LIBERADIO(!)

According to a Clement campaign press release, Bob Clement and Dave Ramsey will be interviewed together this morning at 11:05 on Supertalk 99.7 WTN by radio host Michael DelGiorno. Their discussion, which will take place at the Williamson County studio of Mr. Ramsey, will center on the Congressman’s unusual property tax pledge.

While you’re there, Dave, perhaps you can give Mr. DelGiorno a little advice. Apparently, he has some issues with gambling – both on the air and off.

Though we don’t necessarily approve of his choice of candidates, we wanted to do something that would make Bill Fletcher proud. That said, here’s our version of an ad that should be on TV:

NARRATOR: Don’t you wonder why Bob Clement is always angry at you?

[silent, slow motion, clip of angry Bob; scolding viewers]

NARRATOR: Well, Bob Clement gets angry when he’s behind. Remember how angry he was when he was losing to Lamar Alexander back in 2002?

[angry Bob; scolding Lamar]

NARRATOR: Well, after running for six different offices thirteen times over the last thirty-five years, Bob Clement is behind again. He’s behind in the polls [flash results of Aug. 2nd election] and behind on the issues. He wants us to stay mired in the old politics of the South. He doesn’t even think Nashville is a great city. [fake book cover of Bob Clement's Plan to Take Nashville from So-So to Okay] Maybe he’s thinking of an older Nashville. [still of Bill Boner]

[cut to Karl, on his favorite bridge]

KARL DEAN: I’m Karl Dean, and I know Nashville is a great city. And I aim to keep it that way in the 21st century by improving our public schools and public safety. Competent, efficient government will help keep our taxes low and our potential high. Vote for me, Karl Dean, on Sept. 11th.

On Tuesday, Sept. 11th, as soon as we’re done with our yearly commemoration of crying into our cereal while watching Jon Stewart memorialize the date for us, we’re heading out to vote. [Early voting going on now if you're into that kind of thing. -- Ed.] You thought your civic duty ended on August 2nd? WRONG! We have yet to elect a mayor, and 4 of 5 council at-large seats are still up for grabs. Not to mention a few important district council seats. That’s right, you’ll just have to drag yourself to the polls once more to HELP SET THE DIRECTION THAT NASHVILLE HEADS IN THE 21ST CENTURY!!! Not that there’s a lot of responsibility resting on your shoulders or anything. But seriously, please go vote.

Let’s start with the mayoralty. Sure, the mayor can’t pre-emptively invade Iraq, but he can do a heck of a lot of other things that matter. He’s the guy that sets the budget for the city. And as a city with a $1.5 billion budget, that means quite a bit in terms of local decision-making. And the guy we want making those decisions as mayor is:

Karl Dean
Karl has amply demonstrated his command of the complex issues facing Nashville, offering strong policy ideas that address his top issues – public education, public safety, and economic development. Dean will be pragmatic and keep government humming efficiently along toward these goals which, he will emphatically tell you, are aimed at keeping Nashville an ideal place for families. We do hope, however, that he’ll amp up the progressive end of his agenda on the environment because even though he recognizes that our air quality is the “number one environmental issue” in Nashville, and as cool as bus rapid transit sounds, it’s not going to turn off our air quality alerts by the end of his first term.

One of our favorite things about Dean is that, unlike Congressman Clement, he’s not out to make us all into single-issue voters (we never want to hear the t-word again). He’s demonstrated a broad and deep competency of all things Metro, and policy wonks, not old-school politicians, have steered our ship of city quite nicely for the past 16 years, thank you.

Lastly, Karl Dean already knows Nashville is a great city, and we believe his administration will work hard to keep it that way.

Now let’s move on to the tough job of at-large council. You have to run a county-wide campaign, but your vote isn’t any more powerful than Eric Crafton’s. Still, it is a vote, and it matters. It matters to public education funding, to complicated social and cultural issues facing the city, and to how closely the mayor’s vision for the city is received. In the run-off, we’d like to see the following candidates be in a position to make these difficult decisions:

Megan Barry
We already endorsed Megan once, and our reasons haven’t changed. Barry is an ethics hawk, and if the Bush era has taught us anything, it’s that we need to be more mindful of the ethical stature of our candidates and elected officials. She also fully understands the importance of public school funding, having worked on fundraising campaigns for our local schools. The Council would be a much more effective body under her watchful eye.

Jerry Maynard
We already endorsed Jerry once, too. And again, our reasons haven’t changed. We had the honor of being Jerry’s radio neighbor for 13 weeks on WNSG. His show is called “In Perspective,” and Jerry has wonderful perspective. His ability to bring people together to discuss difficult issues affecting our community is remarkable, and we feel that he would be an excellent leader who could drive consensus.

Luvenia Butler
Ms. Butler has demonstrated a clear passion for Nashville, and her professional experience indicates that she’d be well-qualified to be an official voice in our elected leadership. At a recent candidate forum, she asserted that her current role in the Tennessee Dept. of Health causes her to face issues of discrimination on a regular basis, and she would bring a welcome attitude of anti-discrimination to the new council.

Saletta Holloway
Ms. Holloway has district council experience, and, though some legal scholars might disagree, we think district council is an appropriate stepping stone to at-large council. Ms. Holloway’s experience will be valuable considering the number of freshmen we expect to see. Even better, she wants her experience to be used for building consensus among Nashvillians she sees being torn apart. And in her role at Meharry, she’ll surely help assert the value of our city’s historically black institutions.

We’d like to give an honorable mention to Ronnie Steine. He was a great sport during his interview with us, and we know that he’s got solid policy credentials and has been an effective councilperson in the past. In fact, that’s the problem: he’s already served two terms as an at-large councilman, as well as a stint as vice mayor. Based on existing term limits laws, we’ve got an opportunity to have new voices that have plenty of experience. His fall from grace was steep, but we’re confident that he can continue the process of penance by serving the city in other ways.

As for Election Day round 2, as much as we love voting, um… instant runoff voting anyone?

The New York Times reports yesterday that the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, inspector general Glenn Fine, is “investigating whether sworn statements to Congress by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales were ‘intentionally false, misleading or inappropriate.’”

Fine has also made Mr. Gonzales the focus of investigations “into the propriety of the Justice Department’s involvement in the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and the firing of United States attorneys last year.”

More fun can be found at Consortium News with Robert Parry, who shares with us his favorite “Gonzo” memory – “his insistence that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t expressly recognize habeas corpus, the great fair-trial principle of English law that dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215.” Memories…torment the corners of my minds…

Gail Kerr writing in today’s Tennessean, reminds us that despite the best efforts of either mayoral candidate, your property taxes will increase willy nilly all on their own.

North’s [Jo Ann North, Nashville's assessor of property] staff looks at every one of the properties in Davidson County every four years. They compare your house and the land it sits on to recent sales of similar properties in your neighborhood. Then they adjust your home’s fair market value. Property taxes are paid on that number.

In other words, even if you don’t make improvements to your home but the houses in your neighborhood improve – think East Nashville, 12 South, Salemtown – then your property taxes will increase, regardless of any mayoral pledges to the contrary. And how will those for whom even a moderate property tax increase is unmanageable handle the inevitable jump that will follow in neighborhoods where developers are already replacing modest homes with those selling for four, five and six hundred thousand dollars? As Kerr points out, the next reappraisal in 2009 is halfway through the next mayor’s term and whoever wins “won’t be able to do a thing to help people who own homes in hot real estate markets.”

Or maybe they can. At the very least, they can make a pledge.

In July of this year, Mayor Purcell signed a resolution the council had passed implementing the Property Tax Freeze Program. Currently, the program will freeze property taxes for Metro residents who are 65 or older and who meet the income requirements set by the state – $34,260 for Davidson County.

During the signing ceremony, Mayor Purcell said the program “is far better than any tax relief program previously available to seniors, but we must keep pushing at the state level to raise the income cap so that many more seniors can get the relief they need and deserve.”

Perhaps Clement and Dean can pledge to keep pushing for a raise in the income cap. And while they’re at it, they can pledge to lower or remove the age requirement. Modest income homeowners of all ages should be able to keep their houses in Nashville’s rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. There’s no better way to maintain the balance and income diversity in Davidson County’s more urban districts.

And if this proposal contains too much nuance, the two candidates can simply make a pledge to lower property taxes. It would, after all, have as much meaning as Clement’s pledge to, well, you know…

The press release sent out last week by Reverend V.M. Singletary and the New Wine Ministers announcing mayoral candidate Bob Clement’s delay in submitting answers to their questionnaire must of hit a nerve. By last Friday night they had a Clement submission in hand.

Regardless, the progressive group endorsed Karl Dean at a press conference this morning:

Having met personally with both candidates and submitted a detailed questionnaire including twenty issues directly affecting the African-American community, we believe that Karl Dean’s responses overall will put us in a more positive position to move forward as a city and a community.

In addition to the endorsement, the ministers also encouraged voter turnout in the African-American community asking that each registered voter take “at least seven other persons to the polls when they go to vote.”

Seriously, does it get any better than C-span at the mall with Bruce Barry? (Yes! Macy’s is also having a sale! –Mary)

Bruce Barry, FOL*, Vanderbilt professor of management and sociology, and author of the recently released Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace, will be at Davis Kidd in Nashville tonight, August 29, at 6pm, to sign his book and discuss this very important topic. And rumor has it that C-span will be there to film the event for Book TV.

For a sample of Bruce’s witty and engaging personal style, as well as his breadth of knowledge on your lack of freedoms in the workplace, listen to our interview with him from last Monday’s show.

*Friend of Liberadio(!)

Friends and Liberadio(!) sponsors, Pam Kidd and Keri Cannon, are featured in this morning’s Davidson AM section of the Tennessean. Kidd and Cannon, a mother-daughter real estate team, “give a huge chunk out of every commission to Village Hope, a charity organization the two founded together.” You can read more about what they do, and how and why they do it, at Tennessean.com. Their story is inspirational.

Summary: Bruce Barry, professor of management and sociology at Vanderbilt University (the broadcast home of Liberadio(!)), talks to us about his new book, Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace (Buy the Book). Think you have unlimited freedom of expression in your workplace? Turns out you do. Until you don’t. Find out why and how your employer has all the power and what you can do about it. Bruce, who also happens to be president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, brings it.

Listen to: Interview with Bruce Barry (25:21 23.2MB)

It appears as if the Clement campaign, like Stephen Colbert, are no fans of dictionaries or reference books. If they were they would have realized that their afternoon press release should have been titled, “The Truthiness about Property Taxes,” and not the “The Truth about Property Taxes.”

From the Clement press release:

Nashville – Bob Clement has made it clear to the people of Nashville that, if elected mayor, he will not increase property taxes. Clement has demonstrated leadership by repeatedly pledging that he will not raise property taxes in the next four years.

Yeah, because he can’t raise property taxes. Didn’t we go over this yesterday? Is following the law really such a stretch that you have to crow about it so loudly?

“I have repeatedly made a straightforward pledge not to raise property taxes,” said Clement. “I will lead Nashville forward with no new property tax increases in the next four years.”

Clement said if elected he would create an Office of Volunteerism, a Metro crime lab, implement more music and art festivals, employ a Director of Vitality and Vibrancy, create an arts-in-transit program, establish a mayor’s arts award, hire attendance workers for every middle school and elementary school, improve the State Fairgrounds property, and bid for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games (FYI, Chicago is projecting a $2.9 billion operating budget for the games – including $500 million approved by the city council, a proposed $150 million in state funds and a $500 million private guarantee.) Has anyone heard the Congressman talk about working within the existing budget?

Syndicated radio talk show host Dave Ramsey of the Dave Ramsey Show is supporting Clement and backed his pledge not to raise property taxes.

Kleinheider over a VolunteerVoters.com follows up on this one and learns that Dave Ramsey can’t vote in Davidson County because he lives in Williamson County. But has been a good friend of Bob’s for “twenty years or more.” It’s understandable that Dave doesn’t know the real truth about how property taxes work in Davidson County since he doesn’t live here. Perhaps he can read Clement’s campaign material and learn:

Idea #24 Efficient Government: “The voters have spoken and said there will be no property tax increase without a referendum,” Bob Clement said.