Greg Johnson

Greg Johnson writes with a worldview shaped by an Appalachian heritage, a global perspective from ministry work in Russia, Kenya and the Caribbean, an eye on economics from years in the financial services industry and a foundation in his faith.

• Greg Johnson: Guaranteed raises foster mediocrity Published 5/3/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 25 comments

  Easy Way runs off Westland Drive, not far from the Knoxville First Church of God. Easy Way is not to be confused with Easy Street, which, apparently, runs through the Knoxville City Council meeting room and connects city employees with ...

• Greg Johnson: Syria deteriorating while U.S. dithers Updated 4/26/2013 at 5:55 a.m. 17 comments

  The Boston bombings enraged a nation and virtually emptied a city for a day or so while the manhunt for the bombers enthralled America. Three died. Almost 200 were injured, including multiple survivors who lost limbs. Now, consider Syria.

• Greg Johnson: For-profit utilities better for customers Published 4/19/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 25 comments

  Now that every politician and pundit of every stripe in every state in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s service area has had a chance to fulminate and pontificate about President Barack Obama’s proposal to sell all or part of TVA, could ...

• Greg Johnson: TVA is proof that government can't run businesses Published 4/13/2013 at 7:00 p.m. 10 comments

  The uproar reverberating from the mountains of East Tennessee to the Mississippi Delta would be recognized by the Iron Lady. Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain who died last week, might even sympathize with her ideological opposite, ...

• Greg Johnson: Bill wouldn't improve parenting skills Published 4/12/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 55 comments

  Sometimes public policy hits home. It happened in my family last week, when Uncle Arley unloaded on his conservative columnist nephew.

• Greg Johnson: The good, the bad, the government Published 4/5/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 12 comments

  While your earnest journalist was wandering around on holiday and otherwise occupied with matters sacred and secular, our fearless leaders in Nashville and Washington have been up to stuff. Some bad. Some good. Some possibly promising. To wit:

• Greg Johnson: The church still lives on this Good Friday Published 3/29/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 30 comments

  Darkness settled over the land, the gospel writer tells us, plunging Golgotha into gloom and causing that long-ago Friday to seem anything but good to the followers of Jesus. The humble carpenter from Nazareth, who had a fiery side when ...

• Greg Johnson: Celebrity triumphs over press freedom Published 3/22/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 12 comments

  London’s Speakers’ Corner was silent early Monday, the only sounds the footfalls of early morning exercisers and Londoners hoofing it to work. By midday, double-decker buses, taxis and traffic pitched some noise into Hyde Park, but still no one stood ...

• Greg Johnson: Don't ignore reality for sake of history Published 3/15/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 27 comments

  The history lesson began in a cab in Newcastle. There, close by the waters of the North Sea, the cabbie lamented the decline of industry. There’s no more coal to Newcastle, the coal industry drying up years ago.

• Greg Johnson: America ignores Africa at its own economic peril Published 3/10/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 14 comments

  With sequester in our faces, unemployment near 8 percent, flatlined economic growth — gross domestic product rose 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter — Americans may be forgiven for their near-constant focus on domestic issues. But on the edge of ...

• Greg Johnson: Concentrate on how to fix families Published 3/8/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 9 comments

  Kate, Rick and I fell into one of those spontaneous after-church conversations that make my parish such a pleasant place, an essential place where our community comes to grow into family. Kate commented on my recent column on early childhood ...

• Greg Johnson: Let locals, not state, decide local issues Published 3/1/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 14 comments

  Has the Republican supermajority in the state Legislature made some avowed conservatives a bit tipsy with power, causing them to violate an absolute bedrock principle of conservatism? And, speaking of avowed conservatives, why did a full-page ad in Tuesday’s News ...

• Greg Johnson: Head Start, pre-K are costly failures Published 2/22/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 283 comments

  Wasn’t this supposed to be the empirical presidency? No, not “imperial presidency,” though Barack Obama’s reign has certainly been that. Didn’t Obama promise to be an empiricist, letting data derived from rigorous examination shape policy proposals?

• Greg Johnson: Parents vital for school achievement Published 2/15/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 15 comments

  Knoxville state Sen. Stacey Campfield took an unexpected star turn last week when Stephen Colbert, the left-wing satirical absurdist who rules Colbert Nation on Comedy Central, jokingly pushed Campfield as a 2016 presidential candidate. If President Barack Obama can go ...

• Greg Johnson: Quayle was right on the importance of traditional families Published 2/10/2013 at 3:00 a.m. 8 comments

  Back in the day, Vice President Dan Quayle caused quite the kerfuffle when he questioned the wisdom of Murphy Brown, an unmarried character in an eponymous 1990s sitcom, when she had a child out of wedlock. Quayle worried publicly Hollywood's ...

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