DEMOCRATS SURE GOT IT GOOD: Howie Carr: “Which septuagenarian pol represents the greater threat to the United States — Rudy Giuliani or John Forbes Kerry? Yet it was Rudy’s home and office in Manhattan that were raided Wednesday by the corrupt FBI, while America’s Gigolo continued to get a total pass on the amazing revelation that he’s been whispering top-secret U.S./Israeli intelligence to one of the top leaders of Iran, which leads the world in state-sponsored terrorism.”
Archive for 2021
April 30, 2021
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: The Music City Meltdown: A decade ago Nashville’s rise seemed inevitable, but fiscal recklessness left the city ill-prepared to absorb the pandemic’s economic blows.
For more than a decade, Nashville, Tenn., has been one of America’s hippest and fastest-growing cities. Anchored by the country-music industry and boosted by a hospitable state tax climate, the city and surrounding region attracted businesses and residents. While its music scene made it a tourist mecca, Nashville also lured a generation of college-educated transplants, earning a position as one of the country’s new “brainpower cities.”
These days Nashville is making its way onto other, less distinguished lists. The Institute for Truth in Accounting recently ranked it one of the country’s five worst “sinkhole” cities, with $22,000 in debt per resident. Its bonded debt alone has increased by more than $1.25 billion in 10 years. City leaders have used deficit financing to balance Nashville’s books and spent much of the city’s reserve funds. The Tennessee comptroller has threatened a state takeover, and even the Biden administration’s lavish stimulus isn’t enough to plug Nashville’s budget hole. Amid all this, angry local groups are trying to spur a special election to roll back a gigantic property tax increase. What was once called a miracle in Music City increasingly looks like a meltdown.
That’s quite a dubious record of achievement for a city with enviable economic growth. Rebounding robustly from the 2008-09 recession, greater Nashville gained nearly 300,000 jobs between 2010 and early 2020, an almost 40% increase. Employment in its hospitality industry expanded by 53% as developers added thousands of hotel rooms. Financial-services jobs grew by 46.9%, while professional services employment leapt by 69%. By March 2020, Nashville boasted an unemployment rate of only 3.4%.
With economic growth came more government revenue. Sales-tax collections increased by $200 million, or more than 70%, in a decade. Receipts from other fees and levies grew even faster. Nashville’s main tax, its property levy, increased more slowly. A state law limits the effect of rising property values on taxes, but even so the city’s total budget expanded over a decade by 50% to $2.33 billion.
Still, Nashville had trouble making do. Its leaders cultivated an ambition to make it a world-class city. Nashville built bright, shiny new things with debt. It spent more than $600 million to construct the Music City Center with bonds financed by hotel taxes and other fees. City leaders also built a minor-league baseball stadium for $91 million and a downtown amphitheater that cost $52 million. Now they have pledged city debt to help construct a $275 million soccer stadium.
No amount of money is enough when your city is run by shitty leftist politicians. And that’s been Nashville for at least a decade.
MORE VOTES THAN ANY OTHER PRESIDENT IN HISTORY: The Ratings for Joe Biden’s First Address to Congress Are in, and They’re Really Bad.
HMM. WHAT’S THE LEAST-HYPOTHESIS EXPLANATION FOR THIS? Flu has disappeared worldwide during the COVID pandemic.
Pretty sure it’s that many cases of flu have been misdiagnosed as Covid.
AT THIS POINT I DON’T THINK HE COULD DRIVE A CAMARO DOWN PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE: Biden faces pressure to drive gasoline and diesel cars out of the US.
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: North Korea bans criticism of China as economic dependence grows due to pandemic. “Some North Koreans really dislike Chinese leadership for saying publicly that China is part of a ‘socialist brotherhood’ with North Korea, but Beijing does very little to support us even though we are living through economic hardship due to the coronavirus. Even the authorities in the past have been wary of our unconditional dependence on China and the expectations that they’ll take care of us, saying ‘Don’t trust China too much.’”
NOT THE NEW CENSORS IN THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY: What’s “Normal” in America? More than 200 employees of Simon and Schuster want to stop publishing anyone involved with the Trump administration because it wasn’t a “normal” chapter in American history.
For a long time, dictators, from the European tyrants of the 1930s to the military leaders of the Latin American juntas, skillfully used the violent excesses of dissenters to seize and preserve power. Now so-called liberal “resistance” to “fascism” justifies its attacks on freedom of speech by citing the threat posed by a former American president. Susan Sontag famously enraged the New Left by calling Communism “fascism with a human face.” The current woke movement has all the trappings of fascism with an anti-fascist face.
And fascism seems perfectly normal to them.
HEH, INDEED:
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: 5 Ways Joe Biden Attacked Americans’ Fundamental Rights in His First 100 Days.
DISPATCHES FROM THE LUNATIC ASYLUM: This is America? HUD protecting perverts lurking in women’s shelters, boosting sex traffickers in Illinois, and teaching California students Azetc pagan worship, human sacrifice and cannibalism.
BIDEN’S WAR ON YOUR RIGHT TO CONTRACT: Uber, Lyft stocks plunge after Biden official says drivers are employees.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Stanford student senator says ‘White people need to be eradicated.’
Related: VCU student president says she hates white people, advocates cop killing.
I remember being told that higher education was valuable because it makes people better, more tolerant citizens.
WELL, THAT’S CONSISTENT WITH THEIR GOAL OF MAKING EVERYTHING A WORSE DEAL FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES: Biden’s American Families Plan would make college a worse deal for American families.
RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: Media Enamored with Biden’s Speech, Disgusted by Tim Scott’s.
BIDEN, INC. REMAINS A MAJORITY-OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF THE CCP: 100 Days Into Biden’s Presidency, Hunter Still Owns Stake In Chinese Private Equity Firm, Business Records Show.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Working-class people of color hate the riots the lefty elite keeps cheering.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Big Mo for letting legal gun owners carry across state lines. “The Supreme Court’s decision to take up a New York gun case is sparking optimism for a national concealed carry reciprocity law.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Border Nightmare Is Team Biden’s Only ‘Accomplishment.’ “During his masked fetish party speech the other night our national embarrassment never really got around to the border crisis that he’s created. I’m fully aware that liberals in America don’t care about border issues, especially those who live far, far away from Mexico. I live 60 miles from the Mexican border though, so it’s kind of a big deal here.”
REGARDLESS, WE KNOW WHICH ONE THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WILL INVESTIGATE, AND WHICH ONE IT WILL PROTECT: Howie Carr: Who’s the greater threat to the US, Giuliani or Kerry?
SO SHE AGREES WITH TIM SCOTT: Cornered by a direct question, Kamala Harris says “I don’t think America is a racist country.”
Which is awkward, since Dems have been calling him an “Uncle Tom” and worse for saying the same thing.
SURE. YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO QUESTION THE MASTERS OF THE JUNTA: Today’s blacklisted American: Law professor under investigation for criticizing China.
MOSCOW REALLY DOES PUT BUGS EVERYWHERE: Brazil rejects Sputnik V vaccine, says it’s tainted with replicating cold virus.