Publisher’s Positions
Kincannon Losing Support For Proposed Sales Tax Increase
The defection of City Councilman Andrew Roberto in abandoning Mayor Indya Kincannon’s bid to jack up the sales tax inside Knoxville is an indication he has finally figured out which way the wind is blowing. The proposed tax increase, which would follow a 40% hike in the property tax by the City of Knoxville, is opposed by many voters across the political spectrum. The proposed sales tax hike is opposed by most of the Left and the Right inside the city, as well as many homeowners who simply think the city government is overreaching and trying to put some taxpayers out of their homes. Roberto voted for the big increase in the property tax and evidently, the councilman, who is almost certain to toss his hat into the ring to succeed Kincannon, has decided he doesn’t much like the idea of being crippled coming out of the starting gate.
Kincannon and the great majority of the city council have raised taxes and cut services to taxpayers, all in the name of “affordability.” The city government has failed to define precisely who the recipients of their desired affordability in housing would be. Hiking property taxes RAISES RENTS AND MORTGAGES for everyone except those few residents who benefit from having their rents subsidized by the taxpayers. In other words, if you are dismayed or outraged by the housing crisis in Knoxville and Knox County and don’t like your mortgage or rents rising, the blame can be placed squarely on the tax-and-spend administration of Indya Kincannon and the Knoxville City Council. The city has been raising property taxes steadily over the years to pay for its defined benefit pensions and little else. There isn’t anybody in town who can remember ANY member of the city council under Indya Kincannon who questioned spending. Kincannon rolled back KPD coming to the site of traffic accidents, relieving the police department from having to write up accident reports, but it makes Knoxville more of a “no-fault” insurance area, which drives up the premiums paid by the same taxpayers whose property taxes and rents have gone up dramatically by the tax-and-spend Kincannon and city council.
Beggaring old people on fixed incomes and hardworking families to build skyscrapers and high-rise apartments for folks to enjoy more taxpayer subsidized housing is foolish and is NOT cost-effective. A city with an anti-business inclination and silly economic policies supposedly for the welfare of the poor makes the Lord Mayor Kincannon and her sock puppets on the city council seem like watered-down Mamdanis.
Free Speech Hypocrisy
It is astonishing that the hue and cry of some of those on the Left is about the removal of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night “talk show.” The hysterical cries about censorship come from those who have positively LOVED censorship as well as practiced it with relish. The very same people who are now trying to wrap themselves in the cloak of free speech are the same people who ruthlessly denied it to those people who did not agree with their political orthodoxies and the holy grails worshipped by the Left. It has been documented that the Biden administration put the full weight of the federal government behind pressuring the social media companies to suppress content it did not like, which just happened to be from their political opposition or those who did not share their political views. Those who offered the slightest dissent over COVID and vaccines were harassed, cancelled, fired from their jobs, and lives ruined. They have savagely fought to keep free speech off college campuses, which has resulted in the murder of Charlie Kirk. The entire rise of the “cancel culture” in this country was born and bred by the Left, and we all know it. They are guilty of having used every means, including the government, to persecute, prosecute and punish their political enemies, which is any American who does not share the entirety of their political beliefs. In all honesty, can any rational person believe the numerous political figures who today murmur, babble and sputter when asked the simple question of what a woman is? Is there any rational person who believes we should refer to women as “birthing persons”? Crazy Mazie Hirono, U.S. senator from Hawaii, not only let the cat out of the bag recently, but it got up, ran around the room and bit the stuffing out of her when she questioned Kash Patel, the director of the FBI. Hirono was mad about pull-ups and demanded to know if that was to keep women out of passing the new physical requirements for agents because of the physiological differences between men and women. UH OH! Yet Crazy Mazie is all for letting men play in girls’ and women’s sports.
The Left did its best to stifle, suppress, and kill off the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop and their allies in the news media routinely repeat the same lies for public consumption. For them, it’s never about the truth but rather about the narrative.
The Left has tried to cancel book deals for those voices on the right or those who don’t agree with them. The Left in this country has weaponized an entire “offense industry” which they use to beat their opponents over the head. Anything the Left dislikes or is contrary to their own views has been censored as “misinformation.”
Late-night television is supposed to be entertainment, not political commentary. Johnny Carson set the benchmark when he twitted Republicans AND Democrats, which is something Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are incapable of doing. They have become mouthpieces for the Left and are about as funny as leprosy. Why any thinking person would take their political tips from the likes of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and Sunny What’s-Her-Name is inexplicable. Their programs can find new homes on either CNN or MSDNC, where like-minded people can enjoy them. Comedy ought to be funny. Kimmel and Colbert might as well be North Korean versions of a “comedian.” Even Colbert’s audience has laughed in his face when he has made statements like CNN is “objective.” Both Colbert and Kaitlin Collins were surprised when the audience laughed. The Left ignores the fact that television, even in this day and age, is still driven by profits and viewership, not by ideology.
G. K. Chesterton wrote that “the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind [or next to] him.” We now, unfortunately, live in a time when our young people have been taught to hate those who don’t believe as they do, rather than cherish their own beliefs and principles.
It can surprise nobody that the ultimate result of the cancel culture is attempts to kill those they hate. It is the most final of all cancellations.
The political left long ago abandoned its absolute support for the idea of free speech, and it is astonishing that they sling their charges of Nazism and “Hitler” while they utilize the same tools as every authoritarian on earth. To use one of their own sayings, the people of this country “see you and hear you.”
