Author: Pat Hamsa

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Governor Lee Lets Nashville Government Continue to Spin Out of Control

Between being broke with big debt service, and an insatiable blue wall of protection for illegal aliens and resettling refugees reliant on public assistance programs like TennCare, Bill Lee continues to abet the Nashville island of resistance which threatens the stability of Tennessee.

In November 2019, the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office reviewed and rejected Nashville’s budget, threatening to take over if they couldn’t figure out how to address the years of irresponsible over-spending. According to the Comptroller, “Metro’s expenses have outpaced the city’s revenue growth since 2013, according to Wilson. To accommodate those increasing expenses, city leaders have been depleting Metro’s available cash and reserve funds, which are down 24% and 16% respectively.”

Davidson County is pretty much the cash cow for the state’s different tax collections.

Today, despite the multi-millions of dollars invested in Nashville by state taxpayers, the city is broke and in debt. Today, Nashville has no rainy day fund and it’s debt service consumes a mammoth portion of revenue. The mayor is proposing a sky-high property tax increase, the pro-illegal-immigration-mayor-in-waiting Bob Mendes who chairs the council’s budget committee, is proposing an even bigger tax increase, and socialist council member Zulfat Suara has suggested increasing the county’s debt burden by borrowing more money.

During the worst public health and economic crises faced by Tennessee, Bill Lee has taken a hands-off approach to Nashville letting its far left mayor and city council continue their inept and destructive management of the county.

Lee made this decision even though the state’s liberal Attorney General opined that state law allows the governor to exercise broad power over the local governments during emergencies. Instead, Lee agreed to giving names of COVID positive people to law enforcement.

The Nashville Metro Council now wants to require whoever they determine are essential workers, to wear masks. Will that get another thumbs up from the governor?

While the majority of Tennessee counties were released from the governor’s “safer at home” order on April 30th, Lee allowed Chattanooga, Memphis, Nashville and three other counties to make their own decisions. Nashville’s mayor is taking an overly long route to reopening the county in a four-phased plan with each phase mandated to achieve his seal of approval before moving to the next phase.

WalletHub’s calculated (using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data) that unemployment in Nashville increased 5% since January 2020 due to COVID and was at over 7% in March 2020 as compared to March 2019. Nashville, Chattanooga and Memphis were also ranked among cities with the highest unemployment increases due to COVID. 

Nashville’s we-hate-police Community Oversight Board’s recent report documents that 31,000 illegal aliens are living and working in Davidson County.

WalletHub’s state rankings of COVID unemployment increases, put Tennessee at 22 since the start of COVID in March, and at 18 of being the most impacted for unemployment since May 4, 2020. 

It’s estimated that over 8,000 illegal aliens who have qualified for work permits through Obama’s unconstitutional DACA program are living and working in Tennessee.

A 2017 Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), estimate puts the cost of illegal immigration to Tennessee taxpayers at $793 million dollars. The NAE report says that illegal aliens come to Tennessee to work.

The alleged non-partisan Partnership for a New American Economy (NAE) which churns out reports and “data” advocating for increased legal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens because these workforces are essential to the American economy. Their 2016 report (latest available), states that as of 2015, approximately 26,634 “likely refugees” were residing in Tennessee.

NAE, the Koch brothers Americans for Prosperity Tennessee lobbyist and TIRRC also like to push the false economic-enhancing narrative of legal immigrants like refugees and illegal aliens. Tennessee’s AFP lobbyist Tori Venable and the leader of LIBRE, the Koch’s “premier pro-mass immigration organization,” co-wrote an oped titled, “Common ground is possible even when it comes to immigration.”

And they chose to focus on Nashville “because it’s a hub for tourism, commerce and innovation.”

Nashville is a hub alright and right now that hub is broke with high unemployment and “is projected to lose $470 million in revenue over the next 16 months, including more than $200 million in the next fiscal year, which starts July 1.”

Tennessee’s Comptroller appears to be monitoring Nashville but it’s not clear whether the governor and/or his advisors are reading the Metro tea leaves.

Rescinding his consent for continued refugee resettlement which is expected to begin again very soon, would make unemployed Tennesseans have a small measure of confidence that their needs are first before Bill Lee’s personal agenda.

Governor Lee has assured legislators that they will have revenue data to help them decide about budget cuts when they reconvene for a very very short session beginning June 1. Lee’s commitment to continuing refugee resettlement means that the costs of the federal program will continue to be involuntarily transferred to state and local governments.

If the governor can’t be counted on to put Tennessee citizens first, then the legislature can by passing the Gant/Bell bill which will put the decision-making about refugee resettlement in the hands of the legislature.

The Speaker of the House and Senate will decide which bills will be heard.

Contact Lt. Gov. Randy McNally 615-741-6806 and House Speaker Cameron Sexton 615-741-2343 and ask them to pass the Gant/Bell bill.

Call the Governor and tell him to start working with the legislators and not against them and the voters who gave him the privilege of serving them – 741-2001 or email him https://www.tn.gov/governor/contact-us.html

 

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31,000 Illegal Aliens Working & Homesteading Under the Protection of Nashville Government

The Community Oversight Board (COB), a funded arm of the Metro Nashville government says there are 31,000 illegal aliens living and working in Davidson County.

A 2019 ranking by Pew puts the Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin area as 50th out of 182 of the nation’s metro areas with the highest number of illegal aliens which of course, they incorrectly label “unauthorized immigrants.

The COB run by anti-police-pro-open-borders special interest groups, hasn’t let the COVID pandemic slow their efforts to use the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to obstruct Tennessee’s sanctuary city law and keep illegal aliens from being found by ICE.

The COB is made up of 11 special interest “volunteers” supported by a Metro employee staff of 9 with a guaranteed annual budget of $1.5 million dollars. So of course Nashville’s Mayor must have his 32% property tax increase and state grant dollars to keep this special interest engine running.

In mid April the COB issued a report titled Policy Advisory Report Examining Local Law Enforcement Policies and Immigration Enforcement Actions.  

The core agenda of groups like TIRRC and Conexion Americas is now institutionalized in the Metro government and because Nashville gets a lion’s share of state dollars, for example, in education funds for English Language Learners and economic and community development grants, the COB’s agenda is being funded by all Tennesseans, not just those who live in Davidson County.

Not surprisingly, the COB report was requested by Andres Martinez, the vice-chair of the COB. He also happens to be the Director of Policy and Communications for Conexion Americas, a Nashville organization and affiliate of the National Council of La Raza. This is the organization that gubernatorial candidate La Raza Randy Boyd funded with a quarter of a million dollars. For this and other reasons, thank goodness he didn’t win. 

(As an aside, it’s worth remembering that La Raza Randy who was practically tied at the hip to Jeb!, Bill Hagerty was also a Jeb! aficionado serving as a Jeb! delegate in 2016. And after Jeb! withdrew, Hagerty flipped to Marco Rubio. So in fact, Trump was Hagerty’s last choice.)

A deep dive into the COB report shows that they are pushing for the MNPD to adopt four policies that will help illegal aliens in Nashville go undetected and to ignore the state’s sanctuary city law:

    • The MNPD should create and implement policies and formal training on what types of U.S. issued and foreign issued identification will be accepted in order to issue misdemeanor citations rather than take individuals into physical custody.
    • The MNPD should create and implement policies that discourage police officers from asking about immigration or citizenship status. If an officer does ask about immigration status or citizenship status, they should be required to document that they asked and provide a justification for the question in their report narratives.
    • The MNPD should create and implement training on the difference between administrative and judicial warrants and what ICE can and cannot do while conducting immigration enforcement in public vs. REP (Reasonable Expectation of Privacy) areas.
    • The Department of Emergency Communications and the Metro Nashville Police Department should document and track instances of federal immigration enforcement officials calling for MNPD or first responder assistance during their enforcement actions in Davidson County.

Equally concerning about the COB report is the glowing reference to a resolution adopted by the Austin City Council after Texas passed a very strong sanctuary city law which was subsequently ruled as Constitutional by a federal appeals court. The Austin City Council resolution was specifically intended to obstruct and skirt the state’s law.

Nashville Mayor’s Immigration Task Force is also recommending that the Metro Council adopt the Austin City Council resolution. If that happens, expect to see the same in Knoxville, Chattanooga and Memphis.

Any chance the Governor’s office has any clue what’s going on in Metro? Didn’t Bill Lee campaign as a hawk on illegal immigration? Didn’t he criticize Haslam for not signing the sanctuary city bill and said that if he were governor he would have signed it?

Many thought he actually meant what he said just like when he said he supported the state’s Tenth Amendment lawsuit on refugee resettlement. Right.

The U.S. Supreme Court just issued a unanimous decision upholding the federal anti-harboring law that bars people from actively encouraging illegal immigrants to remain inside the country. Sounds like it would include actions being considered by the Metro Council and the COB on top of Tennessee’s sanctuary city law.

Between 2015 and 2020, the state has given Metro Nashville $99,581,919 in fast track economic development grants. In 2017 and 2018, the state rewarded the out-of-control and irresponsible spending and illegal-alien-protectionist government in Davidson County with over $28 million dollars to recruit Philips North America and Alliance Bernstein.

Where and when does this stop?????

In November 2019, Tennessee’s State Comptroller rejected Nashville’s budget and issued a warning that if the county didn’t fix it’s financial mess, the state would take it over. The fix proposed by Mayor Cooper is a 32% property tax increase without any cuts of course to the COB $1.5 million dollar budget.

Feel free to let your state legislators and the Governor’s office know what’s going on in Metro Nashville – they need to put a stop to it before the radical blue island takes the whole state down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Beijing Bill (Hagerty) – Tennessee Needs Closer Ties With the Commies!

Almost as soon as Haslam appointed Bill Hagerty to Commissioner of Economic & Community Development (ECD), Hagerty started paying back his political IOUs and gave Lamar’s son Will, a last name (Alexander) promotion to chief of staff. ECD’s organizational structure in August 2012, shows that in that position, Alexander oversaw the TN Film, Entertainment & Music Commission.

Beginning in 2013, the Beacon Center’s Pork Reports have pointed out that taxpayer funded subsidies for the entertainment industry benefit the corporate entity and not the taxpayer.

Hagerty, a committed globalist, also began looking to expand trade markets for Tennessee companies. With this goal in mind, he decided to push Tennessee companies to start exporting their goods to Communist China. So Hagerty had his Alexander sidekick organize a medical trade mission to China and South Korea for medical device manufacturers and other health care companies.

By 2013, Tennessee was ranked number one in the country for Foreign Direct Investment job creation, including investment in the state from China.

Who doesn’t want to own a piece of the South?

Hagerty took the early lead on deepening Tennessee’s ties to the communist state until he left in 2014. By 2017, Tennessee was reported to be “a top China trader” and being “the most dependent state in America for trade with China.”

Now that Hagerty’s running for the U.S. Senate and the anti-China sentiment spinning off of the COVID pandemic, he’s criticizing China for its trade expansionism.

On top of that, Hagerty’s plan to make Tennessee a profitable exporter to China never materialized. Instead, in 2016, two years after Hagerty put his plan in place, Tennessee had imported $23.7 billion of products from China compared with exports to China from Tennessee of $2.2 billion.

Expanding trade markets for Tennessee companies makes sense and was probably the same reason that had Hagerty thinking about the Middle East and why he hired someone with expertise in Shariah-compliant finance transactions. That’s the Samar Ali story which by all accounts of Hagerty’s campaign appearances raises questions that visibly irritate him. Like the fact that he says he’s pro-Israel but hired someone whose father has for over 15 years led a virulent anti-Israel organization.

Hagerty wanted Tennessee to get cozier with China even while Tennessee companies were off-shoring their manufacturing. Now the globalist conveniently turned nationalist, wants us to believe that his outrage for China’s trade practices (“China is acting more like trade enemy than trade ally”), and deception related to the Wuhan virus, is sincere.

As Confucius said, “The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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West TN Republican Running for State Senator – Paid Advocate for Refugee Resettlement?

Republican Senator Dolores Gresham is not running for re-election.

Page Walley, who works for an organization involved with refugee resettlement is running for Gresham’s Senate seat.

Page Walley is not new to the state legislature. He served in the House from 1990 – 2000. He has a pretty long resume of holding different positions including as a former Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.

Walley is a licensed clinical psychologist turned lobbyist and works as the President/Chief Public Policy and Community Engagement Officer for St. Francis Ministries. Walley’s job is to advocate for whatever services St. Francis wants to provide and get paid for. Walley and his team lobby in D.C. and at the state and local level. St. Francis maintains a satellite office in D.C.

From the looks of the St. Francis’ latest available 990 (in 2017) – they spend boo-coo dollars on lobbying, like well over $1.5 million.

St. Francis Ministries is an “organization rooted in the Episcopal faith” providing services in several U.S. states and in locations overseas, including refugee resettlement services in Kansas.

The St. Francis Migration Ministries is “a partner and affiliate of Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), the refugee resettlement program of the Episcopal Church.” EMM – Episcopal Migration Ministries, is one of the nine national refugee resettlement profiteers which contract with the U.S. State Department.

As tracked and reported by Refugee Resettlement Watch, EMM is 99.5% funded with taxpayer dollars. That means that you the taxpayer help pay the salaries of St. Francis lobbyists like Walley. Just think, if he wins the Senate seat, taxpayers can double their payments! 

And like the other refugee resettlement profiteers, they have opposed President Trump’s reduction in refugee admission numbers. Maybe because the federal refugee program has historically been a cash cow for NGOs, EMM goes after any opposition to refugee resettlement. After Texas said no to continued refugee resettlement in response to the President’s Executive Order, the Episcopal Church “condemn[ed] Governor Abbott’s decision.

Unlike some of the other federal refugee contractors, EMM and its Government Relations (ie, lobbyist), are part of the Episcopal Church – “The Office of Government Relations represents the policy priorities of The Episcopal Church to the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. We aim to shape and influence policy and legislation on critical issues, highlighting the voices and experiences of Episcopalians and Anglicans globally. All policy positions are based on General Convention and Executive Council resolutions, the legislative and governing bodies of the Church.”

Walley’s job description sounds all warm and fuzzy and his campaign issues which pretty much sound like everyone else’s, include the usual anti-illegal immigration and pro legal immigration.

It’s not a far stretch to say though that Walley’s campaign position to “strengthen legal immigration” is directly related to his job with St. Francis. Not much different than Bill Lee’s personal agenda to shove the refugee resettlement program on all of Tennessee’s counties.

It also means that Walley is not likely to support any efforts by the Tennessee General Assembly to address the issue of the federal government forcing Tennessee to pay for refugee resettlement costs. Sen. Steve Dickerson whose campaign was “I’m a different kind of Republican,” was the only Republican Senator to vote against suing the federal government for forcing the state to pay the federal government’s share of costs for the refugee program.

Gresham was first elected in 2003, to the House where she served for 6 years, and then was elected to the Senate in 2009, where she will have served for 12 years by the time she retires her seat in November.

Could be happy times for Governor Lee if a like-minded refugee program expansionist won the Senate seat.

Voters in Walley’s district need to get busy asking him questions.

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Hagerty Busy Campaigning While Sethi is Busy Saving Lives

A business suit v. a white coat.

 

Elitist v. Man who works among and for regular every day Tennesseans.

Candidate who has constructed his entire campaign around President Trump v. Candidate whose campaign rises from Constitutional self-governance – you know, that “we the People” thing.

Think about it – Hagerty would have no way to try and obscure his deep ties and commitments to Tennessee’s establishment Republicans like Lamar Alexander, and other globalist Republicans like Jeb!, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney.

In case you missed it – Hagerty’s Political Resume – Anti-Trumpers and Pelosi-Republicans

Hagerty owes a big political debt to never-Trumper Bill Haslam whose money and connections continue to give him pull in the Tennessee Republican party.

Hagerty’s launch in Tennessee government started with his political appointment by Haslam to be the Commissioner of the Department of Economic & Community Development (ECD). Does anyone really believe that Hagerty would have gotten that political appointment if he wasn’t connected to Tennessee’s ruling Republican elite and, wasn’t himself extremely wealthy?

Time to elect a man who spends his days with the real people in Tennessee. Someone who helps people through some of the most trying times in their lives. A person whose entire career is a person-to-person transaction, not a person-to-paper transaction.

Tennessee may be Trump country (which is a good thing), but Trump doesn’t elect the state’s Senators – real people in Tennessee do.

Look past Hagerty’s slick ads and his need to rely on the President’s endorsement at every turn – they are just words. Look at his POLITICAL DNA – IT IS FILLED WITH REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT ELITISTS AND ANTI-TRUMPERS.

Enough of giving bored super-wealthy businessmen something to do by letting them rule over us. Watch Hagerty try to take advantage of the COVID-19 crisis touting his business experience and Trump appointing him to an economic advisory team. Hagerty basically bought his ambassadorship and Trump jumped out too early and endorsed him for the Senate seat. So Trump will do what he can to have his pick win.

Tennessee deserves better than another establishment business suit doing the business of people they left in the dust years ago.

 

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What Comes First? Bill Lee’s Personal Refugee Agenda or the Suffering of Tennessean’s Health & Ability to Make a Living?

For Tennesseans personally impacted by the deadly and destructive March tornadoes and/or the deadly and devastating COVID-19 crisis, there is no question about what need to be Bill Lee’s priorities.

Bill Lee needs to retract his consent to continue bringing refugees to Tennessee. In fact, he shouldn’t hesitate to write that letter today to his good buddy Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Lee’s personal agenda for refugee resettlement has no proper place in any plan to help restore Tennesseans impacted by the tornadoes and COVID-19.

Helping Tennesseans recover and get back on their feet comes first. This includes restoring economic vibrancy to the state’s economy. It includes doing everything in our state’s power to prevent the 15 economically distressed counties which “rank among the 10 percent most economically distressed counties in the nation,” from slipping further away from us.

At last count, almost 250,000 Tennesseans have filed unemployment claims but with Lee extending the shutdown for several more weeks, don’t be surprised if the number of unemployed needing help increases.

So, will more people in Tennessee now qualify for TennCare in addition to the working poor on whose behalf the liberals and progressives have been pushing Medicaid expansion? Did Lee’s Medicaid block grant plan account for these contingencies?

Small businesses have been decimated by the COVID shutdown. And even larger businesses have laid off employees. How long will it take for them to gear back up and what happens to the people who are forced to wait or whose job is eliminated?

Regardless of what Lee and company tell us about refugees, the fact remains that they use cash welfare and TennCare as soon as they arrive. They also compete for jobs that out-of-work Tennesseans are willing and need to take.

This was the very real situation in 2009, documented by the Wall Street Journal in Job Fight: Immigrants vs. Locals, about what happened at the Tyson’s plant in Shelbyville.

Economic desperation during the 2007 – 2009 recession didn’t stop either Bush or Obama from importing large numbers of refugees just like the ones lining up in Shelbyville to compete with local residents who needed those jobs. Burmese refugees from Nashville, Florida and Idaho were lined up for the Tyson jobs, along with “several vanloads of Asian and African applicants from Nashville” brought there by “churches and refugee resettlement agencies.”

During these recession years, 3,300 refugees were resettled in Tennessee, not including refugees who moved into Tennessee from other states. The largest groups being initially resettled in Tennessee during this time were 807 Burmese, 575 Iraqis, 463 Burundis, 452 Somalis and 393 Bhutanese.

The data that is reported does not reflect the increase in numbers due to chain migration when resettled refugees apply to bring family members to join them.

Any current plan for Tennessee’s economic recovery should also account for the thriving illegal alien population which groups like TIRRC (TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition) also call “refugees” in a deliberate effort to confuse the public.

A coalition of groups including TIRRC, Stand Up Nashville, The Equity Alliance, Memphis For All, Tennessee Justice Center, Service Employees International Union Local 205, A Better Balance, Chattanooga Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO, Central Labor Council of Memphis and West TN, AFL-CIO, Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle TN, AFL-CIO, Chattanooga in Action for Love, Equality and Benevolence (CALEB), Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH), Southeast Laborers’ District Council, Workers Interfaith Network and Knoxville City Council Movement…

basically the state’s most left-leaning groups, sent a letter to the Governor requesting what amounts to the Pelosi/Schumer plan to steal the 2020 election among other things, also included a request for Lee to “use emergency powers to suspend specific state laws, including those that limit localities from requiring employers to provide paid sick days and repeal anti-sanctuary cities measures to ensure immigrants feel safe getting medical treatment.” 

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Tennessee, there were justifiable grounds for Governor Lee to retract his state-wide consent for refugee resettlement.

Chief among the reasons was the fact that he did not comply with the directives of President Trump’s Executive Order. Instead, Bill Lee without consulting the state legislature or any county leadership, forced his personal agenda for resettling refugees on the entire state. At the First Tuesday meeting the Governor claimed that counties defer to the state’s consent for refugee resettlement. One attendee described Lee’s version as “the counties are at the mercy of the state.”

Even without Lee’s help, Nashville and Knoxville are already ranked in the top 100 cities for refugee resettlement per capita. Three days before the Governor “urged” schools to close, federal refugee contractor Bridge Refugee Services announced that they were “welcoming several new refugees families to Knoxville this month.” The State Department’s refugee resettlement reporting site, however, shows that 13 refugees resettled Nashville and 1 in Chattanooga since the date of Bridge’s announcement.

The country’s listed in the State Department report for refugees who resettled in Tennessee since March 13, come from countries “with confirmed coronavirus infections.” Too bad, Tennesseans.

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According to the operative federal documents, Bill Lee’s consent for refugee resettlement was only supposed to be for June 1, 2020 through the end of the federal fiscal year, which is September 30, 2020. But Bill Lee made his consent valid for a year from December 18, 2019, the date of his consent letter to Mike Pompeo.

Now’s the time for the Governor to show Tennesseans in no uncertain terms that he puts their physical, psychological, and economic health first. Now’s the time for the Governor to live up to his ethical duties to the citizens of the state he was elected to lead.

Contact Bill Lee and tell him to retract his consent – (615) 741-2001 or email him.

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Are Bill Lee’s Refugees Being Screened for Coronavirus?

All those counties who either said they want refugees or refused to object to Bill Lee’s state-wide consent for importing refugees to Tennessee, might want to quickly rethink their decisions.

The Lee administration has been criticized for not readily sharing Tennessee coronavirus case information and it wouldn’t be a big stretch that if a refugee gets coronavirus, that information will never be made public.

That problem aside, think about it this way – Americans returning to the U.S. from overseas travel are being quarantined and others are self-quarantining if they think they’ve been in contact with anyone who contracted the virus.

But refugees and Afghanis and Iraqis who come on Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and get treated like refugees in terms of access to public assistance programs, have continued to be admitted to the U.S. and Tennessee.

Remember, it’s the SIV program that Marsha wants to expand for Syrians and Kurds.

Any overseas medical testing for refugees and SIVs, is controlled by the CDC. And even though there is some apparent flex in the guidelines to test for “quarantinable, communicable diseases” which include:

“Quarantinable diseases designated by any Presidential Executive Order. Current diseases include: cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers, severe acute respiratory syndromes, and influenza caused by novel or re-emergent influenza (pandemic flu).

Events that are reportable as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) to the World Health Organization (WHO) under the International Health Regulations (IHR) of 2005 (currently polio, smallpox, SARS, influenza, and other public health emergencies of international concern.)”

As of now, there’s been no announcement or news that refugees are in fact, being screened for either exposure to or active coronavirus.

A series of articles in 2016, documented that refugees were being admitted to the U.S. with either latent or active TB, including that “one in four refugees sent to Tennessee carry tuberculosis.”

Per CDC guidelines, a refugee with active TB can get a waiver allowing them to enter the U.S.

It’s little comfort that some doctor in the U.S. is supposed to be responsible for seeing that the person gets treated after coming to the U.S., because according to the Tennessee article, Catholic Charities of Tennessee which runs the state’s refugee program, doesn’t ensure that an affected refugee actually gets the follow-up medical treatment.

Public schools, college and universities are shutting down classes. Conferences and music events are being cancelled and whole office buildings are closing up for a spell.

It’s not clear yet how or what the coronavirus spread will become in Tennessee.

What is clear though, is that even in the face of the devastation caused by the tornadoes and emerging cases of coronavirus, Bill Lee hasn’t retracted his consent to keep bringing refugees to Tennessee.

So county leaders may need to step up and do what the Governor should but isn’t doing.

 

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TN Attorney General Says First Amendment Protected Speech Could Be Used to Prosecute Hate Crimes

As in suspected Islamophobic or Anti-Semitic hate crimes? According to Tennessee’s Attorney General, yes.

It started with a 2013 event in Manchester, Tennessee, sponsored by the TN American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) called “Understanding the American Muslim Community.”

Shortly before the event, Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney Bill Killian was quoted – “We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we’re here, they’re going to be protected,” U.S. attorney Bill Killian told the Tullahoma News last week. “This is also to inform the public about what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are.”

“Hateful statements directed at another will be used as evidence in a hate crime…”

It’s a back door way to punish what groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), subjectively label hate speech.

CAIR, a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood and which serves as a front organization for HAMAS, has helped fuel an industry of censoring protected First Amendment speech using subjectively defined “Islamophobia.”

And there was AMAC in 2013, pushing CAIR’s agenda with the help of the DOJ.

A 2019 Tennessee Attorney General Opinion in connection with the year’s HB600/SB1250, a bill based on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, requiring colleges to use a specific definition of anti-Semitism, agrees with what the U.S. Attorney said in connection with the 2013 AMAC event in Manchester:

But the Supreme Court has also recognized that protected expression may be relevant evidence in evaluating whether an individual has engaged in prohibited conduct. In Wisconsin v. Mitchell, for example, a unanimous Court made clear that the “First Amendment . . . does not prohibit the evidentiary use of speech to establish the elements of a crime or to prove motive or intent.” 508 U.S. 476, 489 (1993); see also R.A.V., 505 U.S. at 389 (noting that some speech “can be swept up incidentally within the reach of a statute directed at conduct rather than speech”). Similarly, courts have repeatedly recognized that state officials are permitted to examine protected expression when enforcing Title VI and other anti-discrimination laws and policies, particularly for the purpose of evaluating motive or intent.

Title VI is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or actives which receive federal financial assistance.

Islamists in Tennessee have long been seeking avenues to codify the myth of Islamophobia in Tennessee law and this bill may well serve their purpose.

They tried it in 2018, when an earlier version of HB600/SB1250 was pending but was ultimately never passed. During that legislative session, Islamist activists, some associated with AMAC, met with Speaker Beth Harwell and told her “that they want a bill that would protect students who are bullied because of their religion. Islamist activists in Tennessee connect bullying in school to Islamophobia which they claim leads to being regularly victimized or bullied because of their religion.”

Fast forward to the 2020 Tennessee state legislature is in session and the same scenario is being played out.

Don’t be surprised when Islamists tell legislators supporting HB600/SB1250, that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Are your legislators paying attention?

 

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Should Kurds Who Smuggled Across Borders to Evade Coronavirus Quarantine or Patronized the Hitler Restaurant Be Admitted to US?

 

Breaking today is a report that over 500 Kurds have been smuggled into Kurdistan from Iran to evade the 14-day quarantine imposed because of the outbreak of coronavirus in Iran:

“Iran has become the Middle East epicenter of the outbreak of the virus, with the latest official figures standing at 245 infections and 26 deaths. Iraq has so far confirmed 6 cases of coronavirus, 5 of whom were among Iraqis who had recently visited Iran.” 

Both Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Governor Lee have been adamant about their commitment to the Kurds.

Governor Lee says he won’t “turn his back” on Kurds he claims “walked alongside and fought alongside our soldiers.” This was one of his reasons for consenting to continuing refugee resettlement in Tennessee and ignoring explicit instructions in the President’s Executive Order.

The President said refugee resettlement was supposed to be an opt-in program for the state and the local governments. The President said both the state and local governments each individually had to consent. Instead, Bill Lee said he was consenting for the whole state and as a result, made it an opt-out program for Tennessee counties.

Marsha also believes U.S. taxpayers are beholden to Kurds who claim they were in some way connected, however loosely or remotely, to America’s fight against ISIS. Marsha is so convinced of the need to reward these Kurds that she is co-sponsoring a bill to fast track their arrival to the U.S. whereupon they can qualify for all types of public assistance programs.

A leaked State Department memo indicated that the administration was opposed to Marsha’s bill for a variety of reasons including a concern about super-accelerated vetting, which the State Department wrote, “fails to accommodate vital national security screening.”

Serious questions should be raised about admitting Kurds, Syrians or Iraqis in the face of the region’s outbreak of coronavirus.

Along with that, it seems reasonable to question an individual’s patronage of the “bustling” Hitler Restaurant in Duhok, the capital city of the Kurdistan region.

The restaurant, opened in 2018, kept the Hitler name until deputy head of the Legal Committee in the Kurdistan Parliament, objected. The basis of his objection was not that the restaurant was named for Adolf Hitler, the evil genocidal socialist who murdered, through execution and cremation, over 6 million Jews. No, the legislator’s objection was based on not wanting to offend Germany because “[w]e have to take into account the fact that Germany helped us in the fight against Daesh [ISIS].”

The head of the [Duhok Chamber of Commerce] said that while Hitler may be reviled in Europe, people in the Kurdistan Region are not concerned about him.

“Maybe for the German nation and Europe who suffered a lot under Hitler, it will not be accepted or welcomed,” Ayad Hassan told Rudaw. “But for this region, it will not be an issue to [name a business after] someone who has done good or bad things in history.”

Other Kurds said “it is better to have a restaurant named after Hitler than an alcohol shop.” 

As much as the restaurant owner and others interviewed downplayed the Hitler Restaurant name, it was reported in 2018, that Jews remaining in the Kurdistan region “keep their Jewish identity hidden for fear of persecution.

Even though Nashville Kurdish refugee Drost Kokoye arrived in the U.S. as a young child and was raised here, she has put her hatred of all things Jewish on full display using social media, anti-Jewish campus groups, and pro-HAMAS rallies.

It’s seems reasonable to question why Marsha and Bill Lee insist on romanticizing the Kurds considering the other baggage they’ve brought to Tennessee.

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Nashville Council Member Zocialist Suara Politicking For Socialism

Dubbed “Z” during her successful campaign for Nashville Metro Council, Zulfat Suara now admits she is a full fledged socialist and wants Bernie Sanders to be President.

From the comfort of her new $650,000 home, Zocialist Suara is working as one of Bernie Sanders’ three Tennessee campaign co-chairs. The other two, Emily Benedict and Delishia Porterfield are not surprisingly, Metro Nashville Council members.

From 2012 until right before running for an at-large seat on the Metro Nashville Council, Zocialist Suara led the TN American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC). Under her leadership, AMAC joined forces with Linda Sarsour, one of the most vocal anti-Semites in the U.S., featuring Sarsour at different AMAC events.

Sarsour is now “Bernie Sanders’s Anti-Semitic Surrogate”

This seems to be a pattern for Zocialist Suara who admires vocal Jew-haters U.S. Congressional members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Zocialist Suara was so inspired by the newly elected Jew-haters, that during her speech at the 2019 Nashville Women’s March, she announced her own candidacy for an at-large seat on the Metro Nashville City Council. Best guess is that she had to run at-large because to was all about “My Muslim Vote.”

By the time Zocialist Suara made that announcement she already knew Sarsour who co-founded The Women’s March with Tamika Mallory. The Nashville Women’s March is a named affiliate of Sarsour’s Women’s March.

Sarsour was the one who instigated injecting the Jew-hating anti-Israel BDS campaign into The Women’s March. Granted, no one should have been surprised given that she and her co-leader Mallory are supporters of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite who has praised Hitler and described Jews as “satanic.”

Hitler was a socialist liberal and led the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, a fact neither Bernie’s girls nor Bernie himself wants to own. What they try to do instead, is deflect by claiming their’s is a “Democratic” form of socialism.

Only in their own minds and only using their own twisted semantics since there is no such thing as “Democratic Socialism.”

Along with Linda Sarsour and Zocialist Suara, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have endorsed Sanders for President.

Sarsour, Omar and Tlaib have freely and publicly given voice to their anti-Zionism anti-Semitism.

Zionism is the movement that helped to establish the State of Israel.  Martin Luther King Jr., often cited by progressives as a symbol for social justice, understood that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. As he said, “When people criticize Zionist, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.”

Sanders’ has made a full display of his own Jewish self-hatred. He has hired two senior advisers with documented anti-Israel backgrounds for which they “were censured in the past for their deeply anti-Semitic, Judeophobic and anti-Israel views.”

“Republican Jewish Coalition spokesperson Neil Strauss said the hires illustrate a bigger issue.

‘We see this time and again with progressive Democrats, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are OK in their ranks.’”

It’s become such a lightening rod in the Sanders campaign that a moderate pro-Israel Democratic Super PAC is running ads against him.

(It almost feels like a throw-back to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini’s alliance with Hitler).

al-Husseini and Hitler

Regardless of whether they call themselves “progressives” or “socialists” radical candidates like Zocialist Suara, Tlaib and Omar are celebrated and endorsed by “Our Revolution” (OR), which functions as, the 501(c)(4) arm of Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

Not to be left out, TIRRCVotes (TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition) endorsed its former board member and activist Zocialist Suara for the Metro Council.

OR has a Tennessee state chapter and predictably, a Nashville and Middle TN chapter.

Coincidentally, Bernie Sanders and Leon Trotsky, a Soviet Marxist, both authored a book titled “Our Revolution.”

“In 1980, Sanders served as an elector for the Socialist Workers Party, which was founded on the principles of Leon Trotsky. According to the New York Times, that party called for abolishing the military budget. It also called for “solidarity” with the revolutionary regimes in Iran, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Cuba; this was in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis.”

“Our Revolution” wants Bernie Sanders for President and wants to put radicals in every elected office they can steal. James Zogby, another anti-Zionist, is on the board of OR.

Interestingly, Zogby served with Jerusalem Fund founder Hisham Sharabi on the board of the renamed American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ).

Samar Ali’s father Subhi Ali served alongside Sharabi at the (anti-Zionist-pro-BDS) Jerusalem Fund and has led the organization’s board since 2005. Samar served as Zocialist Suara’s treasurer in her Metro Council campaign.

(Keep in mind Bill Hagerty’s close connection to Samar when that primary election comes around).