Subject: Economic Issues

• Pedro's Memo: Rezoning Plan Racially Motivated

  July 7, 2008

• School Board May Have Broken Law

  July 8, 2008

• Silence of the Lambs

  July 14, 2008

• 'We're Not Taking It Anymore'

  July 15, 2008

• NAACP Decries Rezoning Plan as 'Gallows'

  August 4, 2008

• Dean Takes 'Very Comfortable' Position on Rezoning

  October 1, 2008

• Reader: This Isn't Anything Like the Great Depression

  November 5, 2008

• Pedro's Smoking Gun

  Garcia's memos may supply evidence to undo school resegregation

  July 17, 2008

• Corker and Alexander Say No to the Stimulus: Did They Sleep Through the Election?

  Wait a minute--we thought Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander were supposed to be moderates. That's what the wingnuts are always telling us. But yesterday,our senators joined all the rest of the tightasses in their party--minus Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter, thankfully--in a united front against the economic stimulus package. Alexander was absolutely outraged by the bill: "This bill is a colossal mistake. This is still mostly a spending bill, not a stimulus bill. Even worse, it bo

  February 11, 2009

• Pith in the Wind Forces Democratic Party Chair to Send Press Release

  Oh, the mighty influence of Pith in the Wind. Yesterday, we carped--a bit unfairly, it seems to us now--about Tennessee Democratic Party chair Chip Forrester's failure to stand up for Democrats against Republican attacks. And today--presto!--a Chip Forrester press release appears in our email box: Tennessee Congressman John Tanner is tackling the global economic crisis and America's national security as head of a delegation to NATO and NATO ally countries this week - while state Republicans was

  February 17, 2009

• The Scariest Story You'll Read All Week

  Like most people, we don't have the first clue why the Great Recession began and when, or how, it will end. Explanations of credit-default swaps and secured amortization might as well be written in Swahili. And expecting us to decipher the intricate new relationships between the Treasury Department and financial giants is akin to forcing us to write a five-page paper on advanced string theory. While blindfolded.Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your tolerance for bad news, there are peo

  April 1, 2009

• Find Fashions for the Downturn at Nashville's Recession Junction

  If you can't beat the recession, wear it. That's the philosophy of Daniel Brabson, an enterprising Nashvillian who's found a way to put the "fun" in "fundamentally unchanging economic decline." Brabson is one of the guiding lights behind Recession Junction, an online store dedicated to making sweet lemonade of our current citrus avalanche. Their specialty is recession-themed clothing, bumper stickers and beer glasses. The apparel at Recession Junction is pretty much limited to T-shirts--shipp

  April 14, 2009

• Separate. Equal?

  August 28, 2008

• The Ultimatum

  Black leaders demanding resegration rollback—or else

  August 7, 2008

• Heads of the Class

  July 17, 2008

• Pedro Strikes Back

  In tell-all memo, Garcia casts aspersions at school board

  July 10, 2008

• Pedro's Memo: Rezoning Plan Racially Motivated

  July 3, 2008

• Re-segregation Plan?

  Business leaders secretly lobby to excuse white children from school rezoning

  June 12, 2008

• The Day Property Rights Died

  July 7, 2005

• Dining Notes

  Global Market travels to new location

  June 10, 2004

• Design Guru Named

  It's just one change— including new digs—at the Civic Design Center

  May 27, 2004

• Brain Drain

  Matt Kisber's departure leaves a void—but room for new blood—in the state House

  March 28, 2002

• Business As Usual

  After all the talk of unity, Bush and Congress are back in the mud

  February 7, 2002

• A City Swept Clean

  How urban renewal, for better and for worse, created the city we know today

  September 6, 2001

• Passing the Buck

  May 24, 2001

• Off the Tracks

  Legal opinion threatens to derail living-wage effort

  May 10, 2001

• Resistance is Futile?

  Protestors get no respect on free trade

  May 3, 2001

• Waging War

  The mayor battles the Council on the proposed living-wage bill

  April 19, 2001

• Planning Praise

  Urbanist Stroud Watson earns more acclaim

  January 25, 2001

• Editorial

  What Goes Up Comes Down

  March 16, 2000

• Winds of Change

  Will tornado prompt new, urban-friendly zoning rules?

  February 3, 2000

• Another Head Rolls

  Purcell swings his sword again

  January 13, 2000

• It's Tough Staying the Same

  November 19, 1998

• CCA Does PR

  November 19, 1998

• Planning Central

  November 5, 1998

• The Making of Mill Town

  January 15, 1998

• The Re-Making of a City

  September 11, 1997

• Up With Downtown

  July 31, 1997

• Bidding for the Big House

  April 24, 1997

• What is a Charette?

  February 6, 1997

• Barbarians at the Gateway

  May 9, 1996

• Gibbons Finds Surprise Wedge Issue: the Haywood County Industrial Site

  Looks like Bill Gibbons, for one, recognizes that Ron Ramsey really stepped in it when he tried to kill funding for Haywood County's industrial megasite in this year's state budget. In West Tennessee, here's Gibbons dropping his original law-and-order theme to proclaim the state's desperate need for economic development and tout the monumental importance of that industrial site: "People here understand the importance of having industrial sites like that and the importance of state government

  June 29, 2009

• Free Stuff at Provence Saturday

  During the 1981 recession, I was a broke student, so if there had been mass giveaways of free stuff on anything like the current scale, I would have remembered them and showed up at each and every one. But look how far Nashville has come since those days   -- thanks to our local restaurants, it's the funnest recession ever. Tomorrow's goodie giveaway is at Provence's Summer Fete. Bread samples, locally produced foods, and door prizes. There's a free pack of flabreads with any purchase of a

  July 24, 2009

• NAACP Lawsuit Blasts Metro Rezoning Plan as 'Segregationist Fraud'

  ​The NAACP filed its long-awaited lawsuit (Spurlock v. Fox & School Board) yesterday challenging Nashville's school rezoning plan that stopped the busing of hundreds of inner-city black children to the white suburbs. The lawsuit may not win in federal court, but the story that's told in the complaint ought to shock the city into action. Under the plan, which is supposed to provide school choice, a sixth-grade honor student has been denied enrollment at Bellevue Middle School and forced to

  September 1, 2009

• How can Nashville's rezoning plan work when one school doesn't even have textbooks?

  September 3, 2009

• Democrats Try to Quash Scene Story About Rep. Mike Turner

  State Rep. Mike Turner​In this week's Scene, I write about a secret meeting that may play an important part in the NAACP-supported lawsuit against the city's new student assignment plan. The meeting gathered some of the city's most prominent black leaders with Chamber of Commerce president Ralph Schulz and state House Democratic caucus chair Mike Turner, a member of the task force that recommended the rezoning plan to the school board. At the meeting, Turner described his reasons for supporti

  September 10, 2009

• Rezoning Plan Already Failing Pearl-Cohn Children

  ​The evidence has arrived: Pearl-Cohn students are getting the shaft under the rezoning plan. They're still more likely to be taught by inexperienced teachers despite new pay incentives to attract staff to the high-poverty schools. If school board members were really focused like lasers on improving schools for the city's poor black children, as they constantly claim, then they'd cancel the rezoning plan at their next meeting. Obviously, Nashville is offering a substandard education to Pe

  October 19, 2009

• Student Rezoning Case Goes to Trial Today

  ​Eleven years after winning release from desegregation decrees, Nashville's school officials are being dragged back into federal court beginning today to face accusations they're discriminating against black children. The issue is whether race was a consideration in the student assignment plan that went into effect this school year, and much of the city's white officialdom is on trial. Did school board chairman David Fox openly advocate segregation in community meetings? Did he say, as the pl

  November 3, 2009

• Chamber of Commerce Cash and the Student Rezoning Plan

  Karen Johnson​In the student rezoning case in federal court, Metro's lawyers pop out of their seats with objections at the mere mention of the possibility the Chamber of Commerce might have tried to influence the school board. It's as if they actually think the judge will believe that the Chamber didn't push for the new student assignment plan. Please. The Chamber gave great wads of campaign cash to supporters of the rezoning plan. It even endorsed and funded an obscure candidate named Co

  November 10, 2009

• The outcome of Metro’s bitter rezoning lawsuit may hinge upon a Nashville political scion’s testimony

  November 19, 2009