WASTED OPPORTUNITIES
While our state is flush with federal and state revenues and sitting on billions in reserves and an over-flowing rainy day fund, families and communities across our state face serious challenges on which their elected leaders should be focused.
Our public schools continue to suffer from insufficient funding and a seemingly endless list of policies strategically crafted to undermine teachers, remove local control, increase local taxes, and steer students into religious charter and private schools statewide. Aging and insufficient infrastructure systems, from transportation and wastewater to broadband and electricity, are in need of a forward-thinking vision, political courage and significant investment. Women, families and healthcare providers continue to be threatened by the most extreme reproductive health restrictions in the country. Hundreds of thousands continue without access to Medicaid. The minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour while the average rent for a two-bedroom lease exceeds a full-time, minimum wage worker’s entire monthly salary. The list goes on.
Meanwhile, we are three weeks into the legislative session and most are rightfully ready for the Tennessee General Assembly to adjourn. For some reason the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party and our state insist on waging a culture war rather than working to improve Tennesseans’ quality of life. The numerous serious issues facing our families and communities have all taken a backseat to hate and political gamesmanship. When someone like Matt Walsh, a self-described “theocratic fascist” who regularly spouts white nationalist talking points about “replacement theory,” is invited to testify by the Republican leadership in support of their number one health policy this session, we should consider it an alarming wakeup call of what constitutes the “new normal” in today’s Republican Party. Of course, after my Democratic colleagues and I had the audacity to question his education and policy credentials in the Health committee, it resulted in Walsh whining to Tucker Carlson about us on national television.
Lest you think I am alone in my frustration, I encourage you to read Keel Hunt's Field Notes. As usual, As usual, he sums all this up much better than I.
I will simply add that we MUST stop allowing people to be elected who are more interested in fighting culture wars than fighting for Tennessee families and our communities. Change will only be possible when and if people start voting.
