Greg Johnson: SBC acts mean more than name change
Mother is Southern Baptist. Always has been. From cradle to, I predict, grave, ever how many vivacious years from now that may be. From Providence Baptist on Flat Creek to Antioch to First Baptist,...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Vote for Santorum equals vote for Obama
As Tennessee readies for Super Tuesday to decide who will face President Barack Obama in November, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, according to a Vanderbilt University poll taken last week,...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: GOP conservatives flexed muscles again
Tennessee Republicans stayed true to recent form in presidential primaries on Tuesday, favoring the candidate whose social conservatism shows. Former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum won...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Volt shows Obama's auto bailout claims don't have any juice
President Barack Obama, speaking at a United Auto Workers meeting Feb. 28, obviously hoped to energize the crowd, even "electrify" it, as he defended his administration's $80 billion bailout of the...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Vandy's diversity doctrine is Orwellian
On Monday, the day after this year's NCAA March Madness selections, hardcore Vanderbilt University basketball fans plotted a pilgrimage to the desert, to Albuquerque, to exhort their Commodores in...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Repeal and replace health care law
On this, the second anniversary of "Obamacare," a friend, in a succinct aside, captured the sentiment of the majority of Americans. She explained that her employer in the tourism industry dropped...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Abortion information already a public record
State Rep. Matthew Hill, R-Jonesborough, last week pulled a controversial amendment to the Life Defense Act of 2012 after receiving threats. Ironically, those threats came after critics called Hill's...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: State worker rules to shift for the better
Barring an unforeseen undoing in the Legislature, Gov. Bill Haslam is on the verge of negotiating a seismic shift in state employment policy. This week, the Tennessee State Employees Association agreed...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Pilgrimage best made in the company of others
Somewhere between Samos and Sarria, along the lonely pilgrim's path to Santiago de Compostela, the road grew monotonous, the day hot, still and dry. At an earlier fork, my son, Reed, and I decided to...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Leadership lacking at leadership forum
Perhaps understating is acceptable at the Tennessee Valley Authority. At a "family meeting" last week to announce cost overruns and delays in completion of a second reactor at TVA's Watts Bar Nuclear...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero pushes ideology over pragmatism
Whether on the stump or on official speech duty, President George W. Bush used a standard shtick to remind the gathered of the eternal axiom that all politics is local. After greeting the assembled...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Time to end insanity of entitlements
We've made promises we can't keep. From the city of Knoxville's pension plan to Knox County's Uniformed Officers Pension Plan to Social Security, we are awash in an ocean of obligations that will...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Return on investment key to school funding fight
As the funding fight for Knox County's schools moves toward Round 3, perhaps it is time to pause. Superintendent James McIntyre won Round 1, gaining approval of his proposed $35 million increase for...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: European votes don't discredit austerity
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The American Book Center near the Binnenhof, Holland's house of government, shows the seriousness of this town of 500,000. Foreign policy journals in the front window beckon...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Dutch tulip bubble teaches lessons for modern times
AALSMEER, Netherlands — Behind a bank of computer monitors, traders sit quietly, headsets in place, fingertips poised, eyes scanning their screens for opportunity. The giant "clock" on the wall...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Shore up finances of Import-Export Bank
Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, in the aftermath of a $2 billion trading loss, has called on JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to step down from the New York Federal...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Reality bites into city pension plan
Hamstrung by state law and a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling, Knoxville is stuck with inexorably greater pension obligations for decades. The city owes an estimated $14 million in the 2012-2013 fiscal...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Hybrid pension plan no real change
The city of Knoxville's work to find a solution for its ever-increasing pension plan obligations may have been exhausting, but it was far from exhaustive. In fact, the "Hybrid Max Plan" promoted by...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: City didn't explore all its pension options
Will Knoxville voters go the way of San Jose? Or, unlike taxpayers in northern California, will Knoxvillians meekly accept mild pension modifications that will leave taxpayers guaranteeing most of the...
View ArticleGreg Johnson: Presidential choice is businessman or social worker
Tell the truth: If you owned an enterprise that once was the envy of the world, but that enterprise was now limping along, growing far below potential, was running unimaginable deficits year after...
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