By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — Nashville is home to two kinds of people: those who can afford to live here and those who can’t. “We want to make sure that high roll contractors are paying workers a living wage so that at the end of day they can continue to live in the city,” said Vonda McDaniel, President of the Nashville Central Labor Council. McDaniel and members of a group called Workers’ Dignity gathered on the steps of the Downtown Presbyterian Church last week to present the findings of a new study documenting unsafe working conditions and wage theft…
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By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Unless Congress provides funds to keep them running, the White House education budget eliminates 22 school programs next year that cost $10.6 billion. Other programs face deep cuts like college work-study that will be halved. The President’s education budget for 2018 is 13.6 percent less than this year. About $1 billion of the savings will be spent forcing public schools to accommodate charter schools and another $400 million will provide vouchers to private and religious schools. The picture for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) is not good either. The President promised HBCU leaders…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – There is an unflattering picture of Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R- TN) on a billboard heading South toward Franklin on I-65. It’s meant to be ugly. Blackburn sponsored a joint resolution to remove Internet privacy protections ordered by the Federal Communications Commission last year that were about to go into effect. “We must stop the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules, which are nothing more than a Trojan horse for government takeover of the Internet. These overreaching rules will stifle innovation, restrict freedoms, and lead to billions of dollars in new fees and taxes for American consumers.” Blackburn…
NASHVILLE, TN – About 250 Middle Tennessee Indivisibles rallied at the foot of Broadway on Monday, May 9. They marched eight blocks to the Omni Hotel where Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN 7th District) and Kellyanne Conway were attending a luncheon to honor “Women of Distinction”. Blackburn represents nearby Williamson County and is being publicly shamed by a billboard on I-65 calling her a tool of the Telecom industry. Blackburn sponsored a bill that takes away privacy Internet rules. President Trump signed the bill last week. Conway, a coined the term “alternative facts” referring to White House lies and has been…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Metro Auditor Mark Swann is a nice guy. But if your hand is in the till, he’s going to catch you playing fast and loose with city funds. Swann has new powers to look into the financial operations of all Metro departments. On April 4, the city council voted unanimously to grant him that authority and Mayor Megan Barry signed the resolution the next day. But things haven’t changed much in the auditor’s office. It’s pretty much business as usual: too much to do and not enough time and money to do everything that…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — MLK Magnet’s new library was dedicated to Dr. Samella Junior-Spence on Friday, April 21. The library is on the first floor of a new wing attached to the Pearl High School building on 17th Ave. N. that was built in 1937. The upper floors will have classrooms and the two-year project includes renovation of the old building with its brick façade and distinctive Art Deco portico. Dr. Spence started MLK in 1986 with grades 7-9. It was Metro’s first secondary magnet school and graduated its first class of seniors in 1990. Spence was the…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – It was a sunny 63 degrees at 7:30 AM on the day of the Moosic City DairyPure Dash on April 15. For the 17th time in as many years, about 1600 runners runners, who had each ponied up $35, readied at the starting line for the 5k race. At 8 AM, the long distance runners queued up for the 10km and 15km races. Jeannette Mathieu and Cormac Carolan won the 5km; Anna Stevenson and Scott Wietecha won the 10K; Bonita Dearbone and Matt Davis won the 15km. The other winners were the hundreds of…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – The State and Local Government Committee all but killed a senate housing bill Tuesday that would have ended set asides for affordable housing projects in Davidson County. The bill wasn’t exactly killed, but among the dozens of bills the committee either passed on to other committees or passed up to the hill for the Legislature to vote on, SB0363 was the only one that was placed on the 2018 calendar. In short, Committee Chairman Ken Yager kicked it down the road ten months. “We let cities grant variances all of the time for all…
By Peter White The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Census Bureau could fail to accurately count the U.S. population in 2020. In February, the GAO put the 2020 Census on its list of 34 high-risk federal programs vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. The census was added to the list because the costs have risen a lot and fewer people are returning census questionnaires. The average cost of counting a household has risen from $16 in 1970 to $92 in 2010. When people don’t fill out the questionnaires and return them, the bureau sends out field workers as…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Metro council will soon decide whether to adopt a 1989 state law that allows cities and counties to vote on landfills before the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) grants them operating permits. “I have no faith in TDEC, they take filing fees, they don’t really do anything. I have no faith in their abilities,” said Councilman Nick Leonardo at a Public Works Committee Meeting on March 28. “In about five years the landfill in Rutherford County is going be full and we are going to be here to address an issue and…