Here's one I missed in 2011

Now that Google Reader is shutting down, I've been going back through the stacks of stuff I have not yet read, and I found this 2011 piece by education blogger Jim Horn on the start of "KIPPster" Karl Dean's budget commitments to the charter school corporation:

No leaky roofs in the Mayor's office.

After the Brown v Board of Education decision in 1954, Southern governors and mayors spent large sums of cash to fix up ramshackle black schools in an attempt to placate African-American communities and, thus, seek to avoid the white nightmare of court-ordered desegregation.  Now a half century later, Mayor Karl Dean of Nashville is doing something similar, but this time the effort not only serves segregationists but also the corporations in need of a compliant and positivized work force that is to include a few black and brown faces that can be counted upon to keep their mouths shut.

Mayor Dean has committed almost 10 percent of Nashville Metro’s 4-year school building budget for a new segregated KIPP, Inc. corporate charter school, which lays claim to the exemplary urban penal pedagogy model that has the backing of all the oligarchs of the Billionaire Boys’ Club, regardless of whether they keep Republican or Democratic politicians in their stables.

Meanwhile, Nashville's public schools that serve the poor and the brown use garbage cans to collect water from leaky roofs and cram their kids into overcrowded and damaged classrooms.  At Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet, a high-performing integrated public school, kids eat lunch in the hallways and do not have a functioning gym.

Never mind that KIPP has unlimited funds at its disposal and more on the way, thanks to bottom feeders like hedge funder, Whitney Tilson, who beats the Wall Street bushes daily for new philanthro-capitalists looking for big tax breaks and a sure-fire way to behaviorally neuter and culturally sterilize minority schoolchildren.  Meanwhile, KIPP, Inc. spares no expense to shuttle children around to Ivy League schools under the pretense that a significant percentage of these kids will someday actually attend college at Ivy League schools.

Now that we are about halfway through Hizzoner's commitment, how does Jim's criticism hold up? Is KIPP doing anything more than resegregating public education and raking in the bling via Mayor Dean's regressive education policies? And is Metro Nashville Public Schools really doing anything better than it was before Dean's infatuation with privatizing education began?


UPDATE:  I neglected to mention in this context that Karl Dean recently lent vigorous support to a state charter school authorizer that would effectively remove power to approve charter schools from Nashville and Memphis school boards (what's the legality of that narrow focus?). Hizzoner believes so fervently in privatization that he is willing to invite the state to wrest political control from the hands of local voters, putting it in the hands of a conservative, bureaucratic state board that does not have to be directly accountable to Nashvillians or Memphians.


UPDATE: To reiterate, Williamson Co schools emphasize infrastructure over charter choices. Yet, Hizzoner believes that charter choices make Davidson more competitive.

Follow the bouncing logic

Karl Dean, Jesse Register, and just about every charter school leader I listen to draw the conclusion that Nashville needs charter schools and more charter schools. Their premise is that "choice" will give Metro Public Schools parents incentive to stay rather than to move to affluent public school districts like Williamson County or to private schools.

Williamson County Superintendent Mike Looney told reporters yesterday that he does not want charter schools in his school district because they dilute the resources that the public schools have. So, the focus in Williamson is not on "choice", but on "infrastructure," since money would shunt from the latter to fund charter schools. So, how can Williamson possibly be one of the most envied district if they do not even wave choice at their parents?

I have argued for some time that, as a public school parent, I am more likely to abandon Nashville schools over the charter issue. I base my view exactly on Mr. Looney's premise: charter schools sap what little money bona fide public schools have. Charter schools weaken already reeling Metro public schools. Hizzoner et al. give parents a false sense of choice because the mediocrity is spread around while wealthy education corporations (and some charter administrators) enrich themselves on the pedagogic blight. Choice is like an opiate that lulls parents into believing they have power in a school district that does not share power with those who do not first have the influence (like that of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce).

I guess sometimes, when the red flags of peon parents in poorer districts are ignored, it takes an affluent (and predominantly white?) school district leader to smack down the bouncing, flawed logic of our own educational overlords. Since few people listen to me, I hope others notice the hot mess of Mr. Looney's logic (and take note that infrastructure seems to take precedence over choice in one of the most Republican-leaning counties in the country). It makes more sense than the bunk we are spoon-fed here.

The larger point

One thing you can say about the debate over Mayor Karl Dean's paradoxical plan to give LifePoint tax breaks for a move over the county line to get back a few tax revenues: at least it hasn't been conducted like last July's IQT relocation debacle. Before Canada realized it, Nashville offered IQT subsidies to lay off 1,200 Canadians. Before the news media realized it, social media reported that IQT shuttered completely. Before Karl Dean realized it, IQT announced that they would not be coming to Nashville.

At least in the case of LifePoint, it feels more transparent than it did with respect to IQT, which finally declared bankruptcy in November, and is now facing government pressure to meet its financial obligations of worker compensation.

While LifePoint does not stand to be the same unmitigated embarrassment, the buckling blow to the Mayor's narrow, unexamined thrust of economic development, it generates a new set of obstacles that can hurt an administration that just claimed that it had no clue that the state orchestrated the diversion of sales taxes from Metro coffers to the Nashville Predators. For all the times we're admonished to trust the Mayor's access to information, he seems to come up clued out when the chips are down (cue IQT).

The most glaring obstacle is the Dean Administration's readiness to overbarter in order to sate commercial desires even at the expense of the balance that reason brings. One prominent Nashvillan described the LifePoint deal to me thusly, "Giving away an eroding resource to move less than a few miles into our county. If they needed consolidated space, then that alone should be enough incentive." But Metro is bound and determined to pile up special-interest incentives at greater future risk to service to the rest of us.

Consistent with past unwillingness to rock Rich Riebeling's boat, the Tennessean reporters editorialized the move as a "victory for Davidson County" and a "significant boost" for the area on north of the Williamson County line.

They also claimed the move will "boost" Metro tax revenues, even though the Mayor's bill before the Metro Council (co-sponsored by CM Sean McGuire, CM Brady Banks, and CM Karen Johnson) requires LifePoint to pay zero property taxes the first 4 years, markedly less than half of property taxes the 7 year after that, and only 75% of property taxes until year 15 of their lease. At that rate how can the Tennessean reporters claim that LifePoint is going to "boost" our revenues with any journalistic credibility?

Incidently, The council could also give LifePoint a break on personal property taxes for roughly $50 million worth of computers, software and other equipment (like "supplemental HVAC," a.k.a. "extra air conditioning for computers") that will go into the data center that it plans at the new building. What computer equipment lasts 15 years?

So, the other obstacle to this project is the Mayor's own logic behind how revenues work. With a decade and a half of paying no or very few property taxes on their property, how is LifePoint supposed to be bringing new revenue into Davidson County coffers? Depending on when LifePoint takes up occupancy, Karl Dean could be done with his last term as Mayor by the time the healthcare company starts paying any revenues to Metro.

But Hizzoner insists to all those media who will listen with unconditional regard that deferred scratch is better than none at all:

“If this project didn’t exist – if we didn’t do this arrangement, they would be paying no taxes. So you’re talking about taxes that only exist because we’re doing this deal. And then you start talking about the things that come from this deal.”

Dean says jobs will flow from construction of the headquarters, spurring restaurants and shopping that could lure other investment. And Dean says jobs in the healthcare sector build on one of Nashville’s core strengths, saying “LifePoint could be anywhere they want to be.”

Again with benefits for the restaurant industry? That was a talking point used to sell Music City Center, too.

This seems like just another expansion of the Dean bubble, a small chimera in a sequence of capital plans--convention center, fairgrounds redevelopment, new ballpark among them--that form a slickly marketed, yet profoundly ungrounded dream of a common good.

LifePoint looks like one more notch on the baton of a Mayor who would someday be King. But after IQT, can we have faith that the Mayor has thought out this process carefully or that Nashville won't be fooled again?

How To Take Down a Tsunami

Last week blogging CM Emily Evans cut the legs out from under the myth--which aspiring May Town Center developers were trying to spread--that Williamson County is burying Davidson County's future under an economic tsunami:

Today I got stats from the wonderful folks at the Davidson County Assessor's Office. Seems like things haven't been too shabby here in Nashville either. Between 1994 and 2008, Davidson County's assessed valuation went from $7.784 billion to $16.479 billion - about 111%. Of the $8.694 billion in increased valuation, $5.130 billion or 59% is attributable to our residential and farm growth. Not as much as Williamson County's 70% - but still pretty strong.

Ironicially, our commercial and industrial tax base accounted for 34% of the total growth. That is 10% more than Williamson County. In fact, Davidson County's commercial/industrial tax base grew 89% from 1994 to 2008. Williamson County's percentage growth rate is higher at 400% but you tend to find those kind of percentages when you are working with small numbers. Williamson County's commercial tax base is still just 24% of Nashville's.

And if we were losing growth, businesses and residents to Williamson County, how could Nashville's real estate market be one of the most stable in the country?

When you look past the May Town scare tactics at the numbers, you have nothing to fear except fear itself. Rushing out to build a downtown in a pasture would be knee-jerk nuts with Nashville's relative stability.

Council Member Cuts Through Growth Myths of May Town Developers' Scare Tactics

If you need some prep work in the run up to Metro Council's July 7 public hearing on the May Town Center proposal, look no further than CM Emily Evans, who turns over some stones in the developers' report and unpacks their numbers. As with most data, it must be mined to come to a well-informed interpretation free from the bias of Giarratana salesmanship:

We need to do the best possible job we can attracting and retaining employers but I have always found the argument that Williamson County was stealing our tax base to be a little misleading. A friend of mine says it is sort of like comparing the growth of your 18 year old with a 3 year old. Given that skepticism, I wanted to take a closer look at the question of tax base growth ....

Of ... $5.158 billion [growth in the last 15 years], $3.651 billion was a result of growth in residential and farm assessments. That's right, 70% of the growth in Williamson County's tax base is attributable to home and raw land values. The growth in commercial and industrial assessments accounts for $1.261 billion during the 15 year period or about 24% of the total. Their growth in the commercial area is certainly significant but not to the degree that May Town developers would like you to believe.

Of course, I doubt you would find Williamson County's theft of our subdivisions to be that terrifying.

The Fundamentals of Their Economy are Sound

City Paper Scolds WilliamsonTNGOP Anti-Kurd Grind House; Fails to Attribute Story to Blogs

The Williamson County GOP's animosity toward ethnic communities had been advertised on the party website since July, but the City Paper is just now wading in with a so bold scolding, given it's "healthy readership" in Williamson County:

The real problem here is that Grindstaff appears to have painted some 8,000 Kurds very broadly as robbers and drug dealers, something that is simply inexcusable. The charge, which he has publicly stated was poorly worded, is wrapped in a criticism of the media. Grindstaff should pay more attention as this newspaper, which has a healthy readership in Williamson County, covered the Nejad trial closely.

Nashville Kurds are demanding a public apology from the Williamson County GOP, and they should get a sincere one. This kind of dismissive, insulting charge leveled at an entire immigrant community made up of hard working, honest people is inexcusable.

Gee. You really think so?

Take note: in the future the City Paper may want to avoid the utter hypocrisy of criticizing the Tennessean for failing to attribute one story in the same edition where editors fail to attribute the WilliamsonTNGOP story to bloggers.


UPDATE: The City Paper has interviewed Williamson County Republican Chair Doug Grindstaff in the past. And they couldn't predict that this guy might be magnetic for controversy or spoiling for a fight on culture issues with previous comments to the City Paper like this?

I guess some people don't know tar baby means sticky; it doesn't matter what color it is .... If tar was white, it would still be a tar baby. I don't understand why people don't get a life.

Grindstaff does not sound like the savviest diplomat in the world.

The Latest Racism Spawned in Williamson County

What exactly are they putting in the water in Williamson County, Tennessee that spawns the kind of belligerent prejudice we have seen recently? There was the Williamson County Republicans blaming Nashville's entire Kurdish community for the crimes of two gang members. There was vandalism of a car owned by an African American family in Franklin, Tennessee with racist graffiti telling them to "go back to Africa."

And now comes news via the AP, that Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss from Franklin, Tennessee traveled to what conservatives are ironically calling a "Value Voters Summit" and "briskly" sold boxes of waffle mix with Barack Obama caricatured in a racially and culturally insensitive fashion:

[The waffle box drawing] plays off the old image of the pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.

Placing Obama in Arab-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian. On the back of the box, Obama is depicted in stereotypical Mexican dress, including a sombrero."

Are these Williamson County's best and brightest citizens? Are they typical of what make Williamson County "America's Greatest County"? Are these the kind of values that conservatives at the "Family" Research Council mean when they apply the label, "Value Voters"? Doesn't calling people who deal in racist stereotypes "value voters" amount to Orwellian doublethink ("up is down," "right is left," etc.)? How can they be said to have values properly called human?


UPDATE: Franklin, Tennessee's good ol' boys rationalize their prejudice and the false innuendo they advertise on their mix. It's even more despicable than the AP report let on:

UPDATE: No surprise here but both mix makers have strong conservative evangelical ties. Bob Demoss has collaborated with religious extremist and theocrat, Tim LaHaye. According to his blog, Mark Whitlock has worked with Focus on the Family, which is run by Christian rightwinger James Dobson, who prayed for the weather to impede this year's Democratic National Convention.

DeMoss was unapologetic at the Christianity Today blog:

Does [Obama] have Muslim roots or not? That's a legitimate question. That might offend somebody, but you know what, that's part of the political satire.

Sounds like a page out of the TNGOP playbook to me.


UPDATE: A post celebrating Lou Dobbs' promotion of Obama Waffles has been scrubbed at the obama waffles blog. Not only did the CNN show host buy a box, but he exclaimed that his wife would love it. The story has gone national, hitting newspapers around the country, which is probably more racist-alleging publicity than Lou wanted.

Grind House II: The Revenge of the Kurds

These 8,000 gang members [referring to the Nashville Kurdish community, the largest in the nation], we were the first in line to donate blood when the Sept. 11 tragedy happened .... We're treated worse than second-class citizens. Most of this community has become naturalized citizens and try to earn a decent living.

- -Tennessee Kurdish Community Council member Kovan Murat

The Tennessean follows up on a previous piece on the Williamson Co. Republicans' Chair Doug Grindstaff and his prejudiced TNGOP website commentary that 8,000 Kurds living in Nashville are all responsible for robberies and drug deals. (Grindstaff also writes screeds in the Williamson Herald, which calls itself "The Voice of America's Greatest County.")

Tennessean reporters Chris Echegaray and Harriet Vaughn convey the responses from Kurds who are demanding an apology from Grindstaff. Kovan Murat was quoted as saying that the apology is necessary because Grindstaff's comments were racially motivated.

Grindstaff's puzzling reply yesterday was that he wasn't writing about the Kurds but about the media in writing specifically these words:

There are 8,000 Kurdish immigrants living here in Nashville trying to repay our hospitality by robbing us and dealing drugs.

Does it sound like he's talking about the media? What do 8,000 Kurds have to do with the media's response to two gang member's trial? And as for the media's response, the wife of one of the gang members has a totally different take than Heir Grindstaff. She told the Tennessean:

If anything, I think the media focused on the Kurdish gang and not on the others [in the Nashville Kurdish community].

The Tennessean reporters noted today that Grindstaff's prejudiced commentary was discovered by bloggers. I posted about the targeting of Kurds on WilliamsonTNGOP.com on Monday after finding it on a perusal of the Republican website. It was subsequently picked up by News 2 (thanks Christian Grantham and Tiani Jones) and given more publicity. Here is News 2's exlusive report from Wednesday:

Video Report of Williamson County GOP Racist "Outrage" against Kurds by News 2

Here's the WKRN interview with Isa Tayip of Tennessee Kurdish Community Council. Reporter Tiani Jones tried to reach Williamson County GOP without response. Mr. Tayip warns the GOP that many Kurdish immigrants are citizens who can vote:

The priceless part of Jones' report is when she plays the website recording of the head of the GOP who claims that they are a "big tent" organization that includes people of diverse religions and races. The Williamson County Republicans. Yeah, sure. Their diversity tent is likely huge, if dog houses can be huge.

Here is my original blog post on the story from Monday. Please post and share the video (to get embedding code, click on the envelope icon in the bottom bar and then click on the "grab" button), especially with immigrant communities in Tennessee to keep them informed about Republican Party prejudice and hatred that may be directed their way.


UPDATE: Thanks to Christian Grantham at News 2 for generously linking my post as the "original blog report" on the text version of their story.

Another Case of Nashville Hemorrhaging People to Suburbia

Williamson County residents stake out claims at SigTow.

One of the Stronger Justifications for a Metro Nashville Public Wi-Fi

Our children are at a disadvantage compared to others. Less than 50% have home internet access.

A Williamson County administrator says, "[Williamson County's 89% student internet access] shows that parents value the ability for the children to have information at their fingertips." Or it may show that Williamson County parents have more disposable income per capita than Davidson County parents, who value the ability for their children to have the same information no less than Williamson County parents.

The Boobs In Franklin

Leave it to conservative Williamson County to be thrown into a turmoil over the baby-nurturing, family-bonding act of breast-feeding, which some down there seem to associate with urination or defecation, given that mothers have been banished to bathrooms to feed their babies. The flap over flopping out a tit to furnish food for an infant is furious enough to effectuate legislation to eliminate the filth from un-bra-dled founts. Since when did brandishing mammaries in the name of bringing up baby become opposed to traditional family values? If they really value "discretion," Franklinites should put more effort into making their mall-bopping muffin-top girls wear larger jeans or longer shirts and they should spend less time embarrassing mommies and exiling them to back rooms and furtive nooks.

Justifiable Raise In Ex-Urban Library Fees

The Metro Library Board is going to consider a proposal to raise the library card fee for those who live outside of Davidson County from $25.00 to $40.00, which reportedly constitutes the first increase in the fee since 1989.

This is an entirely reasonable increase given that the fee has not been raised in over a decade and a half. It reflects the current costs of service per person that the library provides the local community. The city's library should serve primarily those who live and pay taxes in the city; if residents from other counties live outside Metro in order to pay lower taxes for less services, they should not expect to leech Metro services without some personal compensation.

Public Schools Respond To Evacuees

Here is a tally so far of public school enrollment of evacuated students from New Orleans:

1. State: 600 (Tennessean)
2. Metro/Davidson County: 100 (Channel 2 News At 10:00 last night)
3. Williamson County: 21 (Channel 2 News At 10:00 last night)
4. Wilson County: Unknown (they may be too busy haggling over the important stuff, like whether stripes should be allowed on students' polo shirts).

Williamson County Government Promotes Christian Church And Encourages Non-Church Goer To Bear False Witness

Yessiree. You read it right. It all started when the government of Williamson County held its first fair in 50 years earlier this month. In and of itself a county fair is a pretty neutral event, right?

Not on Sunday, August 7," which Williamson County declared "Church Day." On "Church Day," Williamson County admitted for free entire Christian families who brought church bulletins to prove their church attendance, while those without church bulletins were charged the regular admission price. The County also provided a parochial group with the County Ag Expo Center so that they could hold a Christian worship service. Synagogue, mosque, and temple goers did not enjoy special promotions or County largesse.

That's only the half of it. Today Yesterday on the local on-line Church-State Forum, a member reported that when he called Williamson County Mayor Rogers Anderson to lodge a complaint, the Chief Executive "indicated" that an alternative for non-church-goers was to print a fake program to gain free admittance to the fair.

Let's put aside the fact that the County Mayor totally missed the point by confusing indignation at unjust and preferential treatment with a personal wish for free admittance. His Honor the Mayor was encouraging someone to bear false witness, to lie, and to cheat the promotion for selfish gain. Does that strike anybody else as un-Christian, and hence, hypocritical?

08/21/2005, 9:00 a.m. Update: It occurred to me during my early morning reflection today that Williamson County's "Church Day" promotion may be discriminating against some Christian denominations. For instance, take the Quakers (a.k.a., Religious Society of Friends--note to younger members of my readership: it has nothing to do with worshipping the popular television show). They do not meet in churches; they have meeting houses. Since they practice the discipline of Quietism during their meetings, I cannot see that there is very much activity or agenda to print up on a bulletin. Bringing a blank sheet of paper as their "church bulletin" to the fair would again be misleading and seemingly un-Christian, since it might force a ticket-taker to turn certain Christian families away from the gate because of their meeting habits.