Hammond gets help on key question: Does travel = transportation?
Sheriff Jim Hammond, the most powerful man in Hamilton County, Tenn, declines to answer questions about the scope of authority of the driver license law, but indicates his belief that no one can be on the road without a license, even if that person is non-commercial. (Photo David Tulis) Sheriff Jim Hammond declines to answer […]
How Berke could win all sides by restraining cops, ordering ’open’ city
Mayor Andy Berke speaks with members of the audience at a campaign debate at UTC in 2017. (Photo David Tulis) I realize it will take a while for the policy and political implications of transportation administrative notice to take effect. For busy men such as Mayor Andy Berke and city attorney Wade Hinton, it will […]
Transportation administrative notice Tennessee
Chattanooga police officers in two cruisers enforce Title 55 of the Tennessee Code Annotated against a man on state highway 153 who is, by rebuttable presumption, a driver and an operator of a motor vehicle — but who may just be a private traveler caught in a legal snare set up by local officials in […]
Katz says localism seedbed of quasi-independent city-state, prosperity
Researcher Bruce Katz of Brookings Institution and Marcus Shaw of Chattanooga discuss lococentrism at a local economy-boosting event in Chattanooga. (Photo David Tulis) This book argues that in local economy people can exercise self-determination via the city-state and escape an impoverished political and national status quo. (Photo David Tulis) Boosters of local economy and tech-driven […]
Across board, rise of executive military state brings death, destruction
Hanson Melvin sits in the waiting room of district attorney Neal Pinkston’s office, reading a perjured indictment Mr. Pinkston won against him that the DA dismissed the next day in criminal court. But Mr. Pinkston lets go two criminal cops who made abusive, perjured arrests, one of whom was aided by a conspiracy of officers […]
State obliterates landmark, rips poor via ‘driver licensing’ regime
Most users of the road are private, but Tennessee imposes a fiction upon them: That no one may use the roadway unless they are common carriers for hire, subject to licensure and taxation, like the trailer truck hauling Target goods. (Photo WikiCommons) The Bible on which governors swear to uphold the constitution forbids the moving […]
‘Talking while black’ defendant yields to courageous cops
Talking-while-black victim Cameron Williams, a hip hop musician called G-Grimey, wants to make the most of his bad experience with cops in which he stood in a public place, addressed an officer for a seeming abuse of his authority, and was arrested under the vague disorderly conduct statute and charged, and his girlfriend gassed while […]
Musician, hairdresser in Nashville sue to legalize home businesses
Musician Lij Saw is suing to overturn a ban in Nashville on home-based businesses. (Photo Beacon Center) Nashville hair stylist Pat Raynor says it is unjust and ugly for city government in Nashville to make her an outlaw for practicing her trade. (Photo Beacon Center) NASHVILLE, Dec. 5, 2017 — Today, the Beacon Center teamed […]
Where does state get standing to prosecute you in criminal case?
Tennessee highway patrol officers enforce the commercial transportation law on the state’s highways. (Photo THP) Tennessee and other state governments have a paternalistic view of citizens and no longer serve them representatively to protect their rights. Rather, they seek to lord it over the people for their own good by holding them in commercial subjection. […]
Sharp raps TIF subsidy for local developer
Helen Burns Sharp Helen Burns Sharp is a model for other concerned localists in knocking commercial government in Chattanooga and Hamilton County. She offers list of criticisms for a F$5 million tax subsidy for Evergreen Real Estate to extend West M.L. King Boulevard to the Blue Goose Landing Trailhead on the Tennessee Riverwalk. Note artist’s depiction […]