Posted on 08/02/2018 9:29:39 PM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
Glen Jacobs aka Kane the big red machine, aka Issac Yankem, DDS for some of you older folks including me is an Anarcho Capitalist to the core. He eats and sleeps Mises, Rothbard, Rockwell,Hayek, Dr. Ron Paul etc.
Being a huge wrestling geek that I am I’ve met Glen several times and I can honestly say that he’s one of the most nicest coolest dudes you’ll ever meet even if you don’t agree with his political philosophy.
I believe that Glen will be mega star in the Republican Party furthermore I believe he will bring back “Ron Paul Republicanism “ in a huge huge way. He can better articulate that political position to the Millennials and Gen Z better than Dr. Paul himself ever could.
Watched him on Fox this AM. Good Guy.
Good for Knoxville.
It’s new in the course of 30 years in TN.
It’s just a County Executive.
Well cause the city is part of the county therefore the county government has power over city residents, but the rest of the county is not part of the city and the city government has no direct power over suburbanites, people not in the city electing the city government would make no sense.
They real question is why are all large cites all not their own county equivalent. The way it is is now large cities who make up the majority of a counties population are able to outvote suburbanites and therefore control the county government, while there is an extra unnecessary level of local government for people in the city, Cook County IL is a prime example, Chicago politicians control the County Board, and Chicagoans are paying taxes to the City AND to the County, sucks for me, sucks for suburbanites.
I’m strongly in favor of changing this, all large cities should be their county. And why not medium/small cities like Knoxville too, either that or get rid of the municipal governments and just have the county government. I see no reason their need to be 2 levels of local government, both with significant powers.
It will be curious to see how he puts his ideology to governance in his new capacity as Knox County Mayor. He’s fortunate there was not a runoff, given his 23-vote margin in the primary, or I doubt he would’ve won given his strident Libertarian background.
Well, they sort of try to have it both ways. Knoxville City has had a static population for several decades because it hasn’t increased in size. But they need the county, but the county has (I believe) shot down attempts at consolidation.
What sent Nashville into a panic mode amongst community leaders in the 1950s was the slow-growth to decline in the city population. In 1950, the city still had a majority of the county population (174k to 321k). Conversely, the population outside the city limits was exploding. It had taken from the 1700s until 1910 to get 150k in our county. It then took just 30 years until 1940 to add another 100k. By 1960, we added almost 150k more people (indeed, more people moved into Davidson County from 1940-60 then at any other point before or since).
But because virtually all growth occurred outside the city, leaders panicked over the tax base and the fact that with the city’s decline in population from 1950 to 1960, its first ever drop, that the county would become its own powerful political force at the expense of the city. With the county population getting to 400k by 1960, the city scrambled to put together a consolidation plan, but voters shot down the plan.
The city then decided to effectively bully the county at that point. A few itty-bitty towns of no significant size (less than 5k) incorporated, with only Goodlettsville straddling the Davidson-Sumner line, ever growing to importance. After 1960, they forcefully annexed about 100k into the city, and told adjacent residents they could go along with the “Metro” plan put on the 1962 ballot, or they could sit back and watch as the city took them anyway. The key was having a massive Metro Council composed of the 2nd largest body in the U.S. (behind only, you guessed it, Chicago’s Board of Aldermen) of 40 members, within 35 districts and 5 at-large. That one passed.
Of course, one reason almost never mentioned is that had Nashville not been able to annex or consolidate, with its population decline, it was on course to becoming a Black majority city by 1980. Probably with just 125k in the declining and poor neighborhoods surrounding the old downtown, and probably down to 75k by 2010 and 90% Black under such dynamics. Black pols in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s opposed consolidation for that reason. The White business community, of course, was never going to let that happen and have us turn into Trenton or Harrisburg (or Columbia, SC).
“I’m strongly in favor of changing this, all large cities should be their county. And why not medium/small cities like Knoxville too, either that or get rid of the municipal governments and just have the county government. I see no reason their need to be 2 levels of local government, both with significant powers.”
So long as liberal cities outvote conservative suburbs, stripping cities from counties will result in cities having liberal governments and counties having conservative governments as opposed to all having liberal governments. But if you have a situation in which conservative suburbs can outvote liberal cities, it would be better if there is a strong county-government system (and a weak city-government system) so that suburbanites can apply sanity to the whole county and city voters can’t go crazy. Alas, not even Hamilton County, OH is voting GOP countywide anymore, so liberal city voters are winning the battle.
I fully fully expect the county to fight him tooth and nail on everything that he wants to implement but I look at this if he gets half of what he wants from an economic standpoint and it bears full fruit that’s a victory right there onto itself
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