READY FOR TERM LIMITS?
HOW LONG IS LONG ENOUGH?
How do you feel about term limits for members of Congress? If you’re for them, would they look more like the 18-plus terms U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California, has served, the seven terms U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tennessee, has served or the two terms U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Georgia, has served?
On Thursday, the Tennessee Senate passed a resolution seeking national term limits on Congress members. Since the state House passed a similar resolution in 2023, the state becomes the seventh to pass in both chambers the United States Term Limits single-subject application to call for such a convention.
The measure has passed in one chamber of six additional states and is being considered in the legislatures of at least eight more states, but it must get to 34 in order to satisfy the Constitution’s Article V provision that allows state legislatures to propose amendments without the approval of Congress.
A convention would determine what those term limits would be. Once determined, they would have to be passed by three-fourths, or 38, of the states.
According to a Pew Research Center poll, 87% of Americans approve term limits on members of Congress.
The state Senate passed the resolution, 18-11. Both Hamilton County state senators, Bo Watson and Todd Gardenhire, voted against the proposal.
In the House vote approving the resolution last year, the county delegation’s four Republicans, Greg Martin, Patsy Hazlewood, Greg Vital and Esther Helton-Haynes, voted in favor of the term limits measure, and the only Democrat, Yusuf Hakeem, voted against it.
REAL COMMUNITY BENEFITS
With the announcement by an official of Chattanoogans in Action for Love, Equality and Benevolence (CALEB) that talks about a community benefits agreement involving the new Chattanooga Lookouts stadium have ended — though the city says they have not — a new proposal this week by Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp would benefit one of the schools that might have seen assistance from a community benefits agreement.
His $3 million proposal would aid career and technical education (CTE) in six area high schools, including $1 million for The Howard School, which is in the South Broad District where the stadium will be located. The amount would cover a state-of-the-art ventilation system for welding classrooms that also would allow the expansion of the number of students able to participate in the program.
Other amounts would go to Harrison Bay Future Ready Center, East Ridge High School and Hixson High School.
In the final stadium deal negotiated in February, the county agreed to invest $15 million into education in the South Broad District, including $10 million at Howard.
And in late November last year, Wamp announced that Howard would be one of four schools to receive a turf football field.
The Hamilton County Commission will vote on the CTE proposal next Wednesday.
WE’RE NOT SO DISTRACTED
If data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is to be believed, the South is doing something right. While polls often show Southern states as “the poorest,” “the worst” or “the least,” research by Florida personal injury attorneys show four out of the five states with the most responsible drivers are in the South.
Of those five, Tennessee is listed as fifth, behind, in order, Mississippi, Florida, Nebraska and Georgia.
The research was based on four factors that are known to be contributing factors to automobile accidents — speeding, hit-and-run, drowsy driving and distracted driving — and comparing the fatalities involving those factors to all fatal automobile accidents.
Tennessee’s percentage of the total of 5,304 accidents over the 2017-2021 period studied that involved the contributing factors was 28.68%, or 1,521 accidents.
READY TO CALL A LAWYER?
On the flip side, Tennessee, according to federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data, has the highest rate of workplace discrimination in the country.
Of 5,471 discrimination charges filed in 2021, as analyzed by employment law attorneys at Eldessouky Law, the state has a discrimination rate of 79 charges per 100,000 population. Rounding out the top five are Arkansas, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania and Alabama, which are tied for fifth.
According to the data, the most common type of discrimination in Tennessee is retaliation in the workplace, which was responsible for 1,276 of the nearly 5,500 charges. Racial discrimination was filed in 863 of the charges and disability discrimination in 819 charges.
Arkansas and Mississippi are the only two states in the top 10 where racial discrimination is the most common type of discrimination in the workplace.
“It is disheartening to see the high rates of workplace discrimination faced by employees across America,” Eldessouky employment law attorneys said in a news release. “Work can be draining for some, but added stress due to racial, sexual, or religious discrimination can be de-motivating, and nobody should have to experience that at their place of work.”