At the risk of alienating non-Tennessee residents (AKA foreigners), this is Tennessee Blogging, two days in a row.

Rich at Shots Across the Bow hosts the Volunteer Tailgate Party, featuring the best of the Rocky Top Brigade. This gave me a chance to visit Frank Cagle's blog, which I now like a lot. A lot of the coverage is focused on Tennessee, but national readers will enjoy his take on Tennesse Senator (and now Senate Majority Leader) Bill Frist.

As a new member of the exalted Brigade, I didn't realize I was supposed to suggest one of my owns posts. Rich chose my Dragon's Run piece, which is one of my better posts, particularly for its Jack Kerouac "I shot a penny postcard across the country and asked me aunt for another fifty" cadence:

The drive took us through Highway 129, including the infamous stretch known as the Dragon's Run, which I mentioned in the Townsend traveller's guide. In 11 miles the road convulses through 318 sick turns that attract driving enthusiasts, and especially sport bikes. We got to see some great motorcycle riding, and a stream of Honda SR2000s that were touring the mountains. If you're prone to carsickness, take Dramamine. One of our intrepid travellers puked at around turn number 210.

SouthKnoxBubba has created a Rocky Top Brigade Bulletin Board.

"T for Texas/Yes and it's T for Timbuktu,
And it's T for San Francisco/Where the little girls know what to do"
- The Grateful Dead, "Minglewood"

Nashville writer and blogger Bill Hobbs is the man on the scene this week. On Tennessee and taxes on Internet access:

Do you use EarthLink to access the Internet in Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, Ohio, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Wisconsin? If so, you will soon be paying taxes on it. Those states are not subject to the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which bans taxes on Internet access, because they had such taxes in place before the law was passed. EarthLink has announced it will start passing along those taxes to its customers in those seven states. Previously, it had just absorbed those costs.

I mentioned U.S. Internet's fight against Tennessee sales tax on Internet service a while back. I left the ISP biz about three and a half years ago, so I haven't kept up. We won at the time, but it sounds like Tennessee ISPs and Tennessee Internet users lost this round. UPDATE: SouthKnoxBubba says that Charter stopped charging sales tax on cable modems in July, but no one at Charter can explain why.

SouthKnoxBubba blogs on the proposed Tennessee $6 wheel tax.

Owning a car in Tennessee is wonderfully cheap. The basic license plate fee is 25 24 bucks a year. There's no wheel tax, and no ad valorum tax (a tax based on the vehicle's worth). We don't have vehicle inspections. Until last year, we weren't even required to have liability insurance. Until recently, you could buy a used car and tell the county clerk - for sales tax purposes - that the guy who sold it to you was a distant cousin and you paid just $1 for the car. (The sales tax is now based on the vehicle's book value, at least here in Blount County.) When my friends took jobs in other states, they kept their cars registered here for as long as possible.

With no requirement for liability insurance until recently, you'd expect insured motorists to pay higher insurance premiums. With no vehicle inspections, you'd expect more accidents (due to cracked windshields and missing/broken turn signals and brake lights), and consequently you'd also expect higher premiums.

Surprisingly, you'd be wrong. Despite what I had always heard to the contrary, Tennessee actually has low car insurance rates. On a scale of 1 to 51 (with 51 being the lowest insurance rates), Tennessee ranks 37th for the year 2000, which was before mandatory liability insurance went into effect.

One place where Tennessee motorists pay is at the gasoline pump. With a state sales tax of 8.25%, the state gets its due at every fillup.

Hobbs is also blogging on the controversy over a proposed Tennessee vanity license plate. The proposal - part of the state budget - would introduce a new vanity license plate that says "Choose Life." Governor Phil Bredesen doesn't like it, though he's not sure what he can do about it without a line-item veto.

Tennessee offers a number of vanity plates for an extra fee, with most of the proceeds going to organizations associated with that plate. Yours truly has a Tennessee parks plate, because I worked for the state park service one summer in college. I appreciate the job they gave me and I know how tight things are for them, so it's my way of giving something back. It's a voluntary tax, if you will.

Now citizens can volunteer for another tax with a more controversial recipient. According to a Knoxville News-Sentinel article:

The Legislature approved a new special license plate bearing the slogan "Choose Life" by lopsided margins despite criticism from a few lawmakers. As with other special license plates, it will cost an extra $25 to purchase and production will not begin until 1,000 persons have signed up to buy one.

The license plate bill, sponsored by Franklin Republicans Sen. Jim Bryson and Rep. Glenn Casada, was pushed by Tennessee Right To Life, an antiabortion organization. Under the bill, 50 percent of proceeds from sale of the plates will go to New Life Resources - which has close ties to Tennessee Right To Life - for distribution to 49 specified agencies across the state that provide pregnancy counseling and adoption services.

SayUncle disagrees with the decision to allow the "Choose Life" plates, and suggests alternative license plates to illustrate the problem:

Republicans Suck
Democrats Suck Slightly More
Eat Meat Because It’s Normal
Vote Libertarian, Nobody Will Notice
Nuke The Gay Whales For Jesus
Fags Are Okay
No Income Tax Was Used To Pay For This License Plate
Buy A Gun, You Pansy
Destroying Civil Liberties Is Like Letting The Terrorists Win

I'm all for free speech, but that doesn't extend to having the state government lend authority to your message. If we're going this route, then let every legitimate or whack-job political interest group that can generate 1,000 orders have their own license plate. I'd like one that says "Use Your Big Head. Wear a Rubber On Your Little Head." Or maybe "Put Down Your Cell Phone and Drive."