Among the few best things Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Monday night in his State of the State address was that with his proposed fiscal 2023 budget, he wants to put forward $200 million to relocate 11 schools across the state which are in flood plains. The trigger, he said, came after a flood in the West Tennessee town of Waverly put almost four feet of water into an elementary school within 10 minutes of the flood’s start.
“If the Waverly flood had happened on Friday, instead of Saturday, we would be mourning the loss of hundreds of Tennessee children. So I’m proposing one-time funding to ensure that no Tennessee student attends a public school located in a flood zone,” Lee said, prompting applause.
Among those flood-prone schools is Clifton Hills Elementary on 32nd Street in Chattanooga. Did we mention it already had been recommended for closure in a March 2020 Hamilton County Schools Facilities Master Plan?
Overall, Lee, a Republican, proposes a $52.6 billion spending plan that’s about $10 billion higher than last year. In it, he proffers a proposed overhaul of the state’s $5.6 billion “student-based” school funding formula – along with $1 billion more in money to pay for it. There also is $626.5 million for transportation and infrastructure, $545 million for health and social services, $601.6 million for law and safety and $1.9 billion for higher education and career technical education.
Governing is easy when the state is awash in money from a good economy but also, mostly, from at least $8 billion thanks to President Biden’s Infrastructure and Jobs Act and the American Rescue Act.
But did Lee ever once say thank you to President Joe Biden or the mostly Democratic federal lawmakers who passed the bills? Of course not. He did, however, take some swipes at them.
“The freedom to innovate requires a healthy balance sheet. Unfortunately, that’s not something we’ve been seeing at the national level. Washington saddles our kids with trillions of dollars in debt,” he said, smiling throughout his speech as he extolled the ways in which he and Tennessee will happily spend that same money.
But what was the absolute worst thing about Lee’s message?
His bow to the false flag of Tennessee “freedoms” for “patriots” – meaning the “freedom” not to have to vaccinate or wear a mask.
No, he never specifically said the words “vaccines” or “masks.” He didn’t even utter the word “COVID.” Nor did he mention Tennessee’s No. 1 position for COVID-19 death rates or its No. 4 spot among states “least-safe” from COVID.
But we all knew what he meant. This is, after all, the state where Lee, hoping to bridge a growing shortage of state troopers, made a video ad inviting officers from other states to come to the Volunteer State – the state where you volunteer to be ignorant while he refuses to entertain practical disease preventions and the Tennessee General Assembly passes foolish mandates against mandates.
In Lee’s ad, aired in the fall, he intoned: “We want you to join the Tennessee Highway Patrol. and we won’t get between you and your doctor. I’ll work to make sure your freedoms are protected.”
On Monday, he was at it again, introducing two veteran police officers from California who he said “recently packed up everything they have, left behind everything they knew in search of, as they say, ‘more freedom.'”
If you had beamed here from outer space to see and hear this address, you would never know that 1.8 million of us had been sickened and 22,452 have died. Just in the first month of 2022, when state officials claimed the virus was peaking and they stopped daily virus reporting, Tennessee still registered at least 269,576 confirmed new cases and 1,300 new COVID deaths.
Lee mentioned “free” or “freedoms” at least nine times, and “patriot” or “patriotism,” at least three times.
Tennessee pastors with the Southern Christian Coalition were not impressed.
“Governor Lee spent 45 minutes celebrating his ‘achievements’ completely ignoring the struggle of Tennessee families who are dealing with the biggest COVID surge yet, which is shuttering school districts and businesses across the state due to the governor’s inaction,” they said in a Tuesday news statement.
“Listening to the ‘State of the State’ it seemed to me the Governor’s Mansion must be located on another planet and not in Tennessee,” said the Rev. Dr. Donna Whitney of Nashville. “Governor Lee celebrated the ‘freedom’ that he believes the state of Tennessee embodies. But how can Tennesseans be ‘free’ when they do not feel safe sending their children to school due to out-of-control COVID spread leading to record numbers of both staff and student illness?
“And how ‘free’ can Tennesseans be if they are worried about going bankrupt from healthcare bills due to the lack of affordable health care? How ‘free’ are we when he is championing legislation that silences teachers in their classrooms ? How ‘free’ can we be when Tennesseans are more likely to die of COVID than Americans in any other state of the union?”
We can’t say it any better.