Roll Call Vote on Last Night's Motion to Defer Controversial Hermitage PUD

Below is the breakdown of votes from the Council's deferral of J.B. Loring's and Harold White's bill to allow a medical building to expand beyond what it had originally proposed when it first moved into the Hermitage neighborhood, which is learning that if you let the camel's nose under the tent at first, the whole animal is bound to push its way in eventually.

First, here's how the candidates running for office in August voted. Mayoral candidate David Briley voted to defer, as did Vice Mayoral candidate Carolyn Baldwin Tucker. Mayoral candidate Buck Dozier, who is consistently pro-business expansion at the expense of neighborhoods, voted against deferral. At-Large candidates Charlie Tygard and Loring voted against deferral.

The 15 council members (with the exception of new member Jim Hodge) who voted against Sam Coleman's deferral for more community feedback, seem to qualify as a consistently pro-business, ambivalent-toward-neighborhoods block:

• Dozier
• Michael Craddock
• Jason Hart
• Jim Forkum
• Rip Ryman
• Feller Brown
• Jim Gotto
• Carl Burch
• Loring
• Ed Whitmore
• Eric Crafton
• Randy Foster
• Jim Hodge
• Parker Toler
• Tygard

The only surprise in the group that voted to defer was Ludye Wallace, who generally votes with the block that voted against deferral. I'm sure Ludye will come back around on March 20, after co-sponsors make little or no effort to address community concerns. Here is the group of 22 voting for deferral of the re-zoning and on behalf of concerned residents:

• Tucker
• Briley
• Adam Dread
• Brenda Gilmore
• Jamie Isabel
• Lisa Hunt
• Pam Murray
• Mike Jameson
• Erik Cole
• Anna Page
• Ginger Hausser
• Wallace
• Billy Joe Walls
• Emily Evans
• John Summers
• Jim Shulman
• Greg Adkins
• Jason Alexander
• Vivian Wilhoite
• Coleman
• Robert Duvall
• Lynn Williams

Absent: White, Diane Neighbors, and Ronnie Greer

This is one of those votes we should keep in mind at election time, especially as it is a strike against candidates Dozier, Tygard, and Loring, unless they change their tune on March 20.

Only Third Reading Stands between Core and Werthan-Proximate Development

Core Development's re-zoning proposal for the mixed-use development on 8th Avenue across Hume Street from Werthan Lofts came out the other side of last night's Public Hearing unscathed and it passed Council's second reading. Looks like it is in the bag.

Metro Council's "Meals for Deals Reprised" Ethics Bill Deferred Indefinitely

And properly so.

That Popping Ain't Corks

[T]he housing industry in 2007 may be where technology was in early 2001—engaged in the first serious hard times the industry had seen in more than a decade, finally aware of the problem, but still a long way from the bottom.

- - Slate's Daniel Gross

Enclave commenter CE Petro updates us on the "fizzle" in the Knoxville housing market bubble after the jump.

While CCA Gives Convicted Criminals ESPN and Pizza in West Tennessee, It Imprisons Innocent Children for Profit in Central Texas

According to the Texas Observer blog, Corrections Corporation of America--which was spotlighted in this morning's Tennessean--is getting paid for incarcerating the innocent children of immigrants who have fled violence or persecution in their home countries and landed in Texas. In spite of the fact that CCA is billing the the US immigration enforcement agency $3 million a month for detaining these children, detainees of all ages tell the Observer:

• Kids spend 10-11 hours each day in a cell where they are not allowed to have toys or even crayons.
• Guards frequently threaten children with separation from their parents.
• Just like a “regular” prison, there’s no privacy in the cells. Kids have to go to the bathroom in front of their parents and vice versa, a deeply humiliating experience in some cultures.
• Sick children often do not receive prompt or adequate medical care.
• The food is unpalatable and foreign; meals last only 10-20 minutes. As a result, kids frequently undergo rapid weight loss.

Our tax money is apparently paying private corrections corporations for mistreating children and spoiling convicted criminals.

Tonight's Council Meeting and the Continuing Conflict between Automobile-Friendly Expansion and Maintaining Walkable Neighborhoods

One of the more riveting portions of tonight's Public Hearing Council Meeting was the debate over keeping a Donelson-Hermitage neighborhood pedestrian-friendly vs. allowing a medical building to expand and make the neighborhood subject to more automobile traffic. At stake was the Planning Department's 2004 sub-area design plan, to which neighbors in the area had contributed the goal of keeping their neighborhood walkable and protecting it from automobile traffic.

Council Members J.B. Loring and Harold White (who was absent) had introduced a bill to re-zone a property to allow a medical building to add a third floor and expand their parking lot. The Planning Commission--which includes J.B. Loring in what has to be the most glaring conflicts of interest in all of Metro--approved the bill 6-4, even though the Planning Department opposed its passage based on the 2004 sub-area plan. Most of the public proponents of the bill seemed to be principals in the construction project. The public opponents were residents, property owners, and a Baptist pastor.

One of the public opponents summed up the bill's problems best: why does Planning and Metro Council waste Metro citizens' time by asking them to help formulate sub-area plans, approving those plans, and then kick-turning later to make exceptions for powerful business interests? Council Member Jason Alexander summed up the primary sponsor's problems best after the Public Hearing: why does Mr. White always have to bring bills controversial with his constituents to Metro Council? The television shot of the public gallery behind Mr. Loring summed up his problem best: if bill co-sponsors had allowed what Mr. Loring called "ample time for community meetings" to discuss the bill, then why were all of the public opponents in the first two rows--even the Baptist pastor--shaking their heads "no" and looking at each other incredulously while he was saying it?

During debate over whether to pass the bill, Mr. Loring first made himself seem like he was only standing in for Mr. White. Then after further questioning, he said that he did not know of community meetings himself, but Mr. White had told him that community meetings were held. Then when it became clear that there was significant opposition from other Council Members--Sam Coleman and Carolyn Baldwin Tucker leading the charge quite admirably--he said that he had attended one community meeting himself. I was impressed with the shifts he was making to try and get the bill passed: playing both the errand-boy and the lead-man.

Eventually, Mr. Coleman moved to have the bill deferred one meeting so that bill co-sponsors could address public concerns with their bill. Mr. Loring immediately moved to table Mr. Coleman's motion. The tabling motion was defeated. The Council then voted in favor of deferring second reading of the bill until the March 20 Council Meeting. In spite of the Council-supported delay, I do not like the odds of Mr. Loring and Mr. White coming out of their cocoons with tycoons and giving those shaking-head constituents a fair hearing.

Lower Broad Historic Overlay Sails Through Public Hearing and Metro Council's Second Reading

Next up: March 20th third reading for final approval.

Without Question, The Worst North Nashville Blog

The Tennessean and reporter Lea Ann Overstreet have made perhaps the worst effort I've ever seen to blog Nashville/Davidson Co. North. Their effort is more like an afterthought than an attempt to be taken seriously by a North End audience. Ms. Overstreet's blogging is spotty and sporadic and her blog has recently become a spam magnet, inundated with advertising commenters.

After she took a development story last week that first appeared on Enclave without proper attribution and spun it promotionally, I left the following comment:

Ms. Overstreet: Your somewhat promotional piece of Steve Yokley's planned developments in the Feb. 28 edition failed to point out that much of what people are reading in the "neighborhood blog" was taken straight from e-mails that passed between Salemtown residents and Metro officials and at least one e-mail that Mr. Yokley sent directly to me. By quoting Mr. Yokley's comments about a "neighborhood blog," without presenting what was actually on the "neighborhood blog," your story makes it seem like that "neighborhood blog" simply fabricated information about Schoene Ansicht, which is in fact false. You also failed completely to source your article back to the "neighborhood blog," which is where you originally picked the story up as you intimate above. I hope that this is not the unbalanced, unsourced kind of neighborhood reporting that the Tennessean intends for the North End in the future.

Indeed, if proper attribution and fact-checking set real journalists apart from "pajama journalists" as

bellows, then Ms. Overstreet seems more of a blogger than a journalist, but she does not even seem to maintain her blog. I did not receive a response to my comment and nobody besides spammers--whom she does not seem to feel the need to control--is reading it as far as I can tell.

Crafton's Sidewalk Bill Deferred

Last night Charlie Tygard moved--on an absent Eric Crafton's behalf--to defer the controversial sidewalk bill until the May public hearing. Council approved.

Another Media Source Reports Connections Between Anti-Immigration and Race Supremacist Groups

I took some blog-generated heat here, here, and here recently for a source I quoted in addressing the race-based roots of English Only. This morning, NPR has a report linking traditional supremacist groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) to anti-immigration. It also underscored links between racists and self-styled "moderate" groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which was actually promoted as legitimate by one of my critics. NPR reports that FAIR recently met with leaders of a European organization that the Belgian Supreme Court has declared as racist. CCC (and the "stink" thereof) helped organize the European leaders' visit to America. Listen to the entire NPR piece, because it includes a recording of an anti-immigration meeting last year in which Phil Valentine got a loud, enthusiastic ovation from Nashvillians when he called for shooting illegal immigrants. Nativist backlash: there's an attractive image of Nashville broadcast around the country.

Pawning Prison

We deserve the idiocy we get when we allow marketing principles to be applied to public institutions and specifically to corrections. Prison amenities mean mucho motsa for private firms pimping for public poppy. For Tennessee, they mean California's incarcerated looking for an extended resort stay. "The promised land of prisons" with a Marketing Moses in a "niche" industry; let's all go live there.

New North End Delivery Option: My Dad's Pizza

If you live in the North End, you know that your food delivery options are slim pickings. For the longest time Downtown's Tazza (near 5th & Church) has been the only eatery delivering to our neck of the woods. Beggars can't be choosers, but Tazza is only so-so in my book. Their motto is "It means fresh," but I was never particularly impressed with the freshness of their food.

And then there were two. And I like the second much better than the first. My Dad's Pizza (northwest Nashville on Buchanan near 14th) offers free delivery to the North End. Last week we had a pizza from My Dad's, which was good and had really fresh ingredients on an able crust.

Tonight we ordered a couple of their Mediterranean dishes, which they advertise as "signature tastes of Jerusalem," including the "Fattet Homos Feast" (which is only available on Mondays) and "Kofta Betheeni." The Fattet Homos is a layered dish, which has an amazing taste combination of ground lamb, roasted almonds, and parsley on the top. The middle layers are homos and yogurt, and I have to say the homos (or hummus) is as good as any that I've had in Nashville. Those topmost layers cover a bed of crispy pita wedges, which were my least favorite part, basically because they seemed to have a lot of oil (deep fried?). The Kofta Betheeni is a dish of meatballs smothered in tahini (sesame paste). This was the first time I've had warm tahini, and I was not disappointed. The meatballs were a little salty for my tastes, and I would probably settle for just one or two in the future, because I am not used to a lot of sodium. Both dishes come with kibbeh (a meat stuffed wheat pocket; cooked, not raw) and "tabooli," which is the best tabouli I've had in Nashville. The tomatoes were ripe, the parsley was fresh, and the lemon juice was tangy without being overwhelming. Fresh, undrenched, springy parsley is the key to excellent tabouli in my opinion.

So, I recommend My Dad's Pizza to my neighbors who are looking for a delivery option beyond mediocre Tazza. Be ready to be asked to call My Dad's back after you finish your meal, because they asked us on both of our delivery occasions to do so to give them feedback. That was also a fresh change of pace. Otherwise, it's nice to have a decent pizza delivery here and one that serves authentic Mediterranean is a big boost.

Walter Reed is Military, Not VA

Associations of the horrible conditions and lack of oversight at Walter Reed Military Hospital with the Veterans Administration Hospital System are erroneous, points out Ezra Klein:

The VA system has made remarkable strides in the past decade, and is now the best hospital system in the nation, beating out such gold standard institutions as the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics. As Phil Longman writes, "A RAND Corporation study published in the The Annals of Internal Medicine concludes that the VA outperforms all other sectors of American health care in 294 measures of quality. In awarding the VA a top prize in 2006 for innovation in government, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government gushed that "While the costs of healthcare continue to soar for most Americans, the VA is reducing costs, reducing errors, and becoming the model for what modern health care management and delivery should look like." The military hospitals, sadly, have not enjoyed the same rennaisance.

Some apologists for privatizing government functions are painting the problems with a broad brush across government-funded medical care in general. As has been pointed out, Walter Reed's problems seem to start with privatization; and perhaps the horrid treatment of soldiers might be traced back to the way the Department of Defense has been run for the past 6 years.

The Price of Concrete Rises and Crafton Wants to Fix Developers' Sidewalk Charges

I've talked to a number of developers over the past year who almost unanimously agree that one of the reasons why building prices are skyrocketing is the increasing price of concrete. Yet, Metro Council member Eric Crafton intends to continue to push a bill--tonight through Public Hearing--that would fix developers' prices for installing sidewalks as a substitute for using the Department of Public Works' equation of the "average linear foot sidewalk project cost." I've already pointed to the unethical conflict of interest in Crafton's sponsorship of this bill. But do conservatives like Crafton only abide by the "laws of supply and demand" when it is convenient for them to do so? By the way, the Planning Commission disapproved (7-1) this bill in October.

Civility Warning: This Video Includes Conservatives Cussing

Disclaimer: I don't necessarily support every interview tactic used by Max Blumenthal in this video. For example, chasing down Michelle Malkin after she walked away bordered on harrassment. Plus, it was more powerful just to watch her take off.

HT: American Prospect

Worse than Coulter: Gingrich's New Katrina Blame Game

Chris Kromm has the details on Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's hurricane victim-blaming at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which ecclipsed Ann Coulter's "faggot" remarks in its lack of civility to people whose lives were destroyed by post-Katrina flooding. Kromm also provides the complete run-down on the facts concerning why the Lower Ninth Ward residents did not evacuate, which had very little to do with them being bad citizens or generally just stupid.

Is That a Popping Sound I Hear?

Check out Bubble Meter, "a blog dedicated to the premise that there is a Housing Bubble in many locales in the USA." While the blog attempts to be national in scope, it focuses specifically on the Washington DC Metro Area. Even more interesting is its list of links to regional sites that focus on the possible pop in the housing markets said to be overdue. Neither Tennessee nor Nashville are listed, yet, although I would bet that there are bloggers here trained on the bubble.

Illegal Immigrants Get Them Stomping

As long as this morning's Tennessean needs to hitch to Eric Crafton's recent celebrity: we need not call Eric Crafton a racist in order to consider the racist intentions of English Only and First. It has already been pointed out that Jim Crow voting laws discriminated against black voters without ever mentioning them specifically or the general idea of race. English Only and First does the same thing. I don't think that you have to be a racist to support racist policies; you only need to be an opportunist. George Wallace proved that to be true. From PBS's The American Experience:

When [George] Wallace turned to the politics of race one of his supporters who was horrified, said, "George, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?" And Wallace, sadly he thought, said, "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about n*****s, and they stomped the floor."

Illegal immigration also fires up voters, even at the local level, where little can be done because local government is mostly about service delivery. Demagoguery in the 2K-aughts is not that different from the demagoguery of the 1950s.

Privatization of Veterans Medical Services May Have Caused Bleak Neglect at Walter Reed

An internal memo divulges that the Defense Department systematically replaced federal workers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with private companies for facilities management, patient care, and guard duty beginning in 2000. President Bush's "competitive sourcing" initiative, which began in 2002, accelerated the process. The company of a former senior Halliburton official enjoyed a $120-million contract at Walter Reed. The memo indicates that officials at the highest levels of the U.S. Army Medical Command were informed about the dangers of privatization, even as skilled government workers were leaving Walter Reed in droves, yet they did very little to prevent the problems that exploded in national media after a February WaPo exposé.

It would seem that if you support running government like a business, then you don't support proper medical care for our wounded soldiers.

Accursed Timing

Two days after a local Republican ex-State Senate candidate dropped a steaming pile of confusion between interpersonal civility and refined language by saying less cussing on the right side of the blogosphere amounts to greater civility on the right side of the blogosphere, right-wing drama queen Ann Coulter buried the pile and shuffled dust over it with comments about Democratic candidate John Edwards. Coulter called Edwards a "faggot" in the disparaging style that the word is often meant by the homophobic among us, and she did so to the ovations of the Conservative Political Action Conference on the same agenda with the 2008 Republican Party Presidential Candidates. Explain the civility Coulter's use of "faggot" for me please.


UPDATE: It appears that our one-time Republican candidate wants to have it both ways. First, He argues that the Conservative Political Action Conference is moderate as reflected in a straw poll. Then, ignoring his own comments about how conservatives are so much more civil than liberals and the fact that Ann Coulter was invited to throw her red meat to the Conference among the 2008 Republican candidates, he argues that Ms. Coulter is not popular with Republicans, based on his survey of--get this--blogs. Then he compares Ms. Coulter to Jesse Jackson, which--even with Rev. Jackson's faults--is a strained analogy when one considers Ms. Coulter's lack of civility.