Compare and Contrast: Conservatives, English Only, and Immigration in the Mayor's Race

[Council Member Eric] Crafton also said the [English Only/First] bill has nothing to do with illegal immigration and that its purpose is simply to reinforce English as the traditional language of our government.

- - Bill Harless conveying Eric Crafton's defense of English Only in the December 5, 2006 City Paper

[Mayoral candidate David] Briley's rhetoric just doesn't match up to his record in the council of being soft on immigration of ALL types. Until now, David Briley NEVER made a distinction about legel [sic] -vs- illegal immigration... in fact, Briley could not even agree that English ought to be the language of the land, and he voted against doing so.

- - "jzcrispgop" (Jon Crisp, Davidson Co. Republican Party Chair) in the comments section of today's City Paper

Waiting on Dean

Here are some questions I posed to the Karl Dean Mayoral Campaign two days ago:

How would Mr. Dean have responded to the Metro Council's news rack regulation bill if he had been Mayor? Would he have vetoed it as Mayor Purcell did? Why or why not?

I am still waiting for answers.

Council Member Pam Murray Is "Exhibit A" in What Is Wrong with the Council's Discretionary Spending

Back in May when the Metro Council's non-profit spending was chugging merrily along, I did not call particular attention to Pam Murray's Resolution No. RS2007-2007 to give $35,750 to a group called NEON (North Edgefield Organized Neighbors), because it was one of a high number of late requests for non-profit spending. Now it appears that, amidst the mud-slinging of the District 5 race reported by Channel 4, Ms. Murray's resolution is classic good-ole-girl patronage, of which I have been warning since the council started spending public discretionary funds on non-profits.

Ms. Murray's close friend, Joyce Stallworth, is on the NEON Board. Ms. Stallworth is reportedly the Secretary of the group. Even if Ms. Murray did not secure the funds based on their friendship, she did not avoid the appearance of impropriety. $35,750 is a lot of money to send to a non-profit, particularly one to which the council member is personally connected. It just does not pass the ethics smell test, in my opinion.

It all stinks. And Ms. Murray's only response to Channel 4 about the ties that brought NEON $35,750 in public tax dollars was to say that she is not using those ties to win the campaign; as if giving $35,750 to one's own pet organization is not problematic in itself.

By the way, Ms. Murray sponsored a passed resolution in 2005 that sent $56,666.66 to NEON. Ms. Murray's current opponent, Sam McCullough was Executive Director of NEON in 2005. Also, there were other Council Members currently running for office who co-sponsored Ms. Murray's NEON largess: in 2005, current Vice Mayoral candidate Diane Neighbors co-sponsored the $56,666 resolution; in 2007, current Council 10 incumbent Rip Ryman co-sponsored the $35,750 resolution. With all of the tax-money going to support a private organization, I would think that NEON ought to be doing well for itself and it need never worry about fund-raising.

City Paper Update on Germantown Overlay

NCP says that Metro Council could consider the historic overlay in the fall.

Charlie Tygard's Latest Ethics Dilemma

Sean Braisted notes that Mr. Tygard, who is currently a term-limited district council member, has decided to run for "re-election" as an at-Large council member on his campaign signs. That is fairly clear campaign misrepresentation.

Charlie Tygard is the same at-Large candidate who issued a letter to the press promising to keep campaign signs out of the public right-of-way and off "school, church, or park properties." I am keeping my eyes peeled to see if his campaign is living by that pledge. If you spot a Tygard campaign sign on a public right-of-way, take a photo of it and send it to me. If it clearly violates his pledge, I'll post your photo here on Enclave.

Tennessean Endorses Gilmore for 19; Wants to Clean House in Other District Endorsements

It looks like the Tennessean is in a "throw the bums out" kind of mood with a number of its endorsements of challengers over incumbents running for District Metro Council Seats. After last year's Council performance, I cannot say that I disagree with them.

There Are No Absolutes?

While not rabid, I am a Star Wars fan. One of my favorite scenes in the whole motion picture series is one during the final epic battle between the Jedi (George Lucas' good guys) and the Sith (his evil ones) on volcanic planet where a young Obi-Wan Kenobi beats and disfigures Darth Vader in hand-to-hand combat, even after the Jedi have already lost the war.

The reason that it is my favorite scene is because in my opinion it deconstructs every distinction that Director Lucas has created between the Jedi and the Sith, good and evil. In the scene, Obi-Wan tells Darth, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." Obi-Wan's telling itself is an absolute, which by implication makes him an evil Sith. I don't know whether Lucus' intention was to open up this aporia in the movie, but once it opened, there is no closing it. The line between good and evil is vague when everyone deals in absolutes, but some refuse to see it.

In the comments section of a previous post, I am contending with a highly intelligent economist who has challenged my moral theory that human action should be judged by some categorical (that is, absolute) imperatives. First, I maintain this primarily because all of us who make value-based judgments deal in categoricals (even the claim, "we should never or rarely use categoricals," is itself applied categorically or absolutely). It was unavoidable that Obi-Wan himself had to absolutize his judgment in order to condemn Darth Vader. He was wrong in distancing himself from his own categoricals.

Second, I argue that there are some categorical imperatives, because you have to hold a categorical imperative to believe that human rights are inalienable and that human nature is inviolable at a profound level. Even if the absolute claim that there are few if any universals or absolute ideals by which to judge human behavior were true, a life that may already be "nasty, brutish, and short" would be infinitely more horrible to contemplate as it is infinitely more horrible whenever it happens.

So, even if there are no categoricals (except the categorical that there are no categoricals), I have faith that human beings have to invent them just to bar all of the extraordinary and mundane inhumanities that can be unleashed upon one another.

Over A Quarter Million Page Loads and Counting

At some point in the past week Enclave passed 250,000 page loads. Thanks to all who dropped by.

The Best Reason for Voting for One for Whom I Will Not Be Voting

I have got to hand it to Carol McCullough for the best argument that I have read for supporting a candidate whom I do not support:

To me, the main distinction between the two is: Diane Neighbors is progressive, but not grassroots. Carolyn Baldwin Tucker is grassroots, but not progressive. So, the question becomes, Which matters more to the office of Vice Mayor?

For me, in the end, I'm going with the grassroots. Progressive, in this instance, is about political positions. Grassroots is about process. The Vice Mayor sets the tone for the Council. The level of discussion and debate heard, the level of public participation encouraged are to some measure controlled by the person in that seat. Committee chairmanship is also determined by the Vice Mayor. Who will get appointed? Pro-development members or recently recruited neighborhood leaders (there are several running this term--Yay!).

What keeps me from supporting either of the candidates is the chance that I lay somewhere in the middle of the continuum between clear grassroots sensibilities and unshakable progressive ideas.

However, while I admire Ms. McCullough's argument, I do not go along with her belief that Ms. Tucker will be adroit at handling debate. I've watched her for a long time in Council Meetings and she is not as sharp as a Vice Mayor should be on using parliamentary procedure. I think that the meetings will be more chaotic and long with her as Chair.

Having said that, I admit to sharing Ms. McCullough's concerns about Ms. Neighbors' seemingly cozy relationship to developers at odds with neighborhoods. We need to keep a close eye on her committee appointments. Those are the hammer positions that can cause the growth pendulum to swing too far in the direction of untrammelled, roughshod development.

This Type of Mistake Gives Self-Important Mainstream Editors More Fodder Against Bloggers

A couple of days ago a commenter to V-Squared wondered in print:

Don’t you wonder if Briley had voted differently on the numerous unmaintained newstands littering certain sidewalks in Nashville that the Tennessean endorsement [for Karl Dean instead of David Briley] might have gone a different way? Somehow I have to think the two are connected.

The only way that comment makes any sense to me is if the commenter assumes that David Briley voted for the news rack regulation bill (that Mayor Purcell vetoed), and if he or she assumes that the Tennessean was using Mr. Briley's supposed support of newsrack regulation against him.

If such is what the commenter (and, in his re-posting, V-Squared Captain AC Kleinheider) intended, then the comment is in error. Here is the roll call vote on the passage of the news rack regulation bill:


David Briley clearly voted against the news rack bill and his own campaign manager, Mike Jameson, who was the bill's primary sponsor. So, if Mr. Briley would have voted differently, then he would have voted against the Tennessean, which opposed the regulation. How would that have gained him an endorsement?

We can criticize the Tennessean for a lot of things, but their endorsements so far do not necessarily suggest that they are using the news rack regulation as a litmus test for endorsements. While they endorsed Diane Neighbors (who abstained from voting without an explanation) against Carolyn Baldwin Tucker (who voted for the bill), they endorsed John Summers (who voted "yes") for at-Large and they did not endorse Buck Dozier (even though he abstained from voting without an explanation).

Tennessean Endorses Megan Barry

According to the editors:

She brings a sense of ethics to the table, having served on the Metro Council Board of Ethical Conduct and in developing ethics programs in business. She is campaigning on a platform that includes ethics and transparency in government. Barry brings a level of enthusiasm that should serve the council well.

Does This Mean That "The Call" Wasn't Really Called?

Someday you will all return to the "Mother Church."
Quoniam tu solus Sanctus.

(Who doesn't love those hot latin lyrics?)

You are accused of heresy on three, uh, four counts!

District 19 Candidate Blogs About North End Problems She Would Have Fixed

Last week Freda Player blogged a list of "smaller housekeeping" problems she saw in Morgan Park and Salemtown that she believes need to be fixed. The items included fixing a broken water fountain at Morgan Park, repairing a broken window at the park's Community Center, and restringing some dangling power-line rubber over a sidewalk on 6th Avenue. That is great retail politics from a candidate. It also shows that she has been pounding our neighborhood sidewalks.

District 19 Candidates Discuss Issues with Salemtown and Germantown

A great crowd showed up for tonight's Metro Council District 19 candidates' forum, which ended up lasting almost 2 hours with the 5 candidates (l-r, facing the camera: Freda Player, David Shaw, Erica Gilmore, Keith Pitts, and Janice Davis) answering a number of unscripted audience questions in a relatively free give-and-take format. The forum got rave reviews from several of the candidates and many in the audience afterwards.

This was definitely a worthy event, which would have been a shame not to have held. We were concerned about the turn-out in the beginning, because the forum conflicted with a Germantown wine-and-cheese event, but the numbers were what some of us here had hoped they would be. With few exceptions, Salemtown Neighbors was definitely in the house. Thanks to all of the candidates for taking time out of their busy schedules to meet with us!

Crafton's Problematic Campaign Post Card

Now that I have actually seen one of Eric Crafton's campaign post cards with School Board Director Marsha Warden's thank-you note, my opinion that Mr. Crafton should not have reprinted the note on his campaign literature is more strongly held. There is also another problem with the post card. The Nashville Public Schools letterhead appearing on the candidate's campaign correspondence can give the impression of the School District's endorsement, in my opinion.

At the very least, he should have asked Ms. Warden's permission to reprint her comments expressly for his campaign, and he should have scrubbed the Nashville Public Schools letterhead completely from the post card if she permitted the reprinting. Not only could it give the impression that the Public Schools administration endorses his candidacy, but it is also inconsistent with his past criticism via the secretive organization "Save Our Schools" that Metro spends too much money on our students.

It is too late to recall the printed post cards, but Mr. Crafton should express responsibility for creating any misperception of endorsements of his candidacy by Ms. Warden or by Nashville Public Schools. He should extend public regrets for sending the card out. That seems the bare minimum to me.

Above and beyond that baseline, I also think that he should take responsibility for his past comments concerning spending too much money on public education and for his 2006 vote for Kay Brooks as a trojan-horse board member in an orchestrated attempt to take money away from our public schools. Why he is not sending post cards out advertising his support of a home-schooler to sit on the School Board and his participation in "Save Our Schools?"


UPDATE: No surprise here. Home-schooling blogger Kay Brooks has repayed Eric Crafton's support of her in 2006 by going to bat for him on her blog against Marsha Warden in the post card flap. She also takes swipes at Mr. Crafton's District 22 opponent, Julie Lamb, whom she connects to Ms. Warden. Maybe Mr. Crafton can use Kay Brooks' comments on his next post card mailer, unless he just prefers to distance himself from any part of the 2006 trojan horse attack on public schools.

Above Shelby Bottoms II

Eastwood Neighborhood Overlay Up for Public Hearing Tonight

I will not get to watch a lot of tonight's Metro Council Meeting because of the District 19 candidates forum this evening in Germantown, but one of the bills up for Public Hearing (and Second Reading) is Mike Jameson's Eastwood Neighborhood Conservation Overlay Ordinance. I do not know what the length of support or opposition to this ordinance is. Anyone else know?

"My First Michael Moore Post" or "CNN Needs Double the Proctologists Now that He Tore Them Another One"

Michael Moore appeared on CNN to answer Wolf Blitzer and Sanjay Gupta's Reality Check on his new movie SiCKO and corporate criticism of it. He turned it around in the live interview (and later on-line) to give them a whopping dose of reality himself.

HT to R. Neal, who in an earlier post shared his family's harrowing treatment at the hands of a health insurance corporation who publicly claims to be trying to reduce the number of uninsured.

If you read this and feel thankful that you are insured, just keep in mind that you are probably just an interoffice memo or a balance sheet away from being among the throng of uninsured in America. Hence, advocating for the uninsured and the underinsured is essentially protecting yourself, too:

The [health insurance] system is broken, and they know it. Now they're just scrambling to keep their jobs.

That second point about "working together to reduce the number of uninsured" is a cruel joke. This same company refused to write me an individual policy at any price at any deductible. They would, however, write my company a policy that covers me. That's because there's no state law in Tennessee that requires them to write individual policies, but they are required to offer employer group plans. I'm not sure what I would have done if I wasn't self employed with the means to pay the company premiums.

Prior to that, we had an individual policy that got canceled when the company decided to get out of the health insurance business and sold the policy group to another company. The new company said everyone would have to reapply but gave assurances of continued coverage. They canceled our policy and denied our new application without any explanation.

At the time that policy was canceled, we had paid approx. $100,000 in premiums over eighteen years or so, with a net present value of approx. $250,000 based on the S&P 500 rate of return during that period. The policy had a $10,000 deductible (I thought it was $5,000, but the Mrs. corrected me). They never paid out a single penny because we never filed a claim, and still haven't to this day.

We would have been better off opting out of the system and stashing the money in a mutual fund for a rainy medical day. But that's what you get for trying to be responsible and for playing a game with the deck stacked in favor of big corporations.

Eric Crafton Accused of Campaign Impropriety

The City Paper reports* that lightning-rod Council Member Eric Crafton has been accused of printing a thank-you note from Metro School Board Chair Marsha Warden on to his campaign literature as if to suggest that she is endorsing him in his race to keep his Bellevue council seat. She was thanking him for what I have called his "gravitas."

Milking a common courtesy for political gain may be just a minor faux pas on Mr. Crafton's part, but his eventual response (Ms. Warden had tried to reach him by phone and e-mail several times) sounds practically ungracious:

As councilmembers, we don’t get a lot of thanks for the job we do. … It’s a thankless job many times, and I appreciate her thanking me.

On the one hand, I am aware of widely shared letters and e-mails to Council Members that thank them for their service to the community, and I wouldn't call the job "thankless." I do not think Council Members should take even one note of thanks for granted. On the other hand, if one campaigns for Metro Council with the expectation that one will be thanked after one is elected, then perhaps one should consider some other line of public service where praise is more forthcoming. Perhaps Metro Council is just plain hard work (a reward in itself?) that is not worth the price of the pay or the degree of expressed appreciation.

__________________
*I cannot link the NCP's story, because of the user-unfriendly changes they made to their website. So, you're on your own finding it; if you figure it out, please come back and teach me.

District 19 Candidates Come to Discuss Their Differences with North End Neighbors Tonight

Salemtown and Germantown folk gather to engage District 19 candidates Janice Davis, Erica Gilmore, Keith Pitts, Freda Player, and David Shaw at Assumption Church School Building (corner of 7th and Monroe) tonight at 6:30 p.m. See you there.