Good morning, Nashville. This weekend, Nashville will be one of the nine polling places for the Iraqi parliamentary election. Because Nashville has the largest Kurdish populations in the United States, we were chosen to host one of the polling sites and Iraqi nationals will be traveling into town from all over the southeastern US to cast their votes. Their election sounds way more confusing than ours, however, as there are 6,172 candidates representing 240 political parties and they’re all fighting for 325 Iraqi Council of Representatives seats. Yikes.
- Gas tax troubles. It seems like everyone is all about going green these days, specifically with hybrid and and fuel-efficient cars. But this much efficiency spells out bad news for Tennessee’s gas tax. If people aren’t buying as much gas, then Tennessee isn’t collecting as much revenue which they use to build roads and fix potholes and all that. Gubernatorial candidate Ron Ramsey (remember this for when MTSU quizzes you!) is proposing a per-vehicle fee so that everyone would be contributing the same thing to the road fund regardless of gas usage.
- Music City Center drama. The Music City Center has hit a bit of a snag with financing that requires an actual change in state law. The current state lending laws cap the interest rate that a city can pay out on bonds, and in order for the financing to happen as planned, Metro will need the state to make an exception. No one seems to think this will be a problem, but they are concerned about the time crunch.
- Bits & pieces. The Workplace English bill is making its way through the legislature, this time with the support of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition … A worker was injured from a fall while cleaning up the coal ash at the Kingston TVA site … This is the time of year where we tell you to that the IRS owes Tennesseans several million dollars and you should probably check to see if any of that is yours … Here is a much better article on the new free Circulator routes, map included.
Photo by Paul Nicholson.
Related posts:
- Election Madness, Part Deux: Get Out And Vote! [English Only]
- Bright & Early: Rockin’ And Rollin’ Edition