VOL. 36 | NO. 2 | Friday, January 13, 2012
MTSU, UTC target each other’s backyard while trying to shake an old stereotype
Midstate high school students are increasingly looking to UT-Chattanooga as their choice for an affordable, in-state college. Likewise, students from East and West Tennessee are taking a closer look at MTSU.
When Diane Penney decided to go back to school to get an advanced degree, her time as a co-ed at the University of Alabama seemed a distant memory. In fact, her son Ryan is now a college student attending Samford University in Birmingham.
A smile jumps onto his face when Antonio Gooch is asked about the day he got his GED. The 22-year-old convict, in an orange jumpsuit, remembers being in his jail pod with about 60 other offenders when his teacher, Edward Marks, walked in and shouted Gooch’s name.
REAL ESTATE
Home buyers looking for good deals returned to the Nashville region’s real estate market in 2011, driving sales up but holding prices down.
REALTY CHECK
The National Associations of Realtors (NAR) held its annual conference last month in Anaheim. During its governmental and legislative affairs session, NAR lobbyists expressed great concern over a new bill that had originated in the Senate. This bill would eliminate government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
TERRY McCORMICK
I know you’re captivated by the Tim Tebow drama unfolding in Denver. After all, Sunday’s AFC Wild-Card Playoff game between the Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers drew a 29 share in the Nashville market.
NEWSMAKERS
Jessica Averbuch has been named managing broker of Zeitlin and Company, Realtors, for its Green Hills office. Averbuch is a partner in the firm and an 11-year company veteran.
I SWEAR
From a newspaper article: “The question begs: Why go crazy celebrating a victory in late May like it was October?”
KAY'S COOKING CORNER
Well, the holidays are over, but that doesn’t mean the good treats and sweets have to stop! Not in my house, anyway.
STATE LEGISLATURE
NASHVILLE (AP) - A constitutional amendment to ban an income tax in Tennessee has passed the House.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The Senate has voted to restore Tipton County to the upper chamber's redistricting plan.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee lawmakers are proposing legislation that could affect Occupy Nashville protesters.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Democrat Ty Cobb, a Columbia firefighter and former state representative, says he will run for a new Senate seat created in Tennessee's redistricting process.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking unemployment benefits plummeted last week to 352,000, the fewest since April 2008. The decline added to evidence that the job market is strengthening.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks rose in midday trading Thursday after a decline in applications for unemployment benefits and strong earnings reports from Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. builders ended 2011 with a third straight year of dismal home building and the worst on record for single-family home construction, despite modest improvement at the end of the year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer prices were unchanged last month, the latest sign that inflation remains tame. Lower gas prices offset rising costs for food, medical care and housing.
NEW YORK (AP) — Bank of America says it made $2 billion in the last three months of 2011 from selling its stake in a Chinese bank and selling debt. That offset losses and higher legal expenses in its mortgage business.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — Is Kodak's moment past?
DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines Co. is making money even with higher fuel prices, thanks to full planes and rising fares.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — UnitedHealth Group Inc.'s fourth-quarter net income jumped 20 percent and trumped Wall Street expectations, but the insurer left its 2012 earnings forecast unchanged as it saw signs of health care use starting to pick back up.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Online piracy costs U.S. copyright owners and producers billions of dollars every year, but legislation in Congress to block foreign Internet thieves and swindlers has met strong resistance from high-tech companies, spotlighted by Wikipedia's protest blackout Wednesday, warning of a threat to Internet freedom.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The tax plan by Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum would cut taxes for most Americans while swelling the federal budget deficit by $900 billion in a single year, according to an independent study.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and Congress are back where they were before Christmas, locked in an election-season tussle over a proposed 1,700-mile oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18
STATE LEGISLATURE
NASHVILLE (AP) - The sponsor of a measure that seeks to ban Tennessee public schools from teaching about gay issues says he plans to delay a vote on the proposal.
NASHVILLE (AP) - Republican state Rep. Joey Hensley says he plans to run for a new state Senate district in southern Middle Tennessee.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The state House has passed a new version of a redistricting bill that corrects an omission of Tipton County from the Senate plan.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) - Nashville residents will be legally able to raise backyard chickens, but with no boys allowed.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - Teachers who "meet expectations" in their evaluation would be eligible for tenure under changes the Tennessee Education Association is recommending be made to the state's new teacher evaluation system.
NASHVILLE (AP) - A manager for an automotive supplier says Tennessee is rapidly becoming a major hub for the industry.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The Internal Revenue Service has opened the 2012 electronic tax return filing season by touting the value of e-filing.
TUPELO, Miss (AP) — Renasant Corp. says fourth-quarter profit rose on the strength of its expansion.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — A surprisingly strong report on the housing market and the prospect of more cash for the International Monetary Fund to fight off a financial crisis powered stocks Wednesday to their highest close since last summer.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. homebuilders are growing a little less pessimistic about the depressed housing market after seeing more people say they might be open to buying a home this year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. wholesale prices fell last month because companies paid less for food and energy, evidence that inflation remains tame.
NEW YORK (AP) — A hedge fund co-founder, a hedge fund portfolio manager, four financial analysts and a Dell Inc. employee teamed up in a record-setting insider trading scheme that netted more than $61.8 million in illegal profits based on trades of a single stock, authorities said Wednesday as they described a cozy network of friends in finance who made the most of their connections with corrupt employees of technology companies.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. factory output surged in December by the most in year. Stronger demand for business equipment, vehicles and energy offered the most visible evidence that manufacturing has roared back from the depths of the recession.
NEW YORK (AP) — Can the world live without Wikipedia for a day? The shutdown of one of the Internet's most-visited sites is not sitting well with some of its volunteer editors, who say the protest of anti-piracy legislation could threaten the credibility of their work.
BEIJING (AP) — The World Bank warned Wednesday of a possible slump in global economic growth and urged developing countries to prepare for shocks that could be more severe than the 2008 crisis.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — An apparent smoke bomb was thrown over the fence of the White House as hundreds of Occupy protesters massed outside the gates.
WASHINGTON (AP) — With television lights glaring, 20 lawmakers will gather next week to revisit the fight that consumed Congress before Christmas over renewing a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Republican campaign chairman, Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, has been notified that he received a discounted mortgage from the former Countrywide Financial Corp.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17
STATE LEGISLATURE
NASHVILLE (AP) - A measure that seeks to ban Tennessee public schools from teaching about gay issues is once again before lawmakers.
NASHVILLE (AP) - Thought Tennessee's arduous redistricting process was over? Not so fast.
NASHVILLE (AP) - House Speaker Beth Harwell has voiced opposition to efforts to water down Tennessee's open meetings law and has called on a Republican colleague to drop a bill seeking to make changes to the current rules.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — A former Vanderbilt University Law School manager has been arrested in the theft of more than $600,000 from the university.
NASHVILLE (AP) — James Earl Ray doubted a jury would believe a defense proposal to blame a conspiracy for the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., according to letters he wrote to his lawyer as he tried to win a trial and withdraw his own guilty plea in the 1968 slaying.
LEBANON (AP) — The founder of the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store chain, Dan Evins, has died at 76.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A health care executive has been named the 2012 Ned R. McWherter Leadership Award winner.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — The head of the Tennessee Lottery says players in the state will like changes to the Powerball game because of the larger jackpots.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The largest U.S. banks must show how they would break up their assets if they were in danger of failing, under a rule approved Tuesday.
DETROIT (AP) — That clunker in America's driveway has reached a record old age, but there are signs that people may be growing confident enough in the economy to get a whiff of that fresh new car scent very soon.
NEW YORK (AP) — Choppy financial markets hurt Citigroup's investment banking profits, and the bank missed Wall Street expectations. The bank said Tuesday that profit fell 11 percent in the last three months of last year.
NEW YORK (AP) — Wells Fargo & Co. says its fourth-quarter profit rose 20 percent, helped by better performance of its loans, growth in deposits and a steadying mortgage business.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — TD Ameritrade said Tuesday that its fiscal first-quarter net income grew 5 percent and its revenue was almost unchanged as the online brokerage's trading activity slowed amid worries about the economy.
Slight improvements in Europe's troubled debt markets and China's economy were enough to lift stocks on Tuesday. The Dow Jones industrial average rose as many as 151 points in the morning before fading to a 60-point gain at the close.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Forget kissing babies on the campaign trail. The millions of dollars' worth of political advertisements airing before the early primary elections are turning out to be money well spent: The ads have affected primary results more than other forms of campaigning, including personal appearances by candidates, campaign speeches or town hall meetings, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican Party's steadily rightward drift, exemplified by the tea party movement's muscle, keeps hitting a quadrennial paradox that frustrates social conservatives: presidential primaries.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney ignored the most significant expansion of trade ties in nearly two decades when he accused the Obama administration Monday night of doing nothing to open new markets. Rick Santorum claimed to be taking purely the high road in campaign ads even as a new one from him veered from that path.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement will meet outside the Capitol in Washington for what participants hope will become the largest gathering of Occupy activists from around the country.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Two groups have canceled planned conventions at Nashville's $585 million Music City Center over concerns the project will not be completed on time, and a third group might have to change plans as well.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - State lawmakers have approved new boundaries for the 132 seats in the Tennessee General Assembly and nine seats in the U.S. House.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The chairman of a Senate committee says he's against changes to the state's Open Meetings Act he believes would prevent transparency and undermine the public's trust in government.
NASHVILLE (AP) - After being sued for creating rules in secret, a state commission on Friday rescinded a policy that directed local jailers to check the immigration status of detainees.
NASHVILLE (AP) - Tennessee revenue collections in December were $965.7 million, more than $123 million more than the budgeted estimate, but the state finance commissioner said revenue in future months may not show the same growth.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The state House on Thursday approved a Republican plan to redraw the chamber's 99 districts, overriding Democrats' objections that it placed five African-American incumbents into three seats, ensuring that at least two of them would be forced out of office.
CHATTANOOGA (AP) — The closing of 25 Food Lion grocery stores in Tennessee and greatly reducing operations at a distribution center in Clinton is displacing about 1,100 workers.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Cheaper tablets, thinner laptops and an array of sleeker TVs stood out at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
NEW YORK (AP) — The economy may be healing, but banks are suffering from a housing hangover.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks fell in morning trading after a rare earnings miss for JPMorgan Chase, the country's largest bank, and as reports swirled that France and other European governments may get their ratings cut soon.
WASHINGTON (AP) — America's retailers enjoyed a record 2011 and their first $400 billion sales months ever. But the final month of the year was a dud.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fixed mortgage rates fell once again to a record low, offering a great opportunity for those who can afford to buy or refinance homes. But few are able to take advantage of the historic rates.
ATLANTA (AP) — Home improvement retailer Home Depot Inc. said Thursday that it will hire 70,000 seasonal workers for the spring season, its biggest season.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal deficit was lower in the first quarter of the 2012 budget year than the same period last year. Yet, the imbalance remains high by historical standards and should keep lawmakers debating tax increases and spending cuts through Election Day.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama asked Congress Thursday for another $1.2 trillion increase in the nation's debt limit, a request that is largely a formality but which carries election-year implications.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit widened in November for the first time in five months. Exports fell for a second straight month while imports rose to an all-time high, driven by rising demand for oil and foreign-made cars.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ben Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006 believing the nation's economy could pull off a "soft landing" from falling home prices. Three months later, Bernanke had begun to grasp that he and others had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Many of Mitt Romney's presidential challengers are having trouble fulfilling a fundamental requirement of running for public office: getting on the ballot.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Torn between reality and their political dreams, leading conservatives are defending Mitt Romney against attacks on his work in the private sector even as they search for a more palatable candidate amid a growing sense that his nomination may be certain.