The Week That Was
Wasting Wilder
It’s like peeling an onion. The rap on state Senate Speaker John Wilder is getting worse by the day—justifiably. Many of the other 31 members of the Senate are openly disenchanted with his lack of leadership. And last week we learned from the Memphis Commercial Appeal that he sold Senate colleague Bob Rochelle down the river this year, having asked the Lebanon Democrat to come up with an income tax plan, then failing to so much as lift a finger to help pass it. Now, a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, Tommy Hopper, has told the newspaper that Wilder, a Democrat, actually helped defeat members of his own party during the 1990s by leaking campaign strategies to the Republicans. His fellow Democrats’ offense? They tried to keep Wilder from another term as Senate speaker.
Nabbed?
Did Metro police catch the men responsible for terrorizing the usually placid Hillsboro Village? The fashionable retail district suffered its sixth armed robbery in less than a month last week, but Nashville’s men in blue might have found the perpetrator, along with a few of his buddies. After a wild chase, officers arrested a man believed to have held up a man at gunpoint on 21st Avenue. The victim was able to identify the alleged robber, William Miller, 23. Police caught him and others near Edgehill Avenue. An investigation is under way to determine if they had any role in the rash of recent armed robberies.
Frist free
Four years after the Nashville-based hospital company HCA ousted executive Rick Scott, whose tenure was most notable for the hordes of suits who descended on the company’s offices to investigate fraudulent practices, company co-founder Thomas Frist Jr. feels HCA is stable enough for him to pass the torch. He’s giving up his chairmanship and will be succeeded by current CEO Jack Bovender.
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