"Black is pushing legislation to establish a dedicated fund where Americans could make donations for the wall, which Trump administration have said will cost at least $20 billion — and which Trump promised Mexico would pay for."

During an appearance on Fox News on Monday, Black — who is running to become the next governor of Tennessee — floated the idea of putting up plaques along the wall to commemorate those who donate.

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This defies basic economic theory. Wages are not supposed to fall in times of rising employment.

Tennessee employers added 45,000 jobs across the state in the past year, lowering the state's seasonally-adjusted jobless rate from 4 percent a year ago to 3.4 percent last month, reports the Times Free Press. But the average hourly wage paid Tennessee workers was lower than a year ago.

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Really interesting poll from Vandy.

Not surprised Bredesen is ahead of Blackburn, especially with her voting record in support of big Pharma and the opiod indusrty tarting to bubble to the surface. More of her pay to play voting record will come out over time.

With an overall favorability score of 67 percent, Democrat and former governor Phil Bredesen is more popular among Tennessee voters than his Republican opponent, Congressman Marsha Blackburn, at 49 percent overall.

Vandy declared the "Governor's Race Wide Open" and really surprised me. Dems have two great candidates running with former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean by far the biggest name. Republicans are running two very rich candidates, with Dianbe Black having some trouble with her sky high unfavorables.

“Diane Black’s unfavorability numbers are a real problem for her in a general election,” said Geer. “Republicans don’t need Democratic votes to win, but they do need votes from independents.”

Dean, the more well-known of the two Democrats, has 47 percent name recognition and a 53 percent overall favorability rating. He’s well-liked by fellow Democrats, with 73 percent favorability, and posts the highest favorability score among independents of all the gubernatorial candidates—60 percent.

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I wondered why TN GOP was so adamant that there NOT be a paper ballot required in TN elections:

Investigators found evidence of a “malicious intrusion” into a Tennessee county’s elections website from a computer in Ukraine during a concerted cyberattack, which likely caused the site to crash just as it was reporting vote totals in this month’s primary.

Cyber-security experts hired by Knox County to analyze the so-called “denial of service” cyberattack, said Friday that “a suspiciously large number of foreign countries” accessed the site as votes were being reported on May 1.

AP Story

A nominating commission Tuesday chose three finalists for appointment as new director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation – former Bradley County Sheriff Tim Gobble, current TBI Deputy Director Jason Locke and Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch.

I think Danny Wright would have been a good choice for that position.

Blackburn says it's "absurd" to think all that money she got from opioid industry influenced her vote to protect the opioid industry profits.

U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn gets a mention in a Washington Post report on political consequences facing members of Congress who supported 2016 legislation “that hampered the Drug Enforcement Administration’s enforcement efforts against the opioid industry."

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Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!

Note to anyone who gets information from Flo: Better fact check it ASAP.

Looking at the actual history, I'd have to say Trump deserves about ZERO credit.

More

Donald Trump has failed at everything he's done except get elected. Yet hes somehow has cash to spend. No American Bank will loan him the vast sums required for a business to function, so where does he get his money? Why anyone can think it is a good idea to NOT investigate his Russian connections is beyond me.

Here is a great way to go about your day and learn how we lost our country, and yes, I believe it is not the idealistic America of our childhoods. This is just the cliff notes in who owns Trump.

Josh Marshal podcast:

‘Trump Is A Mob-Friendly Businessman Who Is Now President Of The United States’

Marsha Blackburn sits on the committee that regulates the telecommunication industry. That would be Sprint, AT&T, Comcast, etc...You know, the folks we all love because they charge what they want and still give crappy service. Why is that? They bribe buy contribute to our elected officials. They still can't write a check to Blackburn personally but they can host a fundraiser for her campaign.

This is pretty brazen.

Sprint, of course, announced last week that it’s pursuing a merger with T-Mobile, and Blackburn is the chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on communications and technology, which oversees the wireless industry. Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) wrote to House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Blackburn last week to urge them to hold hearings on the proposed merger.

TVA Chairman Johnson is a Nuke man. A bad actor of a nuke man but a nuke man none the less. Is that why solar is being slowed down in Tennessee? Or is it because TVA can't put a meter between us and the sun?

“Solar is a cost-competitive resource, and Tennessee has immense potential which, if seized, would mean an influx of well-paying solar jobs and economic benefits for the state,” says Sean Gallagher, SEIA’s vice president of state affairs. “Unfortunately, TVA’s Distributed Solar Solutions program and the results of a 2017 utility-scale request for proposal have continuously been delayed without explanation.”

...“TVA’s lack of a coherent solar procurement strategy has created business uncertainty that is hurting Tennessee’s economic development goals, as large industrial customers are looking to other states for access to clean energy.”

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From Fed Register announcement of SMR site Draft Environmental Impact Statement:

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Public Meetings for Comment

The NRC and the USACE staff will hold two identical public meetings to present a brief overview of the DEIS and to accept public comments on the document. The meetings will be held at Noah's Event Venue, 1200 Ladd Landing Blvd., Kingston, Tennessee, on June 5, 2018. The first meeting will convene at 2:00 p.m. and will continue until approximately 4:00 p.m. The second meeting will convene at 7:00 p.m., with a repetition of the overview portions of the first meeting, and will continue until approximately 9:00 p.m.

This should trouble most folks:

“If the weather is nice road troopers should have no less than 30 citations a week no exceptions. If activity does not improve troopers will be reassigned per the Captain.”

… We looked into the law, part of it stating, “A political subdivision or any agency of this state may not require or suggest to a law enforcement officer that the law enforcement officer is required or expected to issue a predetermined or specified number or any type of combination of types of traffic citations within a specified period.”

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When I reach That Point, Please Have the Rough and Tumble Sing to Me

"People with dementia are confronted by a world that is unfamiliar to them, which causes disorientation and anxiety" said Jeff Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor in Radiology at U of U Health and contributing author on the study. "We believe music will tap into the salience network of the brain that is still relatively functioning."

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When asked about weakening toxic coal ash regulations, Scott Pruitt just testified in a Congressional hearing that he was not aware of the health effects suffered by workers cleaning up the coal ash spill at Kingston and another site in North Carolina.

Via KnoxViews:

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Never before in our nation’s history has the attorney for the sitting President invoked the 5th Amend in connection with issues surrounding the President,

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Wonder why that never gets mentioned by the media. Is it because he is a crazy white guy who killed people of color with an AR-15? Being crazy doesn't excuse or separate him out from most other white separatists in my judgement, but he sure does seem to be nuts.

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The DNC has filed a lawsuit against the Trump Campaign, et al, for conspiring with Russian agents to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign:

The Democratic National Committee on Friday sued the Trump campaign, the Russian government, WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Roger Stone, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos and Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov, his son Emin and others, alleging they conspired to disrupt the 2016 election.

In today's Roane County News Flo Charles says it was God that did it:

...we may not understand all of President Trump’s decisions, nor agree with them, but he is still our president that God saw fit to give us, knowing his imperfections.

My question is why does my subscription have to support such obvious political advertising? Shouldn't the RNC have to pay for Flo's column inches?

This is a scandal. Lobbyists win, taxpayers lose! Teflon Haslam walks away unscathed.

The decision means Tennessee will take a breath as it seeks to fix its broken testing system, which has been snakebit from the outset. In 2016, Education Commissioner Candice McQueen canceled most testing after TNReady’s new online platform collapsed under the weight of statewide testing on newly minted digital devices. The next year, Tennessee reverted to mostly paper-and-pencil tests, but there were scoring and score delivery issues under new vendor Questar.

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List for appointment as new TBI director narrowed to ten
Published April 19, 2018 | By Tom Humphrey

About 45 people submitted applications to become the next director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation after current Director Mark Gwyn retires, reports WTVF. The TBI Nominating Commission cut the list down to ten persons on Wednesday. The ten will all be interviewed at a public meeting by the panel May 15 before it submits three final nominees to Gov. Bill Haslam, who will then appoint one.

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TN GOP apparently thinks bigotry is a winning issue in Tennessee.

During Tuesday’s floor session, Democrats argued the amendment was vindictive. Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, called it the most “vile, racist” effort he had seen and said Republicans viewed Forrest “as if he was God.”

Rep. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, called the amendment “un-Christian.”

“This amendment and the explanation is hateful, it is unkind, it is un-Christian and it is unfair,” she said. “Memphis is a city in this state, and I am sick of people in this House acting like it’s not.”

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Democrats introduced a Bill to let readers know who paid for political ads on social media. This is required for print and broadcast media.

The bill would have required the disclosure on the ad itself, at another linked site or on the profile page of the social media platform.

The failure of the bill in Tennessee comes a week after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced a two-day grilling by members of Congress about a range of controversies, including how Russians used the platform to meddle in the U.S. presidential election.

(Rep)Yarbro has pointed to a federal indictment charging 13 Russians with running a social media campaign engineered in part to help get Donald Trump elected president. The indictment mentions a Twitter account made to resemble the Tennessee Republican Party that attracted more than 100,000 followers.

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1. 26-foot Lego replica of Titanic built by boy with autism finds home in Pigeon Forge

2. UT police: Talk of 'adult cartoon' led to false rumors about a shooting on campus

3. Former Cocke County magistrate who stripped baby of name Messiah vying for judgeship

4.TNReady testing problems reported but a fix is in place, state officials say

5. Tennessee farmers brace for financial impact from China trade war

See! A 26 foot Lego Titanic model is much more important news than the effect of Trump's trade war with China. That's what happens when we let mega-corporations from foreign states own our local newspapers. They turn to the National Enquirer financial model of printing sensation first and information last. The Roane County News is owned by a corporation from Kentucky.

There are many top flight journalists still hanging on in today's corporate bean counter driven newspaper arena, doing what they can with shrinking budgets and squeezed resources managed for the bottom line from afar. Unfortunately many others have given up on print. news.

I understand the fear of reptiles due in great part to ignorance. They are almost all beautiful, especially the venomous ones. That's is most likely to warn you to leave them alone. They really don't want to bite you. If they strike it is only because they are in fear of their lives.

Now, I understand not wanting to have a copperhead living under your garbage can and that most people don;t have the wherewithal to remove it safely. At the same time, thousands of harmless snakes will be murdered out of fear and ignorance. Here is a great web page to go to for identification of the venomous snakes in Tennessee. There are only two that you are at all likely to see in East Tennessee. Learn what they look like.

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Here is a copperhead. They all look almost exactly like this. If you see one the way to deal with it is to back up and go somewhere else. It's easy.

What does this mean to us?

First, the reporter shortage means residents don’t have the information to make decisions for their families or hold institutions accountable. They don’t know if their schools are underperforming or their mayor is corrupt or their courts are fair.

Residents walk into the voting booth carrying only small shards of information about the local candidates. That is, if they bother to vote. Several studies have shown that voting turnout declines as reporting does.

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We experienced Taylor Kropp and his band at WDVX and twisted his arm to come out and play a show for us. He tours with Tanya Tucker as her guitar player but don't let that fool you into thinking he's just country. He is one of those special musicians and who happens to have a beautiful voice to go along with his songwriting. Come join us in beautiful downtown Rockwood.

The museum will be lit up and we have chairs and tables for folks who want to bring a spread. We have way too much fun and then there's some music, too.

Tonight $15 BYOB Doors 7 PM

Music for grownups in a listening atmosphere.

www.RoaneSong.org

Email stevescarb@aol.com if you have questions.

A University of California Study showed Tennesseans were the second most likely behind Texans to share fake Russian posts on social media.

KnoxViews has the story

Our good friend and County Commissioner, Steve Kelley, passed away recently, leaving a vacancy on the Commission. Steve's wife, Renee Kelley, asked to fill his seat until the August election that will install the next round of Commissioners for Roane County. One of the candidates for that position representing Oliver Springs and Oak Ridge is Jerry White, who is also a courthouse bailiff. Renee, who is a friend and rather intelligent lady, was not elected due to a 7-6 vote with the abstention of Commissioner David Bell. The failure to honor Commissioner Steve Kelley in this way is very unusual and disappointing.

Republican congresswoman Marsha Blackburn said on Sunday that women “don’t want” equal pay laws.

During a roundtable discussion on NBC’s Meet The Press, former White House advisor David Axelrod asked if the Tennessee lawmaker would support a law promoting workplace gender equality. Blackburn responded:

“I think that more important than that is making certain that women are recognized by those companies. You know, I’ve always said that I didn’t want to be given a job because I was a female, I wanted it because I was the most well-qualified person for the job. And making certain that companies are going to move forward in that vein, that is what women want. They don’t want the decisions made in Washington. They want to be able to have the power and the control and the ability to make those decisions for themselves.”

So does anyone think Marsha's statement is the least bit coherent? I'm going with "pretty much nonsense".

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The lead attorney for the Justice Department in this search warrant action is a Trump appointee and donated money to the Trump campaign.