Tagged: tennessee

Nashville’s Occupy protest experience may be a foretaste of what’s to come for cities around the country.

A New York judge has apparently ordered that Occupy Wall street protesters be permitted to return to the park that police forcibly evicted them from this morning.

Here in Middle Tennessee, the courts have consistently sided with protesters.

A Nashville judge dismissed trespassing and other citations against 55 Occupy Nashville protesters yesterday and ordered their records expunged.

A Middle Tennessean will join Danny Glover, Cicely Tyson and several other celebrities when they pick up awards tomorrow at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

The 2011 National Freedom Awards are being presented this year to civil rights pioneers in several fields, including education, sports, the arts, and activism.

Special awards for what the museum calls “icons” of the American civil rights movement will also be presented.  The museum’s Gwen Harmon says Middle Tennessee’s John Seigenthaler will be among seven Icon recipients.

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander is part of a bi-partisan push to require online retailers to collect state sales taxes.

The group of ten senators announced yesterday that they will introduce a bill that would let states that adopt the same administrative procedure for collecting taxes to be able to require online sellers to collect those taxes

Online auction company eBay opposes the bill, saying that requiring small vendors to collect sales tax for states around the country would be an unfair burden.

The department that operates Tennessee’s State Court System, the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts, is meeting with representatives of State Finance and Administration to discuss budgetary concerns.

According to the department’s spokesperson, Laura Click, Tennessee’s court system has seen a combined 21 percent cut in its operational budget over the last two fiscal years.

Tennessee's sales tax revenues grew 6.5 percent in the first quarter of the budget year, and general fund collections are $57 million above projections.

Sales taxes account for nearly two out of every three dollars collected for the state's general fund. October sales tax collections, which reflect economic activity in the previous month, came in at nearly $16 million above projections.

State Finance Commissioner Mark Emkes says that the growth of sales tax collections is the "best indicator of economic recovery."  

A MTSU Professor says that a federal internet plan could have a profound impact on Tennessee.

Federal regulators are announcing today that they've cobbled together a consortium of businesses and non-profit organizations to cut the number of U.S. homes that don't have broadband internet service, now at one third, or about 35 million homes.

As part of a federal project cable companies will offer Internet service for $9.95 per month to poor homes with children eligible for the school lunch program.   The plan will be available starting next summer.