Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Politics High Rates of Teen Births and HIV Infection Aren't the Best Things To Be Good At: More Reactions to the 'Gateway Sexual Activity' Law
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Wed, May 16, 2012 at 7:34 AM
Internet dude Philip DeFranco has some thoughts, starting at 2:47 in the above video, about Tennessee's infamous "gateway sexual activity" law. He points out that Tennessee has the seventh highest teen birth rate in the nation and the 11th highest rate of HIV infection, "which, hey, those things aren't the best things to be good at."
Over at the Maddow blog, Steve Benen points out that the correlation between high teen birth rates and abstinence-only education are impossible to miss. "According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly all of the states with the highest rates for teen pregnancies are in the Deep South (a.k.a., the 'Bible Belt'), where abstinence-only policies are the norm." In other words, along with abstinence, we should be teaching kids how to correctly use condoms and various other forms of birth control, and not attaching any kind of stigma to it.
Gov. Haslam is claiming that the law doesn't really change Tennessee's sex ed curriculum, but, if that's so, why would he sign the law? I mean, really. If a law doesn't do anything, then it's not necessary, and the governor should veto it. I mean, it's not unheard of for a governor to say something like, "I understand the sentiment behind this bill, but it needs some work, so I'm sending it back to the legislature." Or he could outright say, "This bill doesn't do anything, so I'm vetoing it." So, why wouldn't he?
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Around Town Karl Dean and Nashville's Obesity Battle on CBS This Morning
Posted by Steven Hale on Tue, May 15, 2012 at 3:53 PM
Watch the mayor discuss his war on obesity and laugh at CBS correspondent Chip Reid, a poor Yankee soul who's never heard of a meat-and-three.
Congress Duncan, GOP Keeping America Safe From Questionnaires
Posted by Jonathan Meador on Tue, May 15, 2012 at 6:46 AM
There is a specter haunting America ... the specter of paperwork!
Yesterday, Tennessee Congressman John Duncan (R, TN-2) voted with a nearly unanimous bloc of House Republicans to rid America of the scourge of too big to fail banks Al-Qaida sleeper cells reality television intrusive and unnecessary census surveys.
According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, Duncan & Co. voted to quash the Census Bureau's monthly American Community Survey because ... Big Brother.
No, really. Big Brother wants you to fill out a piece of paper and, should you refuse, lock you in Room 101 and throw away the key forever, or until you submit to the state, a broken shell of your former self.
"It seems to me that is Big Brother type of government," Duncan shamelessly told the Sentinel.
Duncan and a number of federal lawmakers, mostly Republicans, are pushing to eliminate the American Community Survey, which the Census Bureau sends out every month to 250,000 households across the country.The questionnaire asks Americans everything from their ethnicity to how much they earn to whether they rent or own their own homes.
This week, the U.S. House voted 232-190, mostly along party lines, to prohibit the Census Bureau from using federal funds to conduct the survey. All four of the House members from East Tennessee voted in favor of the legislation.
...
Duncan said he can't think of any reason why the government needs to know how Americans get to work, how many bedrooms are in their homes or whether or not they have hot and cold running water — all questions that are posed on the survey.
"It's just ridiculous how detailed these questions get," Duncan said. "It seems to me there's just almost no privacy anymore, and it just keeps getting worse and worse."
Crazy Crap Bill Boner Defends Himself from Sexual Harassment Charges by Sexually Harassing
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Tue, May 15, 2012 at 5:49 AM
Here's the thing that has to be weighing on Rutherford County Mayor Ernest Burgess' mind — now that The Daily News Journal is reporting on the sexual harassment allegations against property assessor Bill Boner (not to be confused with former Nashville Mayor Bill "Seven-Hour" Boner):
“I’ve got 25 employees. You’re welcome to talk to any of them,” Boner told The DNJ, noting the women still working for him are “a lot younger and better looking” than Zumbro and Dumm.
Yep, when faced with accusations that he fired three women after they complained about him sexually harassing them — Janie Zumbro and Kathy Dumm, who the Labor Board just decided were fired in retaliation for complaining, and Robbie Allen, whose allegations against Boner go even deeper than sexual harassment — Boner's defense is that his other female employees are "a lot younger and better looking." People, his defense is that he wouldn't waste his time harassing the old, ugly chicks.
Mayor Burgess should just go on down to the property assessor's office, count up the people working there, and then estimate for tax payers how much it's going to cost to settle with employees who feel like their boss makes sexually inappropriate comments about the women in his office — and values his female employees based on their youth and looks, instead of on their experience and work performance.
Because this isn't just about allegations of workplace misbehavior. This is Boner demonstrating for the local paper how to create a hostile workplace — by remarking on the attractiveness of one's employees. You don't often see people defending themselves against allegations by doing the thing they're alleged to have done, but folks, we're witnessing it.
I know this isn't funny for the women who have to go through it, but I have to admit I laughed.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Congress Marsha Blackburn vs. Barney Frank on ABC's This Week
Posted by Steven Hale on Mon, May 14, 2012 at 1:30 PM
Watch as outgoing U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) gets increasingly irritated with our own U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, during a discussion about same-sex marriage, the 2012 presidential election and the Dumpster fire at JP Morgan.
40 Jealous Whores Heresy! Sacred Cows! Two Conservative Councilmen Weigh in on Hizzoner's Tax Hike
Posted by Steven Hale on Mon, May 14, 2012 at 11:57 AM
For this week's dead-tree Scene , I waded into Metro politics for some brief reportage on Mayor Karl Dean's proposal of the city's first property tax increase in seven years. Essentially, this amounts to an attempt to catch up to the City Paper's Joey Garrison, who's covered the matter extensively (and, as always, provided the Metro play-by-play on Twitter, may its name be praised).
In the course of trying to take the Metro Council's temperature on the mayor's proposal — which Garrison has also done a bit of — I talked with Antioch-area councilman Robert Duvall and at-large councilman Charlie Tygard, both of whom are conservatives. Duvall started speaking out against a tax increase before it was even proposed, while Tygard, a veteran member of the council who has lived through property-tax debates under several mayoral administrations, said he was "skeptical" but "not committed one way or another."
While chatting on the phone, though, neither hesitated to throw a few ideas at the wall that they say could shrink the tax increase, if not eliminate it altogether.
Law and Order City Paper Investigates Sex Trafficking in Nashville and Beyond
Posted by Jack Silverman on Mon, May 14, 2012 at 11:40 AM
In this week's City Paper, James Nix investigates the sex trafficking trade in Nashville and around the country. The cover story, titled "Faced with pervasive sex trafficking, law enforcement and nonprofits take aim," hit the stands this morning, just 10 days before the Trafficking in America Task Force begins its annual conference at the Holiday Inn Opryland/Airport.
An excerpt:
Nashville, with its central location as a crossroads of interstate traffic, finds itself firmly entrenched on the trafficking circuit, which links other nearby cities like Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis, Clarksville and Birmingham, Ala.In August, police charged Prontiss Houseworth, who turned 19 this January, with trafficking sexual servitude after a detective answered an Backpage.com ad for a “two-girl special.”
At the Knights Inn motel on Spring Street, police said they found two women who told detectives that Houseworth had taken them from Atlanta and driven them to Nashville, with the safety locks on the car doors engaged so they couldn’t escape. They said Houseworth told them he was their pimp now, they were in his “game,” and threatened to use violence against them or their families if they didn’t do as he said.
Disclosure: Backpage.com has signed marketing agreements with a number of alternative weeklies around the U.S., including the Nashville Scene. The Scene and The City Paper are owned by SouthComm.
Education CP: Julia Green Expansion Plans Getting Poor Marks from Parents
Posted by Jim Ridley on Mon, May 14, 2012 at 7:03 AM
The City Paper's Joey Garrison has a big piece this morning on a neighborhood controversy with broader implications for the city: the concerns of parents at Green Hills' Julia Green Elementary School that long-range plans for the respected school's expansion guarantee a future of overcrowding and neighborhood congestion:
“Julia Green is an amazing school,” said Haley Dale, the parent of a Julia Green kindergartner, citing satisfaction with the school’s parental participation, teachers and curriculum.But parents like Dale are questioning Metro Nashville Public Schools’ long-term plan to expand the school through the construction of 12 additional classrooms to address Julia Green’s rapid growth, a scenario many learned about at a March meeting with school district officials. Though the projected $2.8 million building addition isn’t finalized or appropriated, the subject has nonetheless dominated chatter there.
In short time, Julia Green has mushroomed from a student body of 412 just four years ago to a projected enrollment of 626 next school year. Five portable classrooms are currently used to handle the overflow, and one more will be utilized next year. The growth trajectory is only expected to continue, a trend that would follow the Hillsboro cluster’s overall projected increase of 1,200 elementary school students over the next seven years.
On the surface, expansion might seem logical.
Stephanie Edwards, parent of a rising third-grader and a kindergartner, however, called the plan a “Band-Aid approach.” On top of a host of other concerns about a future addition — ranging from snarled traffic to diminished educational quality — many parents worry that the expansion wouldn’t actually solve the problem, based on estimates of future enrollment.
“Twelve classrooms — they could finish that construction, and we would still need portables if those numbers held true,” said Mary Pierce, who heads the school’s parent-teacher organization. “It’s been a tough issue within the Julia Green community.”
In this upscale area — where the rate of public-versus-private schooling runs about 50-50 among children — parents are looking for other solutions to overcrowded schools. They’re frustrated. Some fear future zoning and student assignment changes. And many have their eyes on a proposed Metro charter school called Great Hearts Academies, subject to school board approval later this month. Taking advantage of the state’s new open enrollment law, the school would act as Metro’s first charter to cater to Green Hills students.
In the end, the unrest at Julia Green is likely just the beginning of a process to grapple with growth within the Hillsboro cluster, which includes Julia Green, and another challenge: satisfying a part of the county that often turns away from the public schools system in favor of private education.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Sports The Hippodrome: It's Gonna Be A Long Summer
Posted by J.R. Lind on Fri, May 11, 2012 at 7:11 AM
This Week In The 'Drome: What now, Shea says gay is OK, horses, hats and more
Opening Face-Off
Rebuild vs. Re-buy : At the end-of-year press conference, Predators general manager David Poile said while the end result was the same — losing in the second round — the mood of the annual confab was different from 2011.
"Last year, we were pretty excited at this point. This year, we are disappointed."
Indeed, there will be no Scene covers with Gnash clasping hands with gold-clad Scene staffers like an Up With People album cover. There will be no love letters in the dead tree.
Instead, this week in the dead tree I ask what comes after all-in.
In poker, losing an all-in opens two options.
One, you can shove off, take your patina-covered pennies and play slots with Aunt Edna. Alternatively, you can dig a little deeper into the pockets, re-buy and sit back down for more.
This, too, is the Predators' choice. Do they lament missing their window of opportunity, resigned to the fact that Ryan Suter is going elsewhere along with umpteen other free agents? Or do they come back to the table, build on the success of the year and try to prop that window of opportunity for another year?
Poile said all the right things at the press conference. There was no groundwork-laying, expectation-diminishing chatter about a rebuild. He wants to go for it in 2012-13 too. He was even rosy — as rosy as the often-dour Poile can be — about the chances of bringing Suter back. Whether he was blowing smoke remains to be seen, but Poile is savvy enough an executive that if a rebuild is in the immediate future, he'd certainly prepare the press — and through that conduit, the growing fan base — for it.
Oddly, of course, the Predators have never been on a rebuild, like the Stalinistic five-year plans underway in Toronto and Edmonton. They were an expansion team and then they were a playoff team, and but for one season, they've been a playoff team since they first reached that threshold. Sure, there was The Great Firesale, but you know what happened after that? The team made the playoffs.
A reasonable person would expect, at some point, a rebuild is coming for what is a uniquely stable hockey organization. Nearly every professional sports team goes through one every once in a while. In the words of Clemenza, "These things gotta happen every five years or so, 10 years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood." But in Nashville, it doesn't look like Poile is going to the mattresses this summer.
Legislature / Film Film Incentives Get Funding Boost, Film Workers "Nothing But Grateful"
Posted by Steven Hale on Fri, May 11, 2012 at 5:05 AM
Tennessee's embattled film community got a shot in the arm Wednesday with the announcement that the state's shrinking film/TV incentive fund will get an extra $2 million in funding, after changes to the state's incentives program.
As part of a budget implementation bill, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, the change does away with the refundable tax credit available to film productions and "ends a complex system of incentivizing productions through both Tennessee Film Entertainment and Music Commission (TFEMC) grants and refundable tax credits issued by the Department of Revenue," according to a release from the state Department of Economic and Community Development.
"We recognize the importance of the film industry not only to the economy of the state but to the welfare of countless Tennesseans whose livelihoods depend on it,” said Norris in the release. “This new program simplifies, streamlines and strengthens our commitment to the film industry."
Norris was the Senate sponsor of a stand-alone incentives proposal filed this year, but the bill stalled in both chambers.
Jan Austin, founder and executive director of the Association for the Future of Film & Television in Tennessee, tells Pith that while she always wants more money for film work, the funding boost is "absolutely positive news" and praised Norris and the Haslam administration for working together on the issue.
"It gives us a place to start in this state," she said. "Wonderfully thought out by all the parties. As the economy improves, I expect we’ll continue to look at that. I don’t find negatives in it, whatsoever."
She adds that she has heard "nothing but thankfulness from members" around the state, who have been pleading for a life line to keep them from leaving the state in search of work.
The full text of the ECD release, with more details on what the news means for film work in Tennessee, is after the jump.
