Bible tileLet the Bible be the Bible
The Bible is the world's best-selling book and contains all of the necessary information one needs for personal salvation, but making it Tennessee's "official state book" is trivializing it to the maximum.
State Rep. Jerry Sexton, R-Bean Station, wants the designation to be on par with the Tennessee cave salamander as the state amphibian, the raccoon as the state wild animal, the square dance as the state folk dance and the tomato as the state fruit. Why not a state hill, a state grass, a state rash and a state card game?
The effort seems as trivial as the plethora of recent Facebook posts that ask viewers "What (Disney, Christmas movie, 'Jersey Shore,' cartoon, 'Twilight,' Dr. Seuss, Shakespeare, Harry Potter, musical theater, Robert Downey Jr., classic literary, 1960s TV girl, Peanuts, Sandra Bullock, Looney Tunes or "Walking Dead") Character" are you? Once was cute; the rest are excessive.
It's no shock the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee hates the idea, but the state constitution itself says "no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship."
"Privileging one religion over another is not only unconstitutional," said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU, "it sends the wrong message, marginalizing the thousands of Tennesseans who choose to practice other religions or not to practice religion."
Proposals to make the Bible the state book in Louisiana failed last year, and one in Mississippi failed earlier this month.
A difference of business models
Walmart and President Barack Obama were born within a year of each other, but they came to maturity believing in different business models for paying employees.
Obama wants Congress to increase the minimum wage 39.3 percent, from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, forcing it on businesses whether they can afford it or not. If businesses can't afford it in the still slow-improving economy, they would have to lay off employees, reduce their workloads or invest less in their business.
Walmart, on the other hand, is the nation's largest employer with some 2.2 million associates around the world, having started with one store in Rogers, Ark. In the next six months, it plans to start raising entry-level wages -- fewer than 6,000 of its associates (.27 percent) earn that -- to at least $9 an hour possibly as soon as April and to at least $10 an hour by February 2016.
The retailer, according to information on its website, operates 11,000 stores in 27 countries and pays its management team members between $50,000 and $170,000 a year.
"Just because a $10 minimum wage is the right choice for Walmart, however, does not mean it should be mandated for all other businesses, regardless of industry or size," Michael Saltsman, research director at the Employment Policies Institute in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "The rash of small business closures in San Francisco as a consequence of the city's recently passed 36 percent minimum wage hike highlights the folly of raising wages by fiat."
Walmart, like many businesses which are able, raises its wages both when the economy allows and where it feels it needs to in order to keep valued employees. As competitors follow suit, wages rise naturally rather than forcibly, and thus don't have the negative shock of a minimum-wage hike.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials lead U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann on a tour of the dewatered Chickamauga Lock in this 2012 photo. 'Chuck' lock needs check
U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Chattanooga, says he's working so hard to secure funding for work on the Chickamauga lock to begin again that the project is becoming known "all over the United States" as the "Chuck" lock.
The third-term congressman is no doubt hearing -- and making -- the reference in jest, but he may want to eschew the term for the near future.
While Fleischmann helped secure a new funding formula for the Inland Waterways Trust Fund last year -- a fund that could free up more funds for the lock -- and supported a barge fuel tax increase that would create more revenue, work on the $680 million project still may be several years away.
He has said work could get restarted with $6.9 million in funds, but President Obama didn't include any money for the lock in his Army Corps of Engineers budget, and it currently remains the Corps' fourth-highest priority project.
Fleischmann has, indeed, given a yeoman's effort in trying to secure funding, but if work doesn't start before the 2016 election, he may want to chuck the nickname lest voters chuck him because of the tie-in.