A Bow, A Wave, A Smile

You caught me. I haven't gone back and cleaned up the typos, etc., in the previous posts of early in the week as I promised. Nor have I done that analysis of the CA's endorsements. Nor have I gotten to "Meltdown in Nashville," by our namesake, Jackson Baker. I'm sorry, but the workload prohibits it, unless I want to sacrifice other parts of my life. Only if this blog takes off, heaven forfend!

That's all for tonight. I'm off to prepare for the big push tomorrow. Y'all be good, ya heah?

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

The Stuff You Learn Just By Looking It Up, Part Two

While researching the story just below, I ran across this link to an article titled "Options for Closing the State Budget Deficit: What Now?" It is a report from a forum held in Concord, New Hampshire.

Why do Tennesseans care? Well, there's this excellent observation by the author, J. Mark Lennon:

This event dramatized the stark contrast between New Hampshire's fiscal situation as viewed from within the state - or more accurately, from inside the State House - and from the outside. "What now?" from the outside appeared to have some compelling and straight-forward answers. "What now?" from within appeared to have no answer at all.

But it's one forum participant, and his own comments, that compel. Tennessee's own Richard Fox, UT Professor of choice for the Sundquist administration for his constant doom-and-gloom pronouncements and wildly innacurate economic predictions. Fox's remarks need no further comments from me.

William Fox, who closed the forum, provided a message as clear and recognizable as Raphael's. Fox first pointed out that his home state, Tennessee, ranks 50th in the nation in the proportion of income taken in state and local taxes. New Hampshire ranks 49th. Tennessee has raised a variety of tax rates 60 times in the past 20 years to meet obligations; it still faces a serious structural budget deficit; and it recently saw its bond rating downgraded by two of the three major rating agencies. New Hampshire has done the same, faces the same, and may experience the same result.

Professor Fox's suggestion: Don't try to fund a predictable structural deficit with the Tennessee patchwork. Identify a revenue source that tends to track increases in spending requirements: one that doesn't grow too fast (encourages free spending); one that doesn't grow too slow (the structural deficit will return); one that's not exposed to excessive cyclical variation (too much money in good years, panic and deficits during downturns); one that's got a broad base and doesn't hammer on one segment of the economy. Use this source to fund baseline spending requirements.

Fox pointedly didn't recommend a specific tax to fill this prescription in New Hampshire. He did, however, point out the pros and cons of several major alternatives. A progressive income tax: meets many of the criteria, but tends to grow too rapidly. Sales tax: typically over-reliant on big-ticket items, exposed to large cyclical downturns, and typically fails to match increases in spending (leading to rate creep or returning deficits). A low, flat income tax: meets criteria of broad base, predictable growth generally equivalent to spending growth, capture of economic strength. Gross receipts tax: can work, can have broad base, best if rate kept low. Business taxes: narrow focus, exposed to dramatic cyclical downturns (and New Hampshire's business taxes are already very high in a nationwide comparison).

The Fox bottom line: A temporary hodge-podge of smaller taxes and tax increases don't solve the problem. Structural deficits will recur if they're not fixed with a structural solution, and the temporary fixes will be harder and harder to come by. There are no perfect taxes, only a selection of options, each with strengths and weaknesses. But a lasting structural solution is preferable to the patchwork alternative.

Ohhh, alright. You knew I couldn't resist!

Fox says a progressive income tax "grows too rapidly." In English, the goverment will soon be awash in taxpayer money sufficient to fund all sorts of extravagance. He recommends a flat tax. But ask yourself this:

Do you for one minute believe that the Democrats, and their running dogs in the press, will for one moment let any IT stay flat? Or do you think, as I believe, that cries of "unfair tax burdens" will soon ring out from the Mississippi to the Appalachians?

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

Read For Yourself

Bill Hobbs, see link to the left, has been writing excellently on the gymnastic moves by Finance Commissioner Dr. Neel to paint good economic and revenue news as bad. Hobbs sometimes references the numbers Neel uses, and his dodge-and-weave language. You can read the report itself, and I strongly encourage you to do so, at:

http://www.comptroller.state.tn.us/investor/jun02revenue.pdf

The next report, for July and the fiscal year itself, is due in a week's time. It will be interesting to see what Neel does with that expected good news.

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

The Stuff You Learn Just By Looking It Up

Remember the flap during the Income Tax War about how the State's "revenue problem" led Moody's and Fitch's to lower the State's bond rating? The CA certainly played it up.

But this story, via the Associated Press' Karin Miller, another foot-soldier in the pro-IT journalism army, paints a different picture. She cites almost verbatim from the State Comptroller's Office's terse report, which referenced a Moody's report that was released way back on July 18th, and is not now accessible on the Moody's site. Why did it take so long for this story to come out?

Her article repeats the old story:

The state relies heavily on consumption-based taxes such as the sales tax that don't grow at the same rate as the economy, the agency said in its rating update.

Then she almost immediately contradicts the Comptroller:

"Near-term economic growth is expected to generate sufficient revenue to balance expenditures for the next few years," Moody's said.

But then comes this (slight) puzzler:

Standard & Poor's took similar action earlier in the week, removing the state from credit watch, keeping its general obligation bonds rated at AA and saying the long-term outlook remains negative.

Similar? Removing us from credit watch? That's better news!

And it still remains that after the worst, most bruising battle ever in the Legislature, resulting in the penny sales tax increase that the State's papers call every bad name in the book, in the failure of the IT that every paper called our salvation, that we still maintain our rating. There's a disconnect here.

Until 2000, Tennessee had been one of just nine states with the top credit rating - AAA - from all three major agencies.

The year that Governor Sundquist's ever-growing budgets got caught by the recession.

It was lowered a year after Tennessee lawmakers began balancing the books with a series of accounting gimmicks and the use of nonrecurring funds.

A year later? Where's the causal connection then?

"Accounting gimmicks" that the citizens, and the papers, decried, but they did anyway. And by not reining in spending, but increasing it.

Then comes this zinger from Fitch's:

"With the passage of the 2002-2003 budget which increased taxes, it would appear that the state of Tennessee will be able to return to structural balance, assuming revenue estimates are reasonably realized," Fitch said in its report.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiit! Isn't our budget described by the papers as "structurally flawed?" Seems the pros think differently.

In trying to locate the Moody's and Fitch's reports directly, I was unsuccessful. However, I did locate a fascinating Moody's report on the health of Tennessee cities and counties. It paints a good and very different picture than the one we're used to hearing from the papers. I strongly encourage readers to check it out.

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

Greetings to the Folks at the Commercial Appeal!

Does someone at the CA read Half-Bakered? Have we arrived so soon? Or do great minds think alike?

In a previous post, titled "How Soon They Forget," I wrote about the CA's story on proposed rules to prevent "cruising," or "flexing" as the young folks call it today. I made an analogy using American Graffiti, the classic movie on cruising. Well, in Saturday's lead editorial, the editors use the same analogy!

The editorial blames flexers for traffic problems downtown, citing the city's failure to provide adequate parking, traffic control and streets. Yep, pack the downtown with stuff to draw people in and then blame them when things get crowded in an area where the city hasn't adequately addressed fundamental issues.

The problems flexers really pose are three-fold:

* First, they are young, black and culturally different from the majority white population that lives in, develops and profits from the downtown. Guess who loses?

* Second, they don't spend money. Therefore, they have no need to be there, of course.

* Third, I still maintain my point from the original post, one still not acknowledged in the CA editorial. That is, the flexers are a nuisance to the folks who live on the bluff, who prefer their river-views unpolluted by the great unwashed.

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

The Million Dollar Mayor--County Version

In this story, the Commercial Appeal begins by making much of Republican candidate George Flinn's campaign spending. But readers who persist to the end get a slightly different story than those who skim Page One.

The CA pointedly notes that Flinn's disclosure forms show him spending $999,000. The CA also lists many other numbers, including Mayor Dr. Herenton's previous record, $962,000, or 96% of Flinn's amount. Big record-buster, huh?

Best line is Wharton's reaction: "Goodness gracious." Um...yeah. Wharton also makes noises about how he "never wanted to just wallow in money," even though his campaign raised $895,000, or 82% of Flinn's total. Right, no wallow there!

But the best part is voter reaction: "...they don't seem to mind." Sixty-four percent of voters polled said they thought it good when candidates spent their own money! A meager 17% disapproved.

Well darn them, we'll have to work to change their minds.

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

Roosevelt Has Left the Building

Richard Locker, Nashville bureau chief of the CA, wrote this column last Tuesday, riffing on his opinions on the State Legislature, the changeover sure to come next session and Teddy Roosevelt. As always with the CA, it's mostly repetition of the usual fabrications they want you to believe.

Apparently, he's been reading the Edmund Morris book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Locker seems to long for a new Roosevelt to ride into the corrupted and weak Legislature to sort it out and then reform it. He unfortunately picks a bad quote, mentioning "sodden...Irish," but we'll let that go. The point is that the Legislature "has become dysfunctional."

There's no question that Naifeh and Rochelle screwed it up pretty badly this year, but I somehow don't think that's Locker's point.

Even so, the legislature has become dysfunctional. The tax fight
didn't create its structural problems; it mere ly brought them into
public view.

The underlying dysfunction...

What else can you call a Senate Finance
Committee that sat moribund through most of this year's
six-month-long session, despite state government's biggest
financial crisis in decades, content to let its more ambitious
counterpart in the House take the lead in investigating tax plans
and spending cuts?

Last things first. WHAT spending cuts? Naifeh and Sundquist made it clear that the only spending cuts they'd allow were to be of the Armageddon type. And the Finance Committee is chaired by Mr. IT himself Robert Rochelle. Senators Blackburn and Person, for two, tried to investigate spending cuts and were shut down by Rochelle. They gave up because it was clear Rochelle was only going to allow an IT plan. He was waiting for Naifeh to get the votes in line in the House; that was the plan!

Locker goes on to list all the symptoms of this year's problems and the visible effects, but never actually tells us what that dysfunction is. It's left to the reader to draw the conclusion that we need good ol' TR:

Roosevelt emerged in his first year
as a leader, sparking an investigation of a profitable scheme by a
state's attorney, a Supreme Court judge and a leading financier
to bleed a foundering corporation of its assets. By the end of the
session that spring, he was a household name statewide.

Somehow, I don't think Locker really wants that kind of investigation into say, the wife of Speaker Naifeh, who is a highly paid Capitol Hill lobbyist, or the many seeming sweetheart deals that Sundquist seems to have cut, or the behavior of some legislators on their off time. Only Senator John Ford seems to rate that, but it seems both pro-forma and personal for the CA these days.

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

The CA is proudly trumpeting new poll numbers under a headline, "Latest poll numbers show Wharton's lead widening," that a skimming reader might think means one thing, but actually shows something very much else.

The CA writes:

Wharton leads Republican George Flinn
with 45 percent of the vote compared
to 21 percent. Those who are
undecided registered at 27 percent.

Wharton’s lead has increased 5 percentage points since an
earlier poll conducted July 14-17.

Which is incredibly misleading because Wharton's numbers didn't go up, rather Flinn's went down! Dig down deeper into the print version of the story [which part is not online, oddly enough] and you find these ponderers:

* Wharton's percentage of the black vote is 66! When blacks are nearly 90% Democrat, that's something to worry over.

* Wharton is also only drawing less than half (49%) of city voters.

* Across the numbers, Undecideds account for anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of voters.

* Flinn's Don't Recognize/Don't Knows account for 40%, two-thirds the number of people who do Recognize him. With all his ads, and this close to the election, that's startling and very bad news.

Flinn's negatives have risen all across the numbers: whites, Republicans, suburbans, etc. But Wharton's "overall support has remained virtually the same...[his] support remains rock solid."

In other words, AC Wharton's numbers have stayed static. He's not attracting any more voters, and this after beginning a series of ads! What's happening is that Flinn is putting people off with his "crony" and "anti-arena" ads. This calculated move seems to be backfiring for Flinn, which ought to be good news for Wharton. But the real story is that AC isn't getting those Flinn voters. He appears to have reached his plateau.

The question is, with only six days left can Flinn repair the damage?

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

Sundquist Continues Work on His Legacy

In this post I wrote the following, referring to Mike Fleming:

[he] mentioned that several people had told him Governor Sundquist discussed the need for an income tax up to nine months before his infamous State of the Stateaddress. I've never seen this anywhere else....

Well, today Bill Hobbs, in this post covers an interview Sundquist gave to Nashville TV station WSMV.

It's a sad bit of revision and butt-saving. Read it and Hobb's rebuttal.

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

There's Another Shoe Here Somewhere

In this story, the CA reports on State Senator Marsha Blackburn's press conference of Thursday, which was called to address a flyer that has been circulating. The flyer tries to allege that she's a spendthrift and high-liver.

The article mentions that they "sham group" that claims credit for the flyer was incorporated only recently and that the only name they can attach to it is one Brian Eastin, who is described as "a former employee of the state Republican party."

Some employee! He was the Executive Director. Why do I have the feeling that something subterranean is going on here? Is this some kind of payback for her staunch anti-IT stance?

Until next time,
Your Working Boy

Non-Proliferation Decision Fails

Added some more links to the list at left. I'll stop making root links in the stories and just point you to the main links at the left from now on. Stories will be directly linked as usual. I'll be adding the local TV stations, at least the ones with serious news departments, tomorrow.

I've added the North Shelby Times to the list of links and will be checking in from time to time. I keep stumbling over this one, mostly at Mom'n'Pop convenience stores and the laundromat. It's an odd and ambitious little paper with the oddest columnists. Read North Shelby Politics. [Note: that link is big and in PDF format.] Their website is as quirky as the paper itself.

Not much tonight, as I must catch up on sleep. Tomorrow should see a big update, though. Hopefully....

Your Working Boy

We Are The Government and We Are Here To Help

In the current issue of the Memphis Flyer, a story titled "The Price of Safety" [not online] discusses the onerous recommendation of the Child-Care Transportation Safety Report. It proposes new regulations requiring all daycare centers to be licensed by the Department of Human Services and to purchase vans meeting Federal standards. These vans will also have to be staffed with a monitor.

Of course, the immediate effect of this will be to either shut down centers that can't afford the new vehicles, leaving fewer options for parents, or raise the costs of daycare. Don't be surprised to see calls from certain quarters for public assistance for lower-income families, in the wake of this.

But the recommendation for new, Federal-standard vans would not have done much to stop the most recent deaths of children in daycare vans. They were all the fault of drivers, harried or drugged. Pressed to hold labor costs down, it is difficult to see how daycare centers will be able to pay enough to attract employees of enough caliber to care for children as much as parents do, of higher caliber than they already get.

The real reason for all this comes from State Representative Kathryn Bowers who, as the Flyer notes, is "actively involved in child-care legislation." She says, "Even though it doesn't directly involve transportation, it was difficult for me to get around the fact that it's much more difficult to open a bar than it is to open a daycare center in terms of responsibility of owners and investigation...and that gives me pause."

Ah, there we are. Getting government fingers tighter around daycare. Watch for teacher's unions to start circling, too.

Until next time, that is all.

Fill in the Blank

The Commercial Appeal has learned what astute viewers of ads for State Senator Marsha Blackburn might already know. In this story the CA discovers that an out-of-state group is producing and funding some ads. The Club For Growth is paying for a series of TV ads that promote Blackburn's strong anti-tax background.

Unfortunately for the CA, when they contacted Stephen Moore, who is also an economist and senior fellow for libertarian think tank The Cato Institute, he was voluble and forthcoming. He answered all questions openly and fully! Oops. No secrecy to gin up.

The Club's URL is visible, if not glaring, in their ads. Sadly for CA readers, they fail to provide one in the story, as is often the case with them and their targets. I'm glad to correct the omission.

Until next time, that is all.

The Debate, Such as it Was

Well the Mayoral candidate debate is over and it was as expected. The silly ad flap dominated, wasting time, and not much else was made clear. No real new ground was broken. Democrat AC Wharton, Republican George Flinn and Libertarian Bruce Young participated.

Kudos to Steve Dawson, Fox13's primary news anchor, for a good job trying to keep order. In the first question, to George Flinn, Flinn elected to try to bring up the ad flap. Dawson immediately stopped him, Wharton who tried to jump in, and Dawson forced them back on topic. Dawson was controlled and focused throughout. Well done.

Flinn didn't come off as well as backers hoped, I think. He immediately went to the ad flap and brought it up again and again. It appears he was trying to pin it on Wharton and then sit above the fray, but he didn't achieve that. It made both look juvenile. Wharton, oddly enough, rebuked the Commercial Appeal's reporters and columnists by calling Flinn's ads "not negative--misleading." Take that!

Wharton began very calm and professional, as Lutrell was in the previous ABC24 Sheriff's debate. But when Flinn kept up with the ad flap (and I should point out that Wharton also did his bit to keep that whole exercise alive), Wharton lost his cool, growing angry and taking on some of his lawyerly demeanor. That was especially shown when Wharton forcefully demanded Flinn "look me in the eye" and accuse him of doing what CA stories claim Flinn is accusing. Wharton's question was weasel-wording, as he used "I" and we all know that it would be an underling who would do that, with Wharton given plausible deniability for situations exactly like this. Wharton's campaign image of fatherly and kind and cool was blown; how you look at his reaction would probably be colored by your politics.

Flinn essentially accused Wharton of colluding with the Commercial Appeal to triangulate him, with the "political elite" as the third leg. Nice piece of triangulating, but Wharton accurately pointed out "your debate is with the CA." All of this was a silly argument, as Bruce Young pointed out. Steve Dawson finally called the situation "intractable...[with] no more left to be said" before he pushed on.

Mr. Young came off quite well. The Libertarian Party candidate held his own and looked good on camera. His drawback is the "who's that?" factor, as most television viewers and paper readers won't know him. The ad flap arguments kept him on the sidelines, largely, which made him look slightly irrelevant against the two major party candidates. Still, he did make the most of his opportunity.

All candidates called for "accountability" as the solution to county school funding, though Flinn proposed floating county bonds to make it "local money" not subject to the three-for-one formula of present school funding. And Wharton mentioned "enhanc[ing] property not performing." Whether this was code for re-appraisal of commercial property, or for redevelopment, was not clear enough.

All candidates supported making Shelby Farms an independent entity, per Ron Terry's plan.

Two bits: First, AC Wharton undercut one of Susan Adler Thorp's whacking points against George Flinn by saying that the County Mayor "does" affect education in the county. Hu-zaa! Second, all the candidates proposed fiscal responsibility, even Democrat Wharton. Nowhere but in the few left-liberal politicians like Chumney or Cohen and in black Democrats do you hear old-Democratic speak about more government spending and more programs being touted. Strange times.

Mike Fleming will have a field day with all this tomorrow, but voters didn't get much out of the deal. Too bad.

Until next time, that is all.

The Tide Rolls In, Part Two

I reported earlier about Antonio Lopez' write-in campaign against House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh. Lopez' campaign is picking up steam! His story is appearing on television news and here. Lopez is handing out stickers for voters to bring to polling stations, which is happening. The story notes that early voting is running 400% over last election!

There are also the stories we covered the other day, found at Tax Free Tennessee about the write-in movement in general, or scroll down for the links.

Interesting times in Tennessee.

Until next time, that is all.

Florida Voting, Tennessee Style

South Knox Bubba undertook early voting in Knoxville and lived to tell the tale.

Until next time, that is all.

Forcing the Hand

Republican mayoral candidate George Flinn's latest round of ads, has finally forced the Commercial Appeal to start talking about who AC Wharton is and what he does for a living.

Before the campaign, the CA would, in stories about Wharton, his clients or local Democratic politics, extol his connections and respected insider status. Now, he's just a guy, minus the connections. It's a disservice to readers to avoid that. Many, Half-Bakered included, believe that Wharton is a stalking horse for City Mayor Dr. Herenton, that Wharton will, during his tenure, advance the general aims of Herenton. Those aims include consolidation, which I think is a good and unavoidable thing, but many deplore. Wharton's waffling and ducking on that issue initially worried many. Wharton's long history of picking high-profile and notorious cases deserves scrutiny. Were the CA to write up Wharton's background as they do Flinn's, voters might be better served.

Look at yesterday's headline: "Flinn ad assault lashes Wharton as pol 'crony'"

"Assault?" "Lashes?" Violence by the Republicans again, I guess.

The paper quotes from the televison ad: "Having one of your cronies as Shelby County mayor: priceless. AC Wharton - he's everything the power brokers and politicians want him to be." That actually pretty much sums up the fears of some voters! And what the story documents, in a limited way, tends to bear that out, especially in mentioning Willie Ann Madison and the Cherokee Children and Family Services scandal. With the Ford connection there, it literally begs deeper investigation!

The story continues, quoting again:

Wharton campaign adviser John Bakke, however, was outraged.

"This fulfills our worst expectations of a sewer campaign. Anyone
associated with Dr. Flinn ought to denounce this garbage," Bakke
said. "It's low-down stuff and it pollutes the political process."

Right.... John Bakke should know, eh?

Unfortunately, Wharton proves that Flinn's tactic works, by denying it does:

Wharton denounced the new
allegations Tuesday as mean-spirited
and cowardly.

"It has backfired tremendously
because we have not been able to
field calls on anything else other than
people calling our office expressing
just downright disgust and outrage,"
he said.

Sounds like it worked to me!

Until next time, that is all.

So Much to Do, So Little Time

I'm waiting for the mayoral debate later, and will post commentary immediately afterward.

In the meantime, the Commercial Appeal is running a lengthy and heart-warming series on the rebirth of Stax Studios/Soulsville in Memphis. One problem--the coverage fails to tell the story of how the City Council, back in the 90s, allowed Stax to be razed and destroyed, oblitering its heritage, because they refused to cough up the $25,000 (or $50,000, I can't recall as I write this) needed to save it.

But we can find the quarter-billion to enrich the folks involved with the Grizzlies and their pol pals.

Until next time, that is all.

Notice of Abdication and Other Business

Half-Bakered has received many emails and comments since we added the feedback system to the blog. But we quickly learned that no one is fooled by the royal use of "we" in our posts, as done here. We thought it was a fun mockery of the newsprint tendency to do the same, but it seems more a tired gag. Half-Bakered is indeed run by one person, who will still remain anonymous.

The Commercial Appeal has, time and again, demonstrated no compunction about going after those it perceives as impediments to its agenda. Ask Heidi Schafer, who had her home address published, and Duncan Ragsdale; both opposed the Grizzlies' drive to use public funds and both were pilloried by the CA. Mike Fleming also goes after those he can safely attack.

We are under no illusions that we rate that highly, but we also don't want to take chances. We must protect ourselves against those whose resources dwarf our own.

Beginning tomorrow, Half-Bakered will begin speaking like normal folks and use "I." We hope this will not be upsetting to our readers.

We will also be going back through posts of the day before and cleaning up the typos and other errors. Oy! Such an embarrassment!

And lastly, we've added some new links to our list. One's a Memphis blogger; one's Tennessean; the other's a radio station. More to come tomorrow.

Until next time, that is all.

The Mayoral Debates

Someone make sure to notify Susan Adler Thorp, because George Flinn and AC Wharton will be debating tomorrow. Fox13 will be carrying a live debate between all the candidates for mayor, during their 9PM newscast. Read more here. On Friday, they will do the same for the Sheriff's candidates.

It is good news for Libertarians that Bruce Young, the party's candidate for mayor, will be included. It will be his highest profile appearance of the campaign and has the party jazzed. Unfortunately, this also means that the half-hour program will give short shrift to all candidates.

Until next time, that is all.