Back in 2010, we, the voters of District, 17 had an opportunity to vote out this career politician, Mae Beavers. Unfortunately, we did not do so. Since then, she has sponsored silly, unneeded, and in some cases, ludicrous legislation, as I will point out below. The good news is that in 2014, we have a "second chance" to replace her. We cannot waste this opportunity. Furthermore, since there is no Democrat or Independent in the race, the Republican Primary is the race. The winner gets the District 17 seat.
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| Me with a Boyd for State Senate sign. |
Beavers has been the master of political theater for a long time. She thrives at it, but often all she accomplishes is wasting taxpayer money and the time of her colleagues who have to debate and consider her silly bills. You may be wondering how taxpayer money is wasted? Well, there's labor costs involved with the time the clerks, state attorneys, and others spend writing and proofing each bill. There's also printing, sorting, and other overhead costs involved with getting copies of the bills to the legislators who actually debate and consider them. I could go on, but you get the picture.
Below is a few examples of "Beavers' Political Theater" from the legislative session just ended :
- There was the "Don't Spy on Me, Bro" Bill, as I referred to it in a January post. It's purpose was making it illegal for local law enforcement to gather information from folks' cell phones without a warrant. In my post, I pointed out that both the U.S. and Tennessee Constitutions prohibit these warrantless searches. Therefore, the bill wasn't needed. In my opinion, Beavers was only pushing the legislation in order to score points with voters during an election year while the NSA Spying Scandal was still a hot-button topic. The legislation passed into law and was signed by Governor Haslam, but it's one of those waste of time and taxpayer money bills I mentioned earlier.
- Beavers' sponsored a bill (SB 1607) which if passed would have made it a crime for federal agents to enforce federal gun laws in Tennessee. It was a silly bill. Fortunately, her colleagues voted it down and saved the state some embarrassment. The rest of the country would have looked at us and thought, "Those fools in Tennessee think they can arrest a Fed for doing their job?" I'll call this one the "Stay Outta Our Crib, Bro" Bill. I'm sure that had it passed it would have been smacked down real quick by Uncle Sam. Once again, a waste of time and money.
In my opinion, even though Beavers didn't sponsor the newly adopted bill that reduced the amount of allergy medication we can buy, she is the one ultimately responsible for it. It was she, who just a few years ago, led the charge for legislation which now requires allergy medication purchases to be tracked. Currently, when you walk into your local drugstore or supermarket and purchase allergy meds containing decongestants, you have to register them like many states do gun purchases. You show your drivers' license, make the purchase, and it's logged into a database for government tracking purposes. I've even had to show my drivers' license to purchase plain Mucinex that doesn't even contain decongestants. It's ridiculous.
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| A Beaver Tale (Photo credit: kdee64) |
Lastly, the thing I've never understood is why Beavers gets much of her support from the pro-gun and anti-tax crowds. She's been heralded as spearheading the anti-state income tax movement in Tennessee and as the gun owners friend. However, these folks have apparently forgotten a few things about Beavers. For instance :
- As I've pointed out before, while in the Tennessee House, she voted in favor of Jimmy Naifeh for Speaker on 4 separate occasions. Naifeh is the guy that on many occasions went out of his way to kill pro-gun legislation, including several carry bills. If questioned about it, Beavers will probably reply that he was the only candidate up for Speaker at the time. My response is that she could have voted "no". How the pro-guns folks who hated Naifeh forgive her for those votes, I don't know. I won't.
- Second, did you know that Beavers has frequently voted to either increase taxes or to renew old ones that were set to expire? Well, she has. Many of them are the type of taxes that can get directly passed onto consumers by raising prices, such as taxes on nursing homes and HMO's. I shared these in a 2010 article **, but don't take my word for it, go to the Tennessee Legislature's website (click here) and "do your own homework," as Glenn Beck says. Anti-tax? Not really.
Since the establishment Republicans gained control of the Tennessee Legislature a few years ago, they have been out of control. Since she's been in the legislature for the last 20, I think it's safe to say Beavers is part of that problem. Therefore, it's time to put some new blood in the Tennessee Legislature, and we can start by electing Clark Boyd.
** Due to the legislature using the same bill numbers over and over from year to year, the links to bill numbers in this 2010 article may not necessarily still correspond to the correct bill. However, to look them up, all one must do to find the correct ones is look back at past legislative sessions and plug in the bill numbers given.
