Friday, February 3, 2012
Red State Update Tennessee: Where Evolution Is Optional
Posted by Jonathan Meador on Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 1:01 PM
While it might be something of a misnomer to say that Tennesseans have opted out of the evolutionary process altogether (maybe), it's far more accurate to say that, as far as school learnin' goes, Tennesseans don't take kindly to the idea that human beings are descended from our extinct simian cousins.
In fact, we don't really take to it at all because it's not mandatory to learn in the first place in the state's school system.
Indeed, that evolution is only taught in high school biology classes as an elective is just one factor contributing to Tennessee's recent "D" grade from the obviously liberal and elitist Thomas B. Fordham Institute, whose "State of State Science Standards 2012" report found all manner of flaws with the dissemination of scientific methodology and information in the Volunteer State's classrooms.
American science performance is lagging as the economy becomes increasingly high tech, but our current science standards are doing little to solve the problem. Reviewers evaluated science standards for every state for this report and their findings were deeply troubling: The majority of states earned Ds or Fs for their standards in this crucial subject, with only six jurisdictions receiving As....
The Tennessee science standards are clearly written—but their linguistic clarity too often is undermined by statements that are so broad they starve the passages of meaning. To make matters more confusing, Tennessee offers a bewildering array of high school courses. Taken together, these drawbacks make it impossible to infer what a student in the Volunteer State will know (or at least be expected to know) upon graduation.
Sports The Hippodrome: Yo, Coach Franklin, Pump The Brakes, Buddy
Posted by J.R. Lind on Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 7:14 AM
This week in The 'Drome: James Franklin gets a little too excited, the Predators continue to confound the stat geeks, a cameo by President Polk and more...
Opening Face-Off
James Franklin vs. "Men": All right, all right, we get it. Vanderbilt had one of the best recruiting classes — by several rankings, indeed the best — in school history.
So lauded was this class — top 30 rankings from Rivals.com among others — that Sports Illustrated sent Andy Staples to Music City to document the backstory and what he produced was an excellent read.
It is clear — as has been noted — James Franklin has changed the culture on West End. There is a renewed and refreshing enthusiasm for the fall unseen in these parts in decades. National Signing Day was, for once, an event at Vandy rather than a mild middle-of-basketball-season distraction.
Franklin, though, may have let his increasingly infamous enthusiasm get the best of him Wednesday night at a campus fan event.
According to a tweet from Tennessean beatman Jeff Lockridge, Franklin said players who decommitted were "not men of honor" and "not men of integrity." The quote, for what it's worth, did not make Lockridge's round-up story in Thursday's paper.
Now clearly, some context is important here. Franklin was throwing out the red meat to a rabid and raucous black-and-gold crowd — this was a political speech in the primary, if you will — and indeed Vandy was spurned by coveted defensive end Josh Dawson after previously losing big-time wide receiver Andre McDonald.
But let's keep in mind who Franklin is calling out here. These are not "men." These are teenagers making what is likely the biggest decision of their lives. The hype on Signing Day is a little silly in the long-view. Literally millions of dollars are spent by and with recruiting websites to track the decision-making processes of 17-year-old kids. And when they change their mind — as teenagers are wont to do — they get their integrity lambasted by grown men, who then brag that they are going out in limos to celebrate their own success and talk about how attractive teenagers are with their shirts off.
For all the good things Franklin has brought to and done for Vanderbilt in his short tenure, this was a clanger. Not that he was the only coach who tripped up on Feb. 1. LSU's, um, "eccentric" head man Les Miles disparaged decommit Gunner Kiel — who verballed to about 329 different schools — by saying he didn't have the "chest" (?) to lead the Tigers.
And it's not even that signing day success is universally recognized. By and large, the legion of recruiting sites put this as Vandy's top class in recent memory, but how much better than the usual is a matter of debate. Rivals put Vandy in the Top 30, yes, but others are more bearish: Scout.com has this class at 44th (just two spots better than last season) and 247Sports puts it at 49th.
And of course, the true measure of a class comes on Saturdays in the fall, not in the midwinter.
Phillips Why Shouldn't the State Pay Sales Tax?
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 5:06 AM
I've been thinking about this stupid story about State Rep. Dale Ford wanting to give golf courses sales tax exemptions for golf carts and course maintenance items.
And lord knows I don't want to think about golf for any longer than I have to, but it seems to me that this is the wrong way to go about this. In a state that depends on sales tax like we do, letting everyone who pisses and moans out of paying sales tax means those of us who don't piss and moan loud enough get stuck with a heavier tax burden. It just rewards being a giant baby and undermines our tax base.
So, here is my question: Why can't the state come up with a list of non-essential things it does — you know, the lagniappe things like golf courses — and make those departments pay sales tax? I mean, the golf course operators who have to pay sales tax on items their competition doesn't, just because their competition is the state, have a point. It is unfair. If Private Sector Joe has $100 to spend and State Run Phil has $100 to spend, Private Sector Joe can only get $90 worth of items. State Run Phil can get $100.
So why not end the state-run golf courses' unfair tax advantage? Is it against the law for the state to pay sales tax, or is that just a privilege it has been extending itself since it is the state?
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Politics Planned Parenthood Strikes Back with Federal Lawsuit Against Tennessee
Posted by Jeff Woods on Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 1:15 PM
Planned Parenthood won the funding last summer in a competitive bidding process. But in December, the state dropped the contracts without giving any reason. According to Planned Parenthood, state officials stopped the services without finding a new provider. As the nonprofit's Nashville CEO Jeff Teague points out, young women and men are the casualties here.
"It is disgraceful that Governor Haslam and Commissioner Dreyzehner have put politics ahead of the health and well-being of thousands of Tennesseans. Women and men count on Planned Parenthood for lifesaving health information, including HIV prevention. To jeopardize the lives and health of young people across Tennessee for purely political reasons is shocking and irresponsible."
You may recall last summer the governor and Republican lawmakers succeeded in denying Planned Parenthood more than $1 million in federal family planning money, even though health departments admitted they weren't prepared to handle those programs on their own.
Legislature It's Groundhog Day! GOP Messing with Teachers Again
Posted by Jeff Woods on Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 11:22 AM
Rep. Charles Sargent—a Franklin insurance agent—insisted his bill isn't targeting teachers for punishment. It merely adds them to the long list of professionals whose state-issued licenses are at risk for student loan delinquency, he said. The bill passed with 70 votes despite the pleas of Democrats.
Rep. Mike Turner, D-Nashville: “It’s like we’re piling on teachers again. We already have a system to collect these fees. They can take them to court and get judgments against them right now. If we take somebody’s license away from them, we put them out of work.”
Rep. Tommie Brown, D-Chattanooga: “I certainly do know and can appreciate the underlying intent of this particular piece of legislation. But you and I know that what it will do is impose extreme hardship on individuals. We know the kind of economy we’re in. If we deny people the right to work, then they cannot pay loans. It’s just that simple.”
House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley: “It doesn’t send a good message right at this stage of the game, it appears to me.”
Politics Scene Contributor Joe Nolan in Occupy Congress Video
Posted by Jack Silverman on Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 10:34 AM
Through his production company Zen Violence Films, filmmaker H. Paul Moon has been documenting various Occupy events in New York and Washington, D.C. His most recent work follows the Occupy Congress march up Capitol Hill to the Supreme Court.
And as I'm watching the Occupy Congress video, who should pop up but Scene arts writer Joe Nolan. Joe also contributes to Nashville Arts Magazine and its website, ArtNowNashville.
Furthermore, Joe has long been an advocate for the underprivileged, evidenced by his frequent articles in The Contributor, Nashville's thriving street newspaper.
And he's a singer-songwriter to boot. That's Joe singing his original Occupy anthem, "Occupy Song," for the first four minutes of the video.
Education Where Do You Stand on Charter Schools?
Posted by Jack Silverman on Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 8:57 AM
Charter school advocates see a broken public-education system in need of flexible methods but increased academic rigor. They hope not only to serve low-income families, but also to re-engage upper-class parents who've opted for exclusive private academies — or bolted to the sprawling subdivisions of Williamson County.Critics, however, worry that the sudden push for charters is coming at the cost of thorough scrutiny. They point to shaky early experiments in Nashville's school system, and voice the concern that future charters may find ways to distance themselves — literally and figuratively — from poor neighborhoods. The result, they argue, would be essentially to offer well-off kids a private-school education on the public's dime and resegregate the city into pockets of privilege — while leaving the rest of Middle Tennessee's students to languish in already struggling public schools.
These days, it seems like nearly all public policy debates fall along party lines. But the charter school debate is an exception, with advocates and critics on both sides of the aisle, and in every field of expertise. Ultimately, the argument is no longer whether or not to have charter schools, but how to ensure that they serve the best interest of the city. (And of course, how you define the best interest of the city is quite subjective.)
So where do you stand on charter schools? Will they be a boon for the education system? Will they encourage or stymie diversity in our schools?
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Legislature Bill Advances to Evict Occupy Nashville; Protesters 'Pee in Public's Eye,' One Lawmaker Says
Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 6:17 PM
Watson went on a rant against "disgusting acts" on Legislative Plaza, denouncing "drunks and drug addicts" and "sex scenes." He said Occupy Nashville has "literally peed right in the public's eye."
"It's shameful what has been taking place on the plaza," he said. "This needs to be sacred ground, ladies and gentlemen, for our schoolkids. I'm proud to be a Tennessean and I'm proud of these Capitol grounds."
"This is not a bill that limits the right to protest," Watson told lawmakers, prompting laughter from the audience.
For any one group to take over and dominate a piece of property thereby preventing other members of the public from using that space is equal to the theft of what rightfully belongs to the whole public. We can't stand by and let this continue. I am a strong proponent of First Amendment rights. But I am not a proponent of setting up housing on the public property and defacing it. It's wrong. It's just wrong.
Red State Update Mitt Romney Hates Old People, Wins Florida Anyway
Posted by Jim Ridley on Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 1:19 PM
"Newt Gingrich looks like a Hardee's Breakfast golem breathed to life by a black-magic Martha White."
By the Way Thirty-Five Percent of Nashvillians Live Alone?
Posted by Steve Haruch on Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 11:18 AM
Over at The Daily Beast, Andrew Sullivan posted this map of housing solitude in the U.S., showing that urban areas (at least according to 2010 census data) lead the way in single-person households. Nashville checked in at 35 percent, the same as Chicago (which I expected to be higher) and well behind my old hometown of Seattle's 42 percent.
While urban living and widespread solitude do seem to correlate, I'm curious what more drilldown of the statistics might yield. For instance, how does age figure in? Do cities attract more young people, who tend to be less established (and therefore more likely to live alone)? And do these single households tend to contain a higher percentage of entrepreneurs and mover-shaker types? Does living alone allow more social and economic agility, and therefore help drive creativity and innovation? And by that token, does the aloneness quotient line up at all with any of the "creative class" or other such theories of urban progress and transformation?
Living alone tends to be more expensive than collective life. At least it was in Seattle, where I could barely afford the apartment in which I first watched Altman's Nashville (alone, on two VHS tapes). So it should also correlate with, if not affluence, then at least a can-do attitude, right?
