Here’s what’s on the ballot:

A new section numbered 1.08 will be added to Article 1 of the Metropolitan Charter.

The new section shall state the following:

“English is the official language of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee. Official actions which bind or commit the government shall be taken only in the English language, and all official government communications and publications shall be in English. No person shall have a right to government services in any other language. All meetings of the Metro Council, Boards, and Commissions of the Metropolitan Government shall be conducted in English. The Metro Council may make specific exceptions to protect public health and safety. Nothing in this measure shall be interpreted to conflict with federal or state law.”

They present three reasons to vote against the amendment:

1. It’s needless, because English is already our official language.
2. It will hurt our economy by driving away new jobs and tourism.
3. It will damage our reputation as a friendly city that people want to visit.

All three of these objections to the amendment can be overcome with a little common sense.

1. Yes, Metro council enacted a resolution in January of 2007 making English the official language. But there’s nothing to stop the current council from rescinding that whenever they want. If it’s in the charter, then it’s harder for council to ignore it.
2. The anti-Amendment 1 folks’ web site says that this amendment would make it illegal to speak Japanese to Japanese companies who are considering coming to Nashville. Anyone who’s read the language of the amendment can see that this simply isn’t the case. The contract would certainly have to be in English (surely they don’t expect us to sign a contract in Japanese). They also say this sends a negative and inaccurate message to the world about Nashville. I’d like to see them go to France and expect to see official French government business to be conducted in English.
3. They just say it’ll be bad for tourism and will alienate folks who’ll want to take their money elsewhere. They don’t really give any logical reasoning behind this assumption (and that’s all it is, an assumption). They don’t provide any proof that having Metro Council meetings in English will turn away visitors.

In a nutshell, this anti-English group doesn’t have a logical leg to stand on.

There’s also a second charter amendment up for vote on January 22. Interestingly enough, this same group is against it as well. Upon finding out that little fact, I had to do some more digging. As it turns out, this second charter amendment gives the citizens greater opportunity to propose amendments. So, they’re also against the Nashville citizens having a greater voice in Nashville politics. How Democratic.

I still find it amazing that the United States is seemingly the only country in the world where we’re expected to speak the language of international visitors and emigrants. Whatever happened to “When in Rome…”?

As I mentioned earlier, one would almost get the impression that they don’t want the public to know when they’re meeting.

Woody lays the blame on several entities: City Hall (via the Fair Board), the economy, and race fans. I’d add one more group to that list: NASCAR.

Every time NASCAR has a Cup race on Saturday night, it keeps local fans away from the local tracks. NASCAR has been eating its own young for years this way. You can’t really blame a race fan for staying at home and watching a race for free instead of going to a track and spending $20 to get in plus about that much in food. And now with everyone deciding to have a recession, no one is spending money for anything, so that’s going to make the track’s survival that much harder.

I said a few weeks ago that I didn’t think there’d be any weekly racing in 2009. I still think that’s going to be the case. I took a lot of heat over it on one of the local racing forums, but other than some wishful thinking, I didn’t really see anything that would make me change my mind.

I think the best case scenario is that we end up with a year like 1979, where there wasn’t any weekly racing. But they did have about one major race weekend a month. Weekly racing resumed the next year, but by then folks had found other things to do on Saturday nights.

The Fair Board meets tomorrow, and what comes out of that meeting will have a big impact on what happens at the Fairgrounds in 2009. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the meeting (one almost gets the impression that they have them on Tuesday at 8:00 am in order to make it difficult for the general public to attend the meetings).

I think I’m gonna stop blogging until after the first of the year. Not much politically going on (except the usual Chicago corruption stuff).

Music wise I think we’re going to go see Webb Wilder on the 27th, and Hillbilly Casino is playing a ton of shows out at the Opryland Hotel, so we may check out one of those.

Have a good holiday everyone.

For example, back in the late 70’s I had the idea of having a camera or two at rock concerts and projecting the images onto a big screen for the folks in the nosebleed section. A few years later bands started doing that (of course I can’t prove that I had the idea first, but still).

Anyway, nowadays our government is throwing good money after bad by “bailing” out companies that are in bad shape because of incompetent management the economy. That’s going to add to the already massive federal debt.

I have a solution to get rid of this debt that’s so simple it astounds me. During his presidential campaign, Barrack Obama’s supporters were duped into giving gave him almost three quarters of a billion dollars. That’s $750,000,000.

So it seems to me that he’s great at raising money. He should put that talent to work towards helping these bailouts and the federal debt. Imagine another one of those 30 minute infomercials where he implores folks to help out the government. I’ll bet if he did one of those a month for the first year he’s in office, he could raise at least a hundred million or so, if not more. Actually, it might even be more, since those pesky campaign contribution laws won’t be in effect (not that it limited him anyway; I’m sure there are surprised folks just now getting credit card statements telling them how much they gave to Obama).

How about it, Mr. Nearly President Elect? If you implore your marks supporters to donate to the government, you could get us out of this financial mess in no time.

George Bush took all kinds of heat for firing 8 US Attorneys. The Democrats in Congress, trying to do anything they could to undermine Bush’s presidency, had hearings about those “unprecedented” firings. Never mind the fact that Bush’s predecessor Bill Clinton fired all 93 US Attorneys.

Anyway, we now have firmly established that the President doesn’t have the right to fire someone (who serves at the will of the President).

That should mean that we shouldn’t be hearing any stories about soon-to-be President Elect Obama firing any attorneys. After all, it was the Democrats who made a big stink about it, so if they think it’s wrong, then it’s wrong.

So those attorneys, Fitzgerald in particular, can have a great Christmas knowing their jobs are safe. Thanks Obama.

2008 was the last season ever of weekly racing at the fairgrounds

I say this for a few reasons. Commissioner Varney’s proposal pretty much means that the Board is washing their hands of the Speedway.

The first is that they gave LJ & J a lease for 2009 that no one in their right mind would sign. While the Board voted to extend the lease for one year back in March, LJ & J didn’t get that lease until the middle of October, and only had until the end of October to sign it. Apparently out of the blue in the lease was the fact that LJ & J would not get to handle the concessions, and that Metro had a blanket contract for concessions that would go into effect with the new lease. LJ & J says they didn’t have time to work out the details with the concessionaire so they made a counter offer on October 31. Tonight the board didn’t act on that counter offer, which means that LJ & J’s lease is up on December 31, 2008.

The second reason is that, while ostensibly they’re going to operate the track in 2009, they’re going to “lease it just like Wilson Hall.” So, if you want to put on a Saturday race, just contact the Fair office and lease track for that weekend. Sorry, but I don’t see that happening. And I don’t see the Fair Board hiring someone to run the track operations. Commissioner Varney already complained that in her time on the board, the money they had had shrunk from $6,000,000 to about $2,500,000 (perhaps Ms. Varney should see a correlation there). Spending money that would take away from the Fair just isn’t going to happen.

Another reason is that they’re going to get Metro Codes to come in and inspect the track facilities. I get the feeling that Codes is going to find a bunch of violations which will keep the track from operating until they’re fixed. As I said above, I don’t see the Board spending any money on the track.

And finally, they’re basically planning on just abandoning the property as a board and giving control of it back to the Mayor after 2009. They don’t want to meet their responsibility as a board and figure out how to use the current Fairgrounds to put on a Fair. Somehow they’re going to come up with a new piece of land somewhere (where there are no neighbors to complain about noise), buy it, build several thousand square feet of exhibit halls, and have the Fair and flea market there.

Now there’s always a chance that someone could offer to buy the property and continue to run the speedway in 2010 and beyond. But they only had one proposal for that, and since they pretty much told that company they no longer wanted to do business with them, I don’t see that happening.

So what will happen is sometime in 2009 the Mayor will make a big announcement about the Fair moving to another place and they’re going to buy the new land from the sale of the current fairgrounds. They’ll sell it to some developer (which probably won’t be anyone who submitted one of those proposals) and they’ll dig up the track and put condos or something on the property.

Nashville Speedway, it’s been a good run. I really hope I’m wrong and that Mr. Dozier comes up with some kind of plan that will allow teams to race on the old track one more year. But I think that’s the best-case scenario. What I’ve outlined above is probably the real-world scenario.

Read my report of what happened at the Fair Board meeting here.

I don’t know if he’d lie, but he could certainly create a new government program based on faulty logic or facts. And it looks like that’s what he’s going to do. Somehow, he’s going to wave his magic wand and create all these new jobs with my money.

Captain Capitalism has a good explanation of how jobs are really created, and tells why Obama’s plan is bad for the country. His main point is that “Jobs come from one thing; demand.” Which makes a ton of sense.

Go read it. It’ll make you more aware of how our economy really works.

It’s supposed to show how much of an impact gay folks have on our economy…. or something.

If I’m an employer and someone calls in “gay,” I’m not sure what I’d do. At the very least, I wouldn’t pay them a cent for the day they’re off. I’d probably have to look at their history with the company and see if they’ve really been that useful to the business. If not, I’d seriously have to think about letting them go. Cutting expenses in this economy is what a lot of businesses are doing, and if given the choice between a worker who came into work and one who “called in gay,” I’d have to give the advantage to the worker who was at work that day.

Being gay isn’t like being black or Asian. People can choose to engage in that behavior; you can’t choose your race. If you can choose your behavior, then I should be able to base my decisions on that behavior and whether or not I like it. Why should your so-called rights trump mine?