Hidden Video courses on Math Science, Econ

Link (Scoll down to list)

Over the last few years, a large number of open courseware directories and video lecture aggregators have popped up on the web. These sites often include introductory courses and research seminars, but it can be difficult to find full courses covering advanced topics. For budgetary and copyright reasons, most upper level and smaller attendance courses are not recorded, or are only offered online for a fee. Many schools provide access-restricted videos of advanced courses to current students, but do not make them available to the wider community. To help remedy this, I have pulled together a big list of advanced courses with publicly available video lectures in math, physics, finance, and computer science that seem to have slipped through the cracks and included them in this post (scroll down to skip to the links).

Tracking Terrorists: Amateurs better than Pros?

Spiegel seems to think so. Two of the best: SITE and IntelCenter.

Link HT: BeSpacific

When al-Qaida was founded, Josh Devon was nine years old. Ben Venzke was 15. The year was 1988, and Devon and Venzke were as uninterested in the terrorist network as its leader, Osama bin Laden, was in the two young Americans.

Now, two decades later, things have changed. Venzke and Devon have both become fascinated in terrorism and have turned that interest into careers. And al-Qaida now takes careful note of their work.

Venzke and Devon are two of the most prominent "terror trackers" worldwide. In the United States, and increasingly in other countries, the term refers to a community of people who spend their days analyzing traces that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations leave behind, especially on the Internet. The two Americans are essentially digital trackers in the age of globalized terrorism.

IntelCenter and SITE Intelgroup are the companies that Venzke and Devon, respectively, have founded. They enjoy a strong reputation within the relatively small community of terrorism experts. Beyond that, though, they are virtually unknown -- but wrongly so.

Pictorial Blast from the Past: Income tax Protests

Lest we forget: Pictures from the Tennessee State Income Tax Protests. Tennessee is still INCOME TAX FREE.

Couple of Polls: Job satisfaction and off-shore Drilling

65% Happy with their job, 6% not


69% favor drilling offshore, 51% say it would reduce prices

$577 million of taxpayer money to Volkswagen

The "study" created by the State economic development hacks at UT indicates, of course, it will be a greaaaaat deal. We expect no less from Bill Fox and friends. No dissenting opinions were allowed.

What will this "study" not tell us? It will NOT tell us how many MORE tens of thousands of jobs would be created by giving ALL businesses in Tennessee an across the board tax cut of $577 million. The same Tennessee businesses that work everyday without Matt Kisber and Phil Bredesen and Bob Corker swooning over them like they swoon over Volkswagen.

Why do Phil Bredesen and company give this money to Volkswagen (more than twice what other states gave away in previous "recruitments") and NOT to all Tennessee business? Because they wouldn't get the chance to crow like a rooster and strut like a peacock at the ribbon cutting and say how proud they are that THEY created these jobs. Polticians DO NOT create jobs, they create photo-ops. And, they buy political capital and political influence with OUR taxpayer dollars. If you or I did it, it would be called bribery. When the polticians do it, they call it "wonderful." What a crock!!

Link

State and local governments are offering about $577.4 million in assistance and tax breaks for Volkswagen Group of America over the next 30 years to build its $1 billion auto assembly plant in Chattanooga, officials said today.

But a new study released today concludes that the benefits from the VW plant and the supply businesses it will draw to the region easily exceed the record high incentives for Tennessee by generating over $11.8 billion in personal income growth over that period.

Also, the study by the University of Tennessee’s Center for Business and Economic Research estimated new total tax revenue of nearly $1.4 billion.

Comrades, let us now hear from the

"Public Engagement Committee"

This is unfreakin-believable, sounds like George Orwell's 1984!!

Montgomery County (Clarksville) recently voted to put a wheel tax increase on the Nov. 4 ballot. Now, they will use a "public engagement committee" to convince the unwashed masses what is best for them. Wonder if they will allow tax opponents equal time? Yeah, right. Wonder if they will register with the local election commission?

Developing, More on this as we get more info...

Link

The county's Public Engagement Committee is preparing a "campaign" to educate the public on an upcoming wheel tax referendum, but insists it is not developing a sales pitch to support the measure.

"Selling has the connotation that you're holding back things," said District 2 Commissioner Keith Politi.

"We're not holding back anything. We want the public to be informed about the facts and figures surrounding the wheel tax," he said.

[...]

Politi, County Clerk Kellie Jackson, Grant, District 17 Commissioner Ginger Miles and District 19 Commissioner Charles Keene all discussed what they thought was the best practice to educate the public.

Many ideas were tossed around the table, however one thing was clear — they need to get a quick start, they said.

"October is probably when we're going to hit it as hard as we can," Politi said.

Expecting many voters to cast ballots during early voting, they opted to begin by targeting large civic organizations and groups in the community — the Rotary Club and Civitan Club, for instance.

"We are going to try and get out and reach out to ... organizations that have a social network set up," Politi said.

They also plan to send notices home, in some form, to parents of students in the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System.

The possibility of a public forum was also discussed, but Keene said it might not be the best option.

"If it's going to be like the Animal Control forum, I don't think we'll have the turnout," he said.

Huge Printable Sheet Music Collection from MSU

Link

The sheet music collection of almost 22,000 pieces includes popular tunes dating as far back as 1865. Highlights include a rare copy of Scott Joplin’s “Cascades” bearing his photograph, rare first editions of W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues” and “St. Louis Blues,” and scarce Confederate imprints from the Civil War. Special collections are devoted to ragtime, blues, movie tunes, foxtrots, popular music, show tunes, Irving Berlin, war songs and specialty.

In the spirit of Templeton’s gift to the University, the Library has undertaken the digitization of the sheet music contained with the Templeton’s gift. Since a large portion of these works were published prior to 1923, they are considered to be in the public domain. In 2000, the Library launched the Charles H. Templeton Sr. Sheet Music Collection and unveiled the project to the world. Since the project began, over 5,000 pieces of music have been scanned and made available on the Internet for scholars, musicologist and music lovers. The collection has received worldwide recognition for providing access to such a massive collection.

Fivethirtyeight.com-Electoral Projections Done Right

Link HT: Depth Reporting

We have seen big oil and they are us

Professor Perry analyzes who the vile, despicable, greedy people are who own the big oil companies. It turns out that it is ALL of us. For example, in Tennessee, the largest single holding of the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System is Exxon.

Link

NoTax Hikers!! from National Taxpayers Union

From the National Taxpayers Union, sign up TODAY and pledge NOT to vote for tax hikers.

Just released: Citizens against Govt Waste Rankings

for 2007:

First number is ranking for 2007
Second number is lifetime ranking


Illinois Obama (D) 10% 18%
Delaware Biden (D) 0% 22%

Arizona McCain (R) 100% 88%

Tennessee Alexander, L. (R) 57% 72%
Tennessee Corker (R) 66% 66%

7 Blackburn (R) 96% 92%
9 Cohen (D) 2% 2%
5 Cooper (D) 69% 45%
1 Davis, David (R) 93% 93%
4 Davis, L. (D) 7% 33%
2 Duncan (R) 90% 89%
6 Gordon (D) 5% 35%
8 Tanner (D) 20% 37%
3 Wamp (R) 48% 75%

Newspaper charged $10 for FOIA Denial Letter

Now THAT is govt arrogance...charge someone a fee to deny an open records request!

Link

CORUNNA - Shiawassee County Sheriff Jon Wilson may have violated Michigan's Freedom of Information Act when he charged The Argus-Press $10 for a one-page FOIA request denial.

A Freedom of Information Act request can be made by anyone to obtain information from public agencies.

The Argus-Press requested information regarding the Law Enforcement Information Network rights of former Corunna Police Officer Angelo Panos. The sheriff's department keeps record of who has LEIN rights within the county.

In Wilson's Aug. 18, two-paragraph denial, he stated, “...internal labor issues are not subject to FOIA. I have no knowledge concerning the details of Mr. Panos' employment issues.”

Wilson sent a letter to Panos Aug. 18 detailing Panos' employment issues.

“Chief (Kim) Williams called Lt. (Mike) Ash and advised that you were no longer employed with the City of Corunna,” the letter to Panos reads. “At that time, Lt. Ash requested (Central) Dispatch to remove your LEIN rights.”

Wilson also sent The Argus-Press an invoice for $10 for the FOIA denial.

Should the Fed Govt have this much power over

our lives:

Michael Silence links to a blogger whose bank account has just been cleared out by the IRS.

WSJ: Labor once again makes Dem party tow

the line in spite of shrinking members numbers.

Link

A decade ago, leading Democrats were willing, if not eager, to disagree with union priorities. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Bob Kerrey pushed Social Security reform, and John Breaux took on Medicare. Even Al Gore, in his pre-Oracle phase, took on the task of "reinventing government," including the FAA and air-traffic controllers union. Bill Clinton promoted trade expansion, breaking with the AFL-CIO to do so. Still other Democrats pushed charter schools and more education accountability.

Those reform days are over. In Denver, there's no more talk of busting these "public trusts." The only reform idea for education is a tepid call for teacher testing. Free trade is in disrepute, with Barack Obama bowing to union wishes to rewrite Nafta, even unilaterally if Mexico and Canada don't bend. The party platform includes a passing reference to reviving the Doha Round of global trade talks, but nothing about the trade promotion authority that would be needed to pass more trade deals.

More tellingly, rewriting federal law to promote union organizing is now near the top of the Democratic agenda. The main vehicle is "card check" legislation, which would eliminate the requirement for secret ballots in union elections. Unable to organize workers when employees can vote in privacy, unions want to expose those votes to peer pressure, and inevitably to public intimidation. This would arguably be the biggest change to federal labor law since the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. The Democratic House passed card check last year, and Mr. Obama has pledged his support. With a few more Senators, it might pass.

Tax Toilet Paper

Link

Squeezing a little more taxpayer blood out of the

taxpayer turnip in Knoxville. OUCH!! Its not enough that you have lost your business, Knoxville wants you to really feel the pain.

Going out of Business Permit in Knoxville

Home prices increase in 30 of 50 States

Link from Professor Perry

Taxpayer $ used to get MORE Taxpayer $ in MS

Using taxpayer money to hire lobbyists to get more taxpayer money has got to STOP in Ms AND Tennessee. It is a perversion of government and nothing less than illegal exploitation of taxpayers.

Link

The report is dated Aug. 12 but was released to the public Monday. It says the hiring of private lobbyists by public agencies or colleges "constitutes a waste of the state's scarce resources."

"The money used for contract lobbyists could be used for ongoing programs and services," the report says.

Some legislators have complained for years about agencies or colleges using public money to hire people to lobby for more public money.

[...]

State agencies and colleges spent nearly $1.3 million in public money to hire private lobbyists from January 2003 to December 2007, according to the report. But the committee also said it "cannot attest to the accuracy of this amount" because state laws about reporting lobbyists' compensation are vague.

The largest example of spending in the PEER report was the Mississippi Department of Transportation, which paid one lobbyist $363,769 over four years, an average of $90,942 a year. The smallest example of spending was the University of Mississippi, which paid one lobbyist $7,500 for one year.

Spreednews.com - speed read the news

Link

Trent Lott gets his head right but far, far too late

Link from Club for Growth

"But you know what, in my heart I knew he was right," he said of his pork barrel ways. That's no way to do business, we shouldn't be doing all that earmarking -- it got completely out of control.

"It got out of control with Republicans and that's why we are being punished a little bit," he added. "Because we forgot how we got there, what we believed in, the principles that after 30 years put us in the majority, gave us the White House, the congress, the senate, the house. And then we ran out of ideas...

Quintles in motion, the poor move up and the rich

move down:

Link from Professor Perry

From the Census Bureau: Of households in the lowest income quintile in 2001, 28.6% were in a higher quintile in 2003; of those originally in the highest income quintile, 32.1% were in a lower quintile 2 years later.

In other words, in just a two-year period, 2 out of every 7 households in the lowest income quintile (bottom 20%) in 2001 moved up to a higher income group by 2003, and almost 1 out of every 3 households in the top income quintile in 2001 moved to a lower income group by 2003, suggesting significant income mobility over even very short periods of time.

Another TN Toll project bites the dust

Link

The state pulled the plug on a proposed Nashville-to-Hendersonville toll road because not enough people said they wanted it.

A lack of public support for the Hadley Bend Connector led the Tennessee Department of Transportation to cross it off the list of possible toll projects to present to the General Assembly in January. What started as eight proposals is down to three.

Death by Taxes if this passes in California

Link

A California activist is trying to gather the 694,354 signatures needed to place a tax initiative on the ballot that would:

• Impose a new 35% income surtax (in addition to federal taxes and the existing 10.3% top state rate) -- 17.5% (on all of the taxpayer's income) when income exceeds $150,000 (single)/$250,000 (joint), and an additional 17.5% (again, on all of the taxpayer's income) when income exceeds $350,000 (single)/$500,000 (joint).
• Impose a one-time 55% wealth tax on assets exceeding $20 million held by a California resident or held in California by nonresident.
• Impose an exit tax of between 36.5% to 54.3% on both income and unrealized appreciation in asset values over $5 million when a resident dies or leaves California.

Ted Stevens wins primary, how depressing

One of the biggest pigs at the taxpayer trough wins his primary.

Link

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Even though he's facing federal charges, Ted Stevens remains feisty as ever. The 84-year-old Republican handily won his primary race for Senate and immediately proclaimed the November election a "piece of cake."

That's despite some major hurdles Stevens faces in the next few months.

Stevens has a September trial that will keep him off the campaign trail for weeks, and he's up against his toughest opponent in his 40 years in office: popular Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

Stevens won the race Tuesday with 63 percent of the vote, beating six other opponents, including his closest competitor Dave Cuddy by more than 35 percentage points.

Begich easily won the Democratic primary over two minor challengers with 91 percent of the vote.

Union leaders stress over racism in rank-and-file

Link

DENVER — Racial prejudice is being cited among senior union leaders to explain Sen. Barack Obama’s difficulty in winning over support from white rank-and-file members.

Obama (D-Ill.) is counting on organized labor to help win him key electoral votes in Ohio, Michigan and other battleground states.

Karen Ackerman, political director for the AFL-CIO, acknowledged that Obama’s race is an important factor for some union members.

“This race is very complicated because there is an African-American candidate for president,” said Ackerman. “We feel there is a racial component for some union members, but we’re confident we can overcome that.”

ex-Idol Reuben Studdard "popular" with IRS

Link

American Idol winner Ruben Studdard is facing tax liens from the Internal Revenue Service and the state of Alabama for failing to pay more than $193,000 in back taxes.

The singer, nicknamed the "Velvet Teddy Bear," owes $171,920 to the IRS and $21,731 to the Alabama Department of Revenue. The tax liens could endanger the opening of a nightclub named after him that is set to debut next summer in Birmingham.

Amtrak train runs out of fuel...Wow, nice that Amtrak

doesn't use planes.

Link

LOS ANGELES — An Amtrak train traveling from here to San Diego ran out of fuel on Sunday night, an Amtrak spokeswoman said.

“It’s not uncommon for trains to run out of fuel here,” the spokeswoman, Vernae Graham, said. “It happens from time to time.”

Step AWAY from the Bra

Link

The Constitution bars unreasonable searches and seizures, Kates reminded the TSA supervisor, and scrutinizing a woman's brassiere is surely unreasonable, she said.

The supervisor told her she had the choice of submitting to a pat-down in a private room or not flying. Kates offered a third alternative, to take off her bra and try again, which the TSA accepted.

"They tried to humiliate me and I was not going to be humiliated over this," Kates said. "If I was carrying nail clippers and forgot about them, I wouldn't have gotten so upset. But here I was just wearing my underwear."

So she went to the rest room, then through the security line a second time. Walking through the airport braless can be embarrassing for a large-chested woman, not to mention uncomfortable. The metal detector didn't beep on the second time through, but then officials decided to go through Kates' carry-on luggage, she said.

The whole undertaking took 40 minutes, Kates said, and caused her to miss her flight. JetBlue put her on another one, but she was four hours late getting to Boston.

'People Get Stupider and Stupider Every Election Cycle'

so says Bill Maher on the Keith Olberman show. (with video)

Link

Olbermann asked Maher if the country was at an “all-time low politically” or if it just seemed that way because there is no historical frame of reference for negative campaigning.

“That’s a great question and it certainly is one for historians and I am not a historian,” Maher said. “But in my lifetime, I would have to say that things do seem to be getting worse and they seem to be getting worse because – sorry to say it – people get stupider and stupider every election cycle. I’d love anybody to tell me something that you can’t just tell the American people and have them believe it because you didn’t add ‘LOL’ to it at the end of your e-mail message.”

Maher mentioned Americans’ support for offshore oil drilling – and the idea that increased domestic production would lower gasoline prices – as an example of American stupidity.

“They think offshore drilling is going to lower the price of gas and they think Obama, the black guy from the single mother, somehow is the elitist,” Maher said. “So, you know, I think the American people at the end of the day have to look in the mirror. They get the leaders they deserve and they don’t deserve very good leaders.”

State Pension to invest $900 mil in "private equity"

investments that are much riskier. Certainly hope they know what they are doing because TAXPAYERS will be on the hook if they screw-up. Taxpayers are paying an increasingly larger share of contributions to the pension fund and State employees are paying less each year...PLUS each year normally brings a tweak or two by the General Assembly that makes pensions more generous and thus more expensive to taxpayers.

Milt Capps has the story:

Earlier this year, the Tennessee General Assembly gave TCRS unprecedented authority to invest up to 3 percent of TCRS' $32 billion in assets in what are often labeled alternative investments.

The changes in state law signed by Gov. Phil Bredesen two months ago allow investment in "domestic and international venture capital, corporate buyouts, mezzanine and distressed debt, special situations, and secondary funds. Private equity investment vehicles may include, but are not limited to, limited partnerships, private placements, co-investments, funds-of-funds, and commingled funds."

It may take TCRS "three or four years to get to that [$900M] target," according to Ed Hennessee, the state's assistant treasurer for employee benefits and investments.

"personally and directly watch the urine"

Can't wait until they create a title for this job, a couple of suggestions: whizintendent or pees officer.

Link

Some transportation workers in Boston and across the country may soon have an audience when they give urine samples for workplace drug tests, according to revised federal regulations.

The new US Department of Transportation Guidelines, which take effect in November, will require "directly observed collection" of urine from employees who previously tested positive for drugs or from those whose prior urine samples appear to have been tampered with.

"The observer must personally and directly watch the urine go from the employee's body into the collection container," the new guidelines say.

Observers will also demand that those employees raise their shirt and drop their pants to ensure that the employee is not using a device to sabotage the test, the new guidelines say.

Observers are required to be the same gender as the employees being tested.

"Unfortunately, there is a flourishing industry designed to help people facilitate continuing drug use," said Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the US Department of Transportation. "The only way we can get around that is to do a visual inspection."

Hey Pols, quick!, give them some taxpayer money

Michael Silence points to an article about a new $500 million development in Gatlinburg.

But NOTHING is mentioned about tax breaks or TIFs or PILOTs or job training credits....whats wrong with you politicians up there in Gatlinburg??? Get a head start and promise them all sorts of taxpayer lucre....what are taxpayers good for if not to steal from so you can make your self look good by handing the money over to some greedy corporation.

The article says these are billionaires from the middle east.....so what!! They are no less deserving than Volkswagen or Dell or Bud Adams or Craig Leipold.

Geez!! Get to work pols, there's money in them-thar taxpayers!!

Birthed and raised by the TN Dept of Revenue,

SSTA is a monster that will turn on us all eventually.

Virtually no one in Tennessee understands what the Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement is or why it was created...that's because no rational taxpaying citizen would EVER think of creating the SSTA.

It is purely a creation of the tax collecting bureaucrats in Tennessee and other States and they continue to use taxpayer dollars to feed and nourish this tax Frankenstein.

Link

Several changes to the state’s sales tax law went into effect this year, and more are scheduled for next year, in an effort to recast Tennessee’s law so it is similar to those in other states. The more alike the laws are, the easier it is for multistate retailers to collect taxes, said Scott Peterson, executive director of the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board Inc., based in Nashville.

“The sales tax system we have in the country is becoming unnecessarily difficult to administer,” he said.

Under the law changes, the average Tennessee consumer probably won’t see a huge difference in how much tax he or she pays, he said. But the changes in the law are a first step toward encouraging Congress to pass a law requiring all multistate retailers — whether they’re online, catalog or telephone — to collect sales taxes, he said. If all or most states have the same tax-collection setup, Congress may be more amenable to passing such a law, he said.

Chrono Shredder: Brutally Honest Calendar

Link HT: Productdose

The Chrono-Shredder is a device that reminds us of both date and time. There’s no on or off button. As minutes pass, a continuous roll of time is shredded until you end up with a big pile of paper by the New Year.

Ms Joy still fighting Metro to keep her Property

Kay Brooks has all the details. She will head back to Court on Friday and needs all the support you can give her. This is NOT just Joy Ford's problem, it is every Davidson County property owner's problem. if Metro can take her land and give it to a rich real estate developer they can do it to YOU. Click on pic to see where all of this is taking place. Kay says:

Miss Joy tells me that Institute for Justice attorney Scott Bullock said supporters should be in place by 9:00 a.m. on THIS Friday August 29th. The hearing is in Judge Barbara Haynes Third Circuit courtroom at the Nashville Metro Courthouse, One Public Square. I'm going to do my best to find one of Miss Joy's signature scarves to wear that morning. I don't think I can pull off the hat as well as she does.

How to get into any club

Momma's little demon

Link

Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding

That is the sound of alarm bells going off here at Tn Tax Revolt Central. A "regional" tax source???? Based on our experience with the Music City Star Commuter train, we could tax the entire known universe and still not have enough money to throw down the black hole.

Link

The Metro Transit Authority wants a new, regional tax to fund its operations and future expansion.

In the coming months, MTA director Paul Ballard says he wants to assemble a group representing Davidson and the surrounding counties to propose a dedicated funding source for MTA. Ballard says paying for mass transit should be a burden shared by the region, not just Metro.

“I think that the solution we have to come up with is something that all nine counties are willing to buy into. It’s important to remember that transportation issues do not stop at county lines.”

In November, MTA will take over operations of the Regional Transportation Authority, whose board is made up of mayors from Nashville and the eight surrounding counties. Ballard says the move should help in organizing a mass transit system for the region.

Video of "protest" on C-Span Qik page

Doesn't look like MUCH of a "protest" outside of the main gate to the Democratic Convention. I would like to have the fence contract with the City of Denver....and its probably no-bid.

"lively debate" expected on TN Gas Tax next Year

Tom Humphrey quotes Commissioner Gerald Nicely as expecting a "lively debate" on increasing the TN gas tax next year.

The "lively debate" will, I hope, include taxpayers in addition to road builders. We already know what the road builders will say: the only way to remedy the "problem" is to take great gobs of money from the taxpayers and hand it over to the road builders?

Video: Ophelia Ford Protests high funeral

director fees...which she voted for.

Link

NASHVILLE -- State Sen. Ophelia Ford -- already a YouTube star for her snarling "what you're saying ain't hittin' on nothin' with me" speech last year -- was back at it last week, berating regulators about new state fees on the funeral industry.

Acknowledging that she's a licensed funeral director, Ford complained in a legislative hearing Aug. 13 that fees are going to "eat us up and put us out of business."

She demanded regulators disclose who imposed a new $150 biannual registration fee on preneed funeral sales agents and what it's for.

Turns out that Ford and her legislative colleagues imposed the fee.

Click HERE for the entire video if you want to see more than the small clip below.

Joe Biden's Rating: National Taxpayers Union

Link

Current Year Rating: F (4%)

Previous Year Rankings:

Name:	BIDEN J
Party:	D
State:	Delaware
2007 Grade:	F
2007 Score (in %):	4%
2007 Rank:	94
2006 Grade:	F
2006 Score (in %):	11%
2006 Rank:	90
2005 Grade:	F
2005 Score (in %):	10%
2005 Rank:	76
2004 Grade:	F
2004 Score (in %):	15%
2004 Rank:	74
2003 Grade:	F
2003 Score (in %):	15%
2003 Rank:	94
2002 Grade:	F
2002 Score (in %):	15%
2002 Rank:	82
2001 Grade:	F
2001 Score (in %):	7%
2001 Rank:	80
2000 Grade:	F
2000 Score (in %):	22%
2000 Rank:	61
1999 Grade:	F
1999 Score (in %):	9%
1999 Rank:	73
1998 Grade:	F
1998 Score (in %):	15%
1998 Rank:	73
1997 Grade:	D
1997 Score (in %):	34%
1997 Rank:	65
1996 Grade:	C-
1996 Score (in %):	48%
1996 Rank:	55
1995 Grade:	D
1995 Score (in %):	30%
1995 Rank:	65
1994 Grade:	F
1994 Score (in %):	7%
1994 Rank:	100
1993 Grade:	F
1993 Score (in %):	17%
1993 Rank:	86
1992 Grade:	F
1992 Score (in %):	29%
1992 Rank:	74

A welcome mat for political corruption in Nashville

Michael Cass reports that more Nashvbille Metro Councilmen want to give out special favors known as TIF's. TIFs are agreements between local governments and real estate developers that allow the real estate developers to pay off their debt with money they would have used to pay property taxes. Its that simple, the developers are granted a tax reduction and then use that savings to pay off their mortgage...it is legalized bribery where our elected representatives get to hand out OUR tax money to favored businesses.

For anyone who has watched the internal workings of a legislative body, it doesn't take long to understand that this is a HUGE mistake. More political contributions will flow to those council members who have the power to give out these favors.

If the Metro Council thinks this is a good idea then lets start handing out these favors to Homeowners in return for remodeling or building a new home in Davidson County. Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. Homeowners deserve such a tax break as much as rich deveopers...what say you Metro Council?

DoHop.com - Nice Airline reservations site

Here is the Link Nashville to Phoenix for example.

Great C-Span Hub for Convention with Qik/Twitter

This video explains all the bells and whistles of the C-Span coverage. HERE is the link to the Dem Convention.

A Payroll Tax is ILLEGAL!!

Another payroll tax proposal is rearing its ugly head in Shelby County. Versions of this income tax have been proposed many times over the last 10 years in Shelby County. It was illegal then and it is illegal now. NOT legal....don't know how else to say it:

negatori on the legalori,
ixne on the payroll taxe,
etc etc

Link

Fed workers simply aren't showing up for work

And why are there no consequences? Look at the comments beneath the article.

Link (with video)

Senator Coburn got out his calculator and says in his new report that federal workers missed nearly 20 million hours of work in the past 6 years. That's not sick leave, not vacation, they're AWOL, absent without leave.

"My question is, if people aren't showing up for work, why are they still employed by the federal government?" Coburn said.

How do they get away with it? Coburn blames layers of bureaucracy, inefficiencies, which have allowed the numbers to grow. Even workers see it.

"It is true that there's, I think, a certain lack of accountability in certain offices," federal worker Sarah Kennel said.

"So what do all those lost hours really mean? Well, you can think of it as 10,000 work years not worked, or an entire 30 year federal career for 316 workers, that never happened.

Is Jim Forkum pledging to break the law?

Metro Councilman Jim Forkum is the new chairman of the Metro Council Budget and Finance Committee. He will be one of a handful of people who will determine how much of the Metro Nashville taxpayer's money is spent each year.

Is Jim Forkum planning to defy the wishes of 77% of those who voted for the Charter Amendment which requires voter approval of property tax rate increases?

Is Jim Forkum actively planning a budget which will create a spending crisis?

Is Jim Forkum pledging to break the law by defying the provisions of the Metro Charter?

If Jim Forkum plans to hike property taxes of Metro Taxpayers without their permission he needs to let us know now.

Link

Ultimately the decision to raise the property tax would be prompted by a recommendation from Mayor Karl Dean before the budget and finance committee and Metro Council considered the move.

“By charter, the only people that actually can pass taxes would be Metro Council,” Forkum said. “I guess [the charter amendment] would be court-challenged is what I’m saying.

“I feel like the Council members who represent the people of Davidson County …attend the meetings, they go through the process with department heads and have a lot more information as to whether a tax increase would be needed or not.”

Besides a potential property tax increase, the other issue facing the budget and finance committee in the coming year will be the proposed $600-plus million convention center.

Russians order inflatable Military, they are so crafty

Link

Cuffed and arrested for a library fine...but she sure

looks like she is dealing with it well in this booking photo from the Smoking Gun.

Link

Dalibor was apprehended at her family's home, cuffed and stuffed in a cruiser, and booked for violating the "overdue library materials" ordinance. She also had to pose for the below mug shot at the Grafton Police Department. Dalibor subsequently settled with the library by paying her overdue fines and reimbursing it for the cost of the two novels, which totaled around $180. Dalibor's mother Patty told TSG that her daughter was "a good kid" who works two jobs. She is also now the owner of the Fitch and Brown books, which Dalibor got to keep as a result of paying off her library levies.

Do you live in Wilson County and have you

received a flyer from Wilson County Schools promoting a property tax hike. I have received reports that public school children are bringing home pro-tax propaganda...a definite NO NO. Please email me at tennesseetaxrevolt@yahoo.com or call 847-8050 if you have information, thanks.

Steny Hoyer wants fed employees on 4 day week

Shoot, lets just go for the whole enchilada....what about all federal employees work one day a month. We would all have more freedom and much less hassle in our lives. I think ole Steny is on to something.

Link

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., wants to have most federal employees working four-day weeks by the end of September

Hoyer sent a letter to the Office of Personnel Management on Aug. 4 asking for a transition plan to a four-day workweek. In the letter, released Aug. 19, Hoyer said some state and local governments have saved energy and fuel costs and reduced traffic congestion by adopting similar schedules.

“Adopting a compressed workweek would take approximately 20 percent of federal employees off the roads on any given weekday, generating significant cost savings for the American taxpayer without a drop in productivity or decrease in service,” Hoyer said.

Employees would still work 40 hours a week, Hoyer said, and the days off would be staggered throughout the week. Not all jobs would be eligible for the four-day schedule.

A precedent for THP Snooper? Lets hope not.

No jail time for IRS employee who snooped on celebrity tax records.

Link

Snyder was also ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. Under federal sentencing guidelines he could have been sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine.

As a tax examiner, he had access to a database containing information on every taxpayer in the United States, but Snyder worked almost exclusively on business accounts.

Snyder didn't have a legitimate reason to look up the individual accounts of at least 202 taxpayers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Aladar Hamdani said during a hearing last month.

CA DEM Assemblywoman gets booted for her vote

HT: Andy Roth

Hugo Chavez and his thugs continue the takeover

of Venezuela. Oil revenues are the only thing preventing a complete meltdown of the economy. Chavez is not a "socialist," that would be an entirely naive characterization. Chavez is a mob boss.

Link

"From this moment a decree of expropriation is in effect and the job stability of workers is guaranteed by the Venezuelan state," Ramirez announced.

"The interest of Venezuelans is placed above business interests."

Cemex made no comment on the move beyond acknowledging to the Mexican Stock Exchange that, "According to a press release issued by Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), PDVSA will proceed to take operational control of the plants of CEMEX Venezuela."

But Mexico's ambassador in Caracas, Jesus Mario Chacon, encouraged the two sides to keep negotiating, saying Cemex was "quite ready to make its operations transparent to talk about the nationalization."

How insecure is Dept of Homeland Security?

Pretty Damned:

Link

WASHINGTON - A hacker broke into a Homeland Security Department telephone system over the weekend and racked up about $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia.

The hacker made more than 400 calls on a Federal Emergency Management Agency voicemail system in Emmitsburg, Md., on Saturday and Sunday, according to FEMA spokesman Tom Olshanski.

FEMA is part of Homeland Security, which in 2003 put out a warning about this very vulnerability.

Henri Brooks doesn't have absolute power...yet

but when she gets it, she will "yield nothing."

Link HT: Joe Saino

Democratic commissioner Henri Brooks said the numbers are still too close and Democratic unity still wavers depending on the issue.

“We don’t have the power,” she said. “We think we have the power. We don’t have the numbers. If we had higher, we would yield absolutely nothing. When I came on board, I was of that mindset – ‘We have the numbers. We have the power. I will yield absolutely nothing.’ … What happened?”

The "F" word is a far better description

This is not "misleading," it is FRAUD!!!

Link

Medicare's top officials said in 2006 that they had reduced the number of fraudulent and improper claims paid by the agency, keeping billions of dollars out of the hands of people trying to game the system.

But according to a confidential draft of a federal inspector general's report, those claims of success, which earned Medicare wide praise from lawmakers, were misleading.

In calculating the agency's rate of improper payments, Medicare officials told outside auditors to ignore government policies that would have accurately measured fraud, according to the report. For example, auditors were instructed not to compare invoices submitted by salespeople against doctors' records, as required by law, to make sure that medical equipment went to actual patients.

As a result, Medicare did not detect that more than one-third of spending for wheelchairs, oxygen supplies, and other medical equipment in its 2006 fiscal year was improper, according to the report. Based on data in other Medicare reports, that would be about $2.8 billion in improper spending.

That same year, Medicare officials told Congress that they had succeeded in driving down the cost of fraud in medical equipment to $700 million.

Some lawmakers and congressional staff members say the irregularities that the inspector general found were tantamount to corruption and raise broader questions about the credibility of other Medicare figures. (Ya think!!!)

Definitely NOT Green packaging-enviro disgrace

Funny stuff

PAC bucks: Dems receive $436k, Repubs $55k

Link

More political action committees are giving to the Democratic convention scheduled for next week than the Republican one, to be held in September, according to the recently disclosed lobbyists contribution data available online with the Senate Office of Pubic Records. At least six company PACs have given more than $436,000 to the Democratic National Convention Committee so far, whereas, the Republican National Convention has attracted only $55,000 from company PACs.

New insect species found...on eBay

Link

Dr Richard Harrington thought he was buying just an interesting curio when he paid £20 for the fossilised insect encased in amber.

But it turned out to be a long extinct type of aphid which became trapped in the resin as it seeped from a tree millions of years ago.

It has now been named after Dr Harrington, vice-president of the UK's Royal Entomological Society, who specialises in aphids.

He bought the fossil on the internet auction site from a man in Lithuania.

Top sellers of College Licensed Mdse - UT is 10th

Link

The Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC), a division of IMG Worldwide, is pleased to announce its annual list of top-selling institutions and manufacturers. These rankings represent royalties reported July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008 on all collegiate merchandise sold.

(1.)The University of Texas at Austin
(2.) The University of Michigan
(3.) The University of Florida
(4.) Louisiana State University
(5.) University of Notre Dame
(6.) University of North Carolina
(7.) University of Georgia
(8.) The University of Alabama
(9.) The Pennsylvania State University
(10.) University of Tennessee at Knoxville
(11.) University of Oklahoma
(12.) Auburn University
(13.) University of Wisconsin
(14.) University of Kansas
(15.) University of Kentucky
(16.) Florida State University
(17.) University of Nebraska
(18.) University of Illinois
(19.) University of Arkansas Fayetteville
(20.) University of South Carolina

New IRS Guide for Churches/Religious Organizations

Do ya think the founding fathers ever envisioned a government publication that started with the following paragraph:

Link

This publication explains the benefits and the responsibilities under the federal tax system for churches and religious organizations. The term church is found, but not specifically defined, in the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). The term is not used by all faiths; however, in an attempt to make this publication easy to read, we use it in its generic sense as a place of worship including, for example, mosques and synagogues. With the exception of the special rules for church audits, the use of the term church throughout this publication also includes conventions and associations of churches as well as integrated auxiliaries of a church.

Famous last words by Metro Transit Authority

Nashville's MTA agency, which operates Nashville public buses, is taking over the operation of the ridership and management challenged Music City Star commuter train. And to help them close the $1.7 operating deficit for the train.

MTA is estimating they can save RTA $300,000 by "combining operations." My prediction: next year's deficit will make $1.7 million look like childs play.

Here is the report by WPLN.

"MTA expects it could save 300-thousand dollars just by combining operations."

When amateurs outperform "experts"

Another great article by Thomas Sowell which can be generalized to most licensing laws. They have almost nothing to do with competency and everything to do with restricting entry into an occupation. If you have enough money to put into lobbying and campaign contributions you TOO can have your area of expertise declared to be licensed so others can't compete with you. We have even allowed this trend to threaten the right of parents to decide how their children will be educated.

Link HT: Mark Perry

If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited.

Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master's degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student-- which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12.

Nevertheless, we continue to take seriously the pretensions of educators who fail to educate, but who put on airs of having "professional" expertise beyond the understanding of mere parents.

Study: Pre-K = Taxpayer provided Daycare

Will this stop Phil Bredesen and the TN General Assembly from spending MORE, MUCH MORE of our taxpayer dollars on Pre-K? No, only the citizens can rise up and demand a STOP to this abuse of taxpayers.

Link

But the study conducted by the Columbus, Ohio-based Strategic Research Group found that by the second grade, there was no statistically significant difference between those who went to pre-K and those who did not.

Auto Emissions Testing is a COMPLETE Waste

of time and money and actually INCREASES overall emissions. At the very LEAST we should only test cars more than 5 years old and even that is a halfway measure.

Michael Cass talks HERE and HERE about problems with the current Metro Emissions testing Contract. Emissions testing is still too politically correct for any of our elected representatives to actually fight on our behalf to end this COMPLETE WASTE of time. Maybe someday they will have the testicles to do it...until then citizen activism is the only answer.

80 percent of NY voters say cut spending

Link

ALBANY - New Yorkers to state lawmakers: Cut spending and don't dare raise taxes!

That's the clear message being delivered by a massive majority of voters as the Legislature convenes today for a special session called by Gov. Paterson to deal with a ballooning state deficit, a new poll yesterday showed.

The Siena College survey found 80 percent of voters - including 77 percent of New York City voters and 71 percent of all Democrats - believe lawmakers should cut spending rather than raise taxes, as advocated by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan.)

The poll found just 10 percent of voters favoring a tax hike, although they weren't asked specifically if they wanted the "millionaire's tax" on incomes over $1 million a year favored by Silver.

Support for spending cuts over tax hikes was strong in all regions of the state as well as among all racial groups.

Meanwhile, the poll found that Paterson would lose to Mayor Bloomberg in a race for governor, 44-36 percent, with the rest undecided, while Paterson would defeat former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 48-38.

Even more Senator Stevens prosecution info

Link

New information has surfaced that alleges Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) turned a $5,000 investment into $129,250 profit with the help of a secret no-interest loan that the Senator had not previously disclosed.

Federal prosecutors filed a new motion late yesterday that alleges that between 2001 and 2003, Sen. Stevens had been “intimately involved in a Florida real estate transaction” with an unknown individual who the prosecutors describe as a “personal friend.” After an initial investment of a mere $5,000, the prosecutors allege that “Stevens’ friend sold his real estate interest only six months later, with an eventual gross profit to Stevens of more than $100,000." Stevens' own 2003 disclosure reports put the exact profit from the transaction at $129,250.

The ten oddest former Olympic events

Link

1 Tug of war
2 Motor boating
3 Cricket
4 Club swinging
5 Solo synchronised swimming
6 Tumbling
7 Rope climb
8 Live pigeon shooting
9 Pistol duelling
10 Long jump for horses

Davidson Inde Hotel Owners were treated like dirt

yesterday. The Metro Council passed the latest hotel room tax despite 115 of 156 hotel owners signing a petition adamantly opposing the tax hike. Approx 80 owners appeared at the meeting and three were allowed to speak. The speakers pointed out a clear conflict of interest among those supporting the tax hike. None of this mattered, the Metro Council and the Mayor were hell bent on passing this tax. Kudos to Councilman Phil Claiborne for being the only council member willing to stand up and actively fight this tax hike.

City Paper Article

WPLN Report

TN Open Records Advisory Committee videos

These are the committee hearings that are a follow up to the new TN open records law where they will determine fees...very important. If the fees are too high then access is a moot point.

Remember that you can always slide the progress button around to any point in the video. For example, you can bypass the inevitable dead time that almost always occurs at the beginning of committee meetings.

Here is Part A

Here is Part B

Minnie from Google explains TV Whitespace

and why its so important to hold the FCC accountable for how they allocate this unlicensed space. Google is proposing that it be used a WiFi2.0 or a much more robust wireless network. More info from TechCrunch.

The TTR Screw shows up in Spring Hill

Gary Wilson uses the TnTaxRevolt screw in Spring Hill TN Friday to good effect in dramatizing what is going on in Spring Hill.

First, Spring Hill BOMA passed a 60 cent property tax hike in clear violation of the spirit of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights passed several years ago.

Then, to add insult to injury, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen passed a $2.5 million General Obligation Bond issue...this was too much. Citizens gathered signatures on a petition to force a vote on the bond issue, which they are entitled to do under TN law.

What happens? The BOMA now are going to change the structure of the debt so taxpayers won't be able to VOTE!!! Taxpayers of Spring Hill are definitely screwed unless the BOMA changes their mind at tonight's meeting.

Congrats to Charlie Schoenbrodt and all the fiolks that helped him in Spring Hill.

Politifact.com: Verifying TRUTH in Pres Campaign

Politifact.com Truth-o-meter, is a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to help you find the truth in the presidential campaign. Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times and CQ will analyze the candidates’ speeches, TV ads and interviews and determine whether the claims are accurate.

Important Ballot Initiative in South Dakota

These are common sense measures...who could possibly oppose them? Plenty of people on the government contract gravy train.

Link

That feeling is why Breard is championing a ballot initiative this fall that he claimed will restore openness, transparency and public trust in government. Initiated Measure 10 would, if passed, restrict political donations by people with some state contracts, ban government-funded lobbying, and require the government to create a Web site listing all state contracts.

DOUBLE DUH!! articles in Tennessean on Education

1-Math scores are improving in Metro Schools because previously "instruction didn't take into account where the students were at any given time", DUH!!! and

2- TSU is having enrollment problems because of an "abysmal reputation for basic services." DOUBLE DUH!!!

Maybe we should issue Prozac to taxpayers?

Math scores at Metro schools jump

"Before, instruction didn't take into account where the students were at any given time. … We just didn't have a systematic way of being student centered, of addressing students more individually."

Math teachers underwent professional training to learn the new approach, which incorporated frequent testing to track student progress. Teachers also relied on classroom discussions and presentations to see if their students grasped the material.

Troubles test Tennessee State University

The causes, in part, are the "long lines, unanswered phones and byzantine processes" in the school's student services, according to the Pappas report.

It's a problem some students notice.

"You have to keep a copy of everything, because people are going to try to do as little as possible," senior Melanie Cruz said. "Records, admissions, financial aid — it's like pulling teeth if you want to get something done over there."

Base Jumping in Church, yes, inside

http://view.break.com/551963 - Watch more free videos

"best hope is bankruptcy" for B'ham Ala

Bronner is blaming the problem on investments banks who "persuaded the county to borrow the money", yeah right.....the FBI is investigating and will probably have more to say on who persuaded whom and how much money was used in said persuasion.

Link

Bankruptcy is Jefferson County's best remedy to the sewer debt crisis and the best hope for sewer-rate relief, Alabama pension boss David Bronner told an audience of elected officials Friday.

"You need to make sure the culprits meet their maker in bankruptcy," Bronner said, referring to the investment banks that persuaded the county to borrow $3.2 billion for sewer repairs and expansions. "It's time to stop the money train."

Bronner, chief executive of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, spoke to about 35 Jefferson County commissioners, mayors and state legislators Friday morning at the regular monthly meeting hosted by Alabama Sen. Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills. About 35 other people showed up to hear Bronner's speech at Vulcan Park in Birmingham.

Art of the Poster: 1880-1918

Beautiful, high res reproductions, all copyright free.

Link

Bettors saying Bayh, Biden & Romney, Pwalenty

From Professor Perry:

Current Intrade.com odds for GOP VP (based on last trade):

Romney: 25.2%

Pwalenty: 25%

Ridge: 10%

Palin: 10%


Current Intrade.com odds for Dem VP:

Bayh: 27.8

Biden: 25%

Clarke: 17%

Kaine: 13.9%

Ideology of Cable audiences

Link

From Pew's latest survey:

Fox viewers identify themselves as: 39% Republican, 33% Democratic, 22% independent

CNN: 18% Republican, 51% Democratic, 23% independent (more Democratic than in 2006)

MSNBC: 18% Republican, 45% Democratic, 27% independent (slightly less Democratic than in 2006...really... I know...even with Keith...)

Other fun nuggets:

** The Daily Show claims the largest percentage of indpenedents in the survey -- 45%.

** Only 34% of the sample said they read a newspaper the day before the survey, down from 40% in 2006. 37% of the public gets their news online. A lot more Americans get their news from a variety of sources. Local TV news appears to be the biggest. Younger folks use social networking sites for news.

** Rush Limbaugh's audience is 72% male; the audience for religious radio is 69% female. Sunday morning talk shows are split 50-50.

** Search engines are used for news; Yahoo is the top news site.

** Go us: readership rates for major national magazines have held steady: "Readership rates for news magazines, national news publications and magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Harper's Magazine have remained relatively steady in recent years, as newspaper readership has dipped.:"

Opposition to Travel tax HIKE grows...even more...will

the Metro Council listen? Let us hope. Nashville now has the third highest travel taxes in the entire country. Its time for the Metro Council to STOP this tax hike.

Link

Welcome to Music City. Now, pay up.

Even though the National Business Travel Association says Nashville has the second-highest tax rate for travelers in the nation, the city is poised to tax its tourists once more.

Visitors to Nashville's downtown area pay nearly $40 a day in taxes for lodging, car rentals, food and other general sales taxes. The cost is second only to Chicago's.

The Metro Council next week will consider a proposal to raise the hotel/motel tax by 50 cents, just a year after a $2-per-room tax was added on lodging. The overall effective tax rate on a room in Nashville is now 17.18 percent, the association says.

Pictures from Georgia from Russian Soldier

Here is the link via Google Russian-English Translation...apparently from a Russian soldier.

WARNING: some of the pictures are very graphic.

Opposition Growing to Nashville Hotel Tax Hike

Independent hotel operators are rallying to oppose the 50 cent per room hotel tax for Nashville. Even some of the large downtown hotels are beginning to realize that customers actually have a choice and can choose to stay in other counties or other states that are more traveler friendly. The committee hearing is Monday at 3:30 and the Metro Council will vote Tuesday night.

More evidence in Senator Stevens Case

Link

Federal prosecutors offered a glimpse of previously unseen evidence against U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens in new court filings Thursday, including allegations that Stevens used insider help to turn a secret $5,000 investment in a Florida condo development into more than $100,000 in quick profits.

The government also dismissed assertions by Stevens that his conduct was shielded by the constitution as a member of Congress, citing nine examples of Stevens' "errands" and requests involving Veco that had nothing to do with protected lawmaking.

Among them: an intercepted telephone call in which Stevens discusses how his son Ben, then the state Senate President, planned to push a bill favored by the oil industry as a prelude to gas development.

The new filings go substantially further than the indictment handed up against Stevens last month charging him with seven counts of failing to disclose gifts from 1999 through 2006. Most of the alleged gifts were from the former Alaska-based oil field service company Veco and its politically active chairman, Bill Allen. Allen and Veco vice president Rick Smith have pleaded guilty to bribing elected officials and are working with government prosecutors and are expected to testify at Stevens' trial, tentatively scheduled to start with jury selection Sept. 22.

Rep Laura Richardson's house a "public nuisance"

Link

First Rep. Laura Richardson was having problems making house payments, defaulting six times over eight years.

Then after a bank foreclosed on her Sacramento house and sold it at auction in May, the Long Beach Democrat made such a stink that Washington Mutual, in an unusual move, grabbed it back and returned it to her.

This week, in the latest chapter in the housing saga, the Code Enforcement Department in Sacramento declared her home a "public nuisance."

The city has threatened to fine her as much as $5,000 a month if she doesn't fix it up.

Neighbors in the upper-middle-class neighborhood complain that the sprinklers are never turned on and the grass and plants are dead or dying. The gate is broken, and windows are covered with brown paper.

"I would call it an eyesore," said Peter Thomsen, a retired bank executive who lives nearby.

The city action was prompted by police action.

[...]

In a letter to supporters after her money problems received widespread publicity in June, Richardson said she was current on her house payments.

"Many elected officials are married, rely on two incomes or are independently wealthy," she wrote.

"I do not fit any of these descriptions," she added. "I made the decision to borrow money against my home to help finance my campaign. The election was too important to me, to our community and to our country to roll over."

Karl Dean's poignant cry for help

This is WAAAAAAY beyond bizarre.

Taxpayers will send $600 million this year to Metro schools. (The same Metro Schools that Karl Dean and Phil Bredesen decided NOT to use for their own children.)

The Status quo of edu-bureaucrats and stakeholders is so intractably opposed to every attempt at anything that smells like reform they refuse to carve out 15/100 of 1% of the budget to implement this program.

Kudos to the Mayor for this attempt at reform but the old phrase, "pis*ing in the ocean" comes to mind.

Link

Mayor Karl Dean plans to raise $1 million from private sources to pay for an organization that recruits teachers from professional backgrounds to Metro Nashville Public Schools.

The organization, the New Teacher Project, is similar to Teach for America, in that it recruits individuals to pursue alternative teacher certification paths. The organization was founded by Michelle Rhee, the newly appointed non-traditional chancellor of Washington, D.C. public schools, and operates programs including the Memphis Teaching Fellows.

“They’ll raise the bar for the whole district,” Dean told The City Paper this week. “It allows the district to be more selective in its hiring decisions.”

The New Teacher Project would work with MNPS’s own human resources office to recruit teachers and determine district needs. High-risk schools and high-need teaching areas would be targeted — those include, particularly, middle and high school teachers, in areas including math, science and special education.

DC Teachers union fights losing battle for relevance

The new Washington DC Education Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s teacher contract proposal is spectacularly bold and innovative...why? Because it would pay good teachers MORE, Lots MORE. What a concept. The DC teacher's union MUST defeat this proposal...why? Because teacher's unions must convince teachers that the only way they can get more pay is through union negotiation. If teachers can make more money by working better and harder then they don't need the union, its just that simple.

Tennessean Op/Ed on Sales Tax Holiday

Thanks to the Tennessean for letting me have a say yesterday on the Sales Tax Holiday:

Link

The important work of Tennessee takes place outside of Legislative Plaza by the citizens of Tennessee. The politicians would like us to think they are important by handing out a few tax holidays or lobbyist-inspired business tax breaks.

Sorry 'bout that, politicians, we are onto you. Stop playing games with OUR money. Thanks for all the entertainment you provide, but do us a favor: Balance the budget, try to stay out of our way, and then come home and join us in the REAL work of Tennessee.

The sales-tax holiday created by the Tennessee General Assembly is a great example of good old-fashioned political pandering. The politicians act as if it's their money to give away and tell us how wonderful they are for their generosity. The end result is very little savings for taxpayers and a tax break that is quickly withdrawn when the budget bureaucrats want more taxpayer money.

AP: New Ohio Voting law a boon to Obama

Link

The move will benefit Obama, who enjoys a 2-to-1 lead over McCain among 18- to 34-year-olds, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last month. If Obama's campaign were able to tap into college campuses with one-stop voting, it would add thousands of votes to his tally in a state where, in 2004, John Kerry lost to President Bush by only about 118,000 votes, putting Bush over the top in the electoral count.

Public School Report Cards: C-

Nationally: C-

1. Students are often given the grades A, B, C, D, and Fail to denote the quality of their work. Suppose the public schools themselves were graded in the same way. What grade would you give the public schools in the nation as a whole?

			Racial / Ethnic Identity
	National		White		African American		Hispanic		Public School Teachers
A	2	%	1	%	4	%	2	%	2	%
B	18		18		16		21		32
C	54		57		48		46		51
D	20		18		22		25		13
Fail	6		5		9		7		1

Texas:

Would you say that the quality of K-12 public school education in Texas is:
4% Excellent
42% Good
38% Not very good
11% Terrible
5% Don’t know/Refused/NA

Michael Phelps asked to Stop taking Ritalin

The Greatest swimmer in the history of the sport was hyperactive...imagine that!!

Link

When he was in fifth grade, during his annual check-up, Ms. Phelps and the family physician, Dr. Charles Wax, discussed whether Michael might have A.D.H.D. — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. By then, the Phelpses were a swimming family. (Michael’s older sister Whitney at 15 was ranked first in the country in the 200-meter butterfly, though her career would be cut short by a back injury.) Dr. Wax’s children also swam, and he’d noticed Michael at the Phelps sisters’ swim meets. “Michael used to run around like a little crazy person mooching food off people,” said Ms. Phelps.


The doctor suggested sending assessment forms to his teachers. Their consensus: Can’t sit still, can’t keep quiet, can’t focus.

At age 9, Michael was put on Ritalin, a stimulant used to treat hyperactivity.

His mother thinks it helped a little. “He seemed to be able to focus longer,” she said. “He could get through homework without moving around so much.” She said he was still a middling student. “It might have raised some C’s to B’s,” she said. But if a homework assignment had to be at least four sentences, she said, “he’d just do four sentences.”

After two years, Michael asked to get off the meds. He had to go to the school nurse’s office to take a pill at lunch, she said, and felt stigmatized. “Out of the blue, he said to me: ‘I don’t want to do this anymore, Mom. My buddies don’t do it. I can do this on my own.’ ”

Federal workers pay explodes beyond private workers

Link

Looking at total compensation (wages plus benefits), federal workers earned an average $116,450 in 2007, which is more than double the $57,615 private sector average. The federal compensation advantage increased from 68 percent in 2000 to 102 percent today. Federal workers not only earn much more than private sector workers, their earnings advantage is getting more pronounced every year.

DHS hires spies to spy on the spies

Link

Counterintelligence is an organized effort to block an enemy's sources of information and access to sensitive material. It can also be used to give misinformation.

In his memo, Chertoff instructs that employees must tell a special security officer about any planned foreign travel. When the employee returns, the employee should report "any real or possible contacts with foreign intelligence services, terrorists or foreign criminal enterprises." This reporting, Chertoff says, will protect department employees who travel abroad.

Chertoff instructs employees to report suspected espionage behavior. Some examples:

* If someone asks an employee for classified and sensitive information or access to systems.
* If someone asks an employee traveling overseas to bring back an envelope or package.
* If an employee has regular contact with a person suspected of being part of a foreign intelligence service, terrorist group or foreign criminal enterprise.

While setting up a separate office dedicated to counterintelligence, the concept is not new to the department. In 2005, it published a brochure, "Espionage: How to recognize and report it," which includes a list of suspicious behaviors.

Lobbyist Contributions for US Congress Database

for the US House of Representatives

for the US Senate

Poor play more and LOSE MORE at Lottery

because they play games where odds are worse. Great investigative report by Buffalo News.

Link

It's not that Johnson and others in this neighborhood have less luck at the lottery than those in wealthier areas.

They lose more because of the types of lottery games that are most popular, and therefore most available in these neighborhoods, according to a Buffalo News analysis, the first of its kind to trace the outcome of lottery tickets sold by individual retailers.

Johnson, for example, picked four numbers to play Win 4 and three numbers for the New York Daily Numbers.

These are the most popular games in this neighborhood.

They're also, statistically, among the games that pay out the least in overall winnings.

"I lost," said Johnson, 34. "I haven't hit a straight in a year."

Sometimes he plays twice a day, betting at least $15, and up to $30, "depending on how I feel."

US House Financial Disclosure Search Site

Link

Most recent disclosure forms for TN House members

Member Name	State/District	Filing Date	Filing Type
Blackburn, Honorable Marsha	TN07	05/15/2008	Original
Cohen, Honorable Steve	TN09	06/11/2008	Amendment
Cohen, Honorable Steve	TN09	07/18/2008	Amendment
Cohen, Honorable Steve	TN09	05/14/2008	Original
Cooper, Honorable Jim	TN05	07/30/2008	Amendment
Cooper, Honorable Jim	TN05	06/11/2008	Original
Davis, Honorable David	TN01	05/15/2008	Original
Davis, Honorable Lincoln	TN04	07/25/2008	Amendment
Davis, Honorable Lincoln	TN04	06/11/2008	Original
Duncan Jr., Honorable John J.	TN02	05/13/2008	Original
Gordon, Honorable Bart	TN06	07/15/2008	Original
Tanner, Honorable John S.	TN08	05/15/2008	Original
Wamp, Honorable Zach	TN03	05/14/2008	Original

Opposition Research Blog

Link HT: Depth Reporting

Ten Tips for Opposition Researchers

1.	Set a time limit. The belief that you can learn everything about a candidate is not realistic. Many inexperienced opposition researchers have a tendency to look for ‘one more thing' to obtain.
2.	Remember you are researching public records and information. You are not on a spy mission. Be discreet but not deceptive.
3	Document everything. You must be able to substantiate all the information in your report either through written documents or corroborated interviews.
4.	Our favorite tip is to find someone who has already done the work for you. If the candidate has been in other elections contact the opponent and inquire about what information they may be willing to share.
5.	Do standard background checks on the candidate first using: public records for current and past financial disclosure statements, real estate, liens, judgements, criminal record, law suits, UCC filings, bankruptcy, military records, vehicle ownership, aircraft and watercraft ownership, businesses owned or operated, professional licenses, and education verification.
6.	Our most important tip is to verify everything twice. If possible corroborate with multiple sources. Each fact must have hard copy documentation.
7.	Follow the Dollar. Money is the life blood of an election. Often the candidate with the most money wins. Identify the top donors. The candidate may be taking money from people or companies at odds with his issue positions.
8.	Nothing is more powerful than a candidate's own words. Research their speeches and interviews as well as anything they may have written. Look for examples of the candidate changing his message. This may signal a relationship between campaign contributions and policy positions.
9.	The Internet has changed forever the way in which we research, but the information is not always accurate. Leads developed from the Internet should be corroborated by public records or other sources.
10.	Provide your report to the client who hired you only. Politely decline to provide information to the media if asked.

Holding cells ready for Denver DNC protesters

Link

CBS4 showed its video to leaders of groups that plan to demonstrate during the convention.

"Very bare bones and very reminiscent of a political prisoner camp or a concentration camp," said Zoe Williams of Code Pink.

Williams was one of those arrested at the Republican Convention in New York in 2004.

"That's how you treat cattle," said Adam Jung of the group Tent State University. "You showed the sign where it said stun gun in use and you just change the word gun for bolt and it's a meat processing plant."

Phil Williams finds prisoners scamming IRS

Link

The IRS has estimated that as much as 15 percent of all tax fraud in the country is committed by prisoners -- prisoners who feel they have little to lose if they get caught ripping off taxpayers.

"Many inmates may actually believe that since they are already incarcerated, nobody is going to fool with prosecuting them and give them more time," said Jerry Lester, director of internal affairs for the Tennessee Department of Correction.

Lester added that his investigators have uncovered several prison tax schemes -- which usually involve helpers on the outside, plus an experienced ring leader on the inside.

"His role in it on the inside is to gain names, social security numbers and dates of birth from inmates who are willing to participate in the scams by providing that information for a cut of the return once it comes in," he said.

$1.7 bil of bogus Earned Income Tax Credit Claims?

Researchers cross checked data in Wisconsin and found it likely that, nationwide, $1.7 billion in Earned income tax credit claims are "non compliant."

Translation: taxpayers are getting ripped off to tune of AT LEAST $1.7 billion in bogus payouts that are supposed to go to low income families. This is the program that sends a refund to taxpayers even though they don't owe any tax...basically using the IRS as a welfare payment mechanism. Looks like the IRS or someone else would have looked at this data the same way that these researchers.

Link from the TaxProf

Microwave for your car

Link

DOJ/IRS Money Laundering Manual

Memory Hole Exclusive:

Link

The Memory hole has obtained and scanned “Investigation and Prosecution of Illegal Money Laundering: A Guide to the Bank Secrecy Act.” Originally written and published in 1983 by the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, this is the apparently identical version published by the IRS for its staff.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE DOCUMENT [PDF | 288 pp | 12 meg]

It was sent to Federal Depository Libraries 25 years ago, but the IRS and Justice have long since stopped voluntarily releasing publications that reveal their tactics and inner workings. This manual doesn’t appear to have been posted online until now.

Find exciting jobs with Start-up companies

Link HT: Marcus Zillman

CoNotes is your online destination to discover and learn about job opportunities in startup companies. They provide you with information about these exciting startups, and also tools to find the best startup company and job for you. CoNotes was founded in 2007 by Andrew Chen. Andrew loved the startup environment…the adrenaline, the passion, and the excitement of creating something new. But while a business school student at Kellogg looking for a job within a startup, he found it tedious and difficult to sort through the maze of links and leads, emails and phone calls, just to find out what startup companies were out there, and which ones were hiring. There had to be a better way. And that is where CoNotes was born.

FINALLY!! Gender equality at last

Link

Voter Turnout by Age

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Cyber-front of the Russian-Georgian War

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The Georgian government is accusing Russia of disabling Georgian Web sites, including the site for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Because of the disruption, the Georgian government began posting the Foreign Ministry’s press dispatches on a public blog-hosting site owned by Google (georgiamfa.blogspot.com) and on the Web site of Poland’s president, Lech Kaczynski.

Separately, there were reports that Estonia, which was embroiled in an electronic battle with Russia in May of last year, was sending technical assistance to the Georgian government.

The attacks were continuing on Monday against Georgian news sites, according to Jose Nazario, a security researcher at Arbor Networks, based in Lexington, Mass.

“I’m watching attacks against apsny.ge and news.ge right now,” he said. The attacks are structured as massive requests for data from Georgian computers and appear to be controlled from a server based at a telecommunications firm, he said.

TVWeb360.com-1,000+ live TV channels

Link

Watch a wide variety of free TV channels online directly from your computer. Over 1000 TV stations from around the world in 15 languages including English, French, Spanish etc.

Farmers making out like bandits

Taxpayers are paying farmers HUGE agricultural subsides. In addition, taxpayers are paying billions for ethanol subsidies. All of which is driving up the value of farmland making farmers even wealthier......looks like they would at least send us a thank you note...BUT NO, like recipients of all government subsidies they will take some of their billions and hire lobbyists to whine and cry for MORE next year.

Link

Tennessee cropland and pasture values rose to record levels in 2007 to $3,600 and $4,100 per acre, respectively, the highest since records began in 1997.

According to the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, all Tennessee farm land and building values rose 7 percent in 2007 to an average of $3,650 per acre, up $250 per acre from 2006.

Tennessee's cropland cash rent this year is $65 per acre, compared with $67 per acre in 2007. Pasture cash rent in the state increased to $22 per acre, up $2 from 2007.

Farm real estate values in the U.S. averaged an 8.8 percent rise in 2007 to a $2,350 per acre high, up $190 more than a year earlier.

Both cropland and pasture values for 2008 are record highs nationally. Cropland values rose by 10 percent to $2,970 per acre, up from the previous high of $2,690 in 2007. Pasture value rose by 6 percent to $1,230 per acre.

Damned Free Trade!!...oh wait!!

Free Trade is GOOD when other people buy OUR stuff....its only BAD when we buy other people's stuff...got that?

YES, it is preposterous to say that.

Free Trade is Free market, whether you buy stuff from other people OR others buy your stuff...across the State or across the ocean.

Selling our stuff to other people across the world is helping our economy immensely. (see graph)

Link

Not too shabby for former agoraphobic

Home of Lucinda Bassett, infomercialist

Link

Denver Post sues to obtain Gov Cell records

Link HT: Leslie Graves

The Denver Post sued Gov. Bill Ritter on Monday following the governor's refusal to turn over 19 months of cellular phone records that contain the numbers for people Ritter has discussed state business with since taking office in 2007.

The newspaper claims that it is entitled to the bills showing calls Ritter made and received related to his work as governor.

Ritter only occasionally uses his state -issued cellphone for calls, many of them personal, and carries a second cellphone not provided by taxpayers from which he regularly conducts state business. The governor's office has refused to allow Post reporters to see the itemized bills for that phone, arguing that it would invade the governor's privacy.

TN hands out raises while buying out employees

Interesting piece of data: "The turnover rate in state jobs is above 10 percent, Goetz said"....the buyouts were for approx 5% of the workforce. If we had simply allowed natural attrition to take place, the State could have easily reduced the State workforce by 5%?? Why did we need to spend $64 million for buyouts when 10% would have quit anyway??

Link

The data show that the state gave more than 3,000 raises for various reasons between Jan. 1 and July 1, including about 740 required under state law.

About 1,300 raises resulted from promotions, and another 350 from salary "adjustments," which include merit pay increases for career service employees and raises for executive service employees, who aren't bound by civil service rules.

Most of the 350 salary adjustments — about 280 of them — were before April 1, after which revenues began to show clear signs of slowing. Only 18 came on May 1 or after, when the bleak revenue picture had sharpened.

The balance included about 500 administrative increases because an employee was deemed to be receiving incorrect pay; about 110 due to job reclassifications; and 20 for employees who received job upgrades.

The total amount of all the raises, including those required under state law, translates into more than $900,000 a month. Spread out over a year, the raises total more than $11 million annually.

By comparison, the state was trying to save $64 million through the buyout program, but the workers who were approved Monday for the buyout will save only $47 million — a gap of $17 million.

The turnover rate in state jobs is above 10 percent, Goetz said, and the state is constantly promoting workers to positions that need to be filled. Moreover, he said, pay increases that appear in May or June were probably sought when the state's economy was rosier.

Babysitting

Link

Stumbleaudio.com-find new music

Link HT: Marcus Zillman

StumbleAudio is a social music discovery site with a mission is to help you find music by new and exciting artists that you would like, rather than play or sell you the hits by known artists that you are “expected” to love. Their catalog has over 2,000,000 tracks by over 120,000 artists ready to be played in full length, high quality, free of charge. StumbleAudio started to build its recommendation engine by importing massive anonymous data of saved favorites, music preferences and buying patterns from several online download and actual music CD stores. As you use StumbleAudio the system learns from your “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” and constantly adjusts the music offered to your liking. They are committed to making their recommendation engine more accurate and relevant as they collect more real use data. They will also soon have various social network applications and widgets to share you music discoveries with your friends on Facebook, MySpace, Blogger and others.

Home Schooling Grows by 80% in Fla in 10 yrs

Link

Beth Gunsalus of Vero Beach is beginning her 13th year of home schooling. The mother of two said there are many different reasons families choose to home school.

She and her husband made the decision at the urging of their son, Neil, who was 7 at the time. They thought it would be a one-year experiment.

"I think it has been one of the wisest choices our family has made," said Gunsalus, who is the district 10 director of the state organization, Florida Parent Educators Association and represents Indian River, St. Lucie, Brevard and Okeechobee counties.

Neil, now 20, graduated from home school in May and also earned an associate's degree from Indian River State College, where he was dual-enrolled.

Gunsalus said her daughter Catherine, 16, should also receive an associate's degree from IRSC by the time she finishes high school.

"Home schooling has created a greater family unity, but it has allowed us to sculpt an education program that's met our children's learning styles and met the desires of their hearts," Gunsalus said.

County Govt Transparency Explosion

This is VERY exciting. Counties actually putting their check registers online...wow, now THAT is progress. What say you Davidson, Shelby, Knox. and Hamilton Counties?

Link

It's the Olympics, and the chase for gold is on!

Staying with the competitive theme, it seems fitting that Collin County, Texas, on Friday, August 8th claimed the lead in county efforts to increase transparency in government spending by launching the Financial Transparency Project on the county auditor's website.

The website allows taxpayers to view listings of checks written by county government going back to the beginning of the current fiscal year, which began in October 2007, in searchable PDF format. It also features information on county financial trends over the last five years and allows interested taxpayers to request more information about individual expenditures.

In launching last Friday, the county edged out Hamilton County, OH, which recently voted to post county expenditures online. Hamilton County's website is expected to launch this month. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County's expenditures are currently posted in a searchable online database put together and hosted by the grassroots organization CRG Network.

While Collin County's website currently does not provide for data export and sort functions, the Financial Transparency Project is an important step in the race towards comprehensive fiscal transparency.

1,000+ UK Cancer patients denied drugs

Link

The Rarer Cancers Forum, which compiled the data, called on ministers to intervene to end a "bizarre and demeaning" postcode lottery, which it said was leaving patients to die.

Their analysis shows that almost all patients in some areas were given the often expensive drugs, while in other areas no patient received them.

The call comes just days after patients groups and doctors reacted angrily to a decision that four kidney cancer drugs were not cost effective enough to be provided on the NHS.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) judged that the drugs, which can prolong the average sufferers life for around five or six months, did not provide enough benefits for their cost of up to £24,000.

Memphis Mayor's friend got SWEET contracts

Link

When it comes to landing City Hall subcontracting jobs, Reginald French has a golden touch -- a $1.4 million touch.

A close friend of Mayor Willie Herenton, French has been paid at least that much, and possibly much more, for a variety of jobs, including a particularly fortuitous deal to install fiber-optic cable at two city police stations.

Newly disclosed records tell how French, a onetime prison guard, landed the $68,000 cabling job in 2006 despite lacking experience or equipment for the work.

Undaunted, French then hired a cable installation firm -- for $30,000 -- to perform the work.

Flush with money from the police cabling work and other city jobs, French's subcontracting firm, Integrate Technologies, spent more than $32,000 that year on bonuses for French, car repairs, lawn care and an unsuccessful campaign for sheriff, records show.

UK COPs entered wrong house but left hello

Link HT: Arbroath

The family came home to find a hole in their back door, police in the yard, and fridge magnets rearranged to spell "OLDHAM TASK FORCE CALLED".

NBA scoring inequality-20% score 80% of points

Link

Bottom Line: Just like income or wealth, points in the NBA are distributed unequally, and it's a natural outcome (Pareto distribution) that 20% of the players get 80% of the points. Does anybody advocate "point redistribution" to achieve a more "fair" outcome of NBA points?

NYC Homeless nums increase with spending

Hmmmm...this sounds a lot like education spending.

As we spend more on education and hire more bureaucrats and teachers, we see more problems which in turn calls for more bureaucrats and more spending.

Apparently it works the same way with homelessness....spend more and you get more homeless.

Link

The report indicates that Mayor Bloomberg five-year plan to reduce homelessness in the city by two-thirds by 2009 may be failing. It says that, while efforts to prevent homelessness have expanded, the goal of reducing the number of families and single adults in emergency shelter has not been met.

"We aren't going far enough, and the overall numbers prove it," a City Council member of Brooklyn who requested that the city's Independent Budget Office conduct the study, Bill de Blasio, said yesterday outside City Hall. He said the city needs to begin an "all-out effort" to meet Mr. Bloomberg's original goal. "No one wants to go to shelters. Everyone wants decent affordable housing for their families," he said.

NY will pay citizen legal fees if sued for Records

Link

People who successfully sue (New York) to get access to public records and attend government meetings no longer will have to pay their own legal fees, under a bill signed this week by Gov. David Paterson.

"This legislation will deter government agencies from violating the Open Meetings Law," said Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government.

Paterson also said he vetoed 33 bills, many of which he said would have required spending the state can't afford.

The freedom of information bill, which takes effect immediately, requires that government agencies that lose such lawsuits pay the legal bills of those who sued.

The legislation encourages people who have been wronged by the public process to take action, since the cost of a lawsuit can be prohibitive, said Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale.

According to a memo accompanying the bill, the costs will have to be reasonable, and reimbursement will not be awarded for a lawsuit that potentially could have been settled without court action.

"When government is required to be more open and accountable, it benefits everyone. It helps restore the people's confidence in the public process," said Paulin, who sponsored the bill along with Sen. Stephen Saland, R-Poughkeepsie.

Walter Williams, one of the few people willing

to openly and freely discuss the immorality and failed results of the welfare state. Thank YOU Walter Williams.

Segment 1 on CNBC

Segment 2 on CNBC

AP Photo: GWB gets into Olympic spirit

Link

50 free internet services to dig up info

Link

TN Legislative Info Service Survey

The folks that run the TN legislative web site are asking for feedback from users. Take their survey HERE.

I asked for more robust bill tracking during the legislative session, i.e., being able to see which bills passed in the last week or month or which bills have passed the House but not the Senate for example.

THANK YOU Senators Tracy, Ketron, Rep Johnson

All local TN governments will be required to post a current version of their charter on the web by Jan. 1, 2009. Kudos to Senators Ketron, Tracy and Rep. Curtis Johnson for sponsoring and passing this bill.

HT: Kingsport TN Government

LA SEIU union paid thousands to Pres's wife

Link

California's largest union local and a related charity have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization's president, documents and interviews show.

The Los Angeles-based union, which represents low-wage caregivers, also spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton's steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show.

Housing bill means IRS will see more credit card info

Link

Congress also gave IRS the ability to sniff out unreported income of businesses. Credit card issuers will have to file 1099s on payments to merchants, starting with payments for 2011. This also applies to payments by debit card issuers and third-party networks, such as PayPal. The delayed effective date gives issuers time to gear up their computers. IRS will then match the 1099s with merchants' tax returns. There is a special reporting threshold for third-party networks: 1099s will be required only for payees who receive at least $20,000 in payments during a calendar year or participate in 200 or more sales transactions annually. There is no minimum threshold for credit card or debit card payments. If a merchant does not supply a valid tax identification number, 28% backup withholding is required from payments starting in 2012.

Thursday Tennessee Tax Referenda

When people tell you that voters will never vote to increase their own taxes....don't believe it. Of the 8 referenda tallied below from Thursday's election 50% were approved.

Sevier County voters defeated quarter cent sales tax increase by slim margin

Jefferson County voters approved a half cent sales tax increase by large margin

Loudon County voters defeated a wheel tax increase by a large margin

City of Elizabethton voters approved a half cent sales tax increase

Henry County voters defeated a sales tax increase

Lincoln County voters defeated a wheel tax increase

City of Pulaski voters approve a sales tax increase

Rhea County voters approved a sales tax increase

Judge: Taxpayers owe Am Indians $455 mil

Prediction: This will be the mother of all political slush funds if anything left after the lawyers get their cut.

Link

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Thursday that American Indian plaintiffs are entitled to $455 million in a long-running trust case, a fraction of the $47 billion they wanted.

But U.S. District Judge James Robertson did not say how the government should award the money, writing that his opinion "leaves for another day the question of how and to whom the award should be distributed."

Robertson's final number is close to government estimates and far from the billions sought by plaintiffs in the 12-year trial. The lawsuit - filed on behalf of a half-million American Indians and their heirs - claims they were swindled out of billions of dollars in oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887.

The judge said he will have to hold another proceeding to decide how the money will be awarded, hinting that he hopes for a settlement between the two parties before then.

"Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the announcement in this memorandum of a hard number will give rise to some off-line conversation between the parties in the meantime," wrote Robertson, who is based in Washington, D.C.

86 wives is just too darn many

Link

Study: Settle that suit, don't go to trial

Link

“It’s entirely possible that the attorneys are not giving adequate advice,” said Mr. Kiser, who is also a lawyer but is not practicing. “An attorney could advise a client that they have a strong defense to enforcement of a contract, but that is not the same thing as forecasting what the likely outcome at trial would be.”

As part of the study, which is the biggest of its kind to date, the authors surveyed trial outcomes over 40 years until 2004. They found that over time, poor decisions to go to trial have actually become more frequent.

“It’s peculiar if any field is not improving its performance over a 40-year period,” Mr. Kiser said. “That’s a troubling finding.”

Video: Lightning in Slow Motion

Get Psyched-certified life coach Dr. Lanny Latham

Parody

Ill Gov to put speed cams on all Interstate Hwys

Link

To make good on his offer to help Chicago combat violence, Gov. Blagojevich envisions putting speed cameras on interstates across Illinois -- and using the revenue to form an "elite tactical team" that would operate in Chicago and other cities.

3 Cal Hospitals used Homeless to fleece Medicare

Link

But as investigators began to unravel the incident, they say they found something far different: a massive scheme to defraud taxpayer-funded healthcare programs of millions of dollars by recruiting homeless patients for unnecessary medical services.

The elaborate enterprise churned thousands of indigents through hospitals over the last four years and billed Medicare and Medi-Cal for costly and unjustified medical procedures, federal, state and local investigators said Wednesday.

Those involved in the alleged conspiracy "ranged from street-level operatives to the chief executive of a hospital," U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien said.

Edu-Bureaucrats micromanaging Edu-Bureaucrats?

Yes, friends, it has come to this: we try to solve the problem of too many edu-bureaucrats by adding another layer of edu-bureaucrats. Public education exists in a bizarro world where a federal edu-bureaucracy tries to micro-manage a state edu-bureaucracy which tries to micro-manage a local edu-bureaucracy which answers to politically charged school board which has an adversarial relationship with both the local teacher's union and the county commission.

And ALL of these groups lobby OUR government to keep this crazy status quo.

Rube Goldberg could never have designed such a perverse system.

Link

A state education official told Nashville school board members to stop trying to “micromanage” the state’s attempt at restructuring the school system.

State Accountability Director Connie Smith met with board members last night – on the eve of today’s election where half the Metro school board seats are up. She wanted to clarify their role in the ongoing process to reverse the district’s failure to meet critical No Child Left Behind benchmarks.

Metro Nashville is currently in corrective action status because students haven’t made adequate progress in reading and math for five years in a row. The status also means the state can step in and so far, officials have reorganized the central office and reassigned principals and assistant principals.

The stimulus rebates were a flop...but that is what we

have come to expect from most Congressional "solutions." And Obama's proposed rebate would achieve the same "results" says economist Martin Feldstein.

Link

The evidence is now in and that optimism was unwarranted. Recent government statistics show that only between 10% and 20% of the rebate dollars were spent. The rebates added nearly $80 billion to the permanent national debt but less than $20 billion to consumer spending. This experience confirms earlier studies showing that one-time tax rebates are not a cost-effective way to increase economic activity.

These conclusions are significant for evaluating the likely impact of Barack Obama's recent proposal to distribute $1,000 rebate checks to low- and middle-income workers at an estimated cost of approximately $65 billion. His plan, to finance those rebates with an extra tax on oil companies, would reduce investment in refining and exploration, keeping oil prices higher than they would otherwise be.

Postal Service loses $1 billion

Link

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Postal Service had a net loss of more than a billion dollars in the third quarter of the fiscal year, the agency said Wednesday.

For the quarter ended June 30, the loss was $1.1 billion, which officials blamed on reduced mail volume in the slowed economy, coupled with rapidly rising transport costs because of high fuel prices.

The post office is working to deal with its losses by cutting costs. The agency has reduced its staff by about 100,000 since 2000 and is offering early retirement to some clerks, mail handlers and supervisors.

While the post office operated in the black the last four years, using the money to pay down debts, it has faced significant losses in the past. For example, it was $1.5 billion in the red in 1991, and was down $1.7 billion in 1993. The post office does not receive a government subsidy for operations.

Its easy to "Compromise" when you hold the gun

Now MDHA wants to play nice with Ms Joy. How sweet. What about this for a compromise: leave Ms Joy the hell alone and treat her respectfully like a sovereign, law abiding citizen with a right to the quiet enjoyment of her own property.

Can OUR government never admit a mistake and apologize to the citizens it serves? Is that no longer possible? Leave this woman alone!!

Link HT: Kay Brooks

"We always prefer to find a way to resolve disputes without court proceedings," says Phil Ryan, MDHA executive director in a prepared statement. "Lionstone had previously attempted to develop a plan to build around the 23 Music Circle property, but those efforts were not successful because the parcel is narrow and very deep. We asked Lionstone to revisit the situation and see if they could develop an alternative that would preserve the building.

"We look forward to sitting down with Mrs. Ford and hope to move forward together with her."

Who started the mortgage crisis? Andrew Cuomo

Great investigative piece in the Village Voice. GOVERNMENT!!, I repeat, GOVERNMENT caused the mortgage crisis by distorting incentives and the result was an avalanche of bad loans.

Wildly naive good intentions, unbridled political ambition, and outright corruption combined to cost taxpayers billions and the underlying problems are STILL NOT fixed.

Link

With that many pols at the helm, it's no wonder that most analysts have portrayed Fannie and Freddie as if they were unregulated renegades, and rarely mentioned HUD in the ongoing finger-pointing exercise that has ranged, appropriately enough, from Wall Street to Alan Greenspan. But the near-collapse of these dual pillars in recent weeks is rooted in the HUD junkyard, where every Cuomo decision discussed here was later ratified by his Bush successors.

And that's not an accident: Perhaps the only domestic issue George Bush and Bill Clinton were in complete agreement about was maximizing home ownership, each trying to lay claim to a record percentage of homeowners, and both describing their efforts as a boon to blacks and Hispanics. HUD, Fannie, and Freddie were their instruments, and, as is now apparent, the more unsavory the means, the greater the growth. But, as Paul Krugman noted in the Times recently, "homeownership isn't for everyone," adding that as many as 10 million of the new buyers are stuck now with negative home equity—meaning that with falling house prices, their mortgages exceed the value of their homes. So many others have gone through foreclosure that there's been a net loss in home ownership since 1998.

Who to trust? An Amish Farmer or State Health Dept?

I will take the Amish Farmer any day of the week.

Link

DHMH acknowledged the 2004 rules were too stringent and unrealistic for farmers who found it difficult to travel to Annapolis for an eight-hour course, and that fees were high.

‘‘We realized original regulations were too strict and we rearranged them. I think we’ve made some concessions too,” said Jody Menikhien of DHMH.

Now, the state health department conducts a one- or two-hour inspection at the farm where the products originate, where it evaluates farm operations and tests wells for safe nitrate and bacteria levels. The fee for licensing was also reduced from $150 to $30.

But farmers gathered at the meeting said there continue to be obstacles, especially for Amish families who’d rather stay away from government bureaucracy. There’s also another problem — when visiting farms and home kitchens, many times inspectors found the Amish’s potable water supply was unsatisfactory for use in canned and pickled products.

An Amish farmer, who wouldn’t give his name, said the farmers are trying to obey the laws but it’s difficult to keep abreast of new developments. There are also the high costs of new wells and licensing, and the reluctance to change centuries-old baking and production practices.

All Hail Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Hear Ye

Boy, I bet co-sponsors will be knocking down his door to sign on to this bill.

The jokes virtually write themselves.

Link HT: Andy at CFG

Title: To provide for the issuance of a commemorative postage stamp on the subject of inflammatory bowel disease.
Sponsor: Rep Pallone, Frank, Jr. [NJ-6] (introduced 7/31/2008) Cosponsors (None)
Latest Major Action: 7/31/2008 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Former IJer becomes TCPRer-Welcome Shaka!

Link

NASHVILLE – The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, the Volunteer State’s free market think tank and government watchdog organization, is pleased to welcome Shaka Mitchell as the group’s Executive Vice President.

Mr. Mitchell is an alumnus of Nashville’s Belmont University and joins TCPR from the Institute for Justice, the nation’s leading libertarian public interest law firm, where he led the Outreach Department. During his time in the Washington, D.C. area, Mitchell worked to expand individual and organizational support for fundamental rights, including parents’ ability to choose the best school for their children and workers’ opportunity to earn an honest living.

“Shaka is known in the free market community for his vigorous defense of individual liberty. We are excited that he is bringing that commitment to protecting and expanding freedom to Tennessee,” said Drew Johnson, President of TCPR. “His thoughtful and principled advocacy of individual rights is a welcome addition to TCPR where, on a daily basis, we fight to prevent government abuse of the public trust and citizens’ rights.”

Mitchell writes extensively on education reform, economic liberty and private property rights. His articles and opinions appear in publications such as the ABA Journal and Palm Beach Post. Prior to joining TCPR in a full-time capacity he served on the think tank’s Board of Scholars. Mitchell received his J.D. from the Wake Forest University School of Law.

Brilliant video on the failure of education by bureaucracy

Great video from British TV series. Absolutely brilliant. "Do we really need 2,000 civil servants to shuffle money from a to b."

Mark Rose Having Blogger Problems

Mark is having technical problems with blogger and is changing to Wordpress.

He wants his readers to know they should go to MarkARose.COM.

Strange Math in Memphis

Memphis City Schools will fund their deficit by giving money to the City. The City will then give the money back to the School System. Problem solved. Got that?

Link

Here's how it will work: under the agreement, MCS will first pay $57 million to the city. The money will go towards the $152 million the city says the district owes it. The district would get the money to pay down its debt to the city from its reserves. The city will then turn around, and give the $57 million back to the district to help it balance its budget.

USPS Issues 14-Striped Flag Stamp

Link

Close examination of the "evening" stamp, located in the lower-right quadrant of the official design featured on the U.S.P.S. website, reveals that the stamp apparently has one too many stripes.

City: 81 yr old Handyman can't offer free repairs

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Jon Tennett loves to tinker in his garage. It's not an uncommon pastime for an 81-year-old man, but what is unusual is the city's response.

Because Tennett fixes his neighbours' lawn mowers and other small machines, the City of Pickering has charged him with operating an illegal business - even though he's never charged a penny for his work.

"They could get a lot of revenue elsewhere than looking at an old 81-year-old man trying to keep his mind busy," he points out.

[...]

Tennett's case is currently before the courts and if he loses, he could be fined up to $25,000.

He's already refusing to pay.

"They ain't getting it," he fumes. "I'll do jail time."

He may not have to, if the public outcry is enough to change the minds at City Hall.

Study: Stop Testing for Prostate Cancer

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The blood test that millions of men undergo each year to check for prostate cancer leads to so much unnecessary anxiety, surgery and complications that doctors should stop testing elderly men, and it remains unclear whether the screening is worthwhile for younger men, a federal task force concluded yesterday.

In the first update of its recommendations for prostate cancer screening in five years, the panel that sets government policy on preventive medicine said that the evidence that the test reduces the cancer's death toll is too uncertain to endorse routine use for men at any age, and that the potential harm clearly outweighs any benefits for men age 75 and older.

Most regrettable headline of the day

"With DNC in mind, city bans carrying urine, feces"

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The ordinance makes it illegal to carry certain items, such as chains, padlocks, carabiners and other locking devices. It also prohibits the possession of noxious substances. Two of the most frequently used examples of a noxious substance are a bucket of urine and a "feces bomb."

Police have to prove that people carrying such items intend to use them to block public access or emergency equipment or to thwart crowd control measures.

Safety Manager Al LaCabe said the law will be applied in situations when certain items are going to be used in a disruptive way. He said officers will consider the totality of the circumstances.

"Our intent for this bill is not about suppressing or chilling First Amendment rights," he said.

Freddie Mac screwed up, taxpayers get the bill

Why Bob Corker or Lamar Alexander or anyone else would EVER recommend a "government" solution to any problem is way beyond me. This NYT article is one of the most depressing pieces I have read about the so-called mortgage crisis or more appropriately the government caused mortgage crisis.

Yes, we know what destruction can be wrought by the toxic combination of turf protecting bureaucrats and power hungry politicians...but to see it so starkly in print is still jolting.

NY Times Article:

But as they sat in a conference room, Mr. Syron refused to consider possibilities for reducing Freddie Mac’s risks, said Mr. Andrukonis, who left in 2005 to become a teacher.

“He said we couldn’t afford to say no to anyone,” Mr. Andrukonis said. Over the next three years, Freddie Mac continued buying riskier loans.

Mr. Syron contends his options were limited.

“If I had better foresight, maybe I could have improved things a little bit,” he said. “But frankly, if I had perfect foresight, I would never have taken this job in the first place.”

[...]

However, the companies were constantly under pressure to buy riskier mortgages. Once, a high-ranking Democrat telephoned executives and screamed at them to purchase more loans from low-income borrowers, according to a Congressional source. Shareholders attacked the executives for missing profitable opportunities by being too cautious.

What about offering TAXPAYERS a buyout?

Some State employees say there is NO WAY they are going to accept a buyout offer. The taxpayers (via the Gov) simply aren't offering enough money.

Got me to thinking. Maybe Governor Bredesen should offer TAXPAYERS a buyout?

If taxpayers believe they are not getting the education services they are paying for then the State can pay them a lump sum of, say, $50,000 and the taxpayer agrees never to use taxpayer funded education. This would be a real bargain for both...a win-win.

Reality Amusement Park: Diggerland

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Well, ain't that sweet, TDOT listens to the citizens!!

TDOT won't proceed with a toll road in Knoxville because of overwhelming opposition from local citizens.

(sarcasm alert) Boy, you sure don't have to hit TDOT between the eyes with the proverbial 2x4 before they "get it." Oh no, they are super sensitive.

Link

The state Department of Transportation has scrapped plans to make the proposed Knoxville Parkway a toll road because of significant local opposition, although other work toward construction of the road will continue.

TDOT Commissioner Gerald Nicely announced plans to halt further study of tolls on the road in a letter to Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam. Haslam also is chairman of the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization.

The state Legislature approved two pilot toll projects for roads and bridges in Tennessee, and the TPO's executive board in February approved a resolution asking TDOT to "undertake the next level of study of the feasibility of this potential toll project."

However, TDOT officials have said all along they would not proceed with the plan to charge a toll on the parkway without the backing of local citizens.

Nashville Celebs on Virtual Globetrotting Blog

Starting with Al Gore's House (or click on pic to the left) and then you can look at houses of 451 nearby Nashville Celebrities.

Even if convicted Ted Stevens will keep 122k pension

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Even if Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) is convicted of all seven counts of financial corruption listed in the indictment against him, he'll still be eligible to collect his taxpayer-funded pension of roughly $122,000 if he steps down in 2009.

Why? Ethics legislation enacted last September deprives a lawmaker of his or her pension only for final conviction of certain offenses committed after the bill's enactment. Most of the charges against Stevens (as listed in his seven-count indictment) are for offenses he allegedly committed before that time. Moreover, none of the charges for violations he may have committed after September 2007 are among the 10 specific felony offenses (including bribery, conspiracy, and racketeering) that constitute pension removal under current law.

Read the full NTU press release.

Alexi Zaitsev from Art Russia

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BBC: Cool visualization of heartbeat of modern life

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The Tennessee Waltz of Medicare

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The study by the Government Accountability Office obtained by The Associated Press sought to follow up on oversight gaps that have plagued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services since at least 2005. Roughly $1 billion of the $10 billion in annual Medicare payments the government makes for medical equipment are later deemed improper.

The investigation found that CMS approved two companies in the past year for Medicare billing privileges that the GAO had set up as sham businesses. The companies did not have clients or medical inventory to supply prospective Medicare patients.

These fictitious suppliers, based in Maryland and Virginia, won privileges even though GAO investigators deliberately provided the government with sketchy information and false documents that offered little assurances the companies were legitimate.

Black and Maggart resign from League of Women

voters. Hooray!! for Senator Black and Representative Maggart. The LWV has been a very thinly veiled ultra liberal advocacy group for many years. They are ALWAYS pro-big government and pro-high taxes. They are certainly free to advocate whatever they please but lets drop the silly pretense of being idealogcally neutral.

The AARP is another group that implies a blind neutrality on many issues but in fact pours millions into advocating higher taxes and big government.

Wal-Mart University...no, REALLY

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Wal-Mart has retail outlets where an individual could sign up for classes. It has outlets for the purchase of independently published textbooks and other materials. It has the technological capability of delivering online education anywhere in the world.

Wal-Mart University would not have a campus, any more than Edison State University (New Jersey) or Excelsior University (New York) have campuses. It would exist only digitally. The university would not have any campus maintenance expenses. It would not have to maintain a multimillion-dollar library because there would be no library.

The course work in the freshmen and sophomore years (lower division) could be graded by machine in most cases, since true/false exams are graded this way in most community colleges. Digital term papers could be read and graded by graduate students enrolled in universities anywhere in the country, just as they grade lower division term papers today in all of the major universities. (By the way, very few lower-division courses these days require term papers – grim, but true.) Pay them $5 per term paper. A term paper takes at most 15 minutes to grade.

Nothing has to change academically for lower-division courses. The only difference is this: (1) it would all be handled online; (2) it would be vastly cheaper for students.

This is going to come. Whether Wal-Mart is going to do it, or FedEx, or Target, or UPS, or some other large multinational corporation, is a question that will be solved by the free market. There is no question that it will be solved.

Companies are not going to let the University of Phoenix absorb a couple of billion dollars a year in tuition payments, without getting involved themselves. Why should they let the University of Phoenix skim off this kind of money?

Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border

for no reason and held as long as agents deem necessary and contents may be shared with other agencies. This is wrong, plain and simple; a clear violation of privacy and property rights.

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Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies -- which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens -- are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

Repubs use cellphone Cam for Drill Now Protest

Guest Hosting Steve Gill's Radio Show Today

8-11 central along with Terry Frank and we have a very special guest. Bob Krumm, blogger extraodinare serving in Iraq, will be calling in after the 9:00AM Break at approx 9:07.

Update: If you didn't tune in (sorry that I didn't get notice up sooner) you missed a great interview with Bob Krumm. Thanks to Bob for agreeing to come on.

Trickle Down on the Taxpayers

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USAToday: Nashville 3rd highest Travel Taxes

Don't tell the proposed Convention Center zealots about this, they may choke on their Kool-aid.

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A study being released Tuesday by a business travel group shows that travelers and company budgets are hit hard by taxes.

The study commissioned by the National Business Travel Association reveals that travelers not only pay a local sales tax, but they also spend 33% to 189% more in taxes aimed at visitors each day they stay at a hotel, dine and rent a car.

Airport (Lowest taxes)	Hotel tax single night	Car rental tax single day	Restaurant tax three meals	Combined taxes single day
Honolulu	$11.84	$6.19	$3.42	$21.45
Portland, Ore.	$12.96	$9.87	None	$22.83
Fort Lauderdale	$11.41	$7.03	$4.92	$23.35
Fort Myers, Fla.	$11.41	$7.03	$4.92	$23.35
Detroit	$12.44	$6.13	$4.92	$23.49
West Palm Beach, Fla.	$11.93	$7.41	$5.33	$24.67
Hartford, Conn.	$12.44	$7.89	$4.92	$25.26
Orlando	$12.96	$7.41	$5.33	$25.70
Tampa	$12.44	$7.79	$5.74	$25.98
Washington Reagan	$12.70	$9.49	$4.10	$26.30
(Highest taxes)
Cleveland	$18.81	$20.75	$6.36	$45.92
Chicago	$15.96	$18.07	$8.41	$42.44
Nashville	$17.81	$14.15	$7.59	$39.55
Phoenix	$13.76	$18.71	$6.81	$39.28
Charlotte	$15.81	$16.22	$6.77	$38.80
Dallas	$12.44	$18.97	$7.38	$38.80
Houston	$17.63	$13.22	$7.59	$38.44
Seattle	$15.04	$14.81	$7.71	$37.55
San Antonio	$17.37	$12.97	$6.66	$37.00
Kansas City	$17.81	$10.73	$8.18	$36.72

NY may copy LA ban on Fast Foods

The freedom frog is still in the frying pan and it just got hotter.

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Support for a fast food ban in New York is growing among city lawmakers after the Los Angeles City Council passed an unprecedented bill Tuesday that would make the addition of new fast food restaurants in certain areas of the city illegal for at least one year.

"People are literally being poisoned by their diets — LA's idea deserves serious consideration as we look for holistic solutions to a serious problem. A moratorium may help stem the problem," Council Member Eric Gioia, who represents Queens, said in a statement yesterday.

Some city residents, however, immediately voiced opposition to such a ban. "Banning fast food would be stupid," a 38-year-old warehouse worker in downtown Brooklyn, Dennis Bouknight, said. "They should just let people eat what they want to eat."

Update: Slate Columnist calls it Food Apartheid