VOL. 41 | NO. 6 | Friday, February 10, 2017
SAM STOCKARD: VIEW FROM THE HILL
Democrats appear delighted about division within Republican ranks concerning Gov. Bill Haslam’s proposed fuel-tax increase, detecting a possible chink in the armor.
TIM GHIANNI: STREET LEVEL
While self-styled historical archaeologists finish pulling knotty-pine paneling from the small building where Elvis’ fan club was housed, Steve North, prominent Nashville attorney, all-around good guy and former Circuit Court judge, tries to smile.
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
While the pace of the residential real estate market has slowed somewhat, particularly among higher-end homes, prices for housing less than $700,000 have remained historically high.
REAL ESTATE
January 2017 real estate trends for Davidson, Williamson, Rutherford and Wilson counties, as compiled by Chandler Reports.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long-term US mortgage rates eased slightly this week.
DAVID CLIMER: OUT OF LEFT FIELD
When it comes to offense, Butch Jones thinks he knows what’s best for the Tennessee Vols. And he’s willing to bet his job on it.
NEWSMAKERS
Baker Donelson has named Bruce C. Doeg the firm’s chief strategic officer, Tonya Mitchem Grindon chair of Baker Donelson’s Business Department, a position previously held by Doeg for the last eight years, and Matthew T. Harris chair of the firm’s Real Estate Group.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
Chevrolet has brought its Cruze hatchback to the U.S. for the first time, offering buyers more storage space and standard features than the four-door version of the compact.
GUERRILLA MARKETING
There is no greater scrutiny that a brand faces for its marketing prowess than during the biggest U.S. sporting event of the year. Courageous brands bet big that their ad will win hearts and minds among consumers, but only 40 percent of Super Bowl ads earned favorable ratings from our team of advertising professionals.
NASHVILLE AREA
BALTIMORE (AP) — World Relief says it is laying off more than 140 staffers after President Donald Trump's executive order cut the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States.
NASHVILLE (AP) — The largest U.S. private prison operator has rejected a shareholder resolution seeking independent audits of its detention facilities.
STATE LEGISLATURE
The unveiling of legislation undercutting same-sex marriage and enforcing transgender bathroom rules turned into a short-circuited press conference and confrontation Wednesday.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Reagan administration economist Arthur Laffer is urging Tennessee lawmakers not to include a cut in the sales tax on groceries as part of Republican Gov. Bill Haslam's proposal to offset a gas tax hike.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — House GOP lawmakers are leaving a policy meeting with the new health secretary unclear on exactly how or when they will replace President Barack Obama's health care law. But they're claiming consensus on some basic pillars of their plan.
REAL ESTATE
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. builders broke ground on fewer homes last month, led by a drop in apartment construction.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks around the world pulled back Thursday following a record-setting run that marked the longest winning streak in over 3 years for the S&P 500 index. U.S. stock indexes receded from their latest all-time highs reached a day earlier. The dollar's value fell against rival currencies, and Treasury yields fell as bond prices rose.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose slightly last week but still remained at a level indicating a healthy job market.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Production workers at Boeing's South Carolina plant have overwhelmingly rejected an effort to unionize, maintaining Southern reluctance toward unionization and setting up a picture-perfect stop for President Donald Trump, who visits the facilities this week.
NATIONAL POLITICS
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — As President Donald Trump vows to "drain the swamp" in Washington, a swarm of 1,000 lobbyists, business owners and politicians are boarding a train from the swamps of New Jersey on Thursday for a day of lobbying.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is working frantically to find a new secretary of labor candidate after President Donald Trump's original pick, Andrew Puzder, abruptly withdrew from consideration.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15
STATE LEGISLATURE
A day after former Rep. Mark Lovell resigned abruptly, House Majority Chairman Ryan Williams says he asked Lovell to step down, but only if accusations of sexual misconduct against him were true.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Sherman Novoson, a former concert cellist and longtime radio reporter specializing in sports and politics in Tennessee, has died. He was 70.
NASHVILLE (AP) — An estimated $100,000 price tag has caused a Republican state senator to revise his proposal to require the POW-MIA flag to be flown over the Tennessee Capitol year-round.
STATEWIDE
KNOXVILLE (AP) — A federal jury in Knoxville has convicted a Pennsylvania man of charges connected to a multistate bank robbery-kidnapping spree.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tennessee's two U.S. senators are hoping to get the federal government to honor a Knoxville soldier who is credited with saving the lives of more than 200 Jewish Americans during World War II.
MIDSTATE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Authorities say a Clarksville woman has been charged with stealing nearly a half-million dollars from a church where she worked.
SPORTS
KNOXVILLE (AP) — New Tennessee chancellor Beverly Davenport says the school plans to move "very quickly" in hiring an athletic director but isn't specifying a target date on making the selection.
REAL ESTATE
U.S. homebuilders are feeling a bit less confident this month, reflecting a dimmer outlook for sales in the months ahead and fewer would-be buyers dropping by builders' sales offices.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Government experts say the nation's problem with rising health care spending is back and here to stay.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration took steps Wednesday intended to calm jittery insurance companies and make tax compliance with former President Barack Obama's health law less burdensome for some people.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Health insurers Anthem and Cigna are now trading lawsuits instead of working together to salvage a shaky $48-billion buyout agreement.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — If you do your homework, now is the time to practically steal a new sedan from your car dealer.
TOKYO (AP) — Toyota has revamped its plug-in hybrid with a longer cruising range and quicker charging, including from a regular home plug, hoping it will sell better than the first model from five years ago that officials acknowledged had flopped.
TECHNOLOGY
LONDON (AP) — Yahoo is warning users of potentially malicious activity on their accounts between 2015 and 2016. It's the latest development in the internet company's investigation of a mega-breach that exposed 1 billion users' data several years ago.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks and bond yields punched higher Wednesday, and U.S. indexes set records again, following more encouraging news on the U.S. economy.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen defended the central bank's independence Wednesday from Republican lawmakers who are pushing for major changes in how the central bank operates and how regulators oversee the nation's banking system.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top executive at the company building the controversial Dakota Access pipeline on Wednesday compared pipeline opponents to terrorists.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumer prices rose in January at the fastest pace in nearly four years, strengthening the case for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 0.4 percent last month, slowing down from a solid 1 percent gain in December, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Nearly 3,000 production workers at Boeing's South Carolina plant are deciding whether they want to unionize, writing the next chapter in efforts to organize labor in large manufacturing plants across the South.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union and Canada on Wednesday cast their newly-approved trade deal as a much-needed beacon for cooperation, with the EU criticizing President Donald Trump's protectionist bent as a threat to the continent's prosperity.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's nominee for labor secretary abruptly withdrew his nomination Wednesday after Senate Republicans balked at supporting him, in part over taxes he belatedly paid on a former housekeeper not authorized to work in the United States.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump met Wednesday with the CEOs of large retailers like Target and Best Buy, who have a built-in concern: They're worried about a possible border tax on imported goods.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14
STATE LEGISLATURE
House Democrats are calling for a probe into the sudden resignation of first-term Rep. Mark Lovell, who denies being involved in sexual misconduct as he leaves the state Legislature after just one month.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Two Tennessee lawmakers want to do away with a 40-year-old state law granting legitimacy to children conceived through artificial insemination. Critics say the bill is aimed at gay couples and their children.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — The House and Senate have approved Gov. Bill Haslam's nominations for new boards for six public universities.
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Supreme Court has announced that free legal clinics will be held around the state to help citizens who find themselves in need of a lawyer's advice on matters outside criminal law. It's all part of the court's initiative known as Access to Justice, a program aimed at helping a growing number of people find assistance when they can't afford an attorney.
ALTAMONT (AP) — The Tennessee Highway Patrol has placed the head of its Special Investigations Bureau on leave following his arrest on charges including aggravated assault and public intoxication.
AUTO INDUSTRY
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge in San Francisco granted initial approval Tuesday to a deal worth at least $1.2 billion that aims to compensate the owners of roughly 78,000 Volkswagens with 3-liter engines that were rigged to cheat on emissions tests.
HEALTH CARE
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Major health insurers Aetna and Humana called off their $34 billion combination after a federal judge, citing concerns about prices and benefits, rejected the deal.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen pointed Tuesday to a solid U.S. job market and economy and said the Fed will likely resume raising interest rates in the next few months. But with uncertainties surrounding President Donald Trump's proposals, Yellen said the Fed still wants to keep assessing the economy.
NEW YORK (AP) — Bank stocks jumped Tuesday on hopes that bigger profits are ahead, and U.S. indexes again pushed to record highs.
SHANGHAI (AP) — There's a Trump toilet, a Trump condom, a Trump pacemaker and even a Trump International Hotel among hundreds of trademarks in China that don't belong to Donald Trump. But after a decade of grinding battle in China's courts, the president is expected to get an unlikely win on Tuesday: the rights to his own name.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Higher costs for gasoline costs helped fuel a rise in U.S. wholesale prices in January, but overall inflation still appears to be in check.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — The founder of ZeekRewards has been sentenced to nearly 15 years behind bars for his lead role in an $850 million online Ponzi scheme that bilked nearly a million people in the U.S. and abroad.
LONDON (AP) — British engineering company Rolls Royce says that the collapse in the pound's value has cost it some 4.4 billion pounds ($5.5 billion).
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Tuesday blocked an attempt by Democrats to use an obscure law to obtain President Donald Trump's tax returns from the IRS.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13
STATE LEGISLATURE
Memphis state Sen. Sara Kyle and Nashville Rep. John Ray Clemmons are pushing a plan to raise fuel taxes for transportation funding similar to Gov. Haslam’s, though it also would give local governments more options for bringing in their own money for mass transit.
STATEWIDE
MEMPHIS (AP) — Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland says the city's police union is conducting a "harmful" billboard campaign by touting the city's record-high homicide total last year and police officer shortage.
KNOXVILLE (AP) — Students from three Knoxville middle schools are traveling to Florida to see experiments launch with a mission to the International Space Station.
OAK RIDGE (AP) — The Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce will be hosting "Atomic Integration," a photo exhibit on African-Americans during the Manhattan Project.
SPORTS
KNOXVILLE (AP) — MTSU coach coach Rick Insell and three-time Olympic gold medalist Sheryl Swoopes headline the latest Women's Basketball Hall of Fame class.
AUTO INDUSTRY
WASHINGTON (AP) — In the first major congressional attempt to address the advent of self-driving cars, two senators said Monday they're launching a bipartisan effort to help to speed up the deployment of the vehicles on the nation's roads.
TECHNOLOGY
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Up, up and away: Dubai hopes to have a passenger-carrying drone regularly buzzing through the skyline of this futuristic city-state in July.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks around the world continued their march higher on Monday, and U.S. indexes again hit new highs.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most drivers don't expect to be hit with a rate hike on their auto insurance after a car accident that wasn't their fault.
WASHINGTON (AP) — DuPont and Chemours will pay nearly $671 million to settle thousands of lawsuits related to the release of a chemical from a plant in West Virginia more than a decade ago.
WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Teachers from elementary school through college are telling students how to distinguish between factual and fictional news — and why they should care that there's a difference.
Teachers from elementary school through college are instructing students on how to decipher fact from fiction when it comes to online news, after an election season that saw made-up stories abound. Some of their lessons:
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is patting himself on the back for immigration and job-creation initiatives that started before he took office.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans love cutting taxes, especially if they were authored by a president named Barack Obama. But as they push their wobbly effort to erase his health care overhaul, they're divided over whether to repeal the levies the law imposed to finance its expanded coverage for millions of Americans.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is poised to confirm President Donald Trump's pick for Treasury secretary despite complaints by Democrats that Steven Mnuchin failed to protect thousands of homeowners from unnecessary foreclosures when he headed OneWest Bank.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10
CAREER CORNER
If you’re looking for a new job, I’ll bet one of your top two priorities is finding a job you really, truly love.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — The largest U.S. private prison operator says it can provide the additional detention facilities likely needed under President Donald Trump's executive orders on immigration.
STATE LEGISLATURE
Legislation filed Thursday would stop bans on short-term rentals and vacation homes while setting up basic guidelines for local governments and a state tax-collection system.
MIDSTATE
CLARKSVILLE (AP) — Convergys Corp. is closing one of its divisions in Clarksville_a move that will affect more than 100 workers.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee State Building Commission has voted to appoint Ann McGauran as State Architect, making her the first woman to get the job since the position was created in 1955.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Diane Black may be in charge of one of the most powerful committees in Congress, but the Gallatin Republican says that doesn't mean she won't run for Tennessee governor next year.
REGION
CLINTON, Ky. (AP) — A blaze that tore through an award-winning country ham business in Western Kentucky burned much of the 100,000-square-foot facility to the ground.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fitch Ratings says President Donald Trump "represents a risk to international economic conditions," noting that his "aggressive tone" and willingness to float "unanticipated changes" to U.S. policies could harm worldwide growth and make it more expensive for governments to borrow.
US stock indexes extend climb into record heights
NEW YORK (AP) — Coke is trying to slim down its business, not just its sodas.
NEW YORK (AP) — Sears may sell more locations, cut more jobs and put more of its famous brands on the block in an attempt to revive the faltering retail chain.
NEW YORK (AP) — Investment firm Blackstone is buying Aon's technology-enabled benefits and human resources assets in a deal valued at up to $4.8 billion.
Twitter may be the megaphone for the leader of the free world, but the company's headline omnipresence has yet to turn into a long sought after pot of gold for co-founder Jack Dorsey.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Stockpiles held by U.S. wholesale businesses increased by a solid amount in December, while sales at the wholesale level rose at the fastest pace in more than five years. Both are good signs for future growth.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just three weeks into his administration, President Donald Trump and his allies are moving quickly to dismantle the web of regulations the government passed after the 2008 financial crisis to tighten oversight of banks and protect consumers and taxpayers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long-term mortgage rates slipped again this week.
MUSIC INDUSTRY
NASHVILLE (AP) — Keith Urban leads nominations for the Academy of Country Music Awards with seven nods, including entertainer of the year and album of the year for "Ripcord."