You are seeing lots of political ads and mail from Marsha Blackburn and some out of state PACs talking about keeping China from acquiring farmland in Tennessee.
Is it really an issue worth worrying about, or devoting so much advertising time shouting about? Are the Chinese Communists really locking down Tennessee Farm land?
You don’t have to crack open a fortune cookie to find the answer, just Google the following question:
How much farmland does China own in Tennessee?
Answer:
Chinese investors and entities hold 0 acres of agricultural land in Tennessee. That’s right, ZERO! While foreign entities own about 457,441 acres statewide, the largest portions belong to investors from the Netherlands (174,961 acres) and Canada.
Tennessee law already restricts citizens and entities from China from owning real estate in Tennessee.You can track foreign investments through the USDA AFIDA Reports or review the Tennessee Farm Bureau policy materials on private ownership. You will find the TRUTH.
So why the deceit and outright lies? It creates hysteria to motivate the uninformed to cast their votes the way these out of state PACs want you to do; it has very little to do with the issues that might actually affect the lives of Tennesseans. Unfortunately, it is very effective unless Tennesseans work to spread the truth.
So what is the real motivation behind these ads? The big PACs spending millions on tv and in your mailbox are almost exclusively tied to the agenda of promoting the voucher scam in Tennessee. They are also playing heavily in state legislative races across the state to insure that the BILLIONS of dollars in tax money will continue their drive to expand and maintain their assault on public schools by funding “scholarships” to private schools. Keep in mind that the overwhelming amount of funds for the vouchers are being paid to those who his children were already in private schools. Not really a matter of “choice” when that choice had already been made, right?
Despite a lack of any evidence that the voucher program has produced any gains in academic achievement, the legislator just expanded the number of students eligible for the funds by another 15,000, bring me the number of those receiving the money to 35,000. And the state also doubled the amount being paid to an out-of-state group that helps manage the program to over a half $1 billion, despite the fact that other states have ”fired” that same company for incompetence or worse.
The bottom line is that the groups funding the ads about China are motivated by their own agenda or perhaps even profiting directly from the voucher scam. They are definitely not concerned about the main issues that the next Governor of Tennessee will really face: roads, community safety, economic development, actually improving public schools, finding solutions to our energy and water demands, and more.
So the next time you see an ad or piece of mail focused on creating fear of a Chinese land grab in Tennessee that isn’t real, ask yourself what they are trying to distract you from that might really impact your family.
Steve Gill is editor and Publisher of TriStar Daily.
