Battle lines were drawn at last week’s Metropolitan Planning Commission meeting over the Hillside and Ridgetop Protection Plan. It will be a measure of the health of our local democracy whether this contest is decided by whose argument is more ...

When County Commission briefly deliberated on the East Sector Plan and Midway business park at its last meeting, Commissioner Brad Anders said “we can’t keep saying no to business if we want jobs in Knox County.” On the campaign trail, ...

Most Tennessee counties have new election administrators, Republicans installed to replace Democrats after the GOP gained a majority in the General Assembly. There have been rookie foul-ups in several counties, most minor and forgivable, but what happened in Shelby County ...

A walk down the beer aisle at a supermarket gives testimony to the power of a free market. Whether your priority is quality, price, brand, or style, there is a product to meet your desires. A walk to your polling ...

We have been sending politicians to Nashville and to D.C. to cut taxes and cut spending for decades, but those easy political slogans are not appropriate for these desperate times. We need leaders with the courage to raise taxes and ...

Last week, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued its largest civil penalty ever—$11.5 million against TVA for the December 2008 ash spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant. TVA is already spending two orders of magnitude more money cleaning ...

The last time I saw Henry Granju he was mocking me for being so mainstream as to support a major-party Presidential candidate. His mother had invited friends over to watch Barack Obama give his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic ...

The Hutchison spell is at last broken. The people of Knox County have taken back their government. All it took was adopting a charter, winning a term-limits referendum, and overcoming more than a decade of legal wriggling by incumbents unwilling ...

Evolution is just a theory. This is true, except there is no “just” in “just a theory” when it comes to evolution or any scientific theory. There are only a few theories: evolution, gravity, atomic structure, electricity and magnetism, the ...

The last time Knox County elected a new mayor, it wasn’t really an election. Political power players threw so much money at Mike Ragsdale so early that anyone else thinking of running just gave up. What we got was a ...

Last month the Metropolitan Planning Commission approved a new East County sector plan, and the document will come before Knox County Commission this month.

Being civilized costs money, and ongoing costs ratchet up with each new structure. Roads, dams, and cities need maintenance and repair. TVA is spending about $6 million to raise the height of four dams. Those dams were designed to withstand ...

Ward Cammack may have been the best candidate in the race for governor, an experienced businessman with a coherent and balanced perspective. He dropped out last week in the face of dismal poll numbers. Clearly he was not a good ...

The Development Corporation has a few hundred acres of land in eastern Knox County burning an $11 million hole in its pocket. TDC bought the land on speculation, thinking they could ram zoning and sector-plan changes through County Commission and ...

County Commission devoted considerable energy to adopting district boundaries for next year’s election, but a lawsuit filed two weeks ago could make it all for naught. Meanwhile, efforts to recall Law Director Bill Lockett and school board member Bill Phillips ...