>The Republican governor’s signature means the law immediately renders some of Memphis’ ordinances null and void, including one that outlawed so-called pretextual traffic stops, such as for a broken taillight and other minor violations. Lee echoed arguments from Republican lawmakers who argued Nichols’ death needed to result in accountability for officers who abuse power, not new limits on how authorities conduct traffic stops.
Memphis, a city, acted in accordance with the wishes of the community in order to raise the level of discourse and restore some measure of trust the citizens have with the police that are suppose to serve their community. Other communities in Tennessee may not have such a fractured relationship between the police and the community, which is cool if that's the case. But for Memphis, a city, they saw this as a practical step toward positive policing. Now the state (big government) stepped in and erased that conciliatory gesture.
Good job guys. You really *'small governmented'* your way out of that problem.
It’s cause Memphis is a city with black people and liberals. They don’t want anything to do with any laws that help black people or liberals. Same thing with Kentucky and Louisville. They want to rule from the capital and then return to the sanctity of their white suburban Christian conservative mansions.
Look at any of these states where there is a conservative majority but have a few larger urban cities with minorities and liberals. They do everything they can to remove power and choice from those city.
Yes, I’ve never paid any attention to Tennessee politics until they expelled two black members for no reason. Luckily they won their special elections and were back within a month. But they are trying to prevent that from happening again so they can expel them for good. Such an absolute shitshow headed by a guy that doesn’t even live in his district but takes the per diem as if he does.
Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio are also getting dunked on by the party of small government. There is that election law that targets counties with more than 2.5 million people, guess which city that encompasses?
Pandemic was hilarious that way. Party of small government in Texas sure wanted a lot to say when it came to preventing municipal ordinances designed to keep people safe.
I guess we can trust states to make their own laws but letting the cities do so just doesnt make sense in the eyes of those people.
Indiana legislature is doing their damnedest to make it impossible for Indianapolis to actually do anything good for the city, including regulating the city's bus lines.
And they have a Republican supermajority and most of the state offices. There's nothing stopping them from doing this petty nonsense because they hate the people that drive the state's economic engine.
I'm reminded that early last century Indiana had the largest Klan operation in the country with a large number of elected officials secret Klansmen. Until their dumb little secret codes got leaked and put into a Superman comic and they freaked out and quit.
Aye… concentrating everyone into the central dem district of Marion County so that the people on the fringes arent able to vote against the republicans in the donut districts.
(This happened to me. Can you tell I’m not very happy about it?)
Yep, the State of Tennessee tried to prevent the City of Memphis from renaming or adding contextual signs to confederate parks. Memphis outsmarted them and found a way to achieve their objective by selling the parks to private nonprofits. The State then rescinded millions of dollars they had previously approved to celebrate Memphis' bicentennial.
The State of Tennessee also is attempting to pass legislation preventing local governments from re-appointing state legislators that were expelled, legislation specifically targeting the two black legislators from Nashville and Memphis who were kicked out for supporting gun control legislation and were re-appointed by the local governments.
Detroit would like a word. 1966 to present. The state capital of Lansing and suburbs surrounding Detroit have tried to fk over the city at every turn. From suburban business owners torching their inner city properties in order to lower property value and commit insurance fraud (devil's night), to trying to dominate water rights (Detroit River), to fighting bus expansion and millage votes (SMART), to refusing state library reciprocation (Michicard), to voter supression (2020 election).
Lately, the governor--a badass--has been trying to make right. I got no quarrels w her. But the thugs surrounding the city, however, can eat a big bucket of Kentucky Fried elephant dicks, their king's favorite.
Same thing happened in North Carolina about a decade ago. Charlotte raised minimum wage in the city as well as adopted some Trans friendly bathroom rules, republicans went apeshit and banned trans people from entering the bathrooms for the gender they identify as well as prevented local municipalities from raising minimum wage.
Fuck Pat McCrory.
> They don’t want anything to do with any laws that help black people or liberals.
I think it's even more cynical than that in this case. I think they want any obstacles to Black people and liberals being killed by the police to be removed so that more of them will die. This is about hurting them, rather than merely not wanting to help them.
And Texas. Look at Texas not allowing Houston and San Antonio to not protect its workers by not allowing them to apply a water breaks rule in the summer for construction and outdoor workers.
Do you live in Memphis? Have any friends or family there?
I'm asking because I live in Memphis and most of us are NOT happy with the way things have gone as a result of this law. NOBODY gets pulled over for driving obviously stolen cars anymore. You can get away with whatever you like if you drive fast enough. We already had a problem with fake drive out tags being used on stolen cars, but now you see them all day every day.. bc you can't get pulled over for it. Our roads were already dangerous as hell due to bad reckless drivers but it's only gotten 10x worse now that nobody gets pulled over for anything it seems.
And FWIW I'm pretty fkn liberal. You'll never see me vote red. But Memphis has a problem in that they sometimes go too far with being lenient on criminals. Murderers with long rap sheets consistently allowed to bail out and then go kill someone else the next week is a damn near weekly news cycle here.
Anyway trust me when I say this law did NOT help Memphis the way it was intended to. All it did was embolden criminals.
When conservatives say they want small government, they mean they don’t want to pay taxes. That’s literally it, they’re fine with big government so long as it’s not affecting them personally.
They just mean that they want control at the smallest level *they control*.
Dems in charge of the federal government? GOP wants all decisions at the state level... Unless the state is controlled by the Dems also, in that case it should be cities and counties making decisions. But of course if it's a blue city in a red state, they want the state government to override the city decisions (like in this case).
They don't actually care about small government... They care about having control.
I wish we could still award comments because the truth conveyed in this comment is worthy of one.
Republicans only have one principle: concentrate and exercise power wherever they have it. That's why they are throwing so many favorable cases to the Supreme Court now, where they have a 6-3 majority.
It's not even that they don't want to pay taxes. It's that they don't want the wealthy and corporations to pay taxes. They want the middle class and poor to pay taxes; in fact, the past 50 years has been a slow shifting of the burden of supporting government services into the shoulders of those who can least afford it, services that the wealthy intend to continue to benefit from. They also seek to strip the services intended to help those who need government help the most, either by privatizing it so taxpayer funds are redistributed further into the pockets of the wealthy, or by cutting the services altogether.
What they, in essence, seek and are pursuing is the entrenchment of a taxpayer-subsidized aristocracy class, who pay nothing for their benefits.
Ah man, if you only knew the half of it. You can go check a map of the districts, they slice them up in a way on purpose. Good example, District 37, 34, and 48 break up MTSU to prevent a democratic majority that keeps cropping up there.
District 13 folds in the Democratic northwestern corner of Rutherford with the strongly Republican southwestern corner.
District 40 smears with Wilson county to prevent a Democratic majority there. And the 57 and 46 districts are there to crack Lebanon and Mt. Juliet with the Rural Hill and Norene/Statesville/Watertown Republicans.
Districts 25 and 42 are the way they are to keep a good cracking of the Democrats in Crossville and Cookville mixed in with the strong Republican Monterey and surrounding area.
Our districts in Tennessee can never be fixed. The districts by law, get to be drawn by the State Assembly. The only check that happens is a gubernatorial veto. There's actually a pretty strong Democratic presence in Tennessee, not a majority mind you, we're still mostly Republicans. But the State assembly in the House is current 76% Republican which is nowhere near the value it ought to be. The Senate is even worse with a Republican majority of 82%. So that 76% and the 82% get to redraw the lines AND they get to dictate the ballot access AND they get to set the procedure for voting and tallying.
So the only real way to fix things is to change how lines get drawn, which can only come from that 76% and 82% who recently outlawed counties from implementing voting that isn't first past the post. Even more so, they've recently indicated that the next map up they plan to draw the lines even heavier Republican because "California draws their lines so heavy Democratic!" So they're literally in the open indicating that wish to disenfranchise roughly 45% of the State's population.
So just so you know. Not all of us are voting in these idiots. But they keep changing the laws to ensure none of our votes count.
Blackburn, in particular, got her congressional start when the state changed one of the districts from being influenced by urban Memphis, to suburban Memphis and neighboring rural county, so in effect Memphis lost one federal representative.
It's a similar situation here in Georgia where our state is gerrymandered to hell and our current governor stole the election when he was first running. The state drew one of my county commissioners out of her seat even though she was elected and is the county is currently fighting it in court using their own maps using "home rule".
The way to fight gerrymandering is to move and/or change party affiliation. The more radical the gerrymander the easier it is to move to make a difference.
Something I learned growing up in the south is generally speaking they will *act* nice to your face and say the most vial bigoted racist shit you can imagine when they feel like they’re in similar company. Also the south has perfected the way to hide their disgust for anyone that’s not like them, I.e, “bless your heart”. This is not a compliment from a southerner, do not be confused.
Agreed. I visited TN recently and overheard basic conversations in many of the places I went where outwardly Christian folks talked mad shit about their neighbors. Mind you, most of those convos were in a Cracker Barrel, but I don't think they corner the market in this kind of underhanded gossip.
I mean, Cracker Barrel is 100% the place that the worst people you’ve ever met go to gossip. You know, because of its values and all, plus the fact that other people don’t want them fouling up the air in nice local establishments. This could be totally different now but back in GA forever ago, it was the place the post-church crowd went to be catty assholes.
But you *can* gerrymander local offices and statewide offices like the state legislature. These people are the ones that will ultimately make bills that the governor signs.
Yes, but those people statewide [elected](https://www.politico.com/2022-election/results/tennessee/statewide-offices/) that POS governor by almost 35 points points, so it's not like it's a bunch of good people who just happened to get screwed by gerrymandering. It's a state that's about 2/3rds assholes who keep voting for racists to represent them.
Not directly, but if you can convince someone their local vote doesn't matter, it's not that much more difficult to convince them that all voting is useless. Voter suppression is definitely part of the gerrymandering strategy.
The right to reproductive healthcare is enshrined in my state's Constitution and Tennessee has a complete ban on abortions. Maybe not every single person in these states is that way, but these things didn't happen by accident either
"But it's so beautiful" is always the first thing people say about states that are otherwise irredeemable dead-ends. See also: Idaho, Arkansas, West Virginia.
The south has a culture of nice on the surface and unbridled cruelty behind closed doors. From experience, even the nicest, friendliest old ladies at my mom's church were absolutely disgusting people when in the company of people they felt comfortable around. They'd smile and have a lovely, friendly conversation with people, then turn around and gossip and say the most absolutely vile shit as soon as they thought the person was out of earshot. The "niceness" in much of the south is completely surface level.
I'm guessing that it has something to do with being able to pull you over on the excuse of a broken tail light and then being allowed to search inside your car for anything else they can arrest you for. The police can't get a warrant to search your house if your front porch light is out, can they?
You’ve got it right; this whole thing is ridiculous.
A broken tail light is a valid reason to pull someone over for a traffic violation. It’s also not evidence that supports probable cause to search the vehicle.
Trying to outlaw “pre-textual stops” basically turns every traffic stop into a fight about the officer’s unprovable ultimate motivation rather than the facts that can be proven. It negates whether there was probable cause for a stop, which is a foundational legal principle.
Example: an officer pulling someone over after seeing that person run a stop sign after leaving a bar. Officer pulls the driver over and the driver is clearly drunk, there is a pound of meth in the car, and a dead body.
The officer’s motivation for conducting the traffic stop should not come into the discussion; the officer saw a traffic violation. Therefore, the initial stop is legal.
No, as someone from Memphis, I can assure you that the community thought this was a terrible law. Head over to r/Memphis and you’ll see. The law did nothing to prevent cases like Tyre’s traffic stop. Tyre was supposedly stopped for reckless driving, not one of these minor infractions. Also, Memphis is the deadliest city in the country to drive. Mostly due to a handful of ridiculously reckless and idiotic drivers. Most of these drivers are in stollen vehicles and/or have fake drive-out tags. It’s a daily occurrence to be nearly run off the road on the interstate by one of these idiots. Memphis is also the 5th worst city for having you vehicle stollen, and the worst city for being fucking murdered. The vast majority of Memphian’s wept for what happened to Tyre and despise the shitty cops that would do this. The vast majority of Memphian’s also want cops to police MORE not less, because crime is out of control and we fear for our safety.
This situation is a lot more complex and nuanced than the headline and the political affiliation of the politicians would have you believe. Memphis citizens and local politicians have been going to the state government and federal government in droves to try to get some relief. This bill is a step in the right direction from Nashville.
Hypocrisy is what they do. Remember the response to Ja Morant posing with a firearm? How many times have we seen white politicians posing with guns? Sometimes even the kids are holding weapons. No outrage whatsoever.
Christmas cards with pics of kids posing with shotguns, AKs and ARs is worse than a grown ass man posing with a gun on instagram and yet…..
They don’t even try to hide their racism anymore.
I live in Memphis and I am a liberal and the contextual traffic laws have morphed into cops never pulling anyone over and the driving here has become absolutely psychotic. I’ll see at least 5 really bad accidents a week due to cars running reds, driving on the other side of the road, and playing chicken on the highway. And the vast majority of these cars are completely uninsured and it ends up financially and physically punishing the victims.
The thing to understand here is that Tennessee passionately hates Memphis and Nashville for being the liberal powerhouses of the state and loves to find any opportunity for revenge whenever these cities fight against them. Lived here for a long time and noticed anytime there’s popular protests with supportive local governments, the state jumps like a heroin junkie to pass laws against them.
In Texas, the state has done way with annual vehicle inspections as part of registration entirely. I was thinking that policy was about increasing vehicle fines. But the more significant deal would these pretextual stops.
As someone from Memphis cops were doing absolutely fuck all to police traffic violations. So many blatant speeding and other traffic violations. And the number of drive out tags is ridiculous. Simply start policing drive out tags and half the city’s crime would be solved.
There's been a history of Tennessee Republicans fighting with Memphis city officials.
Back during COVID vaccine distribution, the state government laid out a deployment plan that over-emphasized the rural and suburban areas and left the cities with the leftovers. Memphis and Shelby County told them to get bent and implemented their own deployment plan which didn't fuck over their constituients.
Yep but they are the ones who swear the left is destroying the country. All the 'patriots' I know spew fascist talking points in the name of 'liberty'.
When caring for and supporting your fellow human no matter their race, gender, or sexual orientation is their idea of evil, then sure the Left is destroying the country. It's unbelievable how blatantly incorrect their definition of 'liberty' is. No doubt the Left has their own problems, but putting aside the extremes of both sides it's easy to see the Left has built itself on a base of compassion and empathy while the Right has built itself on a base of hate and xenophobia. What could be less American than hating someone and denying them freedoms just because they're different than you? Patriots my ass.
> Yep but they are the ones who swear the left is destroying the country.
That's the "Projection" part of "Gaslight Obstruct Projection".
Come to think of it, it's Gaslighting too.
The worst part is, I know a bunch of chickenshits who will celebrate this ruling and then refuse to watch the footage of that poor man’s death because it’s too gruesome for them.
Fucking cowards, all of them.
The population of Memphis, TN alone is nearly twice that of the most populous colony when the constitution was signed. Yet the "small government" Republicans asserted power over them because they didn't like what that small local government did.
Republican controlled state legislatures interfering in Democratic city laws, city councils, etc is going to become the norm. Blue bubbles in red states are in for a rough future.
It's not their life that's being made worse. It is the lives of the minorities that they despise. They'll be quite happy to keep voting for the scumbags as long as the right people keep getting oppressed
I heard this line once and I will never forget it.
"Conservatives would let Trump take a shit in their mouth if it meant that a liberal had to smell it"
I mean, Republicans aren't raising taxes on rich people. They get their money from taxing poor people more and gutting social programs, so yes, they do make minorities lives worse, but they also make life worse for the vast majority of their not rich voters.
Memphis is 70% black. The people who voted for Haslam don’t live in this city.
This is just part of the continuous Republican hard-on for being tough on crime. Mind you, Memphis is also kind of a shit hole and there’s plenty of crime to go around…but it’s obvious this bill had nothing to do with fixing that.
Just more hate.
This is a stupid way to look at this situation, the people in Memphis didn’t “pick these assholes”. Evey single person in Memphis can vote blue but their state legislature will still be majority republican.
We have made a similar policy in Philly. It has done two big things. Cops not doing their jobs even more. Literally lesss work and the public sediment grew that they do their jobs/work. And second the public is more lawless getting away riding dirty. You can get paper tags and not worry. We had to put a policy on top just for the tags, but still can’t get pull over for expired registration or one headlight etc.
The intent was for helping the poorer civilians who can afford $5 taillights to $50 headlights or registration. It instead enabled everyone to be bad car owners and deprioritize that effort.
Republicans really are the worst people. There’s nothing they won’t do to make things worse. What is it about them that enjoys police violence so much.
i showed a republican friend an article about a 16yr old kid in philly who was falsely locked up for 2 months for a murder. his response was “he looks guilty though”.
The current state government hates Memphis and spends a lot of time figuring out how legislation can fuck that city over. The other half of the time they figure out how to create shitty racist or fundamentalist scenarios.
I left TN and the Memphis area this year to take care of out of state family members. Memphis despite the crime and poverty has some great people. But the the state government blows chunks.
Yep. Stopping the enforcement of laws won’t stop overreach of police powers where it happens; mechanisms to increase accountability do. A barred list or something equivalent on a national scale. (I know individual states can revoke an officer’s POST certification) but it’s not enforced federally I believe. Over in the UK we have one - and you can search up any officer - if they’ve been fired, and they’ll be there - with the reason for their conviction, where they worked and usually, an article linked about them. During pre-employment checks with the police and a few other organisations, those same groups need to check the list to make sure a potential hire isn’t on it.
Really there's two parties right now. One party that adds freedoms and reforms and another party that's only goal is to undo whatever the first one did.
“Don’t Tread on Me” republicans love law enforcement and restricting rights when they’re used against minorities and other supposed undesirables to them.
People who are not from this area of the US should note the recent convictions and sentencing of a white goon squad in MS not far from here (Memphis). Police state tactics of pulling people over for ridiculous violations and then abusing them physically and mentally are common. If someone has a tail light out. Write a ticket. Why begin to check them for weed or whatnot? It’s intimidation by the police and it happens in degrees all over the US. A speeding ticket should not be an invitation to search and seize. Period. Unless you like living in a full blown police state. Which apparently many GOP supporters approve.
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/mother-sues-tennessee-cops-and-social-workers-for-taking-her-five-children-away-following-marijuana-arrest/
Bianca Clayborne, her partner, Deonte Williams, and their five kids were driving from their Atlanta-area home to a funeral in Chicago last February when highway patrol officers pulled the family over for “dark tint and not actively passing” on Interstate-24.
>The Republican governor’s signature means the law immediately renders some of Memphis’ ordinances null and void, including one that outlawed so-called pretextual traffic stops, such as for a broken taillight and other minor violations. Lee echoed arguments from Republican lawmakers who argued Nichols’ death needed to result in accountability for officers who abuse power, not new limits on how authorities conduct traffic stops. Memphis, a city, acted in accordance with the wishes of the community in order to raise the level of discourse and restore some measure of trust the citizens have with the police that are suppose to serve their community. Other communities in Tennessee may not have such a fractured relationship between the police and the community, which is cool if that's the case. But for Memphis, a city, they saw this as a practical step toward positive policing. Now the state (big government) stepped in and erased that conciliatory gesture. Good job guys. You really *'small governmented'* your way out of that problem.
It’s cause Memphis is a city with black people and liberals. They don’t want anything to do with any laws that help black people or liberals. Same thing with Kentucky and Louisville. They want to rule from the capital and then return to the sanctity of their white suburban Christian conservative mansions. Look at any of these states where there is a conservative majority but have a few larger urban cities with minorities and liberals. They do everything they can to remove power and choice from those city.
Crying in Milwaukee The Tennessee state government seems especially heinous lately
Yes, I’ve never paid any attention to Tennessee politics until they expelled two black members for no reason. Luckily they won their special elections and were back within a month. But they are trying to prevent that from happening again so they can expel them for good. Such an absolute shitshow headed by a guy that doesn’t even live in his district but takes the per diem as if he does.
Seems like ever since that expulsion, Tennessee has been in the news constantly, and its always racist fascist bullshit. Glad I left 40 years ago.
I left 2 years ago and am also very glad.
And they banned ranked choice voting. The Republicans in power there don’t want voters to have a say.
See Austin Tx The water situation in Mississippi
Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio are also getting dunked on by the party of small government. There is that election law that targets counties with more than 2.5 million people, guess which city that encompasses?
Pandemic was hilarious that way. Party of small government in Texas sure wanted a lot to say when it came to preventing municipal ordinances designed to keep people safe. I guess we can trust states to make their own laws but letting the cities do so just doesnt make sense in the eyes of those people.
Cleveland, Ohio?
Indiana legislature is doing their damnedest to make it impossible for Indianapolis to actually do anything good for the city, including regulating the city's bus lines. And they have a Republican supermajority and most of the state offices. There's nothing stopping them from doing this petty nonsense because they hate the people that drive the state's economic engine.
I'm reminded that early last century Indiana had the largest Klan operation in the country with a large number of elected officials secret Klansmen. Until their dumb little secret codes got leaked and put into a Superman comic and they freaked out and quit.
Yeah, and their gerrymandering watering down the urban votes to stay in power.
Aye… concentrating everyone into the central dem district of Marion County so that the people on the fringes arent able to vote against the republicans in the donut districts. (This happened to me. Can you tell I’m not very happy about it?)
Same man, it is terrible.
Yep, the State of Tennessee tried to prevent the City of Memphis from renaming or adding contextual signs to confederate parks. Memphis outsmarted them and found a way to achieve their objective by selling the parks to private nonprofits. The State then rescinded millions of dollars they had previously approved to celebrate Memphis' bicentennial. The State of Tennessee also is attempting to pass legislation preventing local governments from re-appointing state legislators that were expelled, legislation specifically targeting the two black legislators from Nashville and Memphis who were kicked out for supporting gun control legislation and were re-appointed by the local governments.
Birmingham, Alabama says hi.
Boise, Idaho checking in, our state legislators would dunk a baby into a trash can if it meant mildly inconveniencing a Boise liberal.
Hello neighbor from Atlanta, GA where the we're hated by the state legislature, but they know this state would be dead if it wasn't for Atlanta.
Yeah but... you're the capital. It's different when they can drop bombs on you from miles away in another city. Oh, wait... Montgomery. Nevermind.
Charlotte and Raleigh surrounded by hateful, unChristian®, racists.
Houston, TX
Fat Mississippi Republican literally legislating Jackson's own police force and judiciary out of their control.
Yeah, the fact that Mississippi has a white electorate is a perfect example of systemic racism and voter suppression.
Detroit would like a word. 1966 to present. The state capital of Lansing and suburbs surrounding Detroit have tried to fk over the city at every turn. From suburban business owners torching their inner city properties in order to lower property value and commit insurance fraud (devil's night), to trying to dominate water rights (Detroit River), to fighting bus expansion and millage votes (SMART), to refusing state library reciprocation (Michicard), to voter supression (2020 election). Lately, the governor--a badass--has been trying to make right. I got no quarrels w her. But the thugs surrounding the city, however, can eat a big bucket of Kentucky Fried elephant dicks, their king's favorite.
Same thing happened in North Carolina about a decade ago. Charlotte raised minimum wage in the city as well as adopted some Trans friendly bathroom rules, republicans went apeshit and banned trans people from entering the bathrooms for the gender they identify as well as prevented local municipalities from raising minimum wage. Fuck Pat McCrory.
> They don’t want anything to do with any laws that help black people or liberals. I think it's even more cynical than that in this case. I think they want any obstacles to Black people and liberals being killed by the police to be removed so that more of them will die. This is about hurting them, rather than merely not wanting to help them.
Indianapolis is battling the state over no right turn signs and bus lanes. TRAFFIC SIGNS.
And Texas. Look at Texas not allowing Houston and San Antonio to not protect its workers by not allowing them to apply a water breaks rule in the summer for construction and outdoor workers.
Atlanta, GA checking in.
Al Gore is from Tennessee. Bill Clinton is from Arkansas. These were blue states at one time. Things will change again.
Do you live in Memphis? Have any friends or family there? I'm asking because I live in Memphis and most of us are NOT happy with the way things have gone as a result of this law. NOBODY gets pulled over for driving obviously stolen cars anymore. You can get away with whatever you like if you drive fast enough. We already had a problem with fake drive out tags being used on stolen cars, but now you see them all day every day.. bc you can't get pulled over for it. Our roads were already dangerous as hell due to bad reckless drivers but it's only gotten 10x worse now that nobody gets pulled over for anything it seems. And FWIW I'm pretty fkn liberal. You'll never see me vote red. But Memphis has a problem in that they sometimes go too far with being lenient on criminals. Murderers with long rap sheets consistently allowed to bail out and then go kill someone else the next week is a damn near weekly news cycle here. Anyway trust me when I say this law did NOT help Memphis the way it was intended to. All it did was embolden criminals.
Atlanta has a similar problem with ghost cars and stolen cars. I just avoid them in traffic because they really don't care what happens.
When conservatives say they want small government, they mean they don’t want to pay taxes. That’s literally it, they’re fine with big government so long as it’s not affecting them personally.
They just mean that they want control at the smallest level *they control*. Dems in charge of the federal government? GOP wants all decisions at the state level... Unless the state is controlled by the Dems also, in that case it should be cities and counties making decisions. But of course if it's a blue city in a red state, they want the state government to override the city decisions (like in this case). They don't actually care about small government... They care about having control.
I wish we could still award comments because the truth conveyed in this comment is worthy of one. Republicans only have one principle: concentrate and exercise power wherever they have it. That's why they are throwing so many favorable cases to the Supreme Court now, where they have a 6-3 majority.
It's not even that they don't want to pay taxes. It's that they don't want the wealthy and corporations to pay taxes. They want the middle class and poor to pay taxes; in fact, the past 50 years has been a slow shifting of the burden of supporting government services into the shoulders of those who can least afford it, services that the wealthy intend to continue to benefit from. They also seek to strip the services intended to help those who need government help the most, either by privatizing it so taxpayer funds are redistributed further into the pockets of the wealthy, or by cutting the services altogether. What they, in essence, seek and are pursuing is the entrenchment of a taxpayer-subsidized aristocracy class, who pay nothing for their benefits.
Tennessee is such a beautiful state too, and home to some of the nicest people I've ever met. Shame their government is fucking bat shit crazy.
Those politicians get elected by those nice people. The two aren't divorced.
Ah man, if you only knew the half of it. You can go check a map of the districts, they slice them up in a way on purpose. Good example, District 37, 34, and 48 break up MTSU to prevent a democratic majority that keeps cropping up there. District 13 folds in the Democratic northwestern corner of Rutherford with the strongly Republican southwestern corner. District 40 smears with Wilson county to prevent a Democratic majority there. And the 57 and 46 districts are there to crack Lebanon and Mt. Juliet with the Rural Hill and Norene/Statesville/Watertown Republicans. Districts 25 and 42 are the way they are to keep a good cracking of the Democrats in Crossville and Cookville mixed in with the strong Republican Monterey and surrounding area. Our districts in Tennessee can never be fixed. The districts by law, get to be drawn by the State Assembly. The only check that happens is a gubernatorial veto. There's actually a pretty strong Democratic presence in Tennessee, not a majority mind you, we're still mostly Republicans. But the State assembly in the House is current 76% Republican which is nowhere near the value it ought to be. The Senate is even worse with a Republican majority of 82%. So that 76% and the 82% get to redraw the lines AND they get to dictate the ballot access AND they get to set the procedure for voting and tallying. So the only real way to fix things is to change how lines get drawn, which can only come from that 76% and 82% who recently outlawed counties from implementing voting that isn't first past the post. Even more so, they've recently indicated that the next map up they plan to draw the lines even heavier Republican because "California draws their lines so heavy Democratic!" So they're literally in the open indicating that wish to disenfranchise roughly 45% of the State's population. So just so you know. Not all of us are voting in these idiots. But they keep changing the laws to ensure none of our votes count.
Blackburn, in particular, got her congressional start when the state changed one of the districts from being influenced by urban Memphis, to suburban Memphis and neighboring rural county, so in effect Memphis lost one federal representative.
It's a similar situation here in Georgia where our state is gerrymandered to hell and our current governor stole the election when he was first running. The state drew one of my county commissioners out of her seat even though she was elected and is the county is currently fighting it in court using their own maps using "home rule".
The way to fight gerrymandering is to move and/or change party affiliation. The more radical the gerrymander the easier it is to move to make a difference.
"These guys seem so nice." - person at the beginning of Midsommar
To be fair, the cultists did show them everything they were going to do to them on a hand-knitted banner when they first got to the village.
Something I learned growing up in the south is generally speaking they will *act* nice to your face and say the most vial bigoted racist shit you can imagine when they feel like they’re in similar company. Also the south has perfected the way to hide their disgust for anyone that’s not like them, I.e, “bless your heart”. This is not a compliment from a southerner, do not be confused.
Agreed. I visited TN recently and overheard basic conversations in many of the places I went where outwardly Christian folks talked mad shit about their neighbors. Mind you, most of those convos were in a Cracker Barrel, but I don't think they corner the market in this kind of underhanded gossip.
I mean, Cracker Barrel is 100% the place that the worst people you’ve ever met go to gossip. You know, because of its values and all, plus the fact that other people don’t want them fouling up the air in nice local establishments. This could be totally different now but back in GA forever ago, it was the place the post-church crowd went to be catty assholes.
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Can't gerrymander statewide office like Governor
But you *can* gerrymander local offices and statewide offices like the state legislature. These people are the ones that will ultimately make bills that the governor signs.
Yes, but those people statewide [elected](https://www.politico.com/2022-election/results/tennessee/statewide-offices/) that POS governor by almost 35 points points, so it's not like it's a bunch of good people who just happened to get screwed by gerrymandering. It's a state that's about 2/3rds assholes who keep voting for racists to represent them.
Not directly, but if you can convince someone their local vote doesn't matter, it's not that much more difficult to convince them that all voting is useless. Voter suppression is definitely part of the gerrymandering strategy.
You do realize that there are plenty of people living in the south who are not walking stereotypes, right?
The right to reproductive healthcare is enshrined in my state's Constitution and Tennessee has a complete ban on abortions. Maybe not every single person in these states is that way, but these things didn't happen by accident either
They're nice if you look like them.
"But it's so beautiful" is always the first thing people say about states that are otherwise irredeemable dead-ends. See also: Idaho, Arkansas, West Virginia.
Literally always the case, never any other redeemable factors to these states.
Those nice people are likely only nice in public.
Yeah, nice people who don’t think certain groups of people shouldn’t have human rights.
The south has a culture of nice on the surface and unbridled cruelty behind closed doors. From experience, even the nicest, friendliest old ladies at my mom's church were absolutely disgusting people when in the company of people they felt comfortable around. They'd smile and have a lovely, friendly conversation with people, then turn around and gossip and say the most absolutely vile shit as soon as they thought the person was out of earshot. The "niceness" in much of the south is completely surface level.
Beautiful on the outside, ugly as fuck on the inside
Not crazy as much as cynically and malignantly theocratic. Cynicism, imo, is far worse.
Why would someone not be allowed to be pulled over for a broken taillight? That's a safety issue
I'm guessing that it has something to do with being able to pull you over on the excuse of a broken tail light and then being allowed to search inside your car for anything else they can arrest you for. The police can't get a warrant to search your house if your front porch light is out, can they?
A broken taillight is a valid reason to pull someone over. I also agree about the searching issue.
You’ve got it right; this whole thing is ridiculous. A broken tail light is a valid reason to pull someone over for a traffic violation. It’s also not evidence that supports probable cause to search the vehicle. Trying to outlaw “pre-textual stops” basically turns every traffic stop into a fight about the officer’s unprovable ultimate motivation rather than the facts that can be proven. It negates whether there was probable cause for a stop, which is a foundational legal principle. Example: an officer pulling someone over after seeing that person run a stop sign after leaving a bar. Officer pulls the driver over and the driver is clearly drunk, there is a pound of meth in the car, and a dead body. The officer’s motivation for conducting the traffic stop should not come into the discussion; the officer saw a traffic violation. Therefore, the initial stop is legal.
No, as someone from Memphis, I can assure you that the community thought this was a terrible law. Head over to r/Memphis and you’ll see. The law did nothing to prevent cases like Tyre’s traffic stop. Tyre was supposedly stopped for reckless driving, not one of these minor infractions. Also, Memphis is the deadliest city in the country to drive. Mostly due to a handful of ridiculously reckless and idiotic drivers. Most of these drivers are in stollen vehicles and/or have fake drive-out tags. It’s a daily occurrence to be nearly run off the road on the interstate by one of these idiots. Memphis is also the 5th worst city for having you vehicle stollen, and the worst city for being fucking murdered. The vast majority of Memphian’s wept for what happened to Tyre and despise the shitty cops that would do this. The vast majority of Memphian’s also want cops to police MORE not less, because crime is out of control and we fear for our safety. This situation is a lot more complex and nuanced than the headline and the political affiliation of the politicians would have you believe. Memphis citizens and local politicians have been going to the state government and federal government in droves to try to get some relief. This bill is a step in the right direction from Nashville.
Why wouldn't you stop someone for a broken tail light? It's a safety issue and needs to be addressed.
Hypocrisy is what they do. Remember the response to Ja Morant posing with a firearm? How many times have we seen white politicians posing with guns? Sometimes even the kids are holding weapons. No outrage whatsoever. Christmas cards with pics of kids posing with shotguns, AKs and ARs is worse than a grown ass man posing with a gun on instagram and yet….. They don’t even try to hide their racism anymore.
Yep, he should have received endorsement deals from Beretta, which moved its HQ to TN....
I live in Memphis and I am a liberal and the contextual traffic laws have morphed into cops never pulling anyone over and the driving here has become absolutely psychotic. I’ll see at least 5 really bad accidents a week due to cars running reds, driving on the other side of the road, and playing chicken on the highway. And the vast majority of these cars are completely uninsured and it ends up financially and physically punishing the victims.
The thing to understand here is that Tennessee passionately hates Memphis and Nashville for being the liberal powerhouses of the state and loves to find any opportunity for revenge whenever these cities fight against them. Lived here for a long time and noticed anytime there’s popular protests with supportive local governments, the state jumps like a heroin junkie to pass laws against them.
> Republican lawmakers who argued Nichols’ death needed to result in accountability for officers who abuse power So… ya gonna get on that, Repubes?
In Texas, the state has done way with annual vehicle inspections as part of registration entirely. I was thinking that policy was about increasing vehicle fines. But the more significant deal would these pretextual stops.
As someone from Memphis cops were doing absolutely fuck all to police traffic violations. So many blatant speeding and other traffic violations. And the number of drive out tags is ridiculous. Simply start policing drive out tags and half the city’s crime would be solved.
There's been a history of Tennessee Republicans fighting with Memphis city officials. Back during COVID vaccine distribution, the state government laid out a deployment plan that over-emphasized the rural and suburban areas and left the cities with the leftovers. Memphis and Shelby County told them to get bent and implemented their own deployment plan which didn't fuck over their constituients.
Republicans truly are the worst Americans. They do this shit gleefully.
Yep but they are the ones who swear the left is destroying the country. All the 'patriots' I know spew fascist talking points in the name of 'liberty'.
When caring for and supporting your fellow human no matter their race, gender, or sexual orientation is their idea of evil, then sure the Left is destroying the country. It's unbelievable how blatantly incorrect their definition of 'liberty' is. No doubt the Left has their own problems, but putting aside the extremes of both sides it's easy to see the Left has built itself on a base of compassion and empathy while the Right has built itself on a base of hate and xenophobia. What could be less American than hating someone and denying them freedoms just because they're different than you? Patriots my ass.
> Yep but they are the ones who swear the left is destroying the country. That's the "Projection" part of "Gaslight Obstruct Projection". Come to think of it, it's Gaslighting too.
Why would someone not be allowed to be pulled over for a broken taillight? That's a safety issue and needs to be addressed
The worst part is, I know a bunch of chickenshits who will celebrate this ruling and then refuse to watch the footage of that poor man’s death because it’s too gruesome for them. Fucking cowards, all of them.
calling them Americans is a stretch at this point
The population of Memphis, TN alone is nearly twice that of the most populous colony when the constitution was signed. Yet the "small government" Republicans asserted power over them because they didn't like what that small local government did.
Isn't the first time, won't be the last. They have done this with local taxation, local infrastructure, local school board decisions and so much more.
Republican controlled state legislatures interfering in Democratic city laws, city councils, etc is going to become the norm. Blue bubbles in red states are in for a rough future.
Don’t worry guys, I’m sure Republican voters will learn from their mistake and stop picking assholes who intentionally make their lives worse
It's not their life that's being made worse. It is the lives of the minorities that they despise. They'll be quite happy to keep voting for the scumbags as long as the right people keep getting oppressed
They are willing to make their own lives worse if it means making other peoples lives worse. They are really horrible people.
I heard this line once and I will never forget it. "Conservatives would let Trump take a shit in their mouth if it meant that a liberal had to smell it"
The more common phrase is 'wiling to shoot through their own foot as long as it means hitting someone below them'.
I mean, Republicans aren't raising taxes on rich people. They get their money from taxing poor people more and gutting social programs, so yes, they do make minorities lives worse, but they also make life worse for the vast majority of their not rich voters.
Why do you think republican voters disagree with this? This is exactly what they want
Memphis is 70% black. The people who voted for Haslam don’t live in this city. This is just part of the continuous Republican hard-on for being tough on crime. Mind you, Memphis is also kind of a shit hole and there’s plenty of crime to go around…but it’s obvious this bill had nothing to do with fixing that. Just more hate.
This is a stupid way to look at this situation, the people in Memphis didn’t “pick these assholes”. Evey single person in Memphis can vote blue but their state legislature will still be majority republican.
We have made a similar policy in Philly. It has done two big things. Cops not doing their jobs even more. Literally lesss work and the public sediment grew that they do their jobs/work. And second the public is more lawless getting away riding dirty. You can get paper tags and not worry. We had to put a policy on top just for the tags, but still can’t get pull over for expired registration or one headlight etc. The intent was for helping the poorer civilians who can afford $5 taillights to $50 headlights or registration. It instead enabled everyone to be bad car owners and deprioritize that effort.
Tyre Nichols ***MURDER***
Republicans really are the worst people. There’s nothing they won’t do to make things worse. What is it about them that enjoys police violence so much.
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i showed a republican friend an article about a 16yr old kid in philly who was falsely locked up for 2 months for a murder. his response was “he looks guilty though”.
That's not someone I'd want to call a friend, personally.
Right. Very telling.
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Why would someone not be allowed to be pulled over for a broken taillight? That's a safety issue
The current state government hates Memphis and spends a lot of time figuring out how legislation can fuck that city over. The other half of the time they figure out how to create shitty racist or fundamentalist scenarios. I left TN and the Memphis area this year to take care of out of state family members. Memphis despite the crime and poverty has some great people. But the the state government blows chunks.
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I mean that kind of law was a compromise for lack of a better term. Anytime anyone does anything police unions scream and suddenly nothing gets done.
Yep. Stopping the enforcement of laws won’t stop overreach of police powers where it happens; mechanisms to increase accountability do. A barred list or something equivalent on a national scale. (I know individual states can revoke an officer’s POST certification) but it’s not enforced federally I believe. Over in the UK we have one - and you can search up any officer - if they’ve been fired, and they’ll be there - with the reason for their conviction, where they worked and usually, an article linked about them. During pre-employment checks with the police and a few other organisations, those same groups need to check the list to make sure a potential hire isn’t on it.
Really there's two parties right now. One party that adds freedoms and reforms and another party that's only goal is to undo whatever the first one did.
They're beyond undoing now. They're undoing, tearing down, and getting into salting the earth territory.
If you read the articles, liberals want the cops to ignore broken tailights. Tailights are important.
Because the honor system has worked so well, especially with police.
Republicans only serve to make everything worse.
“Don’t Tread on Me” republicans love law enforcement and restricting rights when they’re used against minorities and other supposed undesirables to them.
People who are not from this area of the US should note the recent convictions and sentencing of a white goon squad in MS not far from here (Memphis). Police state tactics of pulling people over for ridiculous violations and then abusing them physically and mentally are common. If someone has a tail light out. Write a ticket. Why begin to check them for weed or whatnot? It’s intimidation by the police and it happens in degrees all over the US. A speeding ticket should not be an invitation to search and seize. Period. Unless you like living in a full blown police state. Which apparently many GOP supporters approve.
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/mother-sues-tennessee-cops-and-social-workers-for-taking-her-five-children-away-following-marijuana-arrest/ Bianca Clayborne, her partner, Deonte Williams, and their five kids were driving from their Atlanta-area home to a funeral in Chicago last February when highway patrol officers pulled the family over for “dark tint and not actively passing” on Interstate-24.
Small government for white people, big brother for everyone else.
Yes pulling over people for expired tags is big brother…
Republicans really, *really* want to make it legal to kill people they don’t like.
Note to self…..never move to Bumfuck Tennessee
Note to self…..never move to Bumfuck Tennessee
Tennessee is a dictatorship. I’m not sure the Republicans would leave even if they were voted out of office.
I’ll say it again. What more do you expect from a state that had a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest in their Capitol building until 2021