VOL. 40 | NO. 41 | Friday, October 7, 2016
SAM STOCKARD: VIEW FROM THE HILL
Fallout from Jeremy Durham’s House expulsion keeps piling up. In the latest brouhaha, outgoing Rep. Billy Spivey is calling for an investigation into a report of alleged abuse by House Chief Clerk Joe McCord involving a female staff member working in the office of House Speaker Beth Harwell.
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
With the presidential election looming, this is the time of year that my wife and I strike out into the neighborhoods with pen and paper in hand in order to count campaign signs in front yards. This practice was begun in the 2000 election, and the results have been startling in all elections, be they local, state, or federal.
REAL ESTATE
September 2016 real estate trends for Davidson, Williamson, Rutherford and Wilson counties, as compiled by Chandler Reports.
Third quarter 2016 real estate trends for Davidson, Williamson, Rutherford and Wilson counties, as compiled by Chandler Reports.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long-term U.S. mortgage rates didn't move this week, remaining at their lowest levels since mid-July as a lure to prospective homebuyers.
DAVID CLIMER: OUT OF LEFT FIELD
In his first 16 NFL starts, the jury is out on the quarterback. Is he destined to be the cornerstone of the franchise or just another first-round draft pick who ultimately will fade away?
TERRY McCORMICK: TENNESSEE TITANS
So how much improvement has there been with the Tennessee Titans this season?
Let Mariota play. Marcus Mariota looks tentative, even hesitant at times, and doesn’t appear to be playing with the same poise and confidence that he did a year ago. It is affecting his play on the field with bad decisions and costly turnovers.
DAVE LINK: UT SPORTS
You almost can feel Tennessee is a football team of destiny as the most difficult games of the schedule loom Saturday at Texas A&M and Oct. 15 against Alabama at Neyland Stadium.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
Cadillac’s newest and biggest luxury sedan, the 2016 CT6, is roomy, stylish and surprisingly agile and comes with innovative features such as cameras that can record the car’s surroundings, even when the driver isn’t there.
GUERRILLA MARKETING
Most businesses of any size are at least experimenting with social media marketing these days, though most remain unsure if that notable time investment is really paying off.
CAREER CORNER
One of the hardest parts of looking for a job isn’t the looking part. It’s what happens during preparation.
I SWEAR
The following is a true story. It happened to my good friend John Doe. I stress this, so that no one else’s insurance agents will come snooping around with threats to cancel their homeowners’ coverage.
KAY'S COOKING CORNER
Don and I have been in San Francisco for the last week on a short vacation, and have been trying to enjoy everything the city has to offer. We haven’t done half bad, either.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce has named Bradley Jackson as the trade association's president and CEO.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits stayed at a 43-year low last week in the latest sign that layoffs are scarce.
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are falling Thursday, following global markets lower after a steep drop in China's exports. Mining and chemicals companies and banks are taking some of the largest losses. China is the second-largest economy in the world its weakness could slow down growth in the U.S.
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon.com will add 120,000 seasonal workers in an effort to meet an expected spike in demand during the holidays.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Verizon is closing call centers in five states, including its home state of New York, drawing the ire of the governor's office.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - The deadline for public comments on an overhaul of teaching standards for social studies has been extended amid an uproar over a proposal to cut out several Tennessee historical events.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The high school graduation rate in Tennessee has increased to 88.5 percent.
MUSIC INDUSTRY
NASHVILLE (AP) — For the second year in a row, Christian singer Lauren Daigle won three awards at the Gospel Music Association's Dove Awards on Tuesday night, including artist of the year.
TECHNOLOGY
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is launching a paid streaming music service, the latest entry in an increasingly crowded field.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Samsung Electronics said Wednesday it is sending fire-resistant packages to its customers in the U.S. as a precaution against possible fires or explosions from Galaxy Note 7s they return to retailers.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks finished slightly higher on Wednesday as investors picked stocks that pay big dividends, like real estate and phone companies. Energy companies fell with the price of oil and health care stocks continued to slide.
NEW YORK (AP) — Wells Fargo's embattled CEO John Stumpf is stepping down as the nation's second-largest bank is roiled by a scandal over its sales practices.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve officials last month kept a key interest rate unchanged but saw the decision as a "close call." Many believed that the case for a rate hike had strengthened in recent months.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers posted the fewest jobs in eight months in August, a sign job gains will likely remain modest in the coming months.
For a storm that inflicted less damage than many had feared, Hurricane Matthew nevertheless impaired or destroyed more than 1 million structures, forced businesses from Florida to North Carolina to close and put thousands temporarily out of work.
NEW YORK (AP) — Tool company Stanley Black & Decker Inc. is buying Newell Brands' tools division for $1.95 billion in cash.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11
MIDSTATE
SPRING HILL (AP) — General Motors said Tuesday that it plans to hire 650 people at its Tennessee plant ahead of the introduction a third shift to boost production of the Cadillac XT5 and GMC Acadia.
REGION
BRENHAM, Texas (AP) — Blue Bell Creameries is recalling all of its ice cream products that contain cookie dough from an Iowa-based supplier.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - Gov. Bill Haslam on Tuesday named state Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey and retired Army Gen. Gary Luck to newly independent university boards.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court has ruled that the structure of a U.S. consumer watchdog agency is unconstitutional because it gives too much power to a single agency director.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court raised serious doubts Tuesday about a $399 million judgment against smartphone maker Samsung for illegally copying parts of the patented design of Apple's iPhone.
TECHNOLOGY
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama sought Tuesday to reinvigorate his call for the U.S. to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, showcasing budding partnerships between the U.S. government and commercial companies to develop spacecraft capable of carrying out the extraterrestrial mission.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Samsung Electronics said Tuesday that it is discontinuing production of Galaxy Note 7 smartphones permanently, a day after stopping global sales of the ill-fated devices.
NEW YORK (AP) — Worries about the safety of Samsung's replacement Galaxy Note 7 smartphones have consumers fretting about what to do.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
A batch of disappointing company earnings news helped put investors in a selling mood Tuesday, pulling U.S. stocks sharply lower.
NEW YORK (AP) — Government regulators are fining Comcast $2.3 million, saying the cable giant has charged customers for stuff they never ordered, like premium channels or extra cable boxes.
PARIS (AP) — Oil production from OPEC nations hit a record last month, according to an international energy group, highlighting the cartel's challenge in trimming output to drive up prices.
NATIONAL POLITICS
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's tax plans are "mirror images" of one another, with the Democrat proposing steep tax hikes on the wealthy while the Republican candidate proposes even deeper reductions in the taxes paid by America's richest people, according to an analysis released Tuesday.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 10
MUSIC INDUSTRY
NASHVILLE (AP) - Dierks Bentley, Eric Church, Maren Morris and Keith Urban, as well as hosts Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley, will perform at the 50th annual Country Music Association Awards show, the CMA announced Monday. The Nov. 2 show will air live from Nashville on ABC.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Unlike other cities in the state, Nashville has rarely used a large tax incentive to rehabilitate old buildings over the past 14 years.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Haslam is calling on Donald Trump to step down as the party's presidential nominee for his recently released comments about women.
TECHNOLOGY
NEW YORK (AP) — You probably already use Facebook at work. Now, Facebook is creating a separate version aimed at helping you do actual work instead of catching up on baby photos and campaign chatter.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Samsung's crisis with its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone deepened Monday as the company confirmed it has adjusted its production following reports that newly released versions offered as replacements for recalled fire-prone devices have also overheated or caught fire.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are ending higher, led by gains in energy companies as the price of crude oil rose to its highest level in more than a year.
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Two U.S.-based professors won the Nobel prize in economics on Monday for studying how to best design contracts, work that sheds light on when it makes sense to give a CEO a bonus or privatize public services like schools, hospitals and prisons.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Donald Trump opened the Trump Taj Mahal casino 26 years ago, calling it "the eighth wonder of the world."
NATIONAL POLITICS
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Investor Warren Buffett says he's never used the kind of tax deduction that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump did, and Buffett says he's paid taxes every year for 72 years.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7
STATE LEGISLATURE
NASHVILLE (AP) - The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators on Friday called for a public response to help keep civil rights milestones in Tennessee history from being removed from the social studies standards for public schools.
COURTS
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee Supreme Court justices peppered lawyers trying to block the state's lethal injection protocol with questions on Thursday, challenging them to declare some other execution method they would consider acceptable under the law.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - Sam Kennedy, a former Tennessee Press Association president who helped push for the state's sunshine law, is being inducted to the State Open Government Hall of Fame in Washington this weekend.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Two presidential polls of Tennessee voters released this week show Republican Donald Trump with a comfortable lead over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A new report sheds lights on the millions of additional dollars announced earlier this year by the state for teacher salaries in Tennessee.
HEALTH CARE
Even the federal government is apparently paying too much for EpiPens, along with angry patients and insurers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is worried that insurers bailing out of the health law's markets may prompt their customers to drop out, too. So it plans to match affected consumers with remaining insurance companies.
TECHNOLOGY
A new privacy proposal up for a vote this month will require broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast to get your permission before sharing with advertisers the websites or apps you've been using.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Drawn by steady hiring and slightly higher pay, more Americans began looking for work in September, a sign of renewed optimism about the U.S. job market.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks ended slightly lower on Wall Street on Friday, giving the market its first weekly decline in a month.
WASHINGTON (AP) — World finance officials, still searching for ways to rejuvenate a sluggish global economy, now face the added problem of dealing with a growing anti-trade backlash that threatens to make the economic situation worse.
DALLAS (AP) — State agents raided the Dallas offices of adult classified ad portal Backpage.com and arrested Chief Executive Officer Carl Ferrer following allegations that adult and child sex-trafficking victims were forced into prostitution through escort ads posted on the site.
NEW YORK (AP) — Hurricane Matthew continues to cause problems for travelers, with 4,500 flights canceled so far between Wednesday and Saturday, according to tracking service FlightAware.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — An organization of New York newspapers and broadcasters has protested a prosecutor's decision to exclude some journalists from a news conference following the acquittal of a former soccer coach charged with murder.
NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to slow its new store openings and pour more money into its online efforts, technology and store remodels, the company said Thursday.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — A dozen big-name business leaders, including lifelong Republicans and independents, say they won't support real estate mogul Donald Trump for president. They say he would be bad for the economy, and they question how successful he's been as a businessman.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Donald Trump's business relationships with Atlantic City casinos have largely been over since 2009, even though the Trump Taj Mahal casino still bore his name. But early Monday, the last vestige of Trump will vanish from Atlantic City when the new owner of the Trump Taj Mahal casino shuts it down. Some snapshots of the Republican presidential candidate's time as a casino owner in Atlantic City:
REAL ESTATE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose this week as the prospect of a year-end interest-rate increase by the Federal Reserve grew more likely.