Tag: Cameron Sexton

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You Pay for Tennessee House Members’ Misfeasance on Illegal Immigration

“Misfeasance” as applied to a politician, is defined as “the performance of an official duty in an improper or unlawful manner or with an improper or corrupt motive.”

Conflict-of-interest driven voting on public policy likely qualifies as misfeasance. It’s especially egregious and harmful knowing that Tennessee is not immune from the crush of illegal alien economic migrants being ferried into the U.S. by the Biden administration.

In addition to the 67,000 illegal alien “essential workers” in Tennessee, and the 31,000 illegal aliens reported to be living and working in Davidson County, and the 135,000 estimated by FAIR, and the $793.4 million dollars illegal immigration costs Tennessee taxpayers, there is the issue of the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) arriving in the state.

Over the past six years, just under 7,500 UACs have been routed to Tennessee. The overwhelming majority, 72%, are between 15 – 17 years old and predominantly male. Recent estimates expect at least 184,000 UACs to arrive in the U.S. this year.

Illegal immigration hurts low-skilled American workers and according to the Project 21 Black Leadership Network, “especially Black Americans who often share the same communities and services as illegal immigrants –[and should] not be forced to subsidize people who are not in the United States legally.’”

Two leading examples of legislators who make it easier for illegal aliens to find work in Tennessee are Rep. John Holsclaw and Rep. Clark Boyd.

Holsclaw is from Elizabethton and represents Unicoi and parts of Carter Counties. He’s been in the state legislature since 2015. Boyd is from Lebanon and represents Cannon County and parts of Wilson and DeKalb counties. He’s been in the state legislature since 2017.

In the 2019-2020 session these two derailed Rep. Bruce Griffey’s bill that would have made it more difficult for businesses to hire illegal aliens. During this session Holsclaw chaired the subcommittee and Boyd chaired the full committee which handled Griffey’s bill.

In fact, Boyd, with agreement from the NFIB and the TN Chamber of Commerce, drafted the amendment that essentially nullified the effect of Griffey’s bill. Griffey’s bill originally required employers with 6 or more employees to use E-verify; Boyd’s amendment increased that to 25 employees. Freshman legislator Griffey probably desperate to pass a bill, swallowed the RINO “incrementalist” approach to policy and accepted a bad amendment.

It is common knowledge that the 25 employee threshold would not apply to the vast majority of small businesses in Tennessee.

As an aside, during the committee discussion, Rep. Mike Sparks (R-Smyrna) expressed worry about the fines levied on businesses that get caught hiring illegal alien workers. WAAAH! And Rep. Rush Bricken (R-Tullahoma) then and now continues to wring his hands trying to figure out how to avoid taking any action against illegal immigration in Tennessee.

After beating back Griffey’s original bill, Holsclaw and Boyd both received the “coveted” NFIB “Guardian of Small Business” award and of course, NFIB campaign donations.

NFIB and Holsclaw

While the Senate never moved the companion bill, Griffey’s bill with the non-effective 25 threshold passed the House making its supporters look as if they were taking meaningful action against illegal immigration in Tennessee.

NFIB and Boyd

Even with an ineffective bill, decepticon Republicans Pat Marsh, Patsy Hazlewood, Kent Calfee, Charlie Baum, Sam Whitson, and Mark White voted against the bill. Even more anemic Republicans Michael Curcio, Curtis Johnson, Jerome Moon, Brandon Ogles, Iris Rudder, Kevin Vaughan, and Ryan Williams, didn’t bother to vote.

It should be remembered that several of these legislators are among the worst illegal immigration protectionists in the Tennessee legislature. Patsy Hazlewood went so far as to try to kill the sanctuary city bill so she could help protect illegal aliens who commit crimes in Tennessee.

This year, when Griffey again tried to lower the E-verify employee threshold to to 6 employees, Boyd and Kevin Vaughn led the pack to kill the bill in subcommittee. Speaker Cameron Sexton subsequently abused his authority to prevent further discussion related to the problem of illegal immigration in the state as a way to protect his Republican caucus from being accountable to legal Tennessee voters and legal Tennessee workers.

Shamefully, Tennessee’s RINO approach to illegal immigration is at odds with a recent NYTimes opinion piece written by the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. He puts it bluntly, in The Real Reason for the Border Crisis, is that “no one is holding American employers to account for their willingness to hire millions of unauthorized immigrants.”

The “no one” includes Tennessee’s Republican legislators.

 

 

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TN House Says Don’t Call Us Conservatives!

March is the month that Tennessee House members shifted remaking the state into high gear – illegal alien workers are welcome, racism is a public health threat and made the case for more RINOs to be elected!

Cameron Sexton and RINO Central 

House members have twice elected Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) to lead as Speaker knowing that he is a card carrying member of RINO Central, aka, the Southland Advantage fundraising firm whose stable of clients include super-RINO Steve Dickerson (voted to support ballot harvesting), Eddie Mannis and La Raza Randy Boyd.

Even if the company Sexton keeps doesn’t concern Conservative voters, his choice of Southland given its traitorous, scandalous and unethical conflict-of-interest ridden history, should.

When Taylor and Walker Ferrell, Southland’s husband and wife team, launched their political shop in 2015, both were employed by and embedded in the Tennessee Republican Party – Walker was the Political Director of the state party, and Taylor was employed as the Interim Finance Director.

All three of Southland’s first stable of Republican clients were recruited to oust proven incumbent conservatives.

Flash in the pan Grant Starrett ran against Rep. Scott DeJarlais, Beth Cox ran against then state Rep. Courtney Rogers, and Will Lockhart ran against then state Rep. Judd Matheny.

All three of Southland’s candidates lost their primary races.

2016 was a busy year for Sexton – he sponsored the National Popular Vote bill and was rumored to have been testing the caucus waters for a bid for Speaker. While it took him four more years to ascend to Speaker, he did so bringing along his tainted perspective of how representative government is supposed to work.

Given his history and affiliations, it’s no doubt that the cowardly Republican caucus suspected that a good RINO like Sexton would be willing to abuse his authority and shield them from inviting illegal aliens to work in Tennessee. Dropping the gavel before any member could even turn on their microphone to offer a second to Griffey’s Rule 53 Motion followed by stripping Griffey of his committee assignments, is a too obvious move to protect caucus RINOs from Chamber and NFIB wrath.

It wasn’t that long ago that Speaker Pro Tem Pat Marsh, an illegal alien protectionist, supported awarding in-state college tuition to illegal aliens because, “I go into the local schools and see these immigrants in leadership roles in our schools. They’re the star athletes. They’re the star students. They deserve a chance to move forward in their lives …”

Tennessee’s doctors are racist

Earlier this month, in true BLM-style, the House Health Subcommittee passed a joint resolution affirming that all Tennessee doctors are racists. Only two Republicans voted against it in the full House committee and even though it’s going back for another round in the full committee, it’s a safe bet that whatever gets passed there again, will be passed by the cowering Republican caucus.

No doubt the even more liberal Senate Republicans will agree and “recognize racism as a public health threat.”

The resolution in question is centered around the pro-abortion American Medical Association’s (AMA) declarations regarding an alleged connection between structural racism and public health.

Like other medical venues which are “laundering their progressivism” under the guise of public health, the AMA is also pushing the climate change. During the Trump administration, the AMA issued a statement criticizing the protective separation of children and adults after crossing the border illegally. There’s no record of the AMA speaking against the same policy practiced during the Obama administration.

House Caucus – we need more fake conservatives

The same divide between Conservative and Establishment Republicans in D.C. is also happening in our state legislature. How did we end up with a governor who campaigned as a “conservative outsider” but whose policies and agenda for Tennessee ignore critical issues like real Constitutional carry and the impact of illegal immigration on Tennessee’s legal workers?

Was anyone else laughing out loud when the American Conservative Union (ACU) ranked the Tennessee General Assembly as the most conservative legislature in the country for a consecutive second year?

But that was in 2017, and A LOT has happened since then including a continued decline in the conservative profile and ACU ranking of Tennessee’s House and Senate.

In 2020, the Senate’s average conservative ranking fell by a full 10 points from the prior year, to 75% while the House fell by 11 points to 78%. The slide of phony conservative legislators into RINO-ism is often subtle and difficult to nail down explicitly; it is best looked at as a downward trend taken in a series of mostly small steps.

For example, when Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby) ran for the first time in his rural east Tennessee mountain district that includes Cocke, Jefferson, and Greene counties, he labeled himself “the conservative”.

A few terms down the road and “the conservative” Faison pushed for legalizing marijuana medical treatments whichhe said, “has no side effects” as compared to alcohol, relying on the standard canard the left and old burned out hippies have been pushing for decades that marijuana can provide medical benefits.

Was Faison’s idea that marijuana would be Cocke County’s biggest cash crop and the pot growers could just start bottling the oil in the field; “farm to table” would, after all, be in keeping with current trends. It will also legalize the weed industry already in place.

Faison also appears to have taken the RINO road on illegal immigration. In Faison’s now deleted 2016 op-ed he wrote that:  “Two of the three top Republican presidential candidates want 30 million illegal immigrants deported. Many of these illegal immigrants have family members that are citizens. No president will ever deport. Republicans should build a bridge to their community with concrete, achievable solutions.” This is probably why he filed to be a Marco Rubio delegate in 2016 due to Rubio’s position to amnesty illegal aliens.

And now for a flashback laugh of the day that no one could seriously fabricate – Faison’s bill making it legal for Tennesseans to raise and sell skunks Creating a ready-made market for pot pet specific products like those being sold in California?

If you’re thinking House member conservative sell-out, know that Faison is not alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bill Lee Tithes For the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program With Taxpayer Money

Why do millionaires like Bill Lee feel so free to use state tax dollars to live out their personal religious beliefs?

Remember when Bill Lee was campaigning and trying to dazzle gullible voters with his “brilliant” idea for an Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives?

Once elected he launched this initiative and it may end up being the vehicle for Bill Lee to funnel more state dollars to pad the pocketbooks of federal refugee contractors and other groups that want to get into the lucrative refugee resettlement business.

In fact, Bill Lee told us as much while he was on the campaign trail:

“My wife has worked in a ministry that serves Kurdish refugees, I’ve been to Kurdistan and served with refugees from ISIS in refugee camps,” Lee replied. “I believe that the work of nonprofits is powerful and important, and that’s what this is about. And I am a Christian, so my experiences and my work with non-profits that are doing effective work has been Christian organizations, so that’s what I talk about, because I talk about my experience, and I will support works that are doing, meeting some of the greatest challenges in our community that I believe government shouldn’t meet, it’s not the role of government to do that. But it is the role of the nonprofit community and I would encourage that kind of work, for sure.”

But he might just use the government to provide the greenbacks – we’ll get to that in a minute.

So why is anyone surprised that when offered, he jumped at the chance to say “YES!” I want to put Tennessee back into the refugee resettlement program!!!

And because of the 50-100 mile placement rules from the four urban centers where the federal resettlement contractor offices are located, when he consented for Tennessee, he pretty much put every county in the state up for grabs.

Shortly after the Governor announced consenting to bring more refugees to Tennessee, a Bill Lee Facebook devotee put out hints about what is in the works:

Kurds which seem to be a Lee-Blackburn obsession, are overwhelmingly Muslim and have been in a long-standing battle with other Muslims over terrain. Let’s also remember that the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party), a U.S. designated terrorist group is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF is a multi-ethnic group of secular forces in northern Syria led primarily by the YPG, a Kurdish militia group.

So exactly how does the Governor plan to “hold Churches and Christian organizations accountable for the refugees they resettle in Tennessee”?

It’s so simple even Governor Lee figured it out – do it the same way the federal government holds states accountable – by attaching conditions to money.

Lee can use his Office of Faith-based & Community Initiatives to offer state grants to the hard leftist federal resettlement contractors who just happen to also be faith-based non-profits. They’re paid by the feds to only provide 30 days of service during which, they get refugees a social security card, enroll kids in school and get anyone eligible for TennCare signed up.

Churches that want to get into the lucrative refugee industry by providing services after the federal resettlement contractors finish their 30 days, can also get in on the state money.

Money? What money?

Was a hint thrown out today by House Speaker Cameron Sexton during hisradio interview about the Governor’s consent on refugee resettlement?

Could the money be coming from the state’s accumulated TANF (cash welfare) reserve funds?

It was reported on November 5th, that the Governor originally supported holding onto the extremely large accumulated bundle of TANF money being held by the Tennessee Department of Human Services:

“However, Lee changed course on Monday by telling reporters he was open to using the surplus on a variety of options to continue helping Tennessee’s poor. His announcement was coupled with news that the state was planning on spending up to $70 million of the surplus on grant awards to nonprofits throughout the state starting in January.”

Maybe like the non-profits involved or soon to be involved with refugees? Would the Governor’s church qualify?

Tennessee has sued to challenge the federal refugee program because of the federal government shifting federal costs associated with the refugee program to the state government. This has been acknowledged in federal reports. And the cost transfer occurs whether or not the state consents to paying these added federal costs.

No worry now, because Governor Lee has now consented to paying the federal costs transferred to Tennessee on top of the state incurred costs for the refugee program and is possibly willing to add some of the TANF money to the effort.

Conservatives in Tennessee who put Bill Lee in office get a lump of coal for Christmas while the radical left TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) congratulates it’s lobbying effort on the consent push:

“We thank Governor Lee for his moral clarity and leadership in making his decision today…‘Refugee communities across Tennessee have played a powerful role in defending not only the resettlement program but the values and aspirations of this country’, said TIRRC Policy Officer Judith Clerjeune. ‘We will continue to work with refugee leaders and partner agencies to advocate for a robust and generous resettlement program.”’

During Bill Lee’s campaign his first major policy initiative was his “Roadmap for Rural Tennessee” which he highlighted by riding around on a tractor and talking about “his farming roots” and about how Tennessee is just one generation away from losing this way of life.

Not sure what happened to all that rural love, because what we have now, is the rural governor scrooging Tennessee’s rural counties in deference to the urban-based federal contractor resettlement agencies.

Merry Christmas!