A rash of diaper theft
I was at a Walgreens store in an upscale Nashville neighborhood buying shaving razors. Like most stores, this place keeps the shaving stuff behind lock and key. The difference is that managers also alarmed their display case, so that when the door is unlocked a little alarm goes off that grows increasingly louder—and more annoying—until the case is locked again.

I remarked to the woman helping me that it seemed odd to keep shaving supplies behind an alarmed door. She told me that as the economy deteriorates, they're having a much bigger problem with shoplifting.

"It's gotten much worse just in the last month," she said. "We've even taken to locking up some of the diapers. That's how desperate people are getting."

She paused, looked over her shoulder and said in a low tone, "But if someone is in such bad shape that they need to steal diapers for their kids, it's hard for me to not want to just give them to them."

Later that day I saw a sign stuck in the front yard of a south Nashville home that read: "Need Ca$$h. Tools for sale. Available for hourly work."

Seeing these things helps put the statistics about our deteriorating economy in an entirely new light. –P.J. Tobia

TVA screws elderly farmers
If you read our initial story about the Harriman folks unfortunate enough to find themselves at ground zero for the TVA Kingston fly ash spill, you may remember Sandy and Terry Gupton, the kindly farmers who've got a few dozen acres fouling beneath piles of fetid ash and water. ("In eastern Tennessee, the TVA spill turns the simple life toxic," Jan. 15.)

You may have also heard that TVA is buying up besmirched properties around the spill—some 12-14 homes. Well, get this: The utility hasn't offered the Guptons a damned thing for their 250 acres.

Times have only gotten worse for the couple. Samples of urine, feces, hair and blood indicate they have elevated levels of heavy metals in their bodies. Prospective cattle buyers have canceled their orders with the Guptons simply because they're near the site—a sort of weird scarlet letter even though they've kept their prized Gelbvieh cattle on the other side of the property.

Sandy and Terry have done a little shopping around, checking out farms around Roane County, but none of them are fixed up with a pond, fences and a house like their little farm. It'd take the couple five to eight years just to get it the way they want it. And as Sandy said, "Terry and I are up in our years."

Sandy is doubtful that TVA will buy them out because of the size of their property, but they can't make a living when every buyer thinks their cattle are bioaccumulating hazards. Meanwhile, ash is still piled up on their land, only now it's seeded with rye and covered over with hay. –Brantley Hargrove

A talk with Mr. Hate
I had a conversation the other day with Gordon Baum, CEO of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. You may remember that our own Sheriff Daron Hall gave a talk to the Middle Tennessee chapter of CoCC awhile back and received some flak about it.

Baum denies that his group is about white power or hate, and says that it has "black people and non-whites that are members." He even claims a "Jewish rabbi in New York City" among its membership. "But we are, and advocate for, whites," says Baum.

And here's where his argument gets a bit, um, weird.

He thinks that "the media" ignores blacks who commit crimes because liberals want to coddle them "in the hopes that they'll behave better."

Baum then offers the example of his home county of St. Charles, Mo., compared to neighboring St. Louis County. The difference is that his county has hardly any blacks (the county is "97 percent white and the rest are Hispanic or Orientals") and zero murders per year, compared to the largely black St. Louis with a "murder every other day."

"What's the difference between St. Louis and St. Charles County?" Baum asks. "It's the race."

"OK," I reply, "but maybe isn't another difference that one county is rich and the other poor? Couldn't that be a reason for the crime?"

"I'm not a sociologist," he says. "...We don't have a solution. We don't have a final solution to this problem."

Thank God for that. –P.J. Tobia

Our gun laws aren't weak enough
Here's something for our state lawmakers to work on this session. Somehow, we have managed to avoid putting the weakest gun laws in the country on the books. We're only No. 33. That's according to the latest ratings by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Kentucky, Louisiana and Oklahoma score the worst—or the best, should we say?—apparently because they force businesses to allow guns in the workplace. We don't do that yet. What's wrong with us?

We don't do a lot of other things, though, that do help our ratings. A sampling:

Are there limitations on assault weapons? No. Are gun owners held accountable for leaving guns accessible to kids? No. Must child-safety locking devices be sold with guns? No. May police maintain gun sale records? Of course not. Are there limitations on "junk" handguns like Saturday night specials? Are you kidding?

And here's one the Brady group apparently doesn't know about. Unlike other states, Tennessee does not report the names of the dangerously mentally ill to the FBI's background check system. That means any lunatic can waltz out of the insane asylum, go straight to a store and buy a gun. Isn't that great?

The governor won't report the names because he says it would cost too much "to aggregate that data."

Anyway, lawmakers should be able move us down that Brady list next year merely by passing that bill allowing handguns in saloons.

I'm hoping we'll move to No. 45 with that one. Is that too much to ask for? – Jeff Woods

I'm not evil

Gov. Phil Bredesen came out swinging against liberal health-care advocates who are trying to torpedo his bid to lead President Obama's health-care reform efforts. He even trotted out former Gov. Ned McWherter, the creator of TennCare, to defend Bredesen for gutting the program.

McWherter blames it all on his predecessor, Don Sundquist, of course: "When I left, the next administration took over and they had five different commissioners in five years and lost control of cost containment. He's got the background and knowledge to develop a program and give us national health care."

Both the Wall Street Journal and Politico note that Bredesen is violating political protocol here and may wind up publicly embarrassing himself by appearing to grovel for the job. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who is believed to be Bredesen's main rival, declined comment to WSJ. Bredesen insists he's not lobbying. Really?

WSJ calls it "unusual public jockeying over the cabinet post," and Politico says: "Bredesen finds himself in a delicate position. Political protocol dictates that those interested in high-level appointments not actually voice their interest. But as an ambitious former CEO and governor—somebody who stepped into the Democratic primary last year to propose a mini-convention of super delegates—Bredesen is loathe to let the considerable incoming fire he's taking go unanswered, especially on an issue to which he's devoted much of his business and government career."

To the Wall Street Journal Bredesen says, "Anybody who's got some real scars and experience is going to have their detractors. People at the White House are smart enough to be able to assess that." And he took a swipe at his opponents, saying that "advocacy groups don't matter nearly as much as the pharmaceutical groups, the hospitals, the doctors' groups. There's a lot of very powerful interest groups that will play in this thing."

He tells Politico: "When I come in as governor, I inherited a complete disaster. TennCare was on the brink of collapse and was eating up every dime of all new revenue coming into the state. It had a completely open-ended benefit structure."

He's peddling support from the Tennessee Hospital Association and a half-dozen pediatricians. The doctors sent a letter to the White House saying "there would be little or no Medicaid of any type available to the pregnant women and children of Tennessee" except for the governor's cost savings in the dismantling of TennCare.

As if he were sitting for a White House interview, Bredesen made an obvious sales pitch for himself in his "State of State" speech, going out of his way to point out "something that I've believed for a long time: that we need a national solution for health insurance. Our health-care system has become antiquated and unfair, and I deeply hope that a new president and a new Congress can fashion the solution that Tennessee and America deserve." – Jeff Woods