‘Tennessee Three’ among top talkers
The narrative the left would like you to believe is that the “Tennessee Three,” state Reps. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, Justin Jones, D-Nashville, and Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, are routinely silenced in their attempts to make points during discussion in the state House.
However, according to an analysis by state Rep. Jody Barrett, R-Dickson, they were three of the top four in commanding speaking time from the floor during House business in 2023. Pearson easily beat all 98 other representatives with three hours, 43 minutes and 57 seconds. Jones was third with two hours, 12 minutes and 26 seconds, and Johnson fourth with one hour, 29 minutes and 45 seconds.
When the House began its 2024 session earlier this week, Pearson continued the obfuscation about lack of speaking time, saying the supermajority GOP has “all these attempts to silence people” and termed them an “attempt to subvert democracy.”
Only one Republican, Rep. William Lambert, R-Portland, who spoke for 40 minutes, was in the top 10 of House members. The most frequent speaker in the Hamilton County delegation was Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, who spoke for 12 minutes, 49 seconds.
Who needs marriage?
Pointing up what many experts are saying about the effects of the destruction of marriage and family across the country, the Census Bureau’s recently released American Community Survey has information on the demographics for Hamilton County.
The five-year (2018-2022) survey shows married-couple households made up 46.2% of all county households, while the combined male and female households with no partner present made up 47.8% of households.
Among county residents ages 15 and older, 50.6% of males were married, and 34.7% of males had never been married. For females, 46.1% were married, and 28.2% had never been married.
The five-year survey also provided several other interesting tidbits:
› 93.4% of households had a computer and 88.7% had a broadband internet subscription, offering realism to what is often lamented as the county’s “digital divide.”
› 90.4% of the civilian noninstitutionalized population had health insurance coverage, again offering truth to what is often characterized as a wide gap between the county’s insured and uninsured. Private coverage was responsible for 69.8% and public coverage for 33.5%. Only 4.2% of children under 19 had no health insurance.
› 76.3% of workers in the county drove to work alone, while 11.2% worked from home, 9% carpooled and less than 1% took public transportation. Commuters on average spent 21.9 minutes getting to work.
› 66.9% of people ages 25 or older had some college, an associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, or graduate or professional degree.
› 9.1% of county residents had incomes of $200,000 or more, while 4.3% had incomes below 10,000. The median income of all households was $69,069.
Numbers snapshot
The 11-month snapshot of Hamilton Counted, the county’s monthly data report, showed violent crime down 3.74% over 2022 and property crime off 16.07%. The overall crime rate was down 13.02% in the city of Chattanooga and 15.46% in unincorporated Hamilton County (including Lakeside and Walden).
Murders for the first 11 months of both years numbered 30.
In comparable data available, both sexual assault calls and exams were down year over year, from July through November, as were overall domestic violence calls, according to the Partnership for Families, Children and Adults.
While the number of sexual abuse exams of children fell by 12 from 2022 to 2023, the total number of forensic interviews for child abuse jumped by 165.
And while fatal overdoses fell in Hamilton County by 17 year over year in the first 11 months of 2023, officials noted the county still had six times more fatal overdoses than murders.
Racial progress in Tennessee
Different segments of the population will have different takes on the racial progress a state is making, based on a variety of criteria.
WalletHub, a financial services company, annually measures gaps between Black and white people in the 50 states and Washington, D.C., across 22 indicators of equality to determine a level of progress.
In the survey, Tennessee is judged to be 18th in the country in racial progress over time, though Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama and Louisiana all stand ahead of the Volunteer State. The state gets its highest marks in health equality and lowest in social and civic engagement.
However, in considering current integration of the races, Tennessee is 11th and stands behind only Kentucky and Georgia among Southern states. The state’s best integration mark is in education and its worst in health, though the rankings are close.