper, shifted to the ballroom addition project, with tax dollars being allocated to the mansion renovation account to cover the difference.

If the ballroom project had been cancelled, the private money would have stayed with the renovation project, negating the need for millions of dollars in tax money to pay for the renovation that, in the beginning was promised by the administration would be funded mostly with private donations.

And that's the core truth that the defenders of the ballroom do not want you to understand: If the ballroom addition was not built, the total cost to taxpayers for the overall project would be millions of dollars lower.

Bottom line: the total cost to taxpayers for the overall mansion project is at least $8 million higher than it would have been if the ballroom was not built. And the Bredesen administration - and almost every single elected Democrat in the state legislature - would rather defend the project and continue the construction of the ballroom than cancel the project, fill the hole back in, and shift millions of dollars to pre-K education or to restore funding recently slashed from services for the state's more than 6,000 mentally disabled children.

Remember that when you go to vote later this year.

Tennessee Dem's Front-Runner for Governor Supports Income Tax

The current Democratic front-runner for governor in 2010, ex-House Majority Leader Kim McMillan - supports creation of a state income tax. That's one reason, no doubt, that she already has House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's endorsement - a reward for being his staunch ally in his quest to create a state income tax a few years ago.

McMillan is the Democrat front-runner now because she's the only runner with even a toe in the race. U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis is going to run for the Democratic nomination for governor, but first he has to convince the people of his congressional district that they should reelect him this fall as their congressman even though two seconds after the polls close he's going to abandon that job - but not the title nor the office, salary and perks - in order to campaign full-time for governor.

As for McMillan, she'll be the Dem's front-runner until two seconds after a Democrat who voted against or opposes the income tax gets into the race.

April 27, 2008

Blogger Beats Trial Lawyer At His Own Game

Legal Newsline tells the story of blogger Kathleen Seidel, who took on a powerful trial lawyer and won. In March, Seidel wrote a blog post documenting how trial lawyer Clifford Shoemaker of Virginia had turned autism and the debate over the role that vaccines play in it into a legal money-maker for himself.

Shoemaker specializes in litigation against vaccine makers, claiming the mercury in their products has led to autism. The fact that the science doesn't support his claims hasn't stopped him from making a fortune with such cases.

After Shoemaker responded by filing this ridiculously broad subpoena requesting Seidel provide, among other things, "documents pertaining to the setup, financing, running, research and maintaining" of her site, which frequently links to articles and features blogs pertaining to Shoemaker's main litigation area.

Seidel fought back.She researched and wrote her own legal brief asking the judge to quash the subpoena - which Seidel right described as "unconstitutional, unreasonable, irrelevant, excessive, invasive, burdensome, frivolous, and clearly retaliatory: - based in part on a journalist's right to protect his or her sources.

The judge not only granted Seidel's motion, he also has now ordered Shoemaker to show cause why he should not be sanctioned for filing such a "burdensome" subpoena.

Seidel is a librarian by trade, not a lawyer, which makes the quality and success of her motion to quash Shoemaker's absurd subpoena all the more impressive. Here's my favorite part:

13. The materials and information demanded in the subpoena are subject to the journalist's privilege. Although I am unaffiliated with a traditional news organization, and am not compensated for my work except to the extent described above, I am a de facto citizen-journalist regularly engaged in the public dissemination of news and information, and the promotion of discourse and advocacy regarding issues of national importance. See Von Bulow v. Von Bulow, 811 F.2d 136 ("[A]n individual successfully may assert the journalist's privilege if he is involved in activities traditionally associated with the gathering and dissemination of news, even though he may not ordinarily be a member of the institutionalized press."). As such, I am entitled to maintain the confidentiality of my work product and information sources.

The First Amendment was not written to protect only the institutionalized press - which, after all, didn't exist in the late 1700s - but to protect all Americans' rights to freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances. Kathleen Seidel asserted her rights - her rights as an American, not merely a journalist - brilliantly.

(Hat tip: American Courthouse)

April 26, 2008

The Ad

The New York Times says this ad is race-baiting. Ann Althouse disagrees. Given that the ad doesn't mention race at all, the NYT apparently thinks it is "race-baiting" to show a picture of an African-American man in a campaign ad about an African-American candidate. Which, if you take the NYT's logic to its extreme, must mean that the NYT thinks all of Barack Obama's ads in which Obama is pictured are "race-baiting."

Update: Obama and his pal Jeremiah Wright star in another ad.

April 25, 2008

Revenue Department Plans to Be More Secretive With Tax Law Changes Next Year

From today's Tennessee Journal:

Each year the Department of Revenue sends the legislature a "technical corrections" bill, intended partly to tighten loopholes in tax laws and keep the state a step ahead - or at least not too far behind - the latest tax-dodging strategies. The department also tries to clear up ambiguities in the law, in the state's favor, of course. Typically, the bill generates $20 million or so in new revenue.

A couple of weeks before introducing the proposal, the department runs a draft by tax lawyers throughout the state to get feedback. This year the Waller Lansden law firm in Nashville posted
a three-page summary of the draft on its web site. State officials were not happy. Next year they plan to send the draft to only a handful of tax attorneys.

Tax policy proposals should be crafted in out in the open, where the public - who, after all, pay the taxes - can see what is happening.

April 24, 2008

Money for Volkswagen In Bredesen's Tax Plan?

Tennessee lawmakers (and the capitol hill press corps) should scrutinize the forthcoming "technical corrections" legislation from the state Department of Revenue, given today's news that Tennessee is one of three states where Volkswagen is considering building an auto assembly plant

A few years ago, the Bredesen administration used that year's "technical corrections" legislation as the vehicle in which it slipped a secret provision that gave Nissan $64 million of your tax dollars, without telling lawmakers. (In fact, it deliberately mislead lawmakers as to the real purpose and cost of a vague "correction" contained in the bill.)

This year's draft technical corrections legislation includes yet more changes to the state's economic development-oriented tax incentives, according to a summary circulated from the Waller Lansden law firm, which is monitoring the legislation for its impact on the business community.

According to the Waller Lansden summary, "The Bill continues the efforts of the administration to (i) expand and target incentives and (ii) provide more flexibility for combined activity of the Commissioners of Economic Development and Revenue to extend periods for business to qualify for certain incentives and credits. "

Volkswagen's decision may well come down to which state puts the best deal - i.e., the most money - on the table, says one analyst quoted in The Tennessean:

George Peterson, president of the marketing research firm AutoPacific in Tustin, Calif., said Michigan is a long shot largely because of the United Auto Workers union influence there. He also said money and tax incentives could play a big factor in where VW lands.

"It really comes down to how much the states want it and how much they're willing to pay," Peterson said, referring to potential tax incentives.

Here Comes the iTax

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen's Department of Revenue is planning to tax your iTunes downloads, and all other digital media you purchase online and download including music videos, movies, news and entertainment programs, music, ringtones and electronic books. Under current law digitally delivered goods are not taxable unless delivered in a tangible form - if you buy software online and receive it digitally, there's no sales tax, but if you also request and receive a copy of the software on a disk, there is.

As I warned you last December with this post, Bredesen's Revenue Commissioner and his staff were preparing "technical corrections" legislation that would make a variety of amendments to the state's tax code, and result in tax increases for Tennesseans. (My blog post echoed and expanded on a Tennessee Republican Party press release issued three days before.)

Now, as the Bredesen administration faces a $500 million revenue shortfall, the administration may be looking at taxing digital downloads as a way to fill part of that hole. The Waller Lansden law firm in Nashville has released a summary of the draft "technical corrections" legislation, and it contains not one but several tax increases.

The first item - the Digital Products/iPod tax - appears to be the biggie. And while some of the technical corrections really are just that - corrections - the Digital Products/iPOD Tax is a wholly new tax on a class of products that have never been taxed before in Tennessee (or, frankly, most states). You could, presumably, even have to pay sales tax when you "rent" a movie digitally via Comcast, given that you are paying to download digital media .

As the legislation is still in draft form, there is as yet no "fiscal note" assessing its impact on state revenues, but if this stays in the legislation and somehow passes the legislature, it could be a rather large tax increase given the growing popularity of digital media downloading.

Update: California Democrat legislators also want to tax digitally-downloaded purchases. Orange County Register "Capital Watchdog" columnist Brian Joseph discusses the iTax and how Democrats are trying to get around the law that requires a 2/3rds majority to pass a tax increase in order to pass it through the state legislature without needing to secure Republican support.

Joseph says a 2006 report by CNET News.com found that 15 states and the District of Columbia tax media downloads. A November 2007 survey by the Washington state Department of Revenue found 21 states tax cell phone downloads.

He also points out a major flaw with state taxes on digital downloads - a state's jurisdiction ends at its border.

The state can only compel companies based in California to collect taxes. iTunes, or any other download site, can be based anywhere in the world. So what do you do?

Well, the state already has a solution - the use tax - but it's so ridiculous I still can't believe it's real. State law literally requires that Californians volunteer to pay taxes on things they purchase out of state but use in California. Really. If you buy a chair in Phoenix for your house in Irvine, you're supposed to tell the state. And then you get a tax bill.

As you might have guessed, Californians rarely volunteer this information. Estimates say something like 99 percent of use taxes go unpaid in California. So what do you think will happen with downloads?

It will be interesting to see how they try to enforce the sales or "use" tax on digital downloads. I download iTunes to my laptop. Sometimes while I'm in other states. How are they going to tax that? Answer: Not with my help.

April 23, 2008

Get Ready for the iTax

Hey, Tennessee residents. The Bredesen administration is considering taxing your iTunes downloads. Details tomorrow...

"No Rep. Briley. Do You?"

State Rep. Rob Briley was a mean and pathetic drunk. Sober, it turns out, he can be quite the jerk. The Tennessean tells the story of how Briley verbally assaulted state Rep. Stacey Campfield with a series of inane, irrelevant questions before killing Campfield's entirely reasonable bill that would have relieved "fathers" of further legal obligations (including paying child support) for children who they initially believed to be their's but were later proven via DNA testing to be not their's.

Briley may be sober now, but it appears his heavy drinking killed off more than a few of his more important brain cells. Briley's series of questions were, to be charitable, stupid. Especially the question he asked Campfield if Campfield thought adultery was "appropriate," a question that is as devoid of connection to the issue raised by Campfield's bill as it is loaded with irony given the history of the man who asked it.

Briley, you'll recall, was the very married father of four who, according to press reports, cheated on his wife and had an affair with the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association lobbyist while she was shepherding legislation through the House Judiciary Committee that Briley chaired.

Campfield managed to hold fire and not blister Briley with the response Briley so richly deserved, but I'd have loved to have heard him respond, "No, Rep. Briley, I don't believe adultery is ever appropriate. Do you?"

Maybe that would have shamed Briley into shutting his mouth. Probably not.

I was willing to give Rep. Briley a pass after his graceful apology on the House floor a few months back for his drunken-driving crime spree that led to his YouTube-immortalized arrest, but not now, not after this. His performance was disgraceful and served no purpose other than to demonstrate vividly that Rep. Briley's retirement from the legislature at the end of this year will vastly improve the legislature.

Unfortunately from his remarks you get the sense that he's hoping to return to the legislature at some point in the future.

Update: Kay Brooks has some thoughts on the episode.

Moving Day Ahead

Limited blogging so far this week and for the remainder of the week - I'm off work this week. I'm on vacation. Well, sort of. We're working to get our house ready to go on the market, so it's not a vacation of the sit-by-the-pool variety...

Step one of getting a house ready to sell: Getting rid of all kinds of things that, until recently, you either thought you couldn't live with out, or you completely forgot you had, or that you wish you hadn't purchased. Some go to the curb, some go to charity, some go to the garage sale.

So, if you are looking for a couch and love seat set with build in recliners, or a 12-foot pre-lit Christmast tree, let me know. Also, we've got a beautiful dining room table with eight chairs and a sideboard that we'd like to part with, though not at garage sale prices. (It has barely been used.)

Oh, and if you're looking for a good 4BR/2.5BA house in Franklin, Tennessee, convenient to shopping, to schools, to downtown Franklin and to all the great things Williamson County has to offer, we need to talk,

By the way, we're not leaving town - we're just trying to move across Franklin to a different house, one that better suits who we are and how we live, and also is a little closer to the main places we go each day. With gas pushing toward $4 a gallon, it just seems like a good idea.

April 20, 2008

A Question For Barack

The Just One Minute blog catches MoveOn.org in a mammoth lie. Judging from the MoveOn.org email that regularly arrives in my various email in-boxes, MoveOn.org is solidly in the Barack Obama camp. So it would be perfectly acceptable and good journalism to ask Obama if he agrees with MoveOn.org's opposition to the war in Afghanistan.

After the Left's whining about ABC asking Obama a few pertinent questions about his friendship with two known terrorists, though, I'm guessing it won't be George Stephanopolous who hits him with the MoveOn.org question.

April 19, 2008

There's Nothing Wrong With Kansas

Mark Steyn explains why God and guns make America better, not bitter.

April 18, 2008

Small Change

Tuke the Grifter? Perhaps. But if so, not a very good one - in the first quarter Tuke raised for a statewide race what Republican Monty Lankford raised for his race in the fourth Congressional district.

Boom and Bust

Just a thought, but how many fewer workers at the Tennessee Department of Children's Services would have to be laid off due to impending budget cuts if the Bredesen administration was spending $8 million more there and $8 million less on a fancy underground ballroom at the governor's mansion?

A Disarming Candidate

Barack Obama promises to disarm America, in the middle of a war. Idiocy or insanity, you make the call.

ACK is BACK

A.C. Kleinheider, who blogged brilliantly for WKRN Channel 2 for nearly two years at VolunteerVoters.com before 'KRN pulled the plug for budgetary reasons, has returned to the blogosphere today with Post Politics, at NashvillePost.com. The direct link to the free blog is http://politics.nashvillepost.com. The hole in Tennessee political media landscape has been repaired. I predict great things for the blog now that it is run by an online-focused new-media company news company. Welcome back, ACK.

Briley Tries To Have It Both Ways

According to a report in today's Nashville City Paper, state Rep. Rob Briley "repeated his defense of closed-door meetings of a powerful judicial panel Thursday, despite Gov. Phil Bredesen’s efforts to shine light upon its proceedings." Specifically, the administration pushed legislation that would have made the Judicial Selection Commission’s meetings open, but that legislation was killed recently by a lawyer-dominated House subcommittee on which Briley, a trial lawyer, serves.

Briley's defense of closed-door meetings for the commission is a flip-flop from last year, when he sponsored legislation - House Bill 1338 - that would have required all meetings of the Judicial Selection Commission to be open to the public. (Link good only until the start of the next General Assembly, in 2009.) You can read the text of House Bill 1338 here.

Meanwhile, the American Courthouse blog continues to comment on the debate over the future of Tennessee's Judicial Selection Commission

The Judicial Selection Commission is group of 17 people - mostly lawyers picked by the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association and other legal industry special interest groups - that gives the governor a list of people he can appoint to the bench. Then, although the state constitution says judges are to be elected by the people, the judges are allowed to serve until a "retention" election in which voters get to vote "yes" or "no" if the judge gets to stay on the bench

As reported by the American Courthouse yesterday, the related Judicial Evaluation Commission - a group of 12, you guessed it, mostly lawyers - generally gives a unanimous positive recommendation for the retention of every judge.

In Tennessee, there’s a 12-member Judicial Evaluation Commission that evaluates judges appointed by the Judicial Selection Commission and reports to the voters on whether or not judges should be retained. Basically, it’s a second group of lawyers deciding whether a judge appointed by the first group of lawyers should keep his or her job.

Guess what? They pretty much always tell voters to keep the judge! Here’s their latest report. Every single commissioner voted to retain every single judge - not one dissenting voice. It gets worse: Since Tennessee adopted the Star Chamber, only one judge has ever lost a retention election. And if a judge actually does lose, the same committee gets to nominate another one in his place.

Retention elections are really just a shell game to bamboozle voters into blithely giving up their constitutional right to vote for state judges. But the bottom line is still the same: When lawyers choose, voters lose.

April 17, 2008

Hamas Hearts Obama

The terrorist group Hamas has endorsed Barack Obama. The Obama campaign responds - sort of.

Hamas' endorsement of Obama is no shock - one of his foreign policy advisers, Robert Malley, has urged the U.S. government negotiate with Hamas. (Ed Lasky details that at the American Thinker.)

Meanwhile, the fallout from Obama's post-debate whining about the questions continues.

If Obama can't handle George Stephanopolous, it's difficult to see how he would handle Iran's whack-job president, Mahmoud Amadinejad, with whom he has said he wants to meet and talk with no pre-conditions.

Bitter Bomber

And so, last night, finally, in the 21st debate in which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have participated, the news media finally got around to asking Obama about his close friendship with an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

Obama's response is enlightening - and frightening. He sees nothing wrong with his relationship with a bitter ex-terrorist who still clings, metaphorically speaking, to his bombs.

Here's the transcript of the exchange between Obama and moderator George Stephanopolous...

Moderator: And I want to give Senator Clinton a chance to respond, but first a follow-up on this issue, general theme of patriotism, in your relationships. A gentleman named William Ayers. He was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He's never apologized for that.

And, in fact, on 9/11, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." An early organizing meeting for your State Senate campaign was held at his house and your campaign has said you are "friendly."

Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?

OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George.

The fact is that I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who, during his campaign, once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions.

Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements? Because I certainly don't agree with those, either.

Hilary Clinton follows up by filling in the blanks on the relationship between Obama and Ayers, and this article in The Politico makes clear that Obama and the unrepentant terrorist are not just casual neighbors, but political pals.

Hot Air says the article is "Proof that Obama’s not above schmoozing bomb-tossing commies — excuse me, reformed bomb-tossing commies - to advance his political career."

Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit has a detailed analysis of Obama's decision to equate a terrorist bomber with his "friend," Sen. Tom Coburn, based on a deceptive misquoting of something Coburn said.

The Power of Mail Order

There's a Silicon Valley company which believes that some day you'll purchase electricity for your home the way you current rent DVDs from Netflix - through the mail. Seriously.

April 16, 2008

The Blogger Protection Act of 2008

New legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, would protect bloggers from Federal Election Commission restrictions. The "Blogger Protection Act of 2008," (H.R.5699) would give bloggers permanent protection from FEC campaign laws when linking to campaign Web sites or editorializing about candidates.

The Libertarian Party loves the Republican's legislation - and bloggers:

"These guys really don't get the credit they deserve for all the work they've done to create accountability and transparency in American politics," says Andrew Davis, national media coordinator for the Libertarian Party. "Often, bloggers are the first to expose politicians for lying and corruption, and hold all politicians to a new level of accountability that would have been impossible only a few years ago. They fully deserve the same protection from government interference that is given to traditional media outlets."

The legislation has 37 co-sponsors, most all of them Republicans.

Sustain the Brand

Colorado state House candidate Joshua Sharf on why Republican candidates ought to sign no-tax pledges:

This morning, I signed both the Americans for Tax Reform Tax Pledge, and the Colorado Union of Taxpayers Pledge. I'm not big on too many of these pledges in general. They tend to be somewhat absolutist documents that seem more designed to trap politicians than to actually promote a particular agenda. But the no-tax stand is so central to the Republican branding, and so critical in achieving the goal of limited government, that it makes sense both as politics and policy.

And at a time when local, state and federal taxes take almost a third (30.8 percent) of the average American's income, it is good to ask the other side one simple question:

"How much is enough?"

Terminal

ER, a television show I am frequently surprised to find out is still on the air, is coming back again next year for a 15th and final season. I thought that show flat-lined about four years ago. Does anybody still watch it?

Florida Freedom

Some good news out of Florida today:

Employers and business owners can no longer bar workers and shoppers from bringing guns onto their property and leaving the weapons locked inside their vehicles under a bill signed into law today by Gov. Charlie Crist. The new law allows employees and visitors who have concealed weapons licenses to leave their weapons locked in or to vehicles."

Not-So-Open Records Update

It has now been 36 days since I made a rather routine open-records request to the Bredesen administration, and specifically Department of Finance & Administration public information officer Lola Potter, for video taken of blasting (for that underground ballroom) at the governor's mansion construction site.

Six days ago, after again restating to Ms. Potter my insistence that she make the video available and allow me to copy all or parts of it as I wish, I was cc'ed on an email to Ms. Potter from Janet Kleinfelter. This is what it said:

I will call you later this afternoon and update you on my conversation with Steve Elkins and let you know what he and I decided to do.

Janet Kleinfelter is one of Tennessee's Assistant Attorneys General. She also is not a big fan of open records. As the Associated Press Tennessee bureau's Erik Schelzig reported in August 2006, Kleinfelter is a big advocate for less government openness.

State Lawyer Discourages Large Open Records Requests
One of Tennessee's top attorneys handling open records cases said on Tuesday she would discourage reporters from requesting too many records because they can interfere with government operations.

Speaking to lawmakers and legislative staffers at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, Assistant Attorney General Janet Kleinfelter said reporters must seek a "balance" in their records request. "When you get a lot of really hard pushes from the press, I've seen the legislatures freeze, and they no longer try to be creative and think outside the box."

Kleinfelter qualified her comments as relating to requests that involve "volumes and volumes of information" rather than regular requests.

But "when a lot of push comes for those public records, the response is to stop doing things in writing," she said. "Everything gets done orally." And that can cause a problem when lawyers try to reconstruct the process if lawsuits are filed later, she said.

Lawmakers and policy makers also get worried about making "out of the box" suggestions on difficult topics because they fear their ideas will be printed in the newspaper the next day, Kleinfelter said.

Frank Gibson, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said Kleinfelter's stance "shows an attitude that the information belongs to the government, and that nobody is entitled to see it but people in government."

Now that we know that Assistant AG Kleinfelter is not the biggest friend of open government, let's move on to the next question.

Who is Steve Elkins?

Steve Elkins was appointed by Gov. Bredesen as Legal Counsel to the Governor in December 2006, replacing Bob Cooper, who was appointed Attorney General - Cooper is Kleinfelter's boss.

Elkins previously served as Deputy Legal Counsel in the Governor's Office.Before joining the administration, Elkins served as research director and comptroller for Governor Bredesen's successful 2002 campaign. Before that, he served as deputy legal counsel for the Tennessee Democratic Coordinated Campaign.

In other words, he's a partisan Democrat.

As you might have guessed, given where I work, I want the blasting video for possible use in this year's campaign to elect more Republicans to the state legislature - given the statewide unpopularity of the underground ballroom and its $8 million cost to taxpayers, and given the reticence of most Democrat incumbents to criticize the ballroom.

I'm guessing that neither Lola Potter nor Steve Elkins nor Janet Kleinfelter - nor the governor nor his press secretary nor Ms. Potter's boss, F&A Commissioner David Goetz - want me to have the video. Which would explain why Ms. Potter has resolutely refused to let me view and copy the video, and demanded $200 for a copy (on a DVD, no doubt with digital rights management" restrictions to prevent copying or editing).

And so I responded to Ms. Kleinfelter's email early Wednesday morning, after six more days of hearing nothing from Ms. Potter or Ms. Kleinfelter about how they will comply with the state's open records law and make the video available to me to view and copy:

Janet,

Thanks for cc'ing me on this six days ago. Why has it taken another six days for y'all to discuss whether or not to follow the law?

The video is a state document.

I am entitled to view it, and to copy it if I wish.

I expect you to facilitate that happening, and sooner than later.

Developing...

April 15, 2008

Secret Selection

Dan Pero's American Courthouse blog has some interesting perspective on Tennessee's Judicial Selection Commission.

Moment of Truth in Iraq

Michael Yon's great new book, Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New 'Greatest Generation' of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope, has soared up the Amazon rankings into the top 10 big sellers on the site. Yon, a former Green Beret now working as an independent journalist and blogger, has spent more time embedded with the troops on the front lines in Iraq than any other journalist.

Here's the book description:

Never underestimate the American soldier. That's the moral of former Green Beret Michael Yon's brilliant battle-by-battle, block-by-block tale of how America's new `greatest generation' of soldiers is turning defeat and disaster into victory and hope in Iraq.

The American soldier is the reason General David Petraeus's brilliant strategy of moving our soldiers off isolated bases and out among the Iraqi people is working. Working to find and kill terrorists, reclaim neighborhoods, and help lead Iraq to democracy.

Yon is no cheerleader. According to the New York Times, he has logged more time in combat situations in Iraq than any other reporter. When failed American leadership was driving Iraq into chaos and civil war, nobody told the story earlier or better than Michael Yon. The top brass was so mad that twice the U.S. military denied him access to Iraq.

So Yon has supreme credibility when he says that we are finally winning, not primarily with our overwhelming technology, not with shock and awe destruction, but with the even more powerful force of American values--with the courage and leadership, strength and compassion of our soldiers.

Iraqis respect strength, says Yon. They know American soldiers are "great-hearted warriors" who vanquish the Al Qaeda terror gangs that "raped too many women and boys, cut off too many heads, brought drugs into too many neighborhoods."

But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic or a school or a neighborhood. They learned the American soldier is not only the most dangerous man in the world, but the best man too. That's what turned defeat into victory.

Here is the true, untold story of the American soldier and the courage and values that are bringing victory for America--and Iraq.

I HAVE NEVER BEEN PROUDER TO PUBLISH A BOOK

Michael Yon changed my mind about the war in Iraq, by making me understand it for the first time.

From the very beginning I was against the war. I thought it would be a disaster, another Vietnam. And until I had the privilege of working on this book with Michael I was always for immediate pull-out: why should one more American die for a doomed effort?

Michael--who is as close to totally non-political as anyone I know--showed me two things. First, because I judged by Vietnam, the war of my youth, I had radically underestimated what American soldiers could do. I knew they could blow away any regular opponent on any battlefield. But wage a counterinsurgency against an enemy with broad support in the population? Win the "hearts and minds," to use the Vietnam era phrase that now can be used only ironically? That was asking too much, I thought.

I was 100 percent wrong. Today's American soldiers excel at counterinsurgency, because they excel at the most important thing: winning over the people by inspiring them with their own courage and compassion, discipline and determination. Reading this book is like watching the movie Apocalypse Now, but in an alternate universe in which the opposite always happens. Every time our soldiers get into an incredibly tense situation with some Iraqis who might be friends or might be enemies or murderers, some situation in which what's needed is amazing calm and courage to keep things from blowing up and ending in a blood bath, our guys pull it off!

Just wait until you read the Chapter "High Noon" (my favorite), the story of the American soldiers who have to arrest a corrupt but politically popular Iraqi police chief we had put in office in the first place because he had been a real hero in fighting the terrorists. He had to be removed by Americans to show the Iraqis we really did believe in the rule of law. The whole thing could have blown up into a one-town civil war with hundreds dead on both sides. Won't tell you how it ends, but you will be amazed and very proud.

The other thing Michael helped me understand is the difference between terrorists we just have to kill (often foreigners, or local criminals) and local insurgents we should have been working with all along. For almost five years I could not tell from watching the news--and certainly not from listening to the Administration--who the enemy was, what they wanted or why they were fighting. Not surprisingly it turns out that understanding the various people we were fighting--some of whom have since become great allies--was the key to winning the war, which we are now clearly doing.

I am convinced that everything I once thought about the war was wrong. The truth is we are doing a great thing in Iraq, most of the Iraqi people really do want to be a united democratic nation and already consider America their greatest friend and ally. It would be a crime to turn tail now and abandon them now.

I owe all that to Michael's book, which is why I believe publishing Moment of Truth in Iraq may be the best thing I have ever done for my country.

Fuel of the Future

Do you remember a car called the Karmann Ghia? What if they brought it back like the VW Beetle, only it was powered by a hydrogen fuel cell? That would be cool - especially if you had a laptop computer that could run for 10 hours on its own hydrogen fuel cell. The former is fantasy, perhaps, but the latter could soon be reality.

Progress

Things have certainly changed at the first newspaper I ever worked for. But that was way back before Al Gore created the Internet.

The Audacity of Hope

John McCain explains Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope:

"They're going to raise your taxes by thousands of dollars per year, and they have the audacity to hope you don't mind."

Update: Some April 15th condolences.

A Way To Help

Several years ago, early on in my blogging career, I encountered a blogger by the name of Jay Solo, who was organizing a weekly business-and-economics blogging "carnival" called the Carnival of the Capitalists. I hosted the CotC once or twice, and helped then-newbie blogger Jeff Cornwall at The Entrepreneurial Mind host it, but after that I lost track of it and of Jay. Until today when I read on Instapundit that he and his family are facing some hard times. You can help him two ways. Go to his blog and hit the PayPal button and send him something. Even $10 will help. And visit his wife's online store and buy some of her crocheted items.

The Natural Order of Things

Barack Obama needs to remember who is the boss.

Reinventing A Media Career

Her contract not renewed, ex-CNN anchor Daryn Kagan reinvented her career online with a website where she tells the stories she wants to tell, facilitated by cheap digital technology. How well did she do? Well enough to grab the attention of the Associated Press. See the story at MeshMediaStrategies.com.

April 14, 2008

Obama Fundraiser a Friend of Terrorists

Human Events blows the cover of the terrorist sympathizer who is raising big bucks for Barack Obama's campaign. And World Net Daily finds photo proof of the same fund-raiser's coziness with Hugo Chavez, the anti-American dictator of Venezuela.

The Appeaser in Chief

While Barack Obama assails church-going gun-owning Americans, ex-President Jimmy "Malaise" Carter heads off to the Middle East to do a little freelance diplomacy with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has killed Americans and is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Here's the result of Carter's previous foray into dealing with Middle East terrorists:

Blasting Barack

The website of the Tennessee Republican Party appears to have suffered some kind of attack which has rendered much of it inoperable. While the IT folks work on it, I thought I'd post here the text of the press release we issued today, and also as a PDF file. The text is in the extended portion of this post. And, yeah, I've blogged a press release in which I am quoted, which is, admittedly, a tad bizarre.

UpdateThe TRP site appears to be functioning again.

WE'RE NOT BITTER
Obama's bigoted statement puts down people of faith

NASHVILLE, TN - When Barack Obama looks at small-town America, he sees a land of angry, racist, gun-totin' Bible-thumpers who, in his words, "cling to guns and religion" only because the economy isn't booming.

We the people of the Tennessee Republican Party beg to differ. We know different.

"The people of small-town Pennsylvania whom Obama directly insulted in his now-infamous remarks to a group of wealthy latte liberals in San Francisco are just like the people of small-town Tennessee - good, salt-of-the-earth folks who don't 'cling to religion' because the government has failed them, but rather worship God out of a deep, real and abiding faith in both good times and bad," said Robin Smith, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.

Sen. Obama's comments indicate an elitist's condescension toward some of the most basic and fundamental freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the Bill of Rights - a document authored, ironically, by Thomas Jefferson, considered a patron political saint of Obama's Democrat political party. Jefferson's 256th birthday is today.

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees people of faith the right to their religious views and practices unmolested by government, and the Declaration of Independence declares that our rights come from God, not from government - yet Sen. Obama seems to view religion the way Karl Marx did, as the opiate of the masses, something people cling to only because the secular state has let them down.

"Sen. Obama's assertion that people turn to God only after government has failed them is an insult to people of faith everywhere," said Smith.

Perhaps Sen. Obama's bitter view of religion flows from the 20 years he spent soaking up the racist, hateful bigotry of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a narrow religious experience which blinded him to the grace and love that is the more common faith experience in churches across small-town America.

As for guns, the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees to all Americans to the right to keep and bear firearms, yet Sen. Obama has expressed that he believes Americans only turn to guns because the economy is bad and government hasn't fixed it. The truth is that millions of Americans own guns for hunting and millions own them for self-defense – the latter necessary because the government in which Obama places his faith has failed its basic duty to keep the people safe.

In his remarks, Sen. Obama also portrayed people who object to illegal immigration as racist, blaming the people when it is the state which has failed to secure the borders and stanch the flow of illegals, who put downward pressure on wages and cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars for added healthcare, education, law enforcement and other services.

"The Tennessee Republican Party rejects Sen. Obama's bitter bigotry toward people of faith, toward Americans who still believe in the Constitution's Second Amendment, and toward people who believe we ought to secure our borders - and we urge voters to take a deeper look at the 'change' that Sen. Obama is offering," said Bill Hobbs, communications director for the Tennessee Republican party. "Obama's idea of change is for you not to rest your faith in God and your rights on the Constitution, but to put your faith in secular government run by elitists like Obama who look down on you."

-30-

Media Contact Info:
Bill Hobbs
Communications Director
Tennessee Republican Party
2424 21st Avenue, Suite 200
Nashville, Tennessee 37212
Phone: (615) 269-4260
Email: billhobbs@tngop.org

Marx Brother

William Kristol spots the latent Marxism in Barack Obama's claim that small-town Americans only "cling to ... religion" because of economic hardship.

Bitter Fruit

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen tells the Philadelphia Inquirer that either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will have a hard time winning Tennessee in the fall - and that either of them as the nominee may also hurt Democrats down the ballot.

Bredesen said some Democrats running for local and statewide office in Tennessee are now distancing themselves from both Obama and Clinton. "One of the superdelegates said to me, 'I'm in a swing district and both of them are poison to me,' " Bredesen said.

Saving Fallujah

Michael Totten's latest must-read article, Hope for Iraq's Meanest City: How the Surge Brought Order to Fallujah, is now online at the website of City Journal. Nowhere has 'the surge" been more successful than in Fallajah - yet Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party are itching to abandon the good people of Fallujah to the guns and bombs of al Qaeda as quickly as possible.

For a broader picture, buy and read Michael Yon's great new book Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New 'Greatest Generation' of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope. Yon, a former Green Beret now working as an independent journalist and blogger, has spent more time embedded with the troops on the front lines in Iraq than any other journalist.

Why McCain Must Win

Here's a very good explanation of why we must not leave Iraq until the job is finished.

Hitting the Target

The NRA fires back at House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh.

House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's recent actions on self-defense votes in the Tennessee General Assembly were hypocritical and ignored the will of tens of thousands of law-abiding Tennesseans. Here's why. Speaker Naifeh enjoys round-the-clock security detail courtesy of Tennessee taxpayers - even in restaurants and bars. But yet he believes that "regular people" neither deserve, nor need, the God-given right to self-defense in restaurants.

Update: Glenn Reynolds comment, "I'm kind of surprised the Democrats in the legislature wanted to pick this fight in an election year. If Al Gore had carried Tennessee in 2000, he'd have been President, and gun issues were one of the main reasons he didn't."

To be fair, not all Democrats in the Tennessee legislature agree with Naifeh's anti-self defense stance - but because they vote for Naifeh for Speaker at the start of each General Assembly, effectively they do. The only way to get rid of Naifeh's anti-self defense efforts in the legislature are to remove him from the Speaker's chair, and that will only happen by electing a Republican majority. The good news: Tennesseans can do that this fall by increasing the number of Republicans in the 99-member House by just four votes.

All a'Twitter

Some time ago I set up my Twitter account but since doing I never have actually twittered, or tweeted, or whatever it's called. So I find it very amusing that hardly a day goes by without Twitter sending me an email telling me that somebody - usually somebody whose name I recognize - has signed up to follow me on Twitter. Maybe I should be twittering.

April 13, 2008

Newsflash

The Newseum opened Friday in Washington DC. Search Google News for "newseum" and hundreds of stories pop up. Here's a selection from the Toronto Star, from Bloomberg News, from CQ Politics, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post.

My impressions of the Newseum, from a pre-opening tour, are posted here.

What Obama's "Bitter" Bigotry Says About The Modern Democratic Party

Politico senior writer David Paul Kuhn's piece on why Barack Obama's "bitter" bigotry matters - and why it shows, yet again, how the Democrat Party is out of touch with middle America - is a must-read.

Also, here's an interesting piece in The Politico about Barack Obama's general-election prospects.

Sales Tax More Stable Revenue Source than Income Tax

A few years ago, during the great Tennessee Income Tax War, the pro-income tax experts often asserted that an income tax would protect the state against revenue shortfalls during an economic slump. They repeated it like a mantra, especially during the recessionary year 2001, pointing to the state's revenue shortfall and its sales tax-based tax code and claiming that an income tax would have prevented the fiscal crisis.

The facts, of course, said otherwise. As I often pointed out on this blog and in my City Paper columns during those years, states that rely on income taxes suffered much larger deficits during that economic slump than did states that rely on sales taxes. But no amount of pointing out the facts seemed to sway the pro-income tax folks, or the media that often carried their water bucket during those years.

But now, the leader of Tennessee's pro-income tax political party - that would be the Tennessee Democrat Party - has admitted the truth: Tennessee's sales tax and lack of a state income tax helps the state avoid huge revenue shortfalls during economic slowdowns. Gov. Phil Bredesen, as quoted in today's Tennessean article, talking about the state's sales tax:

"It doesn't grow as much as an income tax does in good years. It doesn't shrink as much as income taxes do in tough years," he said.

When the economy slows down and income-tax revenue dives, those states face larger deficits because they over-spent - and over-committed for the long-term - during the fat years.

By relying instead on the sales tax, Tennessee is less susceptible to over-spending in the fat years, and less susceptible to massive shortfalls in the lean years.

Gov. Bredesen has explained, in two sentences, why it would be fiscal suicide to reform Tennessee's tax code by adding an income tax.

Ironically, just before Bredesen's statement in the same article, state government's top economic adviser continues to spout the untruth:

Sales tax exemptions have proliferated nationally, but because Tennessee relies heavily on its sales taxes, the state can be harder hit when the economy sours and sales flatten, according to University of Tennessee economics professor Bill Fox, who advises the state on financial matters.

That shortfall is directly tied to how Gov. Bredesen dealt with last year's $1.5 billion revenue shortfall. Instead of saving most of it, Bredesen sought and got a budget that spent almost all of it, and started new programs and expanded existing programs as if the one-year revenue surge was going to be an annual event.

Bredesen's budget even included $723 million in spending that exceeded the state constitution's limit on the year-over-year growth of the state budget.

Now, that over-spending has combined with the economic slowdown to create the fiscal crisis Tennessee now faces.

It's just a good thing that Tennessee Republicans fought to stop the income tax six years ago - else this year's revenue shortfall might be twice as large.

April 12, 2008

Barack's Bigotry Begets Blowback

Jonathan Martin at The Politico assays the self-inflicted damage of Barack Obama's breathtakingly bigoted slap at churchgoing, gun-owning folks in Pennsylvania.

Losing Pennsylvania

Being from Pennsylvania and understanding Pennsylvanians a whole lot better than Barack Obama and his campaign brain trust do, I never believed Obama had much of a chance to win that state's Democratic primary. He'll do okay in Philly and its liberal suburbs, but James Carville was right when he said Pennsylvania is Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west, and a whole lot of Alabama in between.

Memo to liberals: You're wrong if you think Carville's description was a pejorative put-down. He did not call the huge numbers of Pennsylvanians spread across the rural areas and small and mid-sized towns and burgs of the central part of the state ignorant hayseeds. He was reflecting that they are, culturally, a lot like the people of the rural south - people of strong religious faith, a belief in traditional values, respect for the military and a strong support for (and active participation in) the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. They're people who respect the Amish culture that still thrives across much of south central PA.

Pennsylvania may have gone Democrat in recent elections, and its urban areas have certainly sent their share of liberal Democrats to Congress, but it a state steeped in American history, a state proud of its role in the foundation of American liberty and democracy, and a state where huge numbers of people over the decades have worked at such places as the Naval shipyard, at the Boeing plant in suburban Philly where thousands of workers have built Chinook helicopters for the military since 1960, and at the Sunoco refinery.

They may be Democrats but they're not military-hating, America-blaming, Prius-driving West Coast liberals or welfare-dependent urban Chicago Machine Democrats or New York latte liberals who don't understand why people go to church. They're Democrats who own guns for hunting and self-protection, who hang crucifixes and religious sayings on the walls of their homes, who home-school their kids and who are more likely than your average Democrat elitist to actually know a miner or a factory worker - or to be one. Their sports heroes tend to be blue-collar guys who play for the Steelers, or the Eagles or the Phillies - not the flashy, glitzy, superstar players or the thugs that might be stars on other teams in other towns.

They're Reagan Democrats.

Pennsylvania voters once chose a pro-life, fiscal conservative as their governor over a pro-choice fiscal liberal - and the pro-life fiscal conservative was the Democrat.

In short, they're a target-rich environment for a candidate like John McCain - especially now Obama has blown a big hole in his chances of winning Pennsylvania in the general election, should he hang on to win the Democrat's nominee.

Pennsylvania has large populations of culturally conservative Catholics, of retirees, and of military veterans. Memo to Barack: You don't win the votes of such people by insulting them as ignorant, gun-totin' Bible-thumpers.

If Democrats do nominate Obama, the odds of John McCain winning the blue state of Pennsylvania on November 4 just went up, dramatically.

April 11, 2008

The Cost of Immigration

Two complete 24-hour news cycles after the release of a groundbreaking study that calculates the cost to the American taxpayer of immigration - legal and illegal - at $346 billion annually, the Associated Press bureau in Nashville published a story ignoring those numbers while spotlighting the estimated $9 billion in additional revenue collected by Social Security on wages paid to illegals.

$9 billion in additional revenue from illegals hardly pays for $346 billion in added costs to taxpayers from immigrants, of whom an estimated one third are illegals. Even discounting the $346 billion figure by two thirds, we're still left with $115 billion in additional costs compared to $9 billion in additional revenue.

Illegals do not, as the Tennessean headline over the AP story asserts, "help carry the tax burden." They make the tax burden worse, and barely pay a fraction of it.

Here's a section of the Washington Times story on the comprehensive study of the cost of immigration to the American taxpayer:

This is another nail in the coffin of economic growth," said Edwin Rubenstein, director of research and president of ESR Research, which released the report. "There is absolutely no reason immigration policy shouldn't be discussed on its economic merits."

Mr. Rubenstein, a former director of research at the Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan policy research organization, said U.S. taxpayers paid more than $9,000 for each immigrant in the country, a third of whom are believed to be in the U.S. illegally.

The report, which analyzed costs based on 15 separate federal agencies, estimated that the departmental impacts ranged from a high of $146 billion at the Treasury Department to a low of $300 million at the Defense Department.

The loss estimates, the report said, included $100 billion in federal taxes lost "from the reduction of native incomes caused by immigrant workers."

While a total of 15 federal departments were examined in terms of the fiscal impact of immigration, Mr. Rubenstein said the federal budgets never provided a comprehensive analysis to the public.

And even programs that are not usually associated with immigration, he said, have actually added financial burdens to the taxpayers.

For example, Mr Rubenstein said the Bureau of Land Management, a unit of the Interior Department, spends millions of dollars to clean the trash left behind by illegal immigrants crossing the Southern border in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Tennessee's budget deficit so far this year: $268.1 million and rising.

Celebrate!

Free at last, free at last! We're free from the tax man for the rest of the year here in Tennessee. It's Tax Freedom Day. By the end of today, the average Tennessee taxpayer will have worked enough days this year to pay all of their local, state and federal taxes for the year. Details and data links at SolutionsTN.com.

Judge Not

A City Paper story which reports that the law that created Tennessee's "Judicial Selection Commission" may be allowed to expire contains an interesting juxtaposition of viewpoints on the way Tennessee's judges are appointed.

Republican Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who as the leader of the state Senate gets to appoint some members of the Judicial Selection Commission, tells the City Paper he doesn't like it that the law requires him to make his appointments from nominees recommended by a specific list of interest groups. That list includes the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association - the trial bar - which historically leans toward Democrats rather than Republicans. Requiring the Republican leader of the senate to appoint commission members from an interest group that is heavily tied to the Democrat Party and one of the Tennessee Democrat Party's biggest financial benefactors seems to be a rather biased process.

House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, though, is reported to be just fine with the way things are. Of course, the way things are is that liberal interest groups control the process, which gets you a liberal-leaning state judiciary.

There are many folks who believe the Judicial Selection Commission process ought to be allowed to expire for another reason: It is patently unconstitutional. The Tennessee state constitution says judges are to be elected by the people. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has a great history of how the unconstitutional Judicial Commission came to exist despite the expressed opposition by the people of Tennessee in a referendum.

In 1994, Tennesseans' constitutional right to elect state judges was hijacked when lawmakers decided that partisan politics and special interests should overrule the Tennessee Constitution.

Since 1853, direct elections of state judges have been guaranteed by the Constitution. Article VI, Section 3 of the Tennessee Constitution declares, "The judges of the Supreme Court shall be elected by the qualified voters of the state," and Article VI, Section 4 states the same with respect to inferior courts. This system of judicial election provided the state's courts with competent justices for 140 years as Tennessee's voters utilized their constitutional right and chose qualified judges to serve in the state's Judicial Branch.

The case, Johnson v. Bredesen, is pending in U.S. District Court, so it won't be ruled on by any unconstitutionally seated Tennessee state judges, all of whom would clearly have a huge conflict-of-interest.

The new American Courthouse blog, written by Dan Pero at the American Justice Partnership, had a very interesting post Thursday commenting on an Economist magazine article. Says Pero:

The Economist also noted that, "comprehensive legal reform might help keep the tort war from seeping into judicial elections." This indicates that The Economist editors are, unlike many of their American counterparts, aware of the extent to which the trial bar has corrupted and gamed the system in the U.S., from the law school to the bench.

April 10, 2008

What's The Difference?

The Tennessean reports that legislation to end public access to state and local employees' home addresses and phone numbers has passed the state House.

The measure sponsored by Democratic House Majority Leader Gary Odom of Nashville was approved unanimously. The companion bill is scheduled for a Senate government committee next week. Odom has said the legislation will help protect those workers from harassment.

Lola Potter: Public Information Obstacle

I'm beginning to understand why the Tennessee Center for Policy Research felt it had to sue Lola Potter, the public info officer for the state Department of Finance & Administration, to force her to stop ignoring their legitimate open records requests for more than nine months.

Back on March 11 I request a copy of the video the state had made of blasting at the governor's mansion construction site. Learning that the video was hours long, I quickly modified my request to seek a copy only of the portions of the video that actually show blasting in progress.

Subsequently, I requested merely to be given access to the tape so I could watch it, and copy the portions I selected onto my laptop's hardrive.

Potter has done nothing but stonewall and try to prevent me from accessing the tape by, first, telling me it would cost "hundreds, if not thousands of dollars" to get a DVD copy made, then by telling me they would make me a copy for $200, then telling me that I can't watch the video because the state has left it in the possession of the construction contractor.

Let's be clear about a few things.

1. There is no cost to the state to let me download parts or even all of the video to my harddrive. Therefore, any monetary charge to get a copy of the video is unreasonable and intended only as an obstacle to me getting the video.

2. Potter provided an exceprt of the video to two media outlets - the Nashville Scene and WKRN Channel 2 - for free. Thus, she has established the precedent that there is no charge for copies of excerpts of the video.

3. The $200 price tag is arbitrary as it bears no relationship to the actual cost of copying digital video.

4. There is no provision in state law which allows any state agency or employee to evade the requirements of the state's open records laws by storing the records in the possession of a contractor.

5. It has now been 30 days since I first requested the video. Potter clearly has no intention of following the law.

6. Lola Potter is the worst public information officer in state government.

7. Lola Potter's boss, F&A Commissioner David Goetz, has been copied on some of the emails I've sent to Potter insisting she follow the law and provide me access to the video. So has Gov. Bredesen's chief flack, Lydia Lenker. So far, neither of them has lifted a finger to make Potter follow the law.

City Paper Goes Where Tennessean Will Eventually Follow

The Nashville City Paper is about to do what all newspapers will eventually be forced to do: Move more of their business online and evolve away from print. The paper is being purchased by the owner of NashvillePost.com, and will publish a print version only on Mondays and Fridays, and will beef up its online offerings including the addition of video coverage. That's the direction that newspapers have to go, in the opinion of this former newspaper writer.

The City Paper and the Nashville Scene both have reports on the sale and changes ahead for the City Paper.

Some time ago I wrote a piece asserting that newspapers, while they seem to be a more obsolete technology than broadcast news outlets, actually have the advantage over television in the transition to the new media world.

Briefly, I'll recap why.

It comes down to cost. Newspapers have two huge costs that broadcasters don't - the cost of newsprint and the cost of fuel for the delivery trucks. Broadcasters' unique big costs include such things as satellite remote trucks, video cameras, video editing and production equipment, and multi-person crews to produce stories.

Cheap digital technologies have given newspapers a way to dump their two biggest costs - and beef up their products - sooner than broadcasters can reduce theirs.

The City Paper is moving in the right direction - the direction that will soon become a trend among daily newspapers generally.

April 8, 2008

The Ultimate Dirt Bike?

A hydrogen fuel-cell speed bike, and harvesting electricity from dirt - my latest postings over at the Fuel Cell Store Blog.

An Academic Exercise

Vanderbilt University law professor Herwig J. Schlunk is pushing for Tennessee to adopt a "broad-based income tax" on top of its retail sales tax. His 74-page paper is a theoretical exercise based on a series of assumptions and hypotheses, though Schlunk belies his politics with an odd out-of-the-blue jab at two renowned income tax foes - former state senator and now U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, and radio talk show host Phil Valentine.

Throughout the paper, Schlunk rests his whole argument on three highly questionable assumptions: that all or most government spending is good and there is no waste, that government spending must go up rather than down, and that only a system which taxes both income and consumption is a fair system.

Schlunk is seemingly oblivious to the great debate over what, exactly, constitutes "fairness" when it comes to taxes - some say only a flat tax is "fair" because it taxes all people at the same rate, while others say only a system of progressive tax rates is "fair" because the wealthy should pay a higher rate. Fairness is subjective, not objective, though you wouldn't know it from reading Schlunk.

Schlunk then asserts that only a system which taxes both income and consumption is a stable revenue source long-term. By "stable" it is clear that he means "able to keep up with rapid growth in government spending." Except, it isn't true - during the last national economic recession, states that rely more on income taxes than sales taxes suffered much larger deficits in the last recession than states which rely mainly on sales taxes.

The biggest glaring hole in Schlunk's paper, though, isn't one of economics or fairness, but - rather strangely for a law professor - it is his failure to address the legal aspects of the income tax. Schlunk's paper attempts to build a theoretical case for Tennessee having a state income tax, but never addresses the elephant in the room: An income tax is unconstitutional in Tennessee. Period.

Three separate unanimous Supreme Court rulings say so.

The state constitution itself even says so. Explicitly:

Article 11, Section 9, of the state constitution says this: The General Assembly shall not authorize any municipality to tax incomes, estates, or inheritances, or to impose any other tax not authorized by Sections 28 or 29 of Article 2 of this constitution.

The language of Article 11, Section 9, of the Tennessee constitution clearly states that the legislature is not permitted to authorize municipalities to tax income. Section 9 also serves as commentary on Article 2 Sections 28 and 29, which list a variety of taxes the legislature is authorized to levy. Article 11 Section 9 makes it crystal clear that in income tax is part of the list of taxes that are "not authorized by Sections 28 or 29 of Article 2."

I've explained this numerous times over the past several years here at BillHobbs.com and not one single pro-income tax elected official, attorney general or activist has ever tried try to explain how an income tax can be constitutional in light of Article 11 Section 9. Because they can't.

It doesn't matter if an income tax would be more "fair," however you define fair. It doesn't matter if it would be a more "stable" revenue source (though historical data indicates it would not be). The income tax is not constitutional in Tennessee.

You'd think a law professor proposing a Tennessee income tax would have started there.

Bottle Battle

If you think Tennesseans ought to pay a new tax, er, "fee" of about 8 cents per bottle or can of juice, cola or water, and the state ought to force retailers to set up bottle deposit-and-return programs, and the state ought to have a costly new bureaucracy to police the whole thing (and skim off $50 million or more every year), you're in luck - the Senate Government Operations Committee is considering Senate Bill 1408, which would do just that. It has opposition.

The Face of Deceit