Publisher’s Positions
City Should Fix The Gay Street Bridge
Folks in South Knoxville are getting increasingly angry with Mayor Indya Kincannon and the decision to close the Gay Street Bridge to automobile traffic. Kincannon made the startling announcement last week that Knoxville will never again allow motorists across it. The Gay Street Bridge has been closed since June. The City of Knoxville government says it is trying to make the Gay Street Bridge safe enough to allow pedestrians, emergency vehicles and KAT buses to cross it. The city council will decide whether or not to appropriate the necessary funds to fix the Gay Street Bridge and make it safe for vehicles again. The original statement – – – that the bridge would never again allow traffic across it – – – caused an outcry from South Knoxvillians.
The rapid rate of enormous apartment complexes being built at the entrance of the Henley Street bridge and the apartment complexes along Sevier Avenue have already caused a bottleneck with few ways of egress outside of coming out directly onto Chapman Highway. In fact, on opposite sides of the Henley Street bridge are gigantic apartment complexes. Every scrap of space along Chapman Highway is being used to build apartments. There is a complex behind the old Smoky Mountain Market which looks like the landscape of some alien world. There is another built diagonally behind the old Kerns bakery atop a hill and the residents wait impatiently to get into the flow of traffic on Chapman Highway, adding to the growing delay.
The University of Tennessee is already building across the river and more apartment houses are being built, all of which appear to pour even more traffic onto Chapman Highway. One does not have to be a planning genius to figure out things are apt to get far worse for South Knoxvillians traveling the breadth and length of Chapman Highway. The official line from the Kincannon administration is that the thousands of UT students residing at the housing on the South Knoxville side of the river will walk across the new pedestrian bridge that is being built for the University of Tennessee. The cost of that project is already climbing like a toddler let loose. But the truth is, although the Kincannon administration is hoping those students will walk across the new pedestrian bridge, there is nothing to keep them from driving elsewhere, adding to the ever-growing traffic problem along Chapman Highway. Longtime residents of South Knoxville are growing more and more aggravated and if you don’t understand why, try coming back down Chapman Highway towards Henley Street. With the Gay Street Bridge closed, South Knoxvillians come into the city either by Alcoa Highway or the James White Parkway.
South Knoxvillians and all city residents are already paying more in property taxes to the city government than the county government. The City of Knoxville provides fire protection and diminished police protection, garbage pick-up and little else. It is the county that provides the schools, libraries and just about everything else you can think of, yet the city continues spending and raising taxes every three to four years. The City of Knoxville could put a dent in the cost of the repairs on the Gay Street Bridge to all traffic with what it spent on one piece of highly questionable “art” downtown. Clearly, nobody affiliated with the City of Knoxville government either seemed to think through the rapid pace of development surrounding the Gay Street and Henley Street Bridges and the effect it would have on the people already living there. That or they just didn’t care.
Whoever succeeds Indya Kincannon as mayor will inherit a great many problems that have begged fixing and they will likely get far worse before they get better.
Another Example Of Why We Need School Choice
As the teachers’ unions and Commissioner Terry Hill stomp their feet about the Tennessee General Assembly approving vouchers, news has surfaced that an appellate court sided with a young man from Tennessee, identified in court papers as “William A.” who sued the school district he attended for having graduated him despite the fact he could not read. In fact, he graduated with a GPA of 3.4 and his suit stated the school district never addressed his disability and he sued for both damages and a proper education.
More Examples Of Woke Ideology
Who but the Knoxville News-Sentinel — that banner of woke ideology, narrative-reporting jewel in the crown of the Gannett fake news empire — would bother to report as news a handful of protestors against President Trump and Elon Musk? Nobody.
Speaking of woke ideology, fake news and narrative reporting, Margaret Brennan of CBS made the astonishing statement, which is both incredibly stupid and not at all factual, that Nazi Germany “weaponized free speech” in order to commit genocide. Brennan made comments on her Face the Nation show when she spoke to her guest, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio corrected Brennan, pointing out Nazi Germany extinguished free speech and persecuted Jews and other minorities through malice and hatred.
Law professor and expert on the Constitution Jonathan Turley corrected the record in an interview with Fox News:
“Because, of course, the first thing that the Nazis did was to crack down on free speech, to deny it. Censorship is the harbinger of authoritarianism, and I’m not too sure what point she was making, but the Nazis knew free speech was the enemy of totalitarian rule. So the idea that somehow free speech invites fascism is an old saw used by the anti-free speech movement, particularly in Germany. But take a look at Germany: they’ve had a robust censorship system since World War Two. The neo-Nazi movement is flourishing, but a recent poll shows that only 17% of Germans feel comfortable stating their views in public. They’re silencing the wrong people.”
Vice President J.D. Vance called out Brennan’s comments while interviewing Secretary of State Marco Rubio, posting on social media, “This is a crazy exchange. Does the media really think the Holocaust was caused by free speech?”
Readers will recall Brennan was one of the hosts of the vice presidential debate and tried “fact checking” Vance despite the network announcing they would not allow live fact-checking.
Whenever you hear the talking heads and those posing as journalists talk about “saving our Democracy” or “constitutional crises” keep in mind these are almost always the very same people who have tried for the last four or five years to censor speech. Censoring free speech or stopping it altogether under the guise of “misinformation” or “disinformation,” or simply refusing to report it is a distinction without a difference.
