Bill Hobbs takes his advocacy of a taxpayers’ bill of rights for Tennessee to its liberal opponents, with five reasons why liberals should support TaBOR:

1. TaBOR will cause the state to manage its resources more wisely and set priorities – reducing wasteful spending.
2. TaBOR will shield existing programs from deep cuts during future economic downturns.
3. TaBOR will foster more grassroots political involvement and encourage better communication between citizens and their elected representatives.
4. TaBOR will foster more trust and confidence in government.
5. TaBOR will make it easier to pass a state income tax.

Arguably, the first four are good reasons for anyone to support TaBOR; regardless, go and read the whole thing.

Today’s Clarion-Ledger has an article on the continued difficulty some large-county legislators are having getting an exception to the statewide ban on county sheriffs using radar.

The status of all the various bills is here, while the current law is here.

Starting this summer, Mississippi’s getting a new area code—769—which will overlay the 601 area code in central Mississippi. Amazingly, Mississippi only had one area code until 1997. (Everything you’d ever want to know about area codes is here.)

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen has said the casino gambling is “not the solution” to Shelby County’s debt problem, and that he will oppose an amendment to the Tennessee Constitution to allow gambling in Shelby County.

So what the hell are we supposed to do with this pyramid, now that it's not good enough for the UofM Tigers to play basketball in?

Apparently this weekend’s theme in the blogosphere is registration required. Apropos of that: our friends at the CA are going to start requiring registration in the near future.

The Baseball Crank plays whiffleball with some Bush AWOL critics. In the process, he notes this Jackson Baker piece in the Memphis Flyer, picked up by Kevin Drum of CalPundit.

For the uninitiated: Baker is both the bête noir and inspiration of Memphis blogger Mike Hollihan; the classic quote about the Flyer is that the alt-weekly “has never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” I caught Baker redhanded flat-out distorting quotes from politicians back during the Tennessee “tiny towns” debacle in 1997. Baker is the worst kind of political reporter: a man who virtually fellates his sources in print, an unabashed Democratic partisan, and a man who routinely substitutes innuendo for fact. While his work is often amusing, if you’re looking for credible, nonpartisan reportage or commentary without an ideological axe to grind I’d suggest going to Atrios or The 700 Club first.

Update: Dean Esmay has more, indicating that the end may finally be near.

Martin Devon of Patio Pundit catches the New York Times engaging in a bit of fantasy in suggesting that John “I don’t need the South” Kerry can, er, carry Tennessee in November. Said fantasy is based largely on an interview with Kerry campaign co-chair and Congressman-for-life-if-he-wants-it Harold Ford Jr. Quoth the Times:

The state has tended to vote Republican and has two Republican senators. Mr. Gore lost here in 2000 by four percentage points, but some say the issues will be different this time and that Mr. Kerry is a different candidate from Mr. Gore. And last year the state elected Mr. Bredesen, a Democrat, as governor, and he has become enormously popular.

“Some” might also note that Kerry is much further to the left than Gore ever was (until he got Deanentia), and Bredesen largely won because (a) his opponent, Van Hilleary, was an incredibly weak campaigner and (b) his predecessor, Don Sundquist, managed to turn the Republicans’ names into mud in the state by becoming a tax-and-spend liberal in his second term.

Also amusing: the article misspells the name of Vanderbilt University political scientist John Geer.

Since people are Googling… Wonkette! has swiped the results from NRO. The Kerryman is kicking ass.

Bear in mind, however, that at least in Tennessee voters are permitted to vote early up to two weeks before the election; to my knowledge, there was no exit polling done of early voting sites. Not that it’d make much difference in the results, as early voters are only about 1/4 of the electorate, but in a close race it might matter.

Today’s CA features an article on the latest effort to make Mississippi’s seatbelt law a “primary offense”, which would permit law enforcement officers to pull over vehicles whose drivers or passengers were not complying with the law. The article notes:

Nationwide, states that switch from secondary to primary seatbelt laws report a 10- to 15-percent increase in seatbelt use, according to the National Safety Council, an Illinois-based advocacy group. In Alabama, seatbelt use climbed from 52 percent in the year before the state passed a primary law to 79 percent two years later.

However, NHTSA data suggests that figure is overstated: their 2003 survey shows an 8% differential between states with primary and secondary laws. And the Alabama figures seem downright implausible—although, given that seatbelt use is trending higher in all states, not entirely outside the realm of possibility.

There are no fewer than six different bills that would make the seatbelt law a primary offense; they mainly differ in (a) whether or not the maximum fine per vehicle would be doubled* and (b) whether or not non-use of seatbelts can be considered contributory or comparative negligence.

Sunday’s New York Times has a long article on the growth of low-fare airlines on the eastern seaboard, a trend that has largely bypassed Memphis, as this Memphis Flyer cover story from several years back documents. Although minor low-fare player America West and sorta-kinda low-fare (I’ve never seen one of their flights be cheaper than Delta) airTran do serve the market, no-frills big daddy Southwest has stayed out of Memphis for reasons generally unknown—although nearby Tunica Airport has hopes to lure Southwest to the Memphis market when it opens its full 8500-foot runway and full terminal in the next two years. There have also been indications that jetBlue will add Memphis to its lineup sometime in the coming year.

Mike of Half-Bakered is doing the coordinating legwork on arranging a first-ever Memphis bloggers’ bash, to be held somewhere in the vaguely-defined “Madison corridor” in Midtown Is Memphis* on next Wednesday evening. So go forth and (a) RSVP, (b) suggest a location, or (c) all of the above.

Update: Attendees will also get to meet a real, live Commercial Appeal columnist in the flesh. If you ask me, Jon should drag Tom and Blake along for the ride.

The Shelby County School Board has thumbed its collective nose at non-Christians, changing the name of the winter break back to “Christmas break”. (The article does not say what it has been called in recent years.)

Quoth Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association:

[Dissenters] should get over it and be grateful we live in a free nation that tolerates different religious views and not in some Islamic country that forbids anything that is not Muslim.

And board member Joe Clayton, who sponsored the measure:

This is Christmas break. I get offended when I see that pushed to the background.

Maybe they could compromise and call it "Xmas vacation".

Well, at least they haven’t tried to remove the word “evolution” from the biology curriculum.

Over at the Commercial Appeal, we learn that the Rendezvous has added vegetarian selections to its menu:

“Change is hard,” said owner John Vergos. “But we wanted to reach some of those groups who might not consider coming here because one or more of them didn’t eat meat.”

Well, sort of. Apparently vegetarians have two choices: red beans and rice, or a Greek salad.

It’ll take a better selection than that to get me to go to the Rendezvous. But I guess it’s a start.

In public corruption, that is. Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, we learn that the Corporate Crime Reporter has listed Mississippi as the most corrupt state in the country, closely followed by North Dakota and Louisiana.

As for the rest of the Mid-South, the full report reveals that Tennessee comes in at number 19, and Arkansas is way down on the list at number 42. Nebraska is apparently the least corrupt state in the nation.

Congratulations, Mississippi!

UPDATE: Damn, Chris beat me to the post by 24 minutes.

Among Democratic contenders for the nomination, Wes Clark has so far had the Memphis airwaves to himself—apparently in an effort to build momentum going into the February 10th open primary in Tennessee, which is only 3 weeks away from Tuesday. Is Clark planning a “Southern strategy” of his own? Or is this a misallocation of resources? Only time will tell, but if he does well in both New Hampshire and on February 3rd, he should be well-positioned for a win in Tennessee in the race against presumed front-runner Howard Dean.

It’s the equivalent of the “soda/pop/Coke” question for roadgeeks: what do you call a highway with fully-controlled access (i.e. a road like Germany’s autobahns, French autoroutes, British motorways, or American interstates), a freeway or an expressway ? The preferred engineering term is “freeway,” but “expressway” has quite an established tradition in many parts of the eastern U.S.—including much of the south. (Georgia is the only southern state that consistently refers to its freeways in public by that name, although “freeway” does seem to have gained some limited currency in Alabama as well.)

Yet “freeway” creep may be happening in Memphis. The Commercial Appeal‘s Tom Bailey Jr. uses the term in this Go weblog entry, and it’s used more often than “expressway” in the associated article in Friday’s CA.

Bailey also notes Dan McNichol’s visit to Memphis to view the Midtown interchange reconstruction. McNichol is the author of the 2003 book The Roads that Built America. McNichol’s book struck me, when I looked through it at Barnes and Noble a couple of weeks ago, as a more road-friendly but ultimately less engrossing take on the subject than Tom Lewis’ 1997 Divided Highways, which accompanied the PBS series of the same name.

Both books, alas, overlook the second great phase of freeway building that is now getting underway: not just the “Big Dig” style projects that will rectify the mistakes of the past, but also the grand plans like Interstate 69, Interstate 49, and Interstate 73/74, as well as the Trans Texas Corridor. These are the routes that will apply the lessons of Overton Park and the Vieux Carre without compromising the central goals of the Interstate system—improving mobility, bringing economic opportunity, and increasing safety.

Robert Prather approvingly notes Radley Balko’s praise of Tennessee representative Harold Ford Jr. as one of his Libertarian Heroes of 2003. Quoth Balko:

Ford makes this list more for his rhetoric and his potential than his actual voting record. Ambitious and eloquent, he’s a fast-rising star in the Democratic Party. Ford has shown an admirable reluctance to wade into the partisan muck and mire. He’s a free thinker. His talking points aren’t dictated to him by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. He has flirted with support for school choice. He’s generally supportive of tax cuts. And there are rumors around Washington that he may eventually support one of several plans to give Americans ownership of their Social Security taxes. Ford is likely bound for the U.S. Senate, if not higher office. If his voting record ever aligns with his rhetoric, he could emerge as an important voice of reason in a party too consumed with class warfare and entitlement culture.

Ford is in the relatively unique position of being one of the first of the “new generation” of African-American political leaders—and the only Democrat among them to have learned the lesson of the previous generation, which is that amassing a left-wing record in the House in a majority-minority district will guarantee you a permanent seat, and maybe even some committee positions of note, but it absolutely kills any prospect of attaining higher office. Ford, instead, has built on his father’s organizational and constituency service strengths, but adopted a more moderate voting record than his fellow black caucus members—which not only has improved the security of his seat against potential Republican challengers, but also has positioned him to potentially gain broad support among moderate white voters in future statewide contests for either the senate or the governorship.

That isn’t to say that Ford has strong libertarian credentials—he certainly doesn’t—but rather that he’s become one of the south’s first black “yellow dog” Democrats who effectively combines liberal social positions with moderate-to-conservative economic policy views. In other words, he’s the sort of candidate the Democrats need to remain competitive in the south in the face of a relative decline of the black population that means Democrats will have to broaden their appeal beyond the rump group of whites that still identify with the party for economic reasons.

Also of note: Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution critiques Balko’s list for its exclusive attention to politicians.

Update: AlphaPatriot has more on this theme (thanks to Mike Hollihan of Half-Bakered for pointing the post out in an email).

The Mississippi Board of Education is considering making a change to its math requirements in order to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act.

It seems that the NCLBA requires states to test students on the highest level of math required by the curriculum. Currently, Mississippi requires geometry, but only gives standardized tests on Algebra I.

So rather than comply with federal law by giving standardized tests on geometry, the Mississippi Board of Education is considering dropping the geometry requirement.

Yet another illustration of the law of unintended consequences.

Mike of Half-Bakered is soliciting suggestions for a location and date for the first Memphis-area bloggers’ bash. Go forth and comment accordingly.

Upcoming in Monday’s Memphis Business Journal is this piece by Jane Aldinger on the current state of plans to designate the U.S. 78 corridor from Memphis to Birmingham as “Interstate 22.” My (slightly out-of-date) pages on the topic are here.

There is one minor mistake in the article: the Transportation/Treasury appropriations have been rolled into the planned “Omnibus” bill for final passage, due to some post-conference quibbling over some provisions relating to outsourcing provisions that were in the original conference report.

Memphis state senator John Ford is up to his usual shenanigans, this time billing taxpayers for $2200 of personal FedEx charges; Mike Hollihan has all the juicy details (permalink bloggered; scroll down).

Sunday’s Memphis Commercial Appeal endorsed Ronnie Musgrove for Mississippi governor. I’m sure that’ll help Musgrove big time in DeSoto County—a county full of people who moved there to escape from the establishment, “let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya” mentality the CA fosters north of the border.

Insult-the-CA-day continues here at Signifying Nothing as we learn that the Commercial Appeal has decided—stop the presses—to rename its website to CommercialAppeal.com. Whether this is a concession that the overtly boosterish “GoMemphis.com” was a bad fit for a city with a massive inferiority complex is left unsaid.

The Commercial Appeal on Sunday extracted its head out of the buttocks of the Turley-Belz-Lightman Memphis land-speculation elite just long enough to take a look at the city’s abuse of eminent domain as part of the massive, taxpayer-subsidzed Uptown redevelopment project—a project that wouldn’t exist without said land-speculation elite—near St. Jude. Money graf: a quote from Henry Turley, one-third of the prop-spec Axis of Evil, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in the early 20th century “slum clearance” movement:

Henry M. Turley Jr., one of the private developer partners in the Uptown project, said there’s a clear public interest in clearing out blighted areas, and it’s imperative that municipalities use the legal tools available to them. He believes that governments aren’t using eminent domain enough in consolidating tracts large enough for redevelopment.

Collaborating in this shameful exercise are everyone’s favorite Memphians, the Memphis Housing Authority (slogan: “Nobody found guilty of corruption in 7 days!”). Quoth MHA executive director Robert Lipscomb:

Lipscomb said the authority is careful to protect individual property rights while at the same time not unduly enriching those who might try to stall and make a windfall.

Damn straight, Robert; the only people allowed to make a “windfall” in this are Turley and Belz. Heaven forbid any poor bastard who actually had to live in Uptown before the city decided to clear the place out benefits from the exercise.

Germantown leaders are crying in their beer after learning that they can’t force local restaurants and bars to ban smoking, due to a state law that preempts localities from enacting such bans.

Notable by its absence is any mention in the article that there is no state law requiring bars and restaurants to allow smoking; indeed, many restaurants in Germantown already prohibit smoking by their patrons. But why expect basic honesty in reporting from the Commercial Appeal? One small plus: at least they take a welcome break from their continual suburb-bashing crusade in the article.