VOL. 41 | NO. 10 | Friday, March 10, 2017
MIDSTATE
When the $1.2-billion Hemlock Semiconductor plant failed to materialize, it was a sizeable blow to growth and development in Clarksville and Montgomery County.
TIM GHIANNI: STREET LEVEL
After paying way too much in taxes for my .51 acre of the land of the free, home of the brave, I decided to leave the taxman’s office at the Howard School complex behind and drive home via Nolensville Road and through our city’s bustling international cultural mishmash to see if I could find someone who could reassure me it’s great to be an American.
DAVID CLIMER: OUT OF LEFT FIELD
The hiring of John Currie as the University of Tennessee’s athletics director conveys a number of messages. One of them: Butch Jones is officially on the clock.
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
In the world of residential real estate, most closings occur at the end of the month. The main reason for this is that the interest on the loan for the month of the closing is prepaid at the closing.
REAL ESTATE
February 2017 real estate trends for Davidson, Williamson, Rutherford and Wilson counties, as compiled by Chandler Reports.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose this week, marking new highs for the year. An increase in a key interest rate is expected by the Federal Reserve next week, propelled by signs of strength in the economy.
NEWSMAKERS
Attorney Alex Fardon has joined Riley Warnock & Jacobson, PLC, and will continue to focus on commercial litigation.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
For 2017, Toyota has added its most fuel-efficient Prius ever: a plug-in gasoline-electric hybrid called Prius Prime that can travel up to 640 miles on a full electric charge and a single tank of fuel.
GUERRILLA MARKETING
As I reflect on companies large and small that I have had the privilege to partner with over the past decade, there is a consistent theme across those that have consistently improved and grown: A culture of receptivity to change that permeates from senior-most leadership to the front line.
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
No man is an island. He (or she) can’t do everything alone. We need help sometimes, a group of support, a posse with our best interests in mind.
CAREER CORNER
Whenever I meet with a new job seeker, I always ask the same question: “Where are you getting stuck in your search?” It sounds like a simple question, but it can shed quite a bit of light into what’s going on.
STATE LEGISLATURE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee legislative leaders are moving forward with a review of exemptions to the state's open records laws.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Supporters and demonstrators have converged in the heart of Nashville in anticipation of President Donald Trump's visit.
REAL ESTATE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose this week for a second straight week, posting new highs for the year. The markets were anticipating an increase in a key interest rate by the Federal Reserve, which the Fed announced Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. builders broke ground on new homes at a faster pace in February, a sign that developers expect solid sales growth this year despite higher mortgage rates.
AUTO INDUSTRY
ATSUGI, Japan (AP) — Alfonso Albaisa draws upon the cultures of Japan, America and Cuba in concocting car designs with a flair that once was lacking at Japanese automakers, critics say, but is becoming evident as they globalize.
MILAN (AP) — European car sales grew 2.2 percent in February to over 1 million vehicles — close to the level in 2008, just before the economic crisis slid the industry into a prolonged downturn.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Republican health care plan backed by President Donald Trump provides billions of dollars in tax cuts for wealthy families and insurance companies, but it hits older Americans hard with higher insurance premiums and smaller tax credits.
WASHINGTON (AP) — As a new president who has vowed to keep his campaign promises, Donald Trump knows he'll be judged on whether he can repeal the so-called Obamacare law and replace it with something new.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes held steady Thursday, while bond yields recovered some of their sharp losses from the prior day. Stock markets around the world rallied.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers posted more open positions in January compared with December and the number of Americans quitting jumped, trends that could push up wages.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, a further indication of the health of the labor market.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to get tough on trade partners like China, Mexico and Germany. Now his Treasury chief, Steven Mnuchin, will get his first opportunity to confront them all in one room.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump unveiled a $1.15 trillion budget on Thursday, a far-reaching overhaul of federal government spending that slashes many domestic programs to finance a significant increase in the military and make a down payment on a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Military spending would get the biggest boost in President Donald Trump's proposed budget. Environmental programs, medical research, Amtrak and an array of international and cultural programs — from Africa to Appalachia — would take big hits, among the many parts of the government he'd put on a crash diet.
GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — Rejecting arguments from the government that President Donald Trump's revised travel ban was substantially different from the first one, judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked the executive order from taking effect as scheduled on Thursday, using the president's own words as evidence that the order discriminates against Muslims.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15
STATE LEGISLATURE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Republican Gov. Bill Haslam says he approves of changes to his transportation funding proposal made in the state Senate earlier this week.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee lawmakers and downtown state workers will end their work days early because of President Donald Trump's visit to Nashville.
REAL ESTATE
U.S. homebuilders are feeling more optimistic about their sales prospects than they have been since the high-flying days of the housing boom.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government says more than 12 million people have signed up for coverage this year under former President Barack Obama's health care law, even as the Republican-led Congress debates its repeal.
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Paul Ryan is stressing that President Donald Trump had a hand in writing the beleaguered health care overhaul that Republican leaders hope to push through his chamber next week.
CHERRY HILL, N.J. (AP) — The Republican health care plan means less money for states and gives them a tough choice: Find a pot of cash to make up the difference or let coverage lapse for millions of lower-income Americans.
AUTO INDUSTRY
YPSILANTI, Mich. (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the administration will re-examine federal requirements governing the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks, moving forcefully against Obama-era environmental regulations that Trump says are stifling economic growth.
DETROIT (AP) — The Trump administration's decision to re-examine Obama-era rules that govern automobile gas mileage could be the first round of a potentially bruising political fight: revoking the ability of California and other blue states to set their own, tougher car-emission standards.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest rate for the second time in three months and forecast two additional hikes this year. The move reflects a consistently solid U.S. economy and will likely mean higher rates on some consumer and business loans.
NEW YORK (AP) — Federal Reserve policymakers expect to hike rates a total of three times this year, including the increase announced Wednesday. That's the same as their December forecast. But more Fed officials now support that view: Nine of 17 Fed policymakers support three hikes, up from six in December.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks clambered higher Wednesday for their biggest gain in two weeks and easily absorbed the Federal Reserve's latest increase in interest rates, a move that was widely expected.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumer prices rose at a slower pace in February. Clothing and housing costs rose last month, while motor vehicle and gasoline prices dipped.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans spent only slightly more last month at retail stores compared with January, a sign of consumer caution despite rising optimism about the economy.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union has given its blessing to AT&T's proposed $85 billion purchase of Time Warner, saying that it raises no competition concerns in Europe.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump earned $153 million and paid $36.5 million in income taxes in 2005, paying a roughly 25 percent effective tax rate thanks to a tax he has since sought to eliminate, according to newly disclosed tax documents.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The journalist who received a copy of a portion of President Donald Trump's 2005 tax returns says Trump doesn't want the American people to know who "he's beholden to."
TUESDAY, MARCH 14
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — In his first days in the White House, Donald Trump hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office and likened his new administration to that of the snowy-haired man pictured on the $20 bill.
STATE LEGISLATURE
NASHVILLE (AP) — State lawmakers have advanced two bills aimed at helping people recover from deadly wildfires in eastern Tennessee.
AUTO INDUSTRY
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The CEO of German automaker Volkswagen says the United States remains a "core market" for the company despite its diesel emissions scandal and has underlined that it hopes to expand there.
MIDSTATE
NASHVILLE (AP) — A federal jury has convicted a Murfreesboro man of smuggling gun silencers into the United States.
HEALTH CARE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Republican Gov. Bill Haslam is expressing hope that President Donald Trump's visit to Nashville on Wednesday will shed more light on how health care changes will affect Tennessee.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Critics of GOP health care legislation got fresh ammunition from a report that estimates the bill would increase the ranks of the uninsured by 14 million people next year alone, and 24 million over a decade.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican bill to replace major portions of Barack Obama's health care law would leave 24 million additional people uninsured over the next decade, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office. A look at what the CBO said Monday about the House GOP plan that's backed by President Donald Trump:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump told Americans he'd do it all on health care: "insurance for everybody," better coverage and lower consumer costs. By the reckoning of nonpartisan budget analysts at Congress, that's not what will happen if the Republican bill he's backing becomes law.
TECHNOLOGY
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's justice minister is proposing fines of up to 50 million euros ($53 million) for social networking sites that fail to swiftly remove illegal content, such as hate speech or defamatory "fake news."
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stock indexes sank Tuesday after yet another drop in the price of oil dragged down shares across the energy industry. Other areas of the market saw modest losses as investors wait to hear from the Federal Reserve, which began a two-day policy meeting on interest rates.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sending signals loud and clear, the Federal Reserve has left little doubt that it will raise interest rates Wednesday for the third time since December 2015 to reflect a consistently solid U.S economy.
DALLAS (AP) — American Airlines said Tuesday that it plans to offer free meals to everyone in economy on certain cross-country flights starting May 1.
The stock market is up, unemployment is down but things aren't rosy for all Americans.
LONDON (AP) — Britain's Parliament has told Prime Minister Theresa May she can file for divorce from the European Union. She will send the formal letter by the end of March. Then comes the hard part — the arguments, the lawyers, the squabbles over money.
DUBLIN (AP) — Britain's plans to leave the European Union threaten to cause Ireland all kinds of economic and security headaches. But a silver lining is expanding daily along the crane-filled banks of the River Liffey, a likely post-Brexit refuge for British banking operations.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's pick to represent the U.S. in trade negotiations told Congress Tuesday that the U.S. should have an "America first trade policy."
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration remains under scrutiny over potential ties between his associates and Russia in the run-up to the presidential election. Trump has denied knowing that any of his staff had communications with Russian officials during the campaign. But congressional probes are underway, and the FBI is investigating.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Congressional Budget Office is a scorekeeper suddenly in the spotlight.
MONDAY, MARCH 13
STATE LEGISLATURE
Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris pushed a revised fuel-tax bill through the Transportation Committee today, making a sharper cut in the grocery tax to offset phased-in increases at the gas pump.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A Tennessee legislative panel has changed and passed Gov. Bill Haslam's transportation bill, which Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris says would ensure people save more in food tax cuts than they'd pay in a gas tax hike.
The governor’s office is promising $5.6 million in yearly funding and grants to maintain DUI enforcement prosecution across the state, money that would have been jeopardized by passage of an open container law.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fourteen million Americans would lose coverage next year under House Republican legislation remaking the nation's health care system, and that figure would grow to 24 million by 2026, Congress' nonpartisan budget analysts projected Monday. The figures dealt a blow to a GOP drive already under fire from both parties and large segments of the medical industry.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans pushing a plan to dismantle Barack Obama's health care law are bracing for a Congressional Budget Office analysis widely expected to conclude that fewer Americans will have health coverage under the proposal, despite President Donald Trump's promise of "insurance for everybody."
NASHVILLE (AP) — Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been rated as one of the busiest liver transplant hospitals in the nation.
COURTS
NASHVILLE (AP) — Davidson County has become the second county in Tennessee to implement electronic case filing in a state trial court.
STATEWIDE
The state of Tennessee, spearheaded by Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, filed suit against the federal government Monday, challenging the constitutionality of the Refugee Resettlement Program.
AUTO INDUSTRY
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican from a deep red Southern state, has emerged as an unlikely leader of the free tuition movement.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — Intel will buy Israel's Mobileye in a deal valued at about $15 billion, instantly propelling the computer chip and technology giant to the forefront of autonomous vehicle technology.
Intel said Monday that it will spend more than $14 billion to acquire Israel's Mobileye, a company that develops technology that essentially gives computers a sense of their physical surroundings. It's the latest push by a major tech company into autonomous vehicles.
NEW YORK (AP) — Nissan is recalling more than 54,000 cars because of curtain and seat-mounted air bags that may unexpectedly deploy when the door is slammed.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — For years after the Great Recession ended, investors fretted — sometimes panicked — over the prospect that the Federal Reserve might begin to raise interest rates from record lows.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks held steady in a calm day of trading Monday, but the storm may be coming.
LONDON (AP) — Investors around the world are bracing for a series of events this week that could potentially cause waves in markets. And, for once, they're not directly about U.S. President Donald Trump.
U.S. airlines have already canceled more than 6,000 flights Monday and Tuesday as a late-winter storm is expected to dump enough snow to disrupt travel in the Northeast.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has signed an order aimed at streamlining the executive branch.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Senate Democrats are warning Republicans controlling Congress against adding billions of dollars for President Donald Trump's U.S.-Mexico border wall to a coming $1 trillion-plus spending package.
President Donald Trump's release of a spending blueprint for the upcoming budget year will set in motion a debate that's full of uncertainty — and the potential for gridlock, even a government shutdown.
FRIDAY, MARCH 10
STATE LEGISLATURE
NASHVILLE (AP) — The body of Sen. Douglas Henry, a larger-than-life lawmaker with the longest tenure in General Assembly history, has been brought to the Tennessee Capitol. Henry died Sunday night at the age of 90.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee senators have watered down and passed legislation that critics still deem discriminatory.
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee House has passed a bill seeking to allow lawmakers to start raking in campaign cash while they wait for a veto override session.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd is scheduled to visit all four corners of Tennessee next week as part of his campaign launch.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee's state parks are offering free guided hikes to celebrate the coming of spring.
NASHVILLE AREA
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has scheduled another campaign rally, this time in Nashville.
COURTS
NASHVILLE (AP) — A Tennessee free-market group is suing the state over regulation of horse massage therapy.
AUTO INDUSTRY
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A self-driving car company founded by Google is presenting new evidence to support its allegations that a former manager stole technology that Uber bought to help build robot-powered vehicles for its ride-hailing service.
DETROIT (AP) — Volkswagen pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy and obstruction of justice in a brazen scheme to get around U.S. pollution rules on nearly 600,000 diesel vehicles by using software to suppress emissions of nitrogen oxide during tests.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans hate "Obamacare," so House GOP leaders freak out whenever their health care bill is compared to President Barack Obama's law. But one reason some conservatives are branding the bill "Obamacare Lite" comes down to the tax credits to help consumers buy insurance.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders drove their long-promised legislation to dismantle Barack Obama's health care law over its first big hurdles in the House on Thursday, claiming fresh momentum despite cries of protest from right, left and center.
NEW YORK (AP) — A proposal to replace the Obama health care law would cut out a pillar of funding for the nation's lead public health agency, and experts say that would likely curtail programs across the country to prevent problems like lead poisoning and hospital infections.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Determined House Republicans pushed ahead Thursday with divisive legislation to undo former President Barack Obama's health care law, holding marathon all-night voting sessions in key committees despite Democratic protest and intense opposition from doctors and consumer groups.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Forget about insurance coverage. The new Republican buzzwords in Washington are health care access.
TECHNOLOGY
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some hungry customers in the nation's capital may be surprised to discover a robot is delivering their pastrami on rye.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added a robust 235,000 jobs in February and raised pay at a healthy pace, making it all but certain that the Federal Reserve will raise short-term interest rates next week.
NEW YORK (AP) — Led by technology companies, U.S. stocks rose Friday after a strong February jobs report. Most parts of the market moved higher as investors wait for the Federal Reserve to meet next week. The central bank is almost universally expected to raise interest rates.
Financial markets were in a pretty dark place on March 9, 2009.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The stock market's rise to record levels fueled a big increase in U.S. household wealth in the final three months of last year.
MADRID (AP) — Spanish energy company Repsol says an oil reserve of 1.2 billion barrels has been identified in Alaska's North Slope, which the company is the largest onshore discovery in the United States in three decades.
NEW YORK (AP) — Three weeks after AIG reported a titanic loss, the person chosen to turn things around at one of the world's largest insurance companies is stepping down.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — RadioShack has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in just over two years, putting the future of the nearly 100-year-old electronics retailer in doubt.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-led House on Friday backed legislation that requires judges to sanction attorneys and other parties who file frivolous lawsuits in federal district court, a move that supporters said will protect individuals and businesses from unnecessary legal costs.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Wall Street attorney chosen by President Donald Trump to head the Securities and Exchange Commission has worked on many of the kinds of deals the agency regulates and represented some of the biggest financial firms.