Right Minded Online

I’ve long had the sick feeling that Mae Beavers was in her last term in the Tennessee General Assembly. That fear was confirmed last week when she announced that she would not seek re-election, and that she will instead run for Wilson County Mayor. At least we wouldn’t be losing her totally. But the State Senate will lose its most principled conservative.

Senator Beavers spent 8 years in the State House of Representatives, first winning election in 1994. She made a name for herself during the infamous years of Governor Don Sundquist’s second term. Beginning in 1999, the trinity of Governor Sundquist, then-Senator Bob Rochelle, and, later, then-Speaker of the House Jimmy Naifeh began a four-year full-court press trying to stick Tennesseans with an income tax.

Mae Beavers opposed the income tax from the outset, and, unlike many of her peers, stuck to her opposition. A frequent guest on Nashville talk shows hosted by conservatives Steve Gill and Phil Valentine, then-Representative Beavers became not only a critic of the income tax, but an outspoken one, and that’s how her name spread beyond District 57.

The odd thing about those years was that the Tennessee GOP was largely devoid of any male elected conservative leadership. The state’s most prominent Republican, Don Sundquist, was firmly in the tank for an income tax just weeks after his second inauguration, this coming after he campaigned against an income tax. Elected conservative leadership thus came from then-Senator Marsha Blackburn, and Representatives Mae Beavers, Donna Rowland, and Diane Black, while the male GOP caucus members were either cowering in their opposition or acquiescing to the income tax.

When the income tax ultimately failed to pass during the 2002 legislative session, conservatives claimed victory. Don Sundquist was on his way out, and, after Mae Beavers announced that she would challenge Bob Rochelle for the Senate in District 17, Rochelle bailed out, leaving Beavers to face off against an unknown Democrat challenger, Sherry Fisher, from Carthage. Mae Beavers won election to the Senate with 52% of the vote. What made her victory especially remarkable was that District 17 had heretofore been the Democrats’ turf. District 17 is Al Gore country, after all.

Mae Beavers won by simply being conservative: low taxes, limited government, pro-life, and pro-Second Amendment. That she had consistently voted conservative made her a credible conservative candidate. Not only did she articulate conservatism on the campaign trail, she voted that way in the General Assembly. (It’s what I call “principled conservatism.”)

Senator Beavers continued doing the things that had made her a conservative icon while in the House. She voted against budgets that exceeded the Copeland Cap, noting that it doesn’t make sense to vote against overriding the Copeland Cap, and then vote for a budget that overrides the Copeland Cap. She attempted to phase out the state’s sales tax on food, but couldn’t get her bill past the Democrats. She consistently made efforts to advance gun ownership rights. She defended the unborn.

Mae Beavers had illustrated that conservatives can win in yellow dog Democrat districts by winning them over as conservatives, and not by trying to out-Democrat the Democrats. This is how Ronald Reagan won landslides in 1980 and 1984. It really does work.

While serving her first term as a State Senator, Mae Beavers overcame a bout with cancer, and managed to still serve the voters of District 17 while taking chemotherapy. When 2006 rolled around, she was recovered and ready to run for re-election. That’s when Bob Rochelle announced that he would challenge Senator Beavers for his old Senate seat. By now, Senator Beavers was well-regarded for her principled conservatism. Voters knew that what Senator Beavers promised on the campaign trail, she would deliver in the Senate. And so she easily won re-election, this time getting 58% of the vote.

One of the frustrating things for conservatives is watching good conservatives go to Nashville, or go to Washington, D.C., get sucked into the political machine, and lose their conservatism. Don Sundquist is a prime example of an elected conservative gone bad.

Senator Beavers never went bad, never got corrupted by “the system.” She’s every bit as conservative now as the first day she set foot in the State Capitol in 1995. I wish she had run for governor, but I understand why she wants to spend her time here in Wilson County. Politics is often a cutthroat business that can easily corrupt elected leaders if they aren’t careful. By the time she leaves the Senate, Mae Beavers will have served the people of Wilson County (as well as the other counties in her district) for 16 years.

I’ll miss having her as my state senator, but should she become our next county mayor, the voters and taxpayers of Wilson County will be very well served by one of the most principle conservatives we’ll ever see in elected politics.

After “serving” as Memphis mayor for 17+ years, Willie Herenton has resigned his position.

Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton resigns, effective July 10 : Herenton : Memphis Commercial Appeal.

State Senator Mae Beavers, a conservative even among conservatives, has announced that she will not seek re-election next year, and will instead run for Wilson County Mayor.

There will never be another like her – a truly great lady, and a principled legislator to the core.

BREAKING NEWS: Beavers to run for county mayor on The Lebanon Democrat.

What happened in the Tennessee General Assembly this year could not have happened with Democrats still in control. Elections do matter. The General Assembly has passed legislation that would direct around $1 million in Title X money away from Planned Parenthood and to local health departments. This is long overdue, and hopefully, given the insidious things that go on at Planned Parenthood, other states will follow suit.

Planned Parenthood in Tennessee appears to be losing its special treatment and possibly $1 million in Title X family planning funds as the state legislature, following the release of an undercover video exposing the abortion business’s practices, is changing directions.

The Legislature has voted for Senate Bill 470 which, instead of continuing the preference for Planned Parenthood to get about $1 million in federal money allocated to the state for family planning, requires officials to give money first to county health departments.

The vote happened only weeks after a video was released by Live Action Films revealed a counselor at a Memphis, Tenn., Planned Parenthood abortion business apparently advising a “patient” to lie to a judge about her boyfriend’s age to avoid possible felony charges against him.

Abortionists losing special treatment, maybe $1 million.

Richard Locker of the Memphis Commercial Appeal has put together a very good summary of the work turned in by the Tennessee General Assembly during its 2009 session.

News analysis: ‘Year of the Gun’ ends with a bang : Mid-South : Memphis Commercial Appeal.

The indispensable Tennessee Center for Policy Research has released its Pork Report, having identified some $500 million in fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

According to the TCPR, “In total, the Pork Report uncovers nearly 100 examples of outrageous spending by state and local government, including $7.4 million to finance government-approved art, including a grant to an author of sex novels, and $482,572 to fund the ‘Barge to Nowhere,’ a ferry that carries fewer than 17 passengers per day.”

Blue Collar Muse points out that a bill in the Tennessee General Assembly — shouldn’t those folks be out of Nashville by now? — would open up private medical records for government use. I don’t like this one bit.

TN House Bill 2289 (HB2289) and Senate Bill 2239 (SB2239), according to the state’s website, are innocuous bills on insurance, medical fees and accreditation typical of the uninteresting legislation passed nationwide. Reading the text of HB2289, it is anything but.

It establishes an All Payer Claims Database (APCD). The APCD requires private insurance companies to report to the state the details on the claims they process. For perspective, one particular Tennessee insurer processes 32,000 of those details every hour. That’s 250,000 details per day about private citizens the state wants turned over to them.

In fact, there are over 6000 details which might be reported about you under HB2289 including data on prescriptions, medical conditions, sexually transmitted diseases, surgeries and more. If I know Government, 6000 is nothing but a good start!

TN HB2289 Gives Goverment Access to Private Medical Information | Blue Collar Muse.

By a surprising 77-21 vote, the Tennessee House of Represetatives has passed SJR127. That means a lot of Democrats also voted for this bill. Here’s a money quote from Speaker Campfield: “…more and more Dems are stepping away from their party leadership and voting for conservative legislation on the floor.”

Camp4u: The minority of the minority.

Many liberals actually believe this. State Representative Tommie Brown is one of them. No, Representative Brown, you’re not truly the parent of my child. I am truly the parent of my child. Don’t fool yourself into believing that you have one iota of power over my child.

Writes Speaker Campfield: “A bunch of us just shook our heads when she said it in children and family committee. Unfortunately, this theory is not held by just one single legislator. There are several who push this agenda and have this mind set.”

By the way, here’s a link to the bill in question, HB 677. I watched the relevant portion of the video to make sure the quote “The state is truly the parent of the child” wasn’t taken out of context, and, believe me, Representative Browne actually believes that the state is truly the parent of the child.

Blue Collar Muse takes the Rutherford County Democrat Party to task for knocking on State Representative Donna Rowland for voting “present not voting” 83% of the time.

The Rutherford County Democratic Party eagerly picked up on the story claiming Rowland was only working for them 17% of the time.  It doesn’t appear they even tried to contact Rowland.  They just rushed to print claiming “gotcha”. I left a rather snarky comment on their post which was promptly deleted.  (Can’t have anyone offering a dissenting opinion since dissent is only the highest form of Patriotism on Democratic bumper stickers … And, yes, in case you’re wondering, I have the screen-shot.  It’s OK, those guys are young and they’ll learn as we all did.  Until they develop the confidence to swim in the deep end with the adults, we’ll cut them a little slack.)

But why on earth would a principled lawmaker like Donna Rowland vote PNV 173 out of 209 times? Here’s what Rep. Rowland says:

Representative Donna Rowland (R-Murfreesboro) announced today that the State House of Representatives has spent over $300,000 on congratulatory and memorializing resolutions so far this year. Since the beginning of session this year, Rowland has chosen to cast a “present not voting” vote on most of the resolutions to show her disagreement with the volume of resolutions passing through the House of Representatives.

“As a steward of taxpayer money, it is important for us to recognize the tremendous amount of money we are spending on these resolutions,” said Rep. Rowland. “While I understand that sometimes we have outstanding individuals in our districts who deserve to be recognized, this has gotten out of control. These little things add up,” she added.

I’m good with it. Rep. Rowland has been a staunch taxpayer advocate going back to the income tax days. Like our very own Senator Mae Beavers, Donna Rowland has not wavered in her conservatism after serving all these years in the Tennessee Den of Thieves, where many good men and women have gone bad.

I have to give credit to Govenor Phil Bredesen. When he campaigned for re-election in 2006, he insisted that he would not pursue a state income tax. Of course, that’s what Don Sundquist said when he was running for re-election in 1998, and we Tennesseans have a track record of getting burned by second-term governors running against a state income tax.

Governor Bredesen has stuck to his promise, even though the state budget is in worse shape now than it was eight years ago when a failure to pass a state income tax meant certain Armageddon.

The state government is expecting about $4.5 billion in federal stimulus money over the next two years, although only a small portion of that money can actually be used to plug holes in the budget. The rest will have to come from — are you ready for this? — cuts in the budget. No, we aren’t talking about cuts in proposed increases. We are talking about cuts, as in spending less money next year than this year.

Governor Bredesen says a total of about $750 million in cuts will have to be made by 2011 in order to keep the budget balanced. Under his proposed budget that would take effect on July 1, the state government would have to get by on $29.34 billion, which is about $430 million less than the current year budget. That’s a cut of about 1.4%.

Folks, this almost never happens in government. Regardless of the state of the economy, government is never forced to do with less. Lawmakers would much prefer to force the taxpayers to do with less than government. But there are no calls for higher taxes (so far). The state government is going to bite the bullet this time.

The education budget will be spared. The remaining departments will see their budgets reduced by an average of 12 percent — cuts that will be phased in over three years. The federal stimulus money will help the state government avoid what would have been 1,700 layoffs. Instead, there will only be 80, although more may become necessary in future years.

Says Governor Bredesen, “It is important to me not to leave my successor — or the next General Assembly — a budgetary cliff to fall off.”

Elizabeth, this is the big one.

Really, how refreshing is that? While the national government is spending our children’s future earnings as fast as they possibly can, Governor Bredesen is determined to clean up messes that happen on his own watch. If only that kind of responsibility and pragmatism would rub off on our politicians in Washington.

Furthermore, Governor Bredesen is warning local governments and school districts to avoid getting hooked on the stimulus money, reminding them that ”You have a windfall for the next two years. If you create obligations with it that go beyond two years, do not look for the state to bail you out.”

Tennesseans really do benefit from operating with a relatively small state government and light tax burden. We have also benefited by fighting off the attempt to enact a state income tax during Governor Sundquist’s second term. Had we given in to the demands of income tax advocates then, our tax burden would be heavier, our government would be larger, and next year’s budget shortfall would likely be deeper.

Take California, for example, which relies heavily on an income tax (and every other tax you can think of). Their budget deficit is a whopping $42 billion — larger than the entire Tennessee state budget. Given that state expenditures ran $145 billion in 2008, that’s a shortfall of 29 percent. It’s gotten so bad that the governor is threatening to furlough 20,000 state employees.

In New York, which also relies heavily on an income tax, the budget deficit has grown to $16 billion, and lawmakers are responding by following the path of least resistance: trying to raise taxes on the rich.

In Tennessee, which does not have a state income tax (thank you, Mae Beavers, Phil Valentine, fellow protesters, et al), our budget problems are minuscule, especially when compared to other states, and most especially the federal government, where President Obama’s proposed $3.6 trillion budget for FY2010 leaves a budget deficit of $1.2 trillion.

Stopping the state income tax dead in its tracks back in 2002 helped guarantee future fiscal restraint. Only now, with the U.S. economy in recession and tax receipts dropping, are we Tennesseans fully coming to realize the fruits of having a relatively small government and low tax burden. Indeed, conservatism works every time it’s tried.

Governor Bredesen said he would not pursue an income tax during his second term, and he has stuck to it so far. Even though the budget is in worse shape now than during the second term of disgraced former Governor Don Sundquist, our current governor is instead eyeing budget cuts. Real budget cuts.

Federal stimulus money will allow Tennessee agencies to phase in 12 percent spending cuts over three years, Gov. Phil Bredesen said in a speech to lawmakers Monday.

The Democratic governor said even deeper cuts — including substantial layoffs — would have been needed starting in the budget year that begins in July if it weren’t for the federal money.

“This so-called ’stimulus’ package is not a silver bullet — what it does is buy us time,” Bredesen said.

The state is expected to receive about $4.5 billion in federal stimulus money over two years, though only a portion can be used to plug budget holes. Bredesen said about $750 million in cuts will be necessary by 2011.

Under Bredesen’s budget proposal, Tennessee would spend $29.34 billion in the budget year that begins on July 1. That’s about $430 million less than the current budget year.

Bredesen’s budget speech: TN agencies face 12 percent cut in 3 years : Political News : Knoxville News Sentinel.

The Tennessee GOP’s perennial pro-life amendment which declares that “nothing secures or protects the right to abortion, or requires funding,” has cleared its first hurdle. Perhaps, at long last, we can get this thing passed, although I fear that a former Republican named “Williams” will ultimately stand in the way.

WKRN, Nashville, Tennessee News, Weather, and Sports |Abortion amendment passes Senate committee.

According to Speaker Campfield, Kent Williams and others on the left are shocked and indignant over being booted from the Tennessee Republican Party. But why would a Democrat be upset over being booted from the opposition party?

Camp4u: Take my wife, please.

As heard on Tuesday’s show:

This is a great story, a great object lesson here. “Tennessee Republicans ousted the new House speaker from their party Monday.” Tennessee Republicans got rid of the new House speaker from their party Monday. They did this while “giving up their first chance in 150 years to control the entire Legislature, instead choosing to punish him for banding with Democrats to win his seat.” Tennessee Republicans got rid of their House speaker. That means they got rid of the first majority controlled in 150 years because their House speaker was acting like a Democrat. That is amazing.

Stack of Stuff Quick Hits Page.

Tennessee Republicans throw House speaker Williams out of the party : Mid-South : Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Stacey Campfield describes some of the inner-workings of the Tennessee General Assembly. Here are the main points from Speaker Campfield:

1. Democrats don’t really care about equal pay for equal work, after all.

2. House Democrats still have the cush offices and better staff.

3. Kent Williams is incompetent.

4. Speaker Campfield needs a new stapler, preferably a red one.

Camp4u: Office space (Nashville style).

Apparently, Speaker Kent Williams doesn’t like the way the Senate is being run. I would guess not. The Senate, after all, is run by Republicans. Here’s the money quote from Speaker Williams: “The only difference between Ron Ramsey and myself is Ron could only get one Democrat to vote for him. I got 49.”

That’s an excellent point — if you’re a Democrat. But for a Republican, I’d sort of like to have Republicans voting for me. That would be more important than winning Democrat votes. In that respect, Lt. Gov. Ramsey received all 19 GOP votes in the Senate. Other than himself, Speaker Williams got zero GOP votes in the House. Only a Democrat would measure his success by how many Democrats he got to vote for him.

Camp4u: Williams insults Ramsey.

We learned yesterday that State Representative Susan Lynn filed a sexual harrassment complaint against Kent Williams two years ago. The complaint was never supposed to be made public. But it’s public now. Williams, of course, denies the allegation, but then, he also denied ever having said he would support Jason Mumpower for Speaker of the House, too.

Michael Silence has more.

UPDATE: The Tennessean has covered Representative Lynn’s allegations, and now we learn that a second female lawmaker, Debra Maggart, had a similar confrontation with Kent Williams, too. Here are some excerpts:

Mumpower’s memo lays out in detail the allegations Williams faced only months after taking office as a freshman lawmaker from Elizabethton in East Tennessee. Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mt. Juliet, said Williams told her she was a beautiful woman, according to the memo.

“I will give a weeks pay just to see you naked,” Williams said, according to her account of the incident inside the legislative office’s parking garage after a reception on March 27, 2007. Lynn said Williams “was somewhat intoxicated,” according to the memo.

…

The 2007 memo said other lawmakers were standing nearby, including Rep. Debra Maggart, R-Hendersonville, and Rep. Doug Overbey, R-Maryville, who has since been elected to the state Senate.

Maggart said that she got in her car and Williams leaned in the window and told her how beautiful she was and that “he appeared to be staring at her breasts,” according to the memo, which has no time stamp on it to verify when it was drafted.

Mumpower says in the memo that he drafted it on the advice of legal counsel in the event there were future legal actions involving the matter.

Overbey later corroborated the events relayed by Lynn and Maggart, according to the memo. Mumpower set up a meeting between Lynn and Williams, with other staff members as witnesses. The memo says that Williams apologized to Lynn and said it wouldn’t happen again.

Days later, on April 5, 2007, according to the memo, Lynn was standing in the lobby area of Legislative Plaza, talking to Rep. Janis Sontany, D-Nashville, when Williams came up behind her. He “put his army tightly around her and embraced her. She said he put his face close to hers and told her, ‘Have a nice weekend,’ ” the memo says.

“Rep. Lynn said she was quite upset at the event and noticed Rep. Janis Sontany reacted with obvious surprise at the inappropriate contact. Rep. Lynn said she was scared that this behavior pattern would repeat itself as she once again felt sexually harassed,” according to the memo.

This prompted another meeting with Mumpower and staff on April 10 in which Williams again apologized and told Lynn it wouldn’t happen again, the memo said.

Despite this, Speaker Williams issued a statement yesterday asserting, “I have never sexually harassed anyone nor have I been reprimanded for any such behavior.”

How I long for the good ol’ days when Jimmy Naifeh was Speaker of the House.

The good news is that Jimmy Naifeh is no longer the Speaker of the House. The bad news is that we’d be better off with Jimmy Naifeh as Speaker of the House.

You had to know this wasn’t going to be smooth. Within a nanosecond after winning a majority in the Tennessee House on Election Day, we Republicans wondered if we’d be able to corral all 50 members into voting for a Republican as Speaker.

The answer, for all intents, turned out to be “no.”

After all, having 50 members gave the GOP the slimmest of majorities. It would only take one defector to throw the gavel back to the Democrats. With a history of squandering political power by the inside work of turncoats, Tennessee Republicans were quietly wondering who the sellout would be this time. The answer turned out to be Kent Williams, a Republican-in-name-only from Elizabethtown.

Last Tuesday, the day the GOP handed away the reigns to power, the Democrats nominated Kent Williams as Speaker, as it had become obvious that Jimmy Naifeh was not going to get 50 votes. So they pulled what they called the “nuclear option” – the brainchild of Democrat Leader Gary Odom, who first proposed the idea to Speaker Williams over Thanksgiving. Knowing that Kent Williams would be friendly to Democrats, they would nominate him. They did a very good job keeping this a secret. Williams received all 49 Democrat votes, plus his own, leaving Jason Mumpower, the true GOP nominee, with the other 49 votes.

As the vote was taking place, the packed crowd in the House chamber erupted into bedlam, with spectators raining down boos and angry shouts.

After the vote, Speaker Williams gave the GOP one final thumb-of-the-nose by casting his vote for Speaker Pro Tempore for Democrat Lois DeBerry instead of the Republican nominee Beth Harwell.

After all, Speaker Williams explained, it’s only fair that if we have a Republican speaker, then the Pro Tem should be a Democrat. He also says he will split committee chairmanships between Democrats and Republicans. This is just great, because when Naifeh was speaker, Democrats held every single position of power in the House. No wonder the Democrats love this guy.

So there you have it. Just as the GOP was foiled in the Senate four years ago when former Senator Mike Williams cast the deciding vote for John Wilder for Speaker instead of the Republican nominee Ron Ramsey, we have been foiled once again by a Democrat masquerading as a Republican. What is it with Tennessee Republicans named “Williams?”

According to the Tennessee Republican Party in a press release last Tuesday evening, there was already a movement afoot to boot Williams from the party. Bill Hobbs of the Tennessee GOP explains, “Williams put personal ambition ahead of honor and lied his way into the Speaker’s chair. Elected by Republican voters in the historic 2008 elections that saw Republicans win a majority of House seats for the first time since 1868, Rep. Williams chose to betray his party and his constituents.”

Representative Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) wrote on his blog that “[Williams] swore an oath. He broke it. He signed pledges, he broke them. He lied. He lied to all of us. He lied to our faces over and over. He lied to my face. He even lied to us today right before the vote. I could have handled it better had he been straight up with us all along. But he wasn’t.”

“Dems are all giddy and trying every way they can to rub salt in. We are all incredibly let down. We know the Capitol will stay more or less the same [brothel] with just a different piano player. He will be a puppet for Naifeh and the Dems. He will offer some small meaningless scraps to give people the false impression he is being bipartisan but we all know the truth.”

Kent Williams sold every shred of honor he possessed in order to become Speaker of the House. What the honor-less Williams has done is an affront to every Republican voter in this state, and to every campaign worker and volunteer who has put in time all these years in order to win a majority at the polls.

In addition, he is single-handedly responsible for putting a pro-income tax, pro-gay, pro-abortion, anti-gun liberal Democrat, Lois DeBerry, in the number two position in the House. This is not what the voters voted for on Election Day.

To add further insult, the Democrats first order of business was to submit H.R. 1, which would establish a “Speaker Emeritus.” The qualifications set forth for that position would be “…a minimum service of 18 years as Speaker of the House of Representatives, a minimum service of 14 years in other leadership positions associated with the House, and receipt of the coveted William M. Bulger Excellence in State Legislative Leadership Award….” Of course, there’s only one member of the House who meets those qualifications: Jimmy Naifeh. But the real purpose of H.R. 1 can be found a little further down: “BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Speaker Emeritus may perform such functions and duties as are assigned by the Speaker of the House.”

In other words, should H.R. 1 ever pass, Speaker Williams, a Naifeh stooge, could easily hand the gavel back to Speaker Emeritus Naifeh with no recourse whatsoever.

All frustration aside, you have to step back and admire the craftiness of the Democrats. Really. There are two things — and only two things — that I admire about Democrats: their ability to consolidate power, and their cohesiveness. Republicans, by contrast, not only don’t consolidate power when given the opportunity, they give it away even after winning elections. But at least Republicans who aren’t named “Williams” do tend to stick together.

Enjoy your speakership, Mr. Williams. Enjoy it, because it’s all you’ve got now. Enjoy it, because you’ve paid for it with your honor. Enjoy it, because you sold out the voters who put you in office. Enjoy it, because you lied to everyone who confronted you. Enjoy it, because you embody everything that gives politicians a sordid reputation. Enjoy it, because you have prevented the adults (Republicans) from assuming the responsibility of running state government.

There are real consequences to your actions, Speaker Williams, from taxing and spending, to gun rights, abortion rights, and many other serious matters. But you have placed your personal ambition above the good of everything else, so enjoy your seat of power, because every time the Democrats mess things up, which they frequently do, you can bear the blame.